Murder, Inc.
``Don't believe a word you hear. It was not suicide. It couldn't have been.''
-Assistant Attorney General Webster Hubbell, 7/20/93, on White House counsel Vincent Foster's death, cited in Esquire, 11/93.
``Ron's dead. They can't indict him.''
-Nolanda Hill, from ABC NEWS Primetime Live, 1997-Jun-18
Here is my Vince Foster compilation, including the Starr whitewash, the Knowlton papers, and Bloodgate.
http://newhk.blogspot.com/2008/12/uniiic-ii-report-revisited.html
If you have the energy, you can investigate the Mena-BCCI-Inslaw-CIA-NSA-Foster-Etc "Octopus" (Octupus within an Octupus, really, since my own compilation describes the top-level global Octopus) at http://www.federal.com/menascandal.html and http://www.federal.com/inslawsc.html.
Read about the Clinton regime's lower-grade campaign of intimidation and harassment here in a subchapter of the Stonewall chapter.
First a little juicy tidbit from history.
from Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia":
Mary Jo Kopechne
Mary Jo Kopechne (July 26, 1940--July 18, 1969) was a congressional staffer for U.S. politician Edward Kennedy. Kopechne died after a car driven by Kennedy turned off the road in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts and crashed into a pond. Kennedy did not call the police or authorities to save her until the morning. Of course by that time she was already dead. Questions abound about Kennedy, his conduct, and why he did not serve time, receiving only a suspended sentence. It is assumed Mary Jo died from drowning, although her parents filed a petition barring an autopsy.
On television Kennedy later said he was not driving under the influence of alcohol. He explained he was in a state of shock when he emerged from the creek and confused by "a jumble of emotions". He added that he tried several times to find Mary Jo by diving down into the water.
He said he gave up hope and remembers little of how he got back to his hotel in Edgartown except that he swam the narrow channel because there were no night ferries and nearly drowned in the process.
Mary Jo's death severely damaged Kennedy's reputation, and is regarded as one of the primary reasons why he was never able to mount a successful campaign for President of the United States.
Most people assume that Kennedy did not tell the authorities until morning because he was drunk and did not want the public to know his state of intoxication.
from http://www.ytedk.com/drivingrecord.htm:
Ted Kennedy's Driving Record - List of Traffic Offenses
- Ted Kennedy had a record of serious traffic violations. Their nature formed a pattern of deliberate and repeated negligent operation. Particularly bothersome was a June, 1958 conviction for "reckless driving."
- On March 14, 1958, Deputy Sheriff Thomas Whitten had been on routine highway patrol outside Charlottesville, Virginia, when an Oldsmobile convertible ran a red light, sped off, then cut its tail lights to elude pursuit. A license check revealed the car belonged to Edward M. Kennedy, a 26-year-old law student attending the University of Virginia. Kennedy had previously been fined $15 for speeding in March 1957.
- Whitten was on patrol at the same intersection a week later, he testified, "And here comes the same car. And to my surprise, he did exactly the same thing. He raced through the same red light, cut his lights when he got to the corner and made the right turn." Whitten gave chase. He found the car in a driveway, apparently unoccupied. Looking inside, he discovered the driver, Teddy Kennedy, stretched out on the front seat and hiding. Whitten issued a ticket for "reckless driving; racing with an officer to avoid arrest; and operating a motor vehicle without an operator's license (Mass. registration.)"
- Kennedy's attorneys were able to win numerous postponements, but eventually he was convicted on all charges and paid a $35 fine. Court officials never filed the mandatory notice of the case in the public docket, however, and Kennedy's name had not appeared on any arrest blotter. Instead, a local reporter discovered the case when he spotted 5 warrants in Kennedy's name in a court cash drawer.
- Three weeks after his trial, Ted Kennedy was caught speeding again, and still operating without a valid license.
- In December 1959, Kennedy was stopped again for running a red light and fined $10 and costs. In Whitten's view, "That boy had a heavy foot and a mental block against the color red. He was a careless, reckless driver who didn't seem to have any regard for speed limits or traffic ordinances."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- The offenses in Virginia had occurred on Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts driver's license, but mysteriously neither the Registry of Motor Vehicles nor the office of probation in Cambridge had any record of the out-of-state convictions. Had it been revealed at the inquest, the Senator's history of negligence and reckless driving would have been further evidence to support a charge of manslaughter in the Chappaquiddick accident.
~ Senatorial Privilege by Leo Damore
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Senator Kennedy's driver's license had expired on February 22, 1969 (nearly 5 months before the accident at Chappaquiddick) and had not been renewed.
- Although driving with an expired license was only a misdemeanor, it did provide the evidence of negligence needed to prove a manslaughter charge in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.
- The license problem was "fixed" by officials at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, under the direction of Registrar Richard McLaughlin, before the legal proceedings began.
from TPDL 1999-Apr-8, from Capital Hill Blue, by Doug Thompson:
Away from public eye, Bill Clinton is a violent, profane man who wants to "kill" his enemies
Away from the public eye and the vaunted White House spin machine, President Bill Clinton is a vulgar, vengeful man who believes in "killing" people try to hurt him, those who know Clinton best say.
White House staffers, Clinton confidants and others describe Clinton as "incredibly profane" and "an angry man who wants to inflict as much pain as possible on his enemies."
Former White House senior staff member George Stephanopoulos in his book, All Too Human, writes about Clinton's mishandling of the Somalia crisis and shows the depth of the President's violent emotions:
"'We're not inflicting pain on these fuckers,' Clinton said, softly at first. 'When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers.' Then, with his face reddening, his voice rising, and his fist pounding his thigh, he leaned into Tony [Lake], as if it was his fault. 'I believe in killing people who try to hurt you. And I can't believe we're being pushed around by these two-bit pricks.'"
Those who have known Clinton since his days in Arkansas say the quote is "vintage Bill."
"Only an idiot would buy the public persona of Bill Clinton," says Walter Erricson, a retired reporter who covered Clinton in his early political days in Arkansas. "He is an incredibly profane individual. He is now and always has been an angry man who wants to inflict as much pain as possible on his enemies."
White House staff members say Clinton curses like a sailor, has temper tantrums that cause people to back away from him and uses the word "kill" often to describe what he wants to do with his enemies.
"Once, when the House was finishing up its impeachment investigation, the President slammed his fist down on the table and said 'I'd like to kill all of these sons of bitches and just be done with it!' There was a long, painful period of silence until he regained his composure. Then everybody went on like it was never said," says one former White House staffer.
Samuel Wilson, a former political worker in Clinton's second campaign for governor, remembers the candidate encountering a critic at a campaign appearance in a small town. After the critic told Clinton he was nothing but a "two-bit politician" and then walked away, Clinton turned to a campaign aide and said "write down the name of that motherfucker. When I'm back in office, he's a dead man."
"I remember his look. It was cold," Wilson said. "I don't want to think he wanted to kill him literally, but I'm sure some sort of revenge was inflicted later on."
In fact, it was fear of what Attorney General Bill Clinton could do to her business that kept nursing home operator Juanita Broaddrick from reporting Clinton's rape of her 21 years ago in a Little Rock hotel room.
"Her fears were justified," says retired reporter Erricson. "Everybody knew Bill Clinton was a man who got even, any way he could."
Helen Shannon, who worked in the Arkansas Statehouse during Clinton's second term as governor, said the governor would personally order state contracts canceled when he got angry with people.
"The word would come down from the governor's office that somebody was off limits and we would cancel their contracts and put them on a 'don't use' list. It happened a lot," she says.
Shannon, who was dating a member of Clinton's staff, says Clinton would order audits of contracts and tell the the Arkansas State Police to "turn up the heat" on somebody he didn't like.
"When Bill Clinton ran Arkansas, it was a police state," she says.
White House staff members tell similar stories. At one meeting, Clinton told staff members he wanted everyone in the Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's office audited by the IRS.
"Several people in the meeting told the President he shouldn't do that," the staff member remember. "He slammed his fist down on the table and said: 'I can do any Goddamned thing I want. I'm President of the United States. I take care of my friends and I fuck with my enemies. That's the way it is. Anybody who doesn't like it can take a hike."
The White House did not return calls for comment.
from TPDL 2000-Feb-25, from The New Australian No. 145, 21-27 February 2000, by James Henry:
Telling it like it is
Blackmail and the Clintons' pervasive corruption
Blackmail is an ugly deed, especially when used to conceal crimes, political wrong-doing and abuse of power. Nevertheless, the reek of blackmail coming from the White House and enveloping the Beltway is unmistakable. No one in Washington's public arena privately disputes that Clinton aides copied from 900 misappropriated FBI files enough damaging material to silence most of their Republican critics. Recall how the White House attempted to destroy the reputations and credibility of Senators Hyde and Burton by releasing information revealing their indiscretions.
