Brian Jones: “Thank you very much. I, again, come to the floor to talk about a 10-year journey that I have been on with two wives…”

“Thank you very much. I, again, come to the floor to talk about a 10-year journey that I have been on with two wives whose husbands were tragically killed on April 8, 2000. The pilot was John Brow, lieutenant colonel, and the copilot was Brooks Gruber. They were flying what's known as an Osprey. I will hold this up, Mr. Speaker. The Osprey has been one of the planes that the Marine Corps for so long has needed to replace the aged helicopters from the Vietnam era. The sadness and the problem was that the MV 22 at the time that it was being flown by Colonel Brow and Major Gruber was not ready for the mission it had been assigned to. Sadly, that night there were 17 young marines in the back of that V 22 that crashed on April 8 in Arizona. So a total of 19 marines were killed when the V 22 flipped and crashed and burned. December of 2002, the wife of Major Brooks Gruber, Connie Gruber, who lives in my district, Jacksonville, North Carolina, the home of Camp LeJeune Marine Base, she sent me an email. And I want to read one paragraph: I contacted you in hopes that leaders of integrity, free of bias, would have both the intelligence and the courage it takes to decide the facts for him/herself. If you do that, you will agree the ``human factor/pilot error'' findings should not stand as it is in military history. Again, I respectfully ask for your support.…”