ADN by JAMES HALPIN, RICHARD MAUER and LISA DEMER.  Friends of former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (NGP Photo-r with author) said he was traveling Monday to the GCI-owned Agulowak Lodge near Lake Aleknagik, and they were concerned for him.  A woman who answered the phone at the Anchorage home of retired Air Force Gen. Joe Ralston, a good friend of Stevens, said Ralston was with Stevens’ wife, Catherine, comforting her and trying to find out what was going on.  No one answered the phone at the homes of Stevens’ daughter, Susan Covich, in Kenai, or his son, Ben, in Anchorage.

(We pray for the protecting hand of providence on all the souls who traveled on that plane.  -dh)

 

Washington Post/AP by Becky Bohrer and Pauline Jelinek.  A U.S. government official says former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (NP Photos) is believed to have been aboard an airplane that has crashed in a remote part of southwest Alaska. Former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe was on board as well.  The U.S. government official told The Associated Press that Alaska authorities have been informed that the former longtime senator was among several passengers on the plane. The official, who spoke on grounds of anonymity, said Stevens’ condition is unknown.  Alaska National Guard spokesman Maj. Guy Hayes said there are possible fatalities in the crash. Rescue crews were trying to reach the wreckage early Tuesday. A National Transportation Safety Board investigative team has been dispatched from Washington, D.C.  The Anchorage Daily News was the first to report that friends

 

 

of Stevens, 86, believe that he may have been aboard the aircraft. The friends said Stevens had been planning to visit a lodge owned by the same telecommunications company that owned the small plane, the newspaper said. It reported that Stevens’s wife was with a longtime family friend, trying to confirm Stevens’s whereabouts.