No wonder George Stephanopoulos confidently bragged the "long-term strategy" of the White House could be "explosive". The idea that blackmail is at the heart of White House strategy was strengthened by rumours that Clinton aides held very private meetings with Barney Frank, Democratic representative from Massachusetts and expert blackmailer.
Frank brought his expertise in to play when he found his career threatened by the scandal of putting Steve Gobie on his payroll. Answering a personal ad in the homosexual Washington Blade, Frank met with Gobie, a male prostitute with convictions for theft, drug trafficking and sodomising a child. They certainly must have hit it off on their first meeting because shortly afterwards Gobie moved in to Frank's house, from where he ran a male prostitute business among other things. To cut this squalid tale short, Frank escaped the consequences of his action by threatening to reveal the identities of closet homosexuals. What Frank knows is what some Clinton aides wanted to combine with the information they stole from the FBI. They had hopeed that this information would have given them the "explosive" they needed to get their boss off the impeachment hook.
Anyone who thinks the above is far fetched does not know Clinton. This is the man who made Patsy Thomasson - chief lietenant of convicted cocaine dealer Dan Lasater - White House chief of personnel. This appointment did not surprise those who knew of the Clinton/Lasater drug connection that many believe existed before Clinton became governor. The connection might also explain the extraordinary expansion of mob activity that occurred after Clinton became governor. That the FBI was concerned about the rise of the 'Arkansas mafia' under Clinton and its drug running operations and prostitution rackets is no big secret.
That Clinton 'was' a frequent cocaine user is a well known fact that the media chooses to ignore, even though his brother, Roger, a convicted dealer,was taped during an anti-drug operation saying: "Got to get some for my brother. He's got a nose like a vacuum cleaner". That Clinton was linked to cocaine smuggling in the 1980s is already part of sworn testimony. That his association with the drug-trafficking Lasater is connected with the gunning down in 1993 of Clinton's chief of security (the man who knew too much?) in Little Rock is assumed as given by many of that city's good citizens.
So bad is the situation that it was immediately assumed that the killers would never be arrested. They never were. How could they be, whispered critics, when one of the first acts of the Clintons was to replace all US Attorneys "with our people." An unprecedented and dictatorial act that gave the Clintons control over the prosecutorial machinery of the federal government in every judicial district in the country. To top this off, the Clintons even maneuvered to get Webster Hubbel installed as Attorney General - before he went to jail where he threatened to cooperate with Starr. However, $US700,000 plus in hush money, clumsily disguised as consultancy fees.
To strengthen their control further they had William Sessions, Director of the FBI, removed. Sessions was noted for his integrity and opposition to political interference in the Bureau's affairs. (No wonder he had to go.) Clinton groupie Louis Freeh was made Director of the FBI. Rumour now has it that FBI agents have withheld sensitive information from Freeh in the belief, rightly or wrongly, that it would be passed on to the White House which is now considered, to put it mildly, a security risk.
The irony and added danger for the Clintons is that Freeh might start taking his job seriously, unless they have something on him too. That this may be so is why some people believe Freeh refused in May 1998 to prevent the New York Times blowing an FBI operation that centered on Johnny Chung, a Clinton fundraiser, thus endangering his life. Any wonder it is now thought that the White House fed the details of the undercover operation to so-called hot-shot NYT reporters Don Vanatta, Jeff Gerth and David Johnston, confident in the knowledge that Freeh would not intervene. No wonder the NYT was able to smugly claim it would have postponed the story for a couple of days if only Freeh had asked it to do so. Yep, there's one hell of smell round there.
What is really shocking is how the media, with a few brave exceptions, literally covers for the Clintons, even enthusiastically assassinating the characters of his critics, impugning their motives and smearing their reputations. These media storm troopers subjected the likes of Tripp and Jones to the most appalling abuse and constantly vilified Starr while defending the Clintons' corrupt practises.
There is literally no arm of government that has not been infected by this morally diseased administration. However, the Democratic Party and the mainstream media only remain untouched by Clinton's corruption because their moral collapse had take place decades ago. It was this collapse that made the Clinton administration possible.
Editor: Australia's media, particularly the Murdoch press, has stood four square behind the Clinton presidency, making a mockery out of the media's public's-right-to-know doctrine.
from TPDL 2000-May-1, from the Washington Post 2000-Apr-29 p.B3, by Cindy Loose:
Waco Siege Investigator Found Dead In His Home
Carlos Ghigliotti, who had been retained by a U.S. House committee to help investigate the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., was found dead in Laurel under unexplained circumstances yesterday.
"We're investigating it as a homicide," said Laurel police spokesman Jim Collins. Ghigliotti, 42, was found about 1:30 p.m. in the 600 block of Washington Boulevard. His body was badly decomposed, said police. There were no signs of a break-in or a struggle at the home, where Ghigliotti ran his business, Infrared Technologies Corp., police said. An expert in thermal imaging and videotape, Ghigliotti told the House Government Reform Committee in October that his analysis of tapes at Waco indicated that an FBI agent fired shots at the compound on April 19, the final day of the siege--a view disputed by the FBI.
Michael Caddell, lead lawyer in a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit stemming from the Waco siege, said last night that he recently had discussed the findings with Ghigliotti and intended to retain him--not only because his work was impressive but also because Caddell's first expert had suffered a stoke recently. Caddell said that two weeks ago he wrote to Waco Special Counsel John C. Danforth, urging that he interview Ghigliotti immediately. Caddell said he'd heard of Ghigliotti's death yesterday from Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), chair of the committee that retained Ghigliotti. Police called Burton, Caddell said, because his business card was found in Ghigliotti's pocket.
A building manager, concerned that no one had seen Ghigliotti for some weeks, contacted police, who found the body. Michael McNulty, who made a documentary film about Waco that was instrumental in reopening the investigation, said he had been looking forward to seeing Ghigliotti's conclusions. He added, "My impression is that the work he did was significant and important."
Ghigliotti's body was transported to the chief medical examiner's office in Baltimore for an autopsy.
from TPDL 1999-May-21, from the Ottawa Citizen, by Mark Kennedy:
Tainted-blood sleuth firebombed
Intimidation campaign suspected as Arkansas clinic razed, Montreal office ransacked
The controversial story involving tainted plasma from Arkansas prisoners that was shipped to Canada in the 1980s while Bill Clinton was state governor has taken a mysterious and chilling new turn.
Two crimes that occurred within hours of each other Tuesday night, hundreds of kilometres apart, have raised questions about whether someone is trying to intimidate or silence those who are asking questions about the prison-blood fiasco.
In Pine Bluff, Arkansas, someone firebombed a prosthetics clinic owned by Michael Galster, who has been pushing hard for a U.S. government investigation. The clinic was burned to its shell and fire officials, who found a gas container in Mr. Galster's attic -- where he kept his documents -- say they're "90-per-cent sure" the fire was arson.
In Montreal, someone broke into the offices of the Quebec chapter of the Canadian Hemophilia Society, which recently unearthed documents that showed Finance Minister Paul Martin was a board member of the corporation that owned Connaught Laboratories, the company that fractionated and distributed the Arkansas prison plasma in Canada.
Hemophilia Society officials say thieves stole a computer and three telephones. They also stole documents from a box labeled "Hepatitis C, Krever Commission, Reform of the blood system, HIV-AIDS."
Police are investigating both incidents.
Mike McCarthy, a Canadian hemophiliac at the forefront of pushing for answers into the prison plasma scandal, says he's convinced the two crimes are connected.
"It's too much of a coincidence," he said, adding that someone is worried Mr. Galster and the victims are probing too close to the truth.
"They're trying to find out what we know and erase the trail if they can."
"I think they're also sending a message. They're trying to scare us into backing off. They're trying to put the fear of God into us, that if we pursue the truth it can get worse. That the next action might not just be buildings and records."
The RCMP are examining the prison-blood scheme as part of their criminal investigation into the tainted-blood scandal. RCMP Cpl. Gilles Moreau said yesterday that the Mounties are willing to review any evidence local police in Montreal and Arkansas uncover.
"We do not work in a vacuum," said Cpl. Moreau. "If there's information that is linked to the blood distribution system for the period that we're investigating, we're certainly not going to close our eyes to that information. We welcome any information that comes our way."
The story of how prison plasma was collected and found its way into the bloodstreams of unsuspecting Canadians stands as one of the most shocking aspects of the tainted-blood tragedy.
It's not known how many Canadians contracted HIV and hepatitis C from the plasma of Arkansas prisoners, who were paid $7 a unit, although it's likely that several hundred people were infected by the tainted products.
At the time, U.S. companies that fractionate blood products had stopped buying prison blood because it was widely understood that, since many inmates practised unsafe sex or were intravenous drug addicts, their blood posed a high risk of carrying the AIDS virus.
