[Yosemitest]

Take a close review of this:

Boeing T-43

Here's what I've found:

The U.S. Air Force T-43 had been carrying U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 32 others.

The crash site (at the southern tip of Croatia, the light yellow in the lower map on the left), on a 2,300 ft (700 m) hill, was 1.6 miles (2.6 km) northeast of where the aircraft should have been on the inbound course to the NDB.

The pilots failed to identify the missed approach point and IFO-21 (Implementation Force Two One) impacted a rocky mountain side at 2:57 p.m., more than one nautical mile beyond the missed approach point and 1.7 nautical miles to the left of the Dubrovnik runway.
Ground speed at the time of impact was 140 knots.
The aircraft was configured for landing and all aircraft systems were operating properly at the time of accident.

An E-3 Airborne Early Warning Aircraft and later an EC-130 with a mission commander onboard provided primary communication links between NATO and Croatian search and rescue assets.
U.S. helicopters would join the search later after flying one hour from Brindisi, Italy.

Progressively deteriorating weather and erroneous information concerning the crash location severely slowed down the Croatian and NATO search and rescue efforts.
They were also hampered by dense fog and low visibility.
The Croatian search began around 4 p.m. after numerous radio and land communication efforts to locate IFO-21.
French helicopters arrived in the area around 5:15 p.m.
Their initial search efforts began at the last known location of the aircraft at KLP and proceeded along the coastline between the KLP beacon and the airport.
At approximately 6 p.m., when the clouds briefly lifted a Croatian civilian living in the remote village of Veljido.
Because there was no phone in his village he traveled 45 minutes to the next village where he notified the local police.
The police responded to the reported site and confirmed the accident location at 7:20 p.m.
Meanwhile, U.S. helicopters from Brindisi, Italy, had also joined the search and French helicopters now low on fuel departed.

Unaware that a Croatian civilian had located the crash site, U.S. helicopters continued to search until they, too, ran low on fuel.
At 7:48 p.m., they landed at the Dubrovnik airport. At the site, the police began looking for survivors.
By this time, it was dark at the site and low clouds had dropped visibility to less than 30 feet.
Low visibility created extremely hazardous flying conditions and the helicopters could not reach the site.
At around 10:30 p.m., Croatian police informed rescuers they had found a survivor with serious injury.
Because the Croatians feared causing additional injury they requested NATO helicopter support to evacuate the Air Force crew member from the mountain.

Learning of a possible survivor, one U.S. MH-53 helicopter launched at 10:36 p.m. and made repeated attempts to reach the site, but again, weather prohibited them from reaching the area.
Upon receiving word that the U.S. helicopter was unable to reach the site, the police began moving the crew member down the mountain by litter at 11:15 p.m.
At that time, the crew member showed no signs of life.
The police reached the bottom of the mountain and transferred the crew member to a waiting ambulance.
An accompanying Croatian physician pronounced her dead on the way to the hospital.

Callsign "IFO-21" (short for Implementation Force), a military CT-43A did NOT have neither a flight data recorder nor a cockpit voice recorder.
Official US Air Force accident investigation board report noted several reasons that led the Boeing CT-43A to crash.
Chief among the findings was a "failure of command, aircrew error and an improperly designed instrument approach procedure".

Niko Jerkuić, head of navigation at Čilipi Airport where the Ron Brown Aircraft was intending to land, was found dead three days after the accident with a bullet wound to his chest.
The police investigation concluded that the case was a suicide.

Now here's the Transcript of US Department of Defense News briefing held on 7 June 2006 "Results of the Accident Investigation Report of the CT-43 Accident".

It reads a good bit different than what my follow military controller told me, who was stationed at the USAF mobile Ground Controlled Approach Facility at that airport.
He said that the Precision Radar Approach scopes were working at that "trailer", but I can't recall if they were open for hours of operation at the time of the crash on April 3rd 1996, in Croatia.
I believe he said that they were an "on call unit" for the fighter aircraft that had to make an emergency landing during that Croatian conflict.

Now, all of this information is to help you get a mental picture on what might have happened.
But base on my experience overseas, you can't trust the weather reports of airports overseas at small airports, unless there's a US military weather observer on duty, and measuring and reporting the current conditions.
So I don't trust the report to be accurate.

I can only speculate based on what I've been told, and that given, I'd vote for ...
"it was planned and they were cleaning it up prior to the NTSB getting in there and file a report."

[Redwood71]

The NTSB report from their files turned into congress in 2006, almost nothing:
https://www.ntsb.gov/about/Documents/SPC9901.pdf
Dubrovnik, Croatia - Crash of Secretary Brown’s Aircraft On April 3, a U.S. Air Force CT-43A (B-737-200), carrying Secretary of Commerce Ronald Brown, other government officials, and a delegation of business executives, crashed on a mountainside while on approach to Cilipi Airport in Croatia. All 35 people aboard the aircraft were killed. The NTSB provided technical assistance to the Air Force investigation in the areas of flight control systems, structures and aircraft performance. As part of the investigation, the flight control system, including the rudder system, was examined in detail and certain components were shipped back to the U.S. for extensive tests and analysis. The Board advised the Department of Defense (DOD) to equip military transports with cockpit voice and flight data recorders similar to those required on civilian transport aircraft.
___________________________________________________
I reviewed news articles from the LA Times and the Chicago Trib and the only things they mentioned consistent were the lack of updated compasses and the lack of a cockpit recorder and that the air force had decided to violate policy and have them land there in rainy weather.
We both know there was no rain. There were low clouds, but the airport was not set up for ILS as no beacons for that purpose were in place and the radio compass they were using was supposedly stoned knives and bear skins. They never should have landed there no matter what we are guessing. It could be done, but someone had already determined the odds were bad enough to set policy it shouldn’t and that was ignored by unidentified air force command level staff. Can’t find who on that one.
So, I surmise that were told to land in an unsafe condition, against air force policy, by someone at command level that was not identified, using an aircraft and an airport that was not set up to handle the task, basically for no reason. There were airports capable of easily handling a 737 at Zagreb, Split, Zadar, Pula, Rijeka (on the island of Krk), Osijek, Bol and Mali Lošinj. Croatia isn’t exactly Alaska so most likely all of these were within the capacity of the aircraft and the craft would have been set up with additional fuel and/or refueling capacity in the air. This was not a transport.
And the real irony of this is that the aircraft, Boeing 737-200, was built as a navigational trainer. And nothing I can find tells me just how much of the training equipment was still on board that both pilots had probably used at least in sims.
“it was planned and they were cleaning it up prior to the NTSB getting in there and file a report.”
Still stands with me also.
rwood