Secretary Brown died on a trade mission to Croatia, when the government plane he was on flew into a mountainside on April 3 in the 1996 Croatia USAF CT-43 crash. This led to conservative accusations that Clinton had Brown murdered; U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and others scoffed at this conspiracy theory. Soon after, Nolanda Hill declared that she had been engaging in a long-running affair with Brown. The trade missions controversy became more visible in 1996 as an outgrowth of the 1996 United States campaign finance controversy and investigations of Democratic fundraiser John Huang. It thusly became an issue during the 1996 United States presidential election, in which Clinton was nevertheless re-elected. In November 1996, independent counsel Daniel Pearson reported: "My office's investigation of Secretary Brown ended unfinished with his death. The unfinished state of the investigation and considerations of fairness preclude our office from drawing conclusions about the allegations regarding possible criminal conduct by the Secretary." Responding to the original criticism, in March 1997 new Commerce Secretary William M. Daley instituted new departmental policies intended to prevent politics from being part of the trade missions selection process. He also pledged the process would be far more transparent than in the past. Daley said the new rules were not necessarily an admission that prior practices were improper: "This [is] about going forward, not looking back." In June 1997, Nolanda Hill, the aforementioned business and personal associate of Brown, was the subject of a major profile piece in "The New Yorker" which detailed her colorful business past and her relationship with Brown. Hill testified in federal court in March 1998 that Brown had told her that trade mission plane seats were sold to people willing to make campaign contributions. U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth heard Hill's testimony, rejecting her argument that her testimony would adversely affect a federal indictment she was under for fraudulent business practices. Hill stated Brown was angered when White House political staff made him give seats on the trade missions for fund-raising. Hill said Brown told her the main person involved at the White House was Alexis Herman (who would later become Clinton's Labor Secretary); she further claimed that Brown had told her that an assistant to Herman, Melissa Moss, wrote the original contribution letters which had upset Brown. Hill also testified that Brown had told her President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton supported the plan to sell seats for contributions. In one memorable turn, she said that Brown had complained  that "I'm not a motherfucking tour guide for Hillary." Going back to an earlier accusation by Judicial Watch, in January 1999 Judge Lambert found that a U.S. Commerce Department official appeared to have deliberately destroyed subpoenaed documents relating to the department's trade missions to China, following Brown's death.