In Arkansas, a private firm, Health Management Associates, was given a contract by the state government to collect the prisoners' plasma. The firm had difficulty locating a U.S. customer but found a willing buyer in a Montreal blood broker, Continental Pharma Cryosan, which then sold the plasma to Toronto-based Connaught Laboratories. Connaught apparently didn't realize the plasma had come from prisoners.
Canadians learned of the prison plasma scheme in 1995, when Justice Horace Krever's inquiry unearthed some aspects of the story. Last September, the Citizen revealed further details.
Also last fall, Mr. Galster went public with his accusations about the Arkansas prison system, where he conducted orthopedic clinics during the 1980s. Mr. Galster published a book, Blood Trail, which is a fictionalized account of how the prison-plasma program worked.
He wrote under a pseudonym because he feared reprisals. Soon after media stories began appearing, he revealed his true identity. In February, he organized and participated in a news conference in Washington where Canadian victims called for a probe by the U.S. Justice Department and announced plans to depose Mr. Clinton.
Mr. Galster said yesterday he is reeling with shock from the firebombing of his clinic, which he has owned for 21 years.
He said he worked until about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday and was later called at home about the fire.
"I'm trying not to get too paranoid about it. I pray to God that it was just a coincidence."
Mr. Galster said that if someone is trying to silence him, it won't work.
"They're barking up the wrong tree. They can't erase the victims who are seeking the truth."
Pine Bluff's fire marshal, Capt. Randy Rushing, said the state crime lab has been called in to help with the arson investigation.
Capt. Rushing said fire officials have a "couple of leads," but have no evidence on a motive.
In Montreal, hemophilia society officials are puzzled.
In recent days, the group learned that Mr. Martin was a director of the Canada Development Corporation (CDC) from 1981 to 1986 - - the key years of the tainted blood scandal. The CDC was created with federal seed money to promote the country's leading industries and owned a variety of firms, including Connaught.
The Citizen published details of the story on Saturday, and indicated that Mr. Martin has no recollection of any discussions about tainted blood while a CDC board member. The article stated that Mr. Martin's connection to the CDC had been "unearthed" by the hemophilia society.
Just three days later, the break-in occurred. Thieves entered the office of executive director Pierre Desmarais and were selective in what they took.
Mr. Desmarais said that because the thieves stole documents -- not just computer equipment -- it appears they were looking for information, not goods.
"It's really frightening. This is the kind of thing you see in movies."
What follows is a three part series on Tennessee's underworld. WorldNetDaily summarizes: ``The series was researched and written by native Tennessee reporters Charles C. Thompson II and Tony Hays. Thompson is a long-time veteran of network news, having been a founding producer of ABC's "20/20," as well as Mike Wallace's producer at CBS's "60 Minutes." Hays is an experienced journalist whose recent 20-part series on narcotics trafficking received an award from the Tennessee Press Association.
from WorldNetDaily, 2000-Sep-18, by Charles C. Thompson II and Tony Hays:
Al Gore's Uncle Whit
Targeted as alleged drug trafficker by federal, state law enforcement
SAVANNAH, Tenn. -- Vice President Al Gore's uncle and confidant, retired judge Whit LaFon, has been targeted as an alleged drug trafficker by federal and state law enforcement officials in Tennessee.
The allegations arose out of a year-long investigation that included elements of the FBI, the inspector general's office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the 24th Judicial District Drug Task Force and the Tennessee Highway Patrol. According to federal agents, LaFon's alleged connection may stretch from providing protection to narcotics traffickers to the use of his Tennessee River cabin in southern Decatur County, a place often visited by the vice president and his family.
Since those allegations were first detailed last Tuesday in an Accuracy in Media report titled "Al Gore's embarrassing uncle," LaFon, 82, has gone into seclusion.
That report, which focuses on a reported connection to a narcotics trafficking scheme, also included allegations of desecration of protected Native American burial mounds, a record of overt racism and a cover-up following the death of 91-year-old Beulah Mae Holmes in 1989.
A spry, mentally acute octogenarian, LaFon has been one of Gore's key counselors for decades. Although in an April interview LaFon attempted to downplay his relationship with Gore, he recently bragged to the Sun newspaper of Jackson, Tennessee, that Gore was a frequent visitor to both his Jackson home and the Decatur County cabin where the alleged drug trafficking is headquartered. The LaFon family joined the Gore family in a special skybox during the recent Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.
As media attention increases, more details of the narcotics investigation are emerging.
The LaFon connection resulted from an inquiry into Savannah, Tenn., Chancery Court Judge Ron Harmon by the public integrity section of the U.S. Justice Department nearly a year ago. Harmon, who has been under federal, state and local scrutiny for nearly two decades, has been a partner in a ring of three trucking companies alleged to have transported narcotics and illegal aliens. One company is based in Stantonville, Tenn., near Harmon's home base of Savannah. Another facility was located in Clint, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexican border and managed by Glenn H. Gray, a convicted felon. The third company, which Harmon says he sold earlier this year, was situated in Klamath Falls, Oregon.
A former law officer allegedly took witnesses with direct knowledge of the scheme to the Justice Department, after which a probe was launched. As the investigation developed, agents sought to trace a stream of hundreds of thousands of dollars pouring out of Savannah, Tenn., via Western Union moneygrams.
Then in late January, federal agents met with local law enforcement officers and first named LaFon as a potential target along with Harmon.
If money was flowing out, the officers reasoned, a product had to be coming in. They subpoenaed delivery records from Federal Express, Airborne Express, United Parcel Service and other package carriers attempting to determine a pattern of shipments. They couldn't.
Attention was then drawn to LaFon's cabin at Swallow Bluff on the Tennessee River just north of Hardin County, and to Harmon's trucking operations. Local officers who had been investigating LaFon and the alleged weekly airplane landings on the river below his cabin for nearly five years detailed their findings for the federal agents. An over-flight of the region was ordered and, according to eyewitnesses, was flown by a Navy Orion P-3 surveillance aircraft modified for such work.
This flight, like the existence of the investigation and LaFon's status in it, was originally confirmed by then-Jackson, Tenn., FBI Special Agent Mark Post, who was transferred to Washington last week almost immediately after the AIM report was released. In a never-released interview with WBBJ-TV in Jackson just prior to his transfer, Post back-pedaled on his earlier statements, but documentation and eyewitnesses cast serious doubts on his rebuttal.
The federal Drug Enforcement Agency has, at least until recently, been running its own probe into Harmon's trucking operations. It is not known whether LaFon has been targeted in that probe as well, but U.S. Customs sources have confirmed that they've been aware of the airplane landings on the river for a number of years and have attempted to conduct their own investigation. When asked about Customs' involvement in such a probe, Post remarked, "They don't cooperate with us."
In the 1970s, when LaFon was a state prosecutor, and in the 1980s, when he was a judge, federal authorities investigated him for allegedly taking bribes and being involved in criminal enterprises when he was a public official, according to a senior federal prosecutor. No charges were ever filed, however.
Normally accessible to the press, LaFon has been besieged by calls but has refused to say anything. Although the Gore camp has attempted to mount a defense against the drug allegations, they conspicuously have not responded to the charges of overt racism, desecration of burial mounds and the strange circumstances surrounding the death of Beulah Mae Holmes.
Contrary to Gore's recent statements that his family, including his parents' generation, was markedly anti-racist, LaFon is well known throughout west Tennessee as an "overt racist," according to former state public defender Marcus Reaves. LaFon was officially chastised on at least one occasion for making racist comments during a court hearing and then ordering the court reporter not to release the transcript.
Even more controversial was the apparent preferential treatment LaFon received when his pickup truck struck a 91-year-old Henderson County, Tenn., woman, Beulah Mae Holmes. Holmes was killed instantly. But Tennessee Highway Patrol officials ignored virtually every state policy involving traffic fatalities. Attempts to obtain copies of what should have been a lengthy file from the Tennessee Highway Patrol resulted in three pages of an accident report. One THP source, who was working in the Jackson District Office at the time, said, "There was never a file on that case; there was never going to be a file."
Only through the offices of Madison County District Attorney General Jerry Woodall was WorldNetDaily able to obtain anything resembling a complete file. Woodall, in responding to a Tennessee Open Records Act request, gathered remnants of the file from his own and other agencies. Although Woodall was the prosecutor at the time of the accident, he was emphatic that he opted not to pursue prosecution based on "the file THP presented to me." That file showed that a complete toxicological screening as required by law was not performed. Without forensic evidence that LaFon was intoxicated or otherwise under the influence at the time, Woodall's hands were tied.
Rearing its ugly head again for Gore and LaFon is the specter of Swallow Bluff Island and its remnants of an 800-year-old Native American village. Like LaFon, the developers, who purchased the island from Gore's uncle and now face a quarter million dollars in fines and damages by the state of Tennessee, have gone into seclusion and refuse to talk to reporters.
