HOPES of survivors from a White House aircraft that crashed with nine people on board in Wyoming faded yesterday. The four engine US Air Force C-130 cargo plane was transporting cars and equipment used by the White House entourage from Jackson Hole, where President Clinton had been on holiday.
"It doesn't appear there are" survivors, said a spokesman for the US Forest Service, Mr Larry Warren. The plane hit a mountain in the Forest Service-controlled Gros Ventre wilderness, about 24 kms north-east of Jackson Hole late on Saturday.
Mr Warren said there were unconfirmed reports that the crew reported mechanical troubles shortly before the crash. The US Air Force said it had a crew of eight on the plane. One Secret Service agent was also on the flight.
The Clintons left Jackson Hole before the cargo plane after a nine-day holiday and arrived in New York yesterday evening for a party celebrating the president's 50th birthday. "It's a real tragedy and President Clinton expresses his condolences to the families of the crew members," Mr Clinton's adviser, Mr George Stephanopoulos, told NBC television.
Mr Warren said rescue teams on horseback and on foot began arriving at the desolate area around 4:30 a.m. yesterday. "It took rescue crews two hours on horseback to reach the area," he said. The rocky, inhospitable site is at 3,150 metres, he said.
An air force team was to arrive later yesterday to investigate the accident. The plane was equipped with a flight data and cockpit voice recorder, a Pentagon spokesman said.
A military version of a Boeing 737 crashed in Croatia on April 3rd with the US Commerce Secretary, Mr Ron Brown, and 34 others on board. That investigation was hampered because the plane was not equipped with the recorders.
. The former Arkansas Governor, Jim Guy Tucker, and James McDougal, a former business associate of President Bill Clinton are to be sentenced today, AFP reports from Little Rock, Arkansas.
Sentencing comes amid rumours that McDougal, once defiant, is now co-operating with the prosecution in exchange for leniency.
Attorneys for Tucker and Susan McDougal, James McDougal's former wife who was also convicted, say their clients have made no deals to give information to the special prosecutor, Mr Kenneth Starr.
They were charged with fraud and conspiracy in connection with business loans made in the 1980s when Tucker was a private citizen and the McDougals owned the now-defunct Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association.
Clinton was governor at the time. He and his wife Hillary were once partners with the McDougals in a land development deal that was not part of the charges against the McDougals and Tucker. The three were convicted by a federal court on May 28th.
The McDougals and Tucker have said they are the victims of partisan prosecution an effort by Mr Starr, a Republican, to get at Mr Clinton through Democratic associates. During the trial, James McDougal was particularly outspoken in making this claim.
The sentencing of Tucker and the McDougals should have little political impact in Arkansas. Tucker alienated even Democratic supporters when he first announced his resignation, then tried to withdraw it, before finally stepping down.