Sabow apparently committed suicide amid allegations of base corruption, specifically using military aircraft for personal use. His family and friends denied he committed suicide and pointed out that Col. Sabow had pledged to fight the charges against him just minutes before his death in phone conversations with other officers. According to a 1996 lawsuit, Sabow was murdered because he threatened to expose an authorized covert operation at El Toro involving some of his fellow officers, CIA-sponsored airlifts to Central and South America, running arms and drugs. A forensic analysis conducted appeared to indicate the death was homicide and that evidence had been altered. On 2 May 1993, during the 1993 MCAS El Toro airshow, an F-86 Sabre crashed on the runway after failing to pull out of a vertical loop. The F-86 pilot, James A. Gregory, died on impact. No one was hurt on the ground. The airshow continued. Normally the F-86 performed with a MiG-15, but the pilot of the MiG-15 was ill that day and the F-86 was doing a solo run. Notable events The MCAS El Toro Air Show took place annually from the 1950s until 1997. It featured the U.S. Navy Blue Angels, as well as the USAF Thunderbirds. The Air Show also featured new aircraft that were coming into active service, such as the B-2 stealth bomber. Other displays featured military vehicles. The show also had a large gathering of vendors of military items and memorabilia. The final Air Show in 1997 drew an estimated two million visitors. MCAS El Toro was regularly used for flight operations by Special Air Missions during President Richard Nixon's term in office, in support of the "Western White House," Nixon's home at San Clemente. The final Nixon flights were, first, when he landed there upon resigning the White House in 1974, and again, after his death in 1994, when his body was flown to California for burial. He flew both times in his Air Force One, SAM 27000. In 2006, an abandoned F/A-18 hangar in Irvine California was sealed to create, in effect, a giant pinhole camera, and a panoramic print of the El Toro Air Station was formed on a light-sensitive muslin cloth measuring 111 feet wide, 32 feet high. Under the direction of Laguna Beach photographer Jacques Garnier, the image, known as “The Great Picture,” was originally produced as part of the Legacy Project - a photographic