But it was developer Larry Melton who accuses LaFon of promising Gore's assistance in bypassing and evading federal and state erosion control and grave desecration statutes. Indeed, this pattern of behavior is becoming more and more apparent as citizens in the Hardin County area recall situations where Tennessee Valley Authority regulations/restrictions seemed to exist for some, but not for others -- those others being friends and supporters of Al Gore and his close friend and national finance chairman, former TVA Director Johnny Hayes.
As publicity on all these matters increases, observers in Tennessee are noting movement on several fronts.
Harmon, according to local sources, is selling off sizable pieces of his extensive land and development holdings and demanding cash settlements within mere days. Glenn H. Gray, once the manager of the Clint, Texas, trucking operation, has reappeared in Tennessee seeking new business opportunities.
Other law enforcement officials, such as Steve Lee, director of the 24th Judicial District Task Force, whose officers assisted the federal agents in the narcotics probe, at first denied any knowledge of such a probe to WBBJ-TV reporters. But Lee later recanted, admitting he had attended the January meeting at which LaFon's name was first mentioned, but denied that he had heard Gore's uncle referred to at all.
FBI supervisor Mark Post first told friends about his transfer just two weeks ago. They described his reaction as peculiar, and said, "he obviously wasn't thrilled, and he indicated that it was something he didn't have a lot of choice about." Post becomes the second agent connected to the LaFon investigation to be transferred to Washington. Tom Locke, the former special agent in charge in Memphis, who, according to local officers was a driving force behind the investigation, was switched to FBI headquarters after less than a year in the Memphis post.
from WorldNetDaily, 2000-Sep-19, by Charles C. Thompson II and Tony Hays:
Gore plays fixer to 'crooked' uncle
How vice president used police to 'take care' of friends, family
SAVANNAH, Tenn. -- According to a senior official with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the state's premier law-enforcement agency, Vice President Al Gore Jr. routinely contacted his longtime friend and supporter TBI Director Larry Wallace for assistance with criminal matters involving Gore's family and political cronies.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official stated that on at least four occasions during the past two years, while sitting in Wallace's office, a secretary would enter the room and announce, "Director Wallace, Vice President Gore is on the line for you." The official, who was intimately involved in criminal investigations, understood that the calls were related to criminal cases. According to this same source, Wallace frequently told senior staffers that Gore had put the arm on him to "take care" of criminal matters involving Gore's "crooked [expletive] uncle," retired judge Whit LaFon, brother to Gore's mother, Pauline LaFon Gore.
LaFon, 82, who according to one senior political correspondent is "as close to Gore as you can get," was apparently also in frequent need of protection from the TBI and other law-enforcement agencies. At least twice while LaFon was a state prosecutor and later a judge, federal prosecutors attempted to indict him for bribery and extortion under the federal Hobbes Act. He has also been under investigation by federal and state agencies for public corruption, alleged narcotics trafficking and desecration of a Native American burial mound.
The Gore campaign declined to answer questions about LaFon, who denied that he had any involvement with illegal drugs. LaFon recently bragged to the Sun newspaper in his hometown of Jackson, Tenn., that his nephew visited him often in Jackson and at his cabin on the Tennessee River and that his family shared a skybox with the Gore family during the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.
Wallace had no comment for this story, despite repeated calls over a three-month period.
The fact that Wallace was helping Gore and his uncle was well-known among a number of TBI higher-ups, according to many former and current agents, as well as three past directors of the TBI. During Wallace's tenure, the once highly respected TBI has been laid low by ever-increasing charges of institutional corruption, causing wholesale defections.
John Carney, who headed the TBI 10 years ago and is now the district attorney in Clarksville, Tenn., said, "The TBI is in sad shape. Nobody trusts it because it's totally dominated by politics."
Former TBI Director Arzo Carson, who drafted the 1980 legislation to take the TBI outside the governor's control, agreed, saying he is "bitterly disappointed" with what Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has become.
"The TBI is really great for getting small fry, but for some reason, they are never able to make cases against the rich and famous, especially if these folks are politically well-connected," said one federal prosecutor.
Wallace, a tall, rugged individual, began his law-enforcement career as a 20-year-old patrolman on the Athens, Tenn., Police Department in 1964. He then served with the Tennessee Highway Patrol for seven years before joining the TBI in 1973.
He was only a field agent for three years, but some of his contemporaries never forgot nor forgave what they considered his lack of courage in the face of danger.
Retired agent Bill Thompson said that Wallace once left him in the lurch by not showing up to arrest a multiple murderer, whose case was assigned to Wallace.
"Jimmy Dale Smith was the murderer. He was about the baddest character in rural eastern Tennessee back then," Thompson said.
Thompson had learned that Smith would be playing poker in a club one night in the shadows of the Great Smokey Mountains. When Wallace failed to show to make the collar himself, Thompson positioned himself just inside the club and snared Smith when the killer arrived. He stuck his pistol in Smith's neck and handcuffed him.
"I heard all about Larry Wallace's cowardice. I knew better than to take him along as a back-up when there was going to be gunplay," said George Haynes, another retired TBI agent.
"George Haynes and Bill Thompson are the real thing," Carney said. "George killed at least two men in the line of duty, and Bill was there to back George up during one of those shoot-outs."
According to Robert Lawson, the former commissioner of public safety and Wallace's one-time boss, "Everybody in law enforcement knows that Larry Wallace isn't going anywhere near where bullets are flying."
Wallace left the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in late 1976 when he was elected sheriff of McMinn County occupying that office for four years.
He returned to TBI in 1980. Seven years after Wallace's return, he incurred the wrath of Carson, who suspected Wallace of leaking secrets from a 1987 federal grand jury to high-ranking members of then-Gov. Ned McWherter's cabinet.
Wallace used family connections to become the uniformed head -- colonel -- of the Tennessee Highway Patrol, or THP. His then-wife Charlotte and her family were big in the Democratic Party. He asked his in-laws to intercede with the governor, and it worked. He landed the job.
According to former members of the Tennessee Highway Patrol, Wallace involved himself whenever a prominent politician had a traffic accident on a state highway or had a dust-up with the law. One such case involved state Sen. John Ford, who allegedly fired a pistol at a trucker on Interstate 40 near Lexington, Tenn., in 1990. Ford was a member of the powerful African-American Ford political dynasty in Memphis. A Dallas trucker reported the shooting to the Highway Patrol station in Jackson, Tenn., around 4:30 p.m. The Jackson troopers called Nashville headquarters for guidance, and according to a former THP official, Wallace said, "Don't stop that car (Ford's). Let it go."
At this point, there was adequate time to apprehend Ford on the interstate and search his car for the weapon. But because of Wallace's order, Ford escaped and wasn't questioned until the next day. By that time, there was no pistol found in his Mercedes-Benz.
Although a bullet was recovered from the truck, Ford accused the trucker of making everything up. A jury in Jackson acquitted Ford of all charges.
Lawson said that he, like Carson before him, became convinced that Wallace was bootlegging highly sensitive criminal investigative material to politicians who were under investigation in order to curry favor with them.
The primary motivation for the TBI director selection committee and Gov. Ned McWherter to pick Wallace, according to former director Carson, was self-preservation.
"At that time, the TBI was feared by all politicians, regardless of their political party," Carson said. "The bureau had sent many corrupt Tennessee officials (33 out of Tennessee's 95 sheriffs) to jail. The politicians obviously thought that TBI's fangs had to be pulled."
What better way, Carson said, to control the TBI than have a weak individual head it, someone who would undermine the organization, keep the governor and other officials thoroughly apprised as to ongoing investigations and terminate politically sensitive investigations before they became public issues.
A sampling of aborted investigations under Wallace involving politicians as well as institutional cover-ups bears out Carson's assessment of Wallace.
Among Wallace's first acts as director was to abolish the agency's highly regarded public corruption unit. Wallace went even further, ordering his agents never to open an investigation in any of Tennessee's 95 counties without first notifying the sheriff, if the sheriff was the target of the investigation.
Rank-and-file agents and their supervisors were outraged.
"We were hamstrung. There was no way we could investigate a crooked sheriff anymore," one supervisor said.
Wallace also allegedly interfered in the murder investigation implicating his own son, Larry Dean Wallace.
In 1994, at least three TBI agents and supervisors came to Wallace and told him that his son, Larry Dean Wallace, then in his late 20s, was heavily involved in drug trafficking.
When former TBI drug agent Milton Bowling told Wallace about his son's drug dealings, the director reportedly became glassy-eyed and said, "You're to stay away from this case."
A year later, Larry Dean lay in ambush and shot to death James Edward Wilkerson over $1,500 that Larry Dean owed Wilkerson for drugs.
Larry Dean then loaded the body into the trunk of Wilkerson's car and arranged to have a wrecker haul the car some 10 miles from the scene of the crime.
After confessing to second-degree murder, Larry Dean was sentenced to a 15-year prison term. Never imprisoned, he served his time in a cushy clerical job, all because, in the words of his attorney, Hal Hardin, "His father is the state's top law-enforcement officer."
Wallace faced a political quandary in 1994. His staunch supporter, McWherter, was retiring as governor and would not be able to help him when he came up for another six-year appointment as TBI director in 1998.
Bill Morris, the mayor of Shelby County (Memphis) was locked in a heated contest for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination with Phil Bredesen, the mayor of Nashville, and eight other candidates. Even though Morris appeared to be a winner, Wallace hedged his bets, hoping to be on the side that won.
But before Morris' campaign left the launching pad, a bombshell landed. A hard-hitting series by investigative reporter Louis Graham of the Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis inspired a TBI criminal investigation of Morris. The newspaper documented 100 events since 1987 in which Morris allegedly used prison inmates to cater his political and personal social events.
Wallace sent his No. 2 man, Robert Reeves, to coordinate this delicate investigation and try to rescue Morris. TBI agents based in Memphis were upset by Reeves' orders to investigate only two of Morris' subordinates -- his executive assistant, Robert C. Lanier, and Garner Branch, who was in charge of dietary services at the Shelby County Correctional Center -- and to leave Morris alone.
Roger Moore, an assistant district attorney in Nashville appointed special prosecutor, worked hand in hand with Reeves. According to a well-placed source in the Shelby County District Attorney's Office, Reeves presented evidence to the grand jury. But, according to one of the grand jurors, her fellow jurors became incensed by Reeve's blatant attempts to insulate the mayor from blame.
"People (on the grand jury) were awfully mad," the grand juror said, and they voted to indict Morris on six felony and three misdemeanor charges.
Reeves hastened back to Nashville to explain what happened to Wallace.
When Reeves emerged from Wallace's 3rd-floor offices nearly four hours later, he was visibly shaken.
"Larry told me to go back to Memphis and unindict Morris," said Reeves, according to a senior TBI official.
Five weeks later, rather than face the defiant grand jurors again, special prosecutor Moore and Reeves appeared before Criminal Court Judge Joseph B. Dailey and signed a motion dismissing all the charges against Morris. They left the indictments standing against Lanier and Branch.
"Why would they drop the charges against the mayor when my husband only did as he was instructed to?" Branch's wife asked.
Both Lanier and Branch later pleaded no contest and were placed on probation. Reeves publicly rebuked them for not having "the courage to stand up in court and admit their guilt."
Morris never recovered from the quashed indictments. Phil Bredesen beat him, who was in turn beaten by Republican Don Sundquist.
Secret test site for Hillary's plan
A lifelong Democrat, Wallace quickly switched his allegiance to the Republican Party with great fanfare. Although he kept close contact with many of his Democratic buddies, such as Gore, he began ingratiating himself with members of the Sundquist administration.
Early in the Clinton administration, while Hillary Clinton was unsuccessfully attempting to cobble together a nationwide health-care system, then-Gov. McWherter contacted Bill Clinton and Gore and volunteered Tennessee as a test site for Hillary's health plan.
About 1.1 million poor and uninsured people were enrolled in the program. The federal government allowed Medicaid dollars to be diverted into TennCare, and the program quickly became the financial and criminal equivalent of the Black Hole of Calcutta.
Despite the fact that the state contributed more than 25 percent of its annual budget to the program, TennCare was still under-funded.
"We couldn't get the big guys (insurance companies) in. We got the fly-by-nights," said a federal prosecutor who has tried a number of TennCare fraud cases. "Many of these insurance companies who joined TennCare were just fronts for legislators, their families and other public officials who raked in money while the poor were denied services to which they were legally entitled."
The program was a revolving door for administrators, eight in only six years, and now threatens to bankrupt the state.
Wallace established a health-care fraud unit, which many TBI agents described as a joke. Even so, some members of the unit were aggressive and vigorously pursued those who bilked TennCare.
According to TBI agents and federal prosecutors, OmniCare, a health insurance company closely allied with the politically potent Ford family of Memphis, was one of the most scandal-ridden of the 12 managed-care organizations participating in TennCare.
In 1995, TBI agents arrested a Nashville woman who admitted forging more than 140 applications for TennCare while working as an independent contractor for OmniCare. Pamela Renee King said she obtained the data contained on the false applications while working as a fitness consultant in the health center at the sprawling Saturn automobile plant in Spring Hill, Tenn.
TBI investigator Shana Roberts said King was paid between $13 and $17 for each application. As long as the scam went undisclosed, OmniCare received $111 per patient per month for patients who didn't exist or who were fraudulently enrolled in the program.
King was the second OmniCare representative to be caught by TBI agents in 1995. Harold McGhee, a former employee at the Shelby County Corrections Center, admitted to agents he had enrolled 202 inmates that he knew already had medical coverage and were therefore ineligible for TennCare.
Both King and McGhee were convicted of mail fraud and making false statements. Each received a sentence of about a year in prison.
'The Fords had gotten him'
Although he wasn't a company officer or a member of OmniCare's board of directors, former Rep. Harold Ford was publicly identified in 1996 by the Commercial Appeal as being associated with OmniCare. Ford, an African-American, was first elected to Congress in 1974, beating a white incumbent. Ford's district encompassed most of Memphis, which became majority black.
Ford had a rocky political career, and he allied himself and his family with Gore. He was indicted on federal bank, mail-fraud and conspiracy charges in 1987, stemming from $1 million of loans he had received from banks controlled by Democratic politician Jake Butcher and his brother C.H. Butcher. The money was loaned for business purposes, but was allegedly converted to personal use by Ford. His first trial resulted in a hung jury. A second jury acquitted him.
When the House banking scandal broke in 1993, it was revealed that Ford had written 388 bad checks totaling $552,447 at the bank between 1988 and 1991. Although he was one of the worst offenders, a special prosecutor's probe found no criminal wrongdoing on Ford's part.
Ford retired from Congress in 1996 and was succeeded by his son, Harold Ford Jr., a move that angered some local black leaders who resented the Ford family's belief that the congressional seat belonged to them rather than to the people. At the time, Ford Jr. was only 24 years old, the youngest member of Congress. It was Harold Ford, Jr. whom Gore picked to make one of the Democratic convention's keynote addresses.
In addition to Harold Ford Sr.'s older brother, John, a state senator, other Ford brothers who have been actively involved in family politics include: 1) Joe Ford, who ran for mayor of Memphis in 1999; 2) former state Rep. Emmitt Ford, who served time in a federal prison in the late 1990s for failure to file tax returns on income of $700,000; and 3) Dr. James Ford, an ophthalmologist, a member of the Shelby County Commission and a TennCare provider.
A hard-charging young TBI agent, David Loftus, who worked on the Shelby County Corrections Center portion of the OmniCare investigations, told his colleagues he was bound and determined to find out why the Ford family's involvement in OmniCare was not being taken more seriously by the TBI.
"The evidence showed that the Fords were up to their eyeballs in OmniCare and yet nobody was holding their feet to the fire," said Loftus. Even though an assistant U.S. attorney in Memphis warned Loftus to be more discreet "about what he said about the Fords or they will get you," he continued to probe the Ford family's involvement with TennCare.
Loftus had nearly finished his two-year stint as a probationary agent with TBI and had recently received an outstanding evaluation from his supervisor, when suddenly he was summoned to TBI headquarters and was summarily fired. No reason was given.
He was going boating that day with three of his colleagues on a lake near Nashville. The others were laughing and drinking beer when he arrived. They saw his long face and asked him what had happened. "I got fired," Loftus said.
"I knew immediately that the Fords had gotten him," one agent said. "There was no way that Larry Wallace was going to let a rookie agent upset the Fords."
'Good Ol' Boys Roundup'
Agents say that TBI cover-ups weren't limited to just protecting politicians.
In the summer of 1995, Tennesseans and the rest of the nation were dismayed by the news that a group of off-duty federal, state and local law-enforcement officers had gathered in May for an event known as the "Good Ol' Boys Roundup," where racist activities were apparently encouraged.
Camping along the banks of the Ocoee River in southeast Tennessee for three days of whitewater rafting and beer drinking, 300 law-enforcement officers and their friends, including federal and TBI agents, were exposed to some virulent racist displays.
Vendors sold T-shirts depicting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in gun-sight cross hairs and others bearing the slogan "Boyz on the Hood" with police officers surrounding two black men spread-eagle over a police cruiser.
The reaction was swift from Washington. President Clinton denounced the roundup as "an event literally overflowing with racism." Both the Justice and Treasury departments opened wide-ranging investigations.
Gov. Sundquist announced there would be an investigation of the roundup to be headed by Wallace. There was only one hitch -- Wallace had reportedly attended the roundup.
Wallace handed over the day-to-day management of the investigation to his general counsel, David Jennings. Richard Brogan, TBI's special agent in charge in Chattanooga, handled the fieldwork and some of the interrogations. Like Wallace, Brogan had also allegedly attended the roundup.
State arson investigators Robert Frost and Dennis Ledbetter said that Ledbetter provided Jennings with a statement putting Wallace inside the meeting grounds. Ledbetter said he cooked a steak for Wallace.
Agent Lee Porter wrote a memo stating that Brogan and his wife, Brogan's assistant, Brooks Wilkins and his wife, and agent T.J. Jordan and his wife were present.
Jennings turned his investigative file over to Jeff Long, head of the intelligence division, for further processing. Long was one of the most respected senior officers in the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
Long, who subsequently resigned from the TBI and is now a prosecutor serving four counties in Middle Tennessee, said that Ledbetter's statement and Porter's memo were missing from the file Jennings gave him.
"Jennings told me that no further investigation was required. I took him at his word," Long said. "In retrospect, I wish I hadn't."
During a televised news conference, Wallace reassured Sundquist, who appeared with him, that neither he nor any of his senior officers had attended the roundup.
Bat guano
Another institutional cover-up, which is still haunting Wallace and the TBI, involves a substance known as bat "guano," a genteel way of saying feces.
In 1994, the TBI sought accreditation from a nonprofit organization, the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc., or CALEA. Thousands of dollars of tax money and many hours of employee time were allocated to the project, headed by Jennings.
CALEA sets rigorous guidelines regarding an agency's training, record management and storage of evidence. That last category appeared to be an insurmountable obstacle to the TBI's accreditation. Evidence of upcoming cases and cases under appeal were spread willy-nilly in agents' offices throughout the headquarters building.
This practice was strictly counter to state and federal court guidelines requiring a rigid chain of custody. Evidence was supposed to be logged in and preserved in a tightly controlled vault. TBI had a vault, but it was not nearly adequate to hold all the evidence.
Bulky evidence was stored in a separate building referred to as the old cafeteria. Two or three rooms in the building were filled with bat guano taken from a cave in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains. This fertilizer had been advertised in nationally circulated magazines devoted to the drug culture.
Bat droppings are supposed to make marijuana grow faster and hardier. The guano is also guaranteed to work miracles on vegetable gardens and flowers.
The guano had been seized from Robert Senick, who ran a company called Bat Majic. At the time of the accreditation, Senick was awaiting trial on drug charges.
In addition to Senick's exotic fertilizer, an elaborate hydroponic marijuana growing system was also crammed into the old cafeteria.
The day before the CALEA inspectors arrived, agents say that Jennings, along with Reeves, Wallace's most trusted aide, decided to get rid of everything in the old cafeteria and also throw away or hide many other pieces of evidence.
Jennings and Reeves allegedly both looted piles of the Bat Majic guano for their own use. Reeves hauled a pickup truck full of bat dung away to fertilize his flower garden. Ten to 12 other employees helped themselves to the guano. These same employees also destroyed evidence, according to a TBI memo written after the event.
Bob Pearce, then TBI's assistant director for administration, was seen carrying away five bulging duffels and three to four boxes of evidence. The boxes and bags contained hunting rifles, shotguns, pistols, assault weapons, sheaf knives, switchblades and bayonets, according to multiple TBI sources.
After the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation cheated its way through the CALEA exam, Pearce brought back just two of the boxes. Nobody is quite sure what happened to the rest of the evidence. Pearce, who has since retired and is a Baptist minister, refused to talk about the incident.
Agents say that evidence destruction occurred again in 1997 during CALEA's re-inspection process. When WorldNetDaily first contacted CALEA, Steve Mitchell, the program manager for the TBI, was incredulous. Mitchell said he found it hard to believe that a state police agency would willfully destroy evidence.
When informed that documentation existed, he said, "That's very serious, possibly a criminal matter."
Mitchell later said that Wallace and Jennings told him that TBI destroyed evidence in 1994 and 1997. Did they obtain the requisite court orders before doing so?
"They told me they didn't obtain court orders," he said.
According to many former and current agents, drug cover-ups perpetrated under the Wallace regime undermined many agents' morale.
'The godfather'
In 1995, Butch Morris, one of the TBI's best undercover agents, and his partner, Milton Bowling, were investigating reports that local law-enforcement officers and perhaps local prosecutors in the Cookeville, Tenn., area were providing protection to drug dealers and might even be involved in drug trafficking themselves.
In the course of their investigation, Morris and Bowling learned how hazardous it could be to run afoul of a Wallace political crony. Numerous law-enforcement sources said that Cookeville land baron Mike Gaw is a close associate of Wallace. Gaw owns 500 pieces of rental property in Putnam County (Cookeville).
"Mike Gaw is the godfather of Cookeville. He owns the whole town, the condos, apartment buildings and slum property," a TBI official said.
Tennessee political reporters said that Gaw gained his power by contributing $70,000 to Sundquist's two gubernatorial campaigns and that he became acquainted with Wallace through Putnam County Sheriff Jerry Abston, one of Wallace's closest friends.
Morris infiltrated a Putnam County gang and served as its intermediary in buying a pound of methamphetamine from a Los Angeles group. He then arranged for the gang to buy up to 40 pounds of the drug, which had a street value of about $360,000.
Morris said the gang was connected "to some of the highest rollers in the community," people who rubbed elbows with the sheriff, the prosecutor and Mike Gaw.
Shortly before he rounded up the gang members, Brogan, Morris's TBI supervisor, stepped in and "put his investigation on hold."
"We missed a chance to shut down one of the largest meth labs in the country and at the same time destroy a major Tennessee drug connection," Morris said.
Five years after Morris was pulled off the case, a gung-ho FBI agent picked up the threads. Two defendants pleaded guilty to federal drug trafficking charges and another was convicted after Morris testified against him. Later, Morris tells WorldNetDaily, he was asked by an assistant U.S. attorney what had gone wrong back in 1995, in response to which Morris shrugged and looked at the ceiling as if to say, "it's a very long story."
Two years ago, Morris appeared before a state legislative investigative panel and publicly criticized TBI's drug policy. The next day, TBI Deputy Director Reeves appeared before the same body and trashed Morris' job performance. One of Reeve's complaints was that Morris had misspelled an informant's name. Morris later resigned from the agency and is now police chief in La Vergne, Tenn.
Sundquist reappointed Wallace to another six-year term in 1998, although Wallace received fewer votes from the "independent" selection committee than Jeff Long. According to published reports in the Tennessean and Associated Press, within a matter of hours after having received the committee's recommendation, Sundquist, without comment, ignored the committee and reappointed Wallace.
Some members of the state legislature have become so disenchanted with the TBI's desultory performance in catching drug dealers that there is now a serious legislative effort to abolish the agency's drug unit.
Not long ago, TBI dispatched 49 agents to shut down a cockfight in eastern Tennessee.
"If the TBI doesn't have the manpower to make serious drug cases, then how does it have 49 men to halt a rooster fight?" one top official said. "It's high time to quit doing favors for public officials, even if they are the vice president of the United States, and get back to enforcing the laws fairly like we did before Larry Wallace came along. If we can't do that, then it's time to abolish the TBI and start all over."
from TPDL 2000-Sep-20, from WorldNetDaily, by Charles Thompson and Tony Hays:
Officials say Gore killed drug probe
Mayor: Top fund-raiser, pal had 'clout to shut down an ongoing investigation'
SAVANNAH, Tenn. -- If you were rich and politically connected in Hardin County, Tenn., and were under scrutiny for drug dealing by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, or if you needed a permit from the Tennessee Valley Authority to run a sewer line on your property abutting the bank on Pickwick Lake, you might have gone to two of Al Gore's money men to get things straightened out.
Take those pesky TVA permits that encompassed everything from your right to cut down a tree on your property to dredging a boat slip or building a dock. These permits were costly and time-consuming, and sometimes seemed unobtainable.
According to Benny Austin, owner of the largest real estate agency in Savannah, the county seat of Hardin County, until very recently the best person to expedite those permits was Clark Jones, a Savannah car dealer and a key fund-raiser for Gore, who raised more than a $100,000 for the vice president last year.
Jones took contributions for Gore in return for handling TVA permits, according to Austin, who added that the potential scandal "has been swept under the rug."
Another major realtor who spoke on condition of anonymity said a second fund-raiser and longtime friend of Gore also obtained TVA permits for properties that weren't eligible.
"I checked it out and found that these permits should never have been granted," he said.
The fund-raiser, Paul Callens, 57, a wealthy real estate broker, controls a great deal of the desirable building lots around Pickwick Lake. These lots sell for $69,000 for an off-water lot, while a waterfront lot begins at $159,000. Callens' company handles the sales of many of the opulent estates situated on the gently rolling hills surrounding the lake.
Callens' and Jones' access to Gore allowed them to obtain lucrative federal assistance from Gore and his aides. A problem with barges cluttering Pickwick Lake disappeared after a Callens contact with Gore and Sen. John Stennis, D-Miss.
Given this background, it is not surprising that when last year the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation began narcotics-trafficking investigations against Jones and Ron Harmon, a sitting chancery court judge, Jones allegedly went to Gore to have the investigation killed. The embarrassing and politically dangerous state probe was suddenly terminated last year just 10 weeks after it began by the director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Larry Wallace, another of Gore's close associates.
According to current and former TBI officials, that is business as usual at the agency. In fact, those officials say Wallace has routinely spiked investigations that could be harmful to politicians or that involve law enforcement officials -- especially those involving Gore.
Sources within the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation say Gore and Wallace have been in frequent contact over the past eight years. WorldNetDaily asked Wallace for his correspondence with Gore and his aides involving TBI investigations and were told "no such correspondence exists."
Ed Holt, deputy director of the TBI, said Wallace killed the Hardin County drug probe because the agency was unable to develop an informant.
"You know there was an opportunity at one time for a drug investigation down there, but we couldn't take it anywhere, because we couldn't get any informants, " Holt said.
"That's total bulls--t!" responded Butch Morris, a former top narcotics agent with the TBI. Local and federal sources agree with Morris, saying bureau agents were spoonfed documentation and key informants, but never used them.
Community leaders in Hardin County, center of the TBI inquiry, claim that the investigation was terminated prematurely after an unusual meeting between an alleged suspect, Jones and the TBI agent in charge of the investigation, Roger Hughes.
According to members of the 24th Judicial District who worked with the FBI, the federal agency began the investigation last fall. The federal Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Customs Service have opened their own investigation of the case. Holt confirmed that after his agency halted the investigation in the spring of 1999, FBI special agents questioned him about some of the TBI's suspects.
However, the federal agents added another suspect, according to two local law enforcement officials who are part of a narcotics task force assisting the FBI. They identified him as Whit LaFon, Gore's crusty old uncle, a former state judge who peppers his conversation with racial epithets such as "nigger."
The genesis of TBI's Hardin County drug investigation was the overdose death of a 20-year-old Savannah man, John Riddell. Riddell had been at a party on Dec. 29, 1998, at a friend's house in a secluded area of Hardin County known as Bruton Branch.
According to his autopsy report, John had ingested three prescription drugs. He aspirated his vomit and then choked to death. His parents, David and Jane Riddell, were painfully aware of their son's addiction.
They had tried twice without success to get John to straighten up. He remained just one night in a rehabilitation facility and then agreed to stay for the full 28 days of treatment at another. However, he was soon back on the streets of Savannah abusing drugs. John Riddell's death in the rural west Tennessee county sparked a ripple effect, and the tremors are now reaching the national stage.
An avalanche of drugs
Hardin County's geography makes it an inviting target for drug traffickers. Bisected by the Tennessee River, it is a natural way station for barges hauling drugs from the Gulf of Mexico.
In recent years, widespread dope dealing has become an unwanted way of life on the streets of Savannah and the back roads of Hardin County. Police Chief Don Cannon said he has seen an avalanche of drugs during his 33 years on the police force.
During Cannon's tenure, heroin, speed and cocaine replaced marijuana and uppers and downers as the addicts' drugs of choice.
Police estimate that seizures of cocaine account for about 10 percent of the total supply. Federal agents estimate that some $2.3 million worth of cocaine goes through Hardin County each week, or more than $100 million per year. Lawmen say that profit on an ounce of cocaine runs about $1,200, or about $7,000 a week profit for street dealers.
Methamphetamine usage is totally out of control, officers say. Users can often be violent, according to former Hardin County Deputy Sheriff Larry Phelps.
"You don't know when you come crashing in a door on a meth raid, whether the person inside is going to shoot you or kill himself," Phelps said.
The vast amounts of money generated in Hardin County each year seem out of place for a small, rural county, which has a population of only 25,000. And especially so for Savannah, which only has 6,000 residents.
"There are more dealers now, more of everything. But what can I do? I have three or four patrolmen on each shift," Cannon said.
One major problem, according to the chief, is that state and, until recently, federal law enforcement agents rarely visit Hardin County, much less investigate anything relating to drugs there.
Given the high level of drug abuse in Hardin County, it's amazing that John Riddell's drug overdose death was even noticed.
However, John's parents were prominent members of Savannah's business community, and they vowed to get the TBI or the FBI to conduct a thorough investigation of drug dealing in Hardin County. The Riddells own three Piggly Wiggly grocery stores in the Savannah area. Jane Riddell is a former high school teacher and a member of the Savannah School Board.
On the cold, rainy night of Jan. 7, 1999, 1,500 people packed Savannah's city hall to listen to a mixture of old-time religion and fire-eating anti-drug rhetoric.
The Riddells spoke and then Randy Isbell, a photogenic Baptist minister, took over.
"We're not talking about vigilante justice -- yet," Isbell exclaimed, inserting a pregnant pause between the words "justice" and "yet."
The crowd sensed that Isbell, pastor of Hopewell Baptist Church, was slyly informing them that vigilante justice might be OK sometime soon, and it roared its approval.
Out of that meeting grew a coalition of citizens, determined to establish a permanent drug awareness organization called Community Partners. The organization's primary goal was to educate the area's youth about drugs and their dangers and to enhance and cooperate with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies' investigations of drug dealing in Hardin County.
Randy Rinks, a well-respected state representative, attended this meeting and was so impressed by the fervor of the crowd that he called Larry Wallace and suggested that the TBI should talk to the Riddells, Rev. Isbell and others and open an investigation.
Wallace promised Rinks that he would have his agents in Jackson contact the Riddells and other members of Community Partners.
On Jan. 6, 1999, the Riddells received a call from John Mehr, special-agent-in-charge of the TBI's office in Jackson. Mehr asked them to drive to Jackson that day for a meeting. He warned them not to discuss the meeting with anyone else. They bundled up their son's telephone records, tapes, and other information and despite the icy and hazardous roads they went. The matter was too important to let the weather stand in the way.
The Riddells told Mehr and the other agents that even though they were devastated by their son's death, they had resolved to do everything in their power to stop the drug dealing at all levels.
"The TBI agents were aggressively interested; they asked a lot of questions," Jane Riddell said. The Riddells provided information and documentation about their son's drug addiction and acquaintances.
Jane Riddell and her husband left the meeting feeling that the TBI agents were serious professionals who would do a good job.
The investigation Rep. Rinks had sparked with his phone call eventually centered on two individuals:
1) Clark Jones, 43, owner of three car dealerships in Savannah, Tenn., and Corinth, Miss., is a close friend of Gore and has been a political contributor for nearly 20 years.
2) Ron Harmon, 50, a state chancery court judge from Savannah, has been a political backer of Gore for 20 years, donating and raising thousands of dollars for Gore's congressional, senatorial and presidential campaigns. Harmon has also lunched or dined with Gore during his visits to Savannah.
According to Robert Lawson, former Tennessee Public Safety Commissioner and, as such, also in charge at that time of the Tennessee Highway Patrol, Clark Jones' name was listed on the TBI's computerized files in the late 1980s and early 1990s as an alleged dope dealer. He is currently listed in computerized federal intelligence files as a "suspected drug dealer."
Jones has often boasted to the people of Hardin County about the many honors he has received as a result of his friendship with Al Gore.
For example, he was appointed to the eleven-member White House Conference on Small Business Commission in 1993.
And he was present when more than 2,000 businessmen and women heard Gore heap praise on him on June 14, 1995, at a White House Conference on Small Business held in Washington.
Ron Harmon, elected to the bench in 1998, is a wealthy land speculator and silent partner in a trucking firm. During its investigation, law enforcement officials say, the TBI looked into the activities of the trucking company. The operation is located in a large cow pasture adjacent to an isolated two-lane, blacktop road. Some of its trucks allegedly transported cocaine, heroin, marijuana and illegal aliens from a subsidiary operation located along the Mexican border all over the United States.
Jones, Harmon and Gore's uncle Whit LaFon, in addition to their link to Gore, shared a link to another sinister character by the name of Junior Sweat. Sweat, 61, an arsonist par excellence and a master methamphetamine manufacturer, was busted for operating the largest methamphetamine lab ever discovered in the state. He died in prison shortly afterward, in July 1999.
Law enforcement officials told WND that Sweat, a nasty-tempered but highly proficient arsonist and convicted cocaine trafficker, divided his time between cooking his deadly drug and hanging around the Jones Motor Company dealership.
In the months preceding the raid on his lab, Sweat was frequently on the phone with state Judge Ron Harmon, another alleged suspect in TBI's truncated probe. Sweat's widow, Janice Walker, said Sweat would shoo her out of the room and lower his voice when on the phone with Harmon.
And when Junior was arrested in June in the raid on his meth lab, he asked Walker to call "the only (attorney) who can get me of jail." The lawyer, she said, was LaFon.
"Junior was so good he could burn concrete," Chief Cannon said. "He could be mean, violent. He owned a beer joint in Wayne County, Tenn., and later on they dug bodies up out back."
Whenever he wasn't locked up, Sweat closely allied himself with Jones and his family.
He was managing a farm owned by Clark's father, Claude Jones, when Claude died in 1973. Shortly after Claude Jones' funeral, Junior moved in with Clark's mother, Joanne Jones. He remained with her for some eight years before returning to prison.
A number of residents of Savannah told WorldNetDaily that during Junior's years with Joanne Jones, he became almost a surrogate father to Clark and his younger brother, Charlie. They say that Clark and Charlie referred to Junior as their "uncle" or their "step-father."
Clark Jones adamantly denied that he ever used those terms of endearment or enjoyed a close relationship with Sweat. "Junior was a very bad person. He had a relationship with my mother, a very terrible relationship. I hated that son of a bitch," he told WND.
Despite these harsh words, police sources say Clark Jones allowed Junior to hang around the showrooms of his two Savannah dealerships four days a week. Cannon said Junior used the remaining three days of the week to cook methamphetamine.
Although Jones insisted that Junior might have been visiting the dealership talking to one of his car salesmen, Cannon scoffed at that, saying, "Junior always hung out with the Jones boys (Clark and Charlie)."
Cannon and Roberts state flatly that Junior torched the Jones family's car dealership. The fire erupted at 1 a.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 1980, on Wayne Road, an extension of Savannah's main drag.
Two days before the fire, a state auditor, Mary Towater, arrived in Savannah for a scheduled appointment to examine the Jones Motor Company's books.
Towater's car broke down, and she brought it to another Savannah dealer to be repaired. While she was waiting for her car to be repaired, Towater told this dealer that she was in town to determine if the Jones dealership routinely cheated the state on its taxes.
The dealership's corrugated metal main building was gutted. The financial data sought by Towater was destroyed. State Fire Marshal Robert Frost said the blaze started with papers in the office.
"You could smell the heavy odor of gasoline in the drawers of a desk. Gasoline was dripping out on the floor," Frost said, adding that there was no forced entry, meaning that it was an inside job.
There was only one suspect, Frost said: Junior Sweat.
Clark Jones told WND that the dealership wasn't insured. However, James Beller of the Frank T. Bass Insurance Co. in Whiteville, Tenn., said his company paid the Jones family $100,000 for the building and $30,000 for the contents. Beller said he's sure Junior burned the place down.
A state official, who was thoroughly familiar with Jones Motor Company's financial standing at the time of the arson, said the dealership was worth considerably less than $130,000.
Jones didn't dismiss the possibility that Junior was responsible for the fire when he spoke to WND. Janice Walker said Junior bragged to her on more than one occasion that he had torched the Jones dealership, and Cannon, the police chief, says he has absolutely no doubt that Junior was the arsonist.
Junior was never arrested for these arsons, but he was arrested for arson for hire in 1981, after his co-conspirator taped him and turned the incriminating tape over to State Fire Marshal James "Pa-Paw" Robertson. Junior served six years in prison on that charge.
In 1987, he was sentenced for 40 years (eventually serving 11) on a series of charges -- arson for hire, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of three ounces of cocaine.
A hulking man who stood six feet, three inches tall, Junior, a chronic alcoholic, became even nastier during the winter and spring months of 1999, a time when he was setting up a monster methamphetamine laboratory, Janice Walker said.
Walker is a teetotaler who regularly attends church, but by her own admission she could be one tough cookie when she was threatened. She says Junior repeatedly threatened to kill her or burn down her home if she deserted him. Junior said that in the event he got busted, he had previously arranged to have somebody kill her.
"I told Junior, 'Smith & Wesson didn't get rich by just making one gun,'" Walker said. "You've got a gun, and I've got a gun. If you try to kill me or try to burn down my house, I'll blow your head off!"
During February, March and early April of 1999, then-Hardin County chief narcotics investigator Larry Phelps was developing information on Junior's operation, but it would not be until June 10, 1999, three months after the TBI closed its Hardin County drug inquiry, that an informant, Bubba Harris, one of Junior Sweat's associates, provided the Decatur County, Tenn., Sheriff's Department and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration with the exact location of Junior's meth lab in Decatur County.
Harris had been arrested on Dec. 16, 1998, when his meth lab in Hardin County was raided by Phelps and DEA agents. He is currently serving time in a federal penitentiary.
Affidavits and search warrants filed in U.S. District Court in Jackson show that Larry Joe had loaned Bubba up to an ounce of meth at a time to help alleviate some of Bubba's money problems.
Junior's lab was situated back in the woods, far away from the nearest road, because production of meth causes a distinct, easily traceable odor.
Sheriff's deputies and DEA agents surrounded the lab, arresting Junior and his partner, Larry Joe Franks.
Janice Walker said her husband and Franks, who were both on parole at the time of the raid, planned to operate the drug factory just two months. They would net $20 million apiece and then retire.
Decatur County Sheriff's Deputy Terry Tolley, a narcotics officer who participated in the raid, estimates that Junior's meth had a street value of at least $40 million.
The raiders, who wore oxygen masks, respirators and body armor, were startled when they broke into the lab and discovered that it contained one thousand gallons of highly toxic anhydrous ammonia, which, according to one law enforcement source, "could have changed the course of the Tennessee River if it had ignited." This highly volatile chemical and the other ingredients were worth at least $1 million, which led police to the conclusion that someone had fronted Junior and Larry Joe a lot of money to start his meth lab.
Nearly a year after the raid, the drug factory's site is now an environmental nightmare, with blackened grass, blighted trees and a foul chemical odor clinging to the countryside.
After his arrest Junior Sweat was really worried, especially since he had a lengthy criminal history. He told his wife that he expected to be sentenced to life without parole.
Walker said Junior counted on Jones to bail him out after he was arrested, but that didn't happen.
Junior also attempted to get help from Harmon. Harmon had previously represented Junior when the judge was in private practice, but Harmon didn't do anything to help Junior either.
While Junior was in jail, said Walker, he asked her to contact LaFon, telling her that LaFon was the only one who could get him out of jail. The 81-year-old LaFon and uncle to Al Gore is a former prosecutor and state judge.
Janice Walker knew LaFon well, having once been offered a job as a housekeeper living in LaFon's well-guarded, fortified compound. She rejected the job because of the isolation. She said Junior died before she had time to contact LaFon.
LaFon told WND he knew Junior and was familiar with the raid on his meth factory, but said no one had contacted him about representing Junior.
During the time that Junior Sweat was setting up his huge meth lab, the TBI brought in others for debriefing on the Jones/Harmon investigation. Randy Isbell received a call from John Mehr asking him to attend a Jan. 12, 1999, meeting at the TBI's Jackson office.
Like David and Jane Riddell, the Baptist minister was instructed not to tell anyone that he was talking to the agency. This gag order effectively isolated the Riddells and Isbell for about two months, because they couldn't share their information.
Mehr, Hughes and the other agents who attended the meeting with the Riddells were also present for Isbell's initial debriefing.
Isbell asked when the TBI expected to launch a full-scale investigation in Hardin County.
"It may be weeks, it may be months, but we are coming," Mehr said.
The Baptist minister made two other trips to the TBI headquarters in Jackson, bringing documentation and escorting half a dozen informants.
These informants turned over lists of drug dealers from whom they regularly obtained their narcotics to the TBI. On one of these lists appeared the name of Charlie Jones, Clark's brother and partner in their car dealership.
One informant worked for E&K Trucking Company, in which Ron Harmon has a major financial stake. This same informant brought a computer disk and a document containing particulars about E&K's alleged illegal activities.
According to Isbell, the disk contained information about E&K's smuggling points, quantities of narcotics shipped, amounts of cash paid for the drugs and delivery dates.
Hughes loaded the disk in a computer and scrolled down the screen. The disk contained the equivalent of two typed pages. When the agent reached Judge Ron Harmon's name, he paused. Mehr pointed at the name with a ballpoint pen and chortled, "Look here, Roger!"
"The TBI was intensely interested," Isbell said.
During the TBI investigation, Isbell said he had regular telephone phone conversations with Mehr and Hughes. In addition, other TBI agents visited him at his church and home in Savannah.
Around this time, Ron Harmon called Randy Isbell at home and invited him to a meeting at his private law office. Isbell told WND that he was scared about going, but that he screwed up his courage and went anyway.
Arriving at Harmon's back-alley office as the sun was setting, Isbell became even more apprehensive. The judge had instructed him to look for a green door and then knock. Isbell located a green door, but he paused before knocking. There was no name on the door, no sign indicating that this was Harmon's law office.
Isbell finally rapped on the door, and Harmon let him in. A robust man in his early fifties, Harmon seemed as uncomfortable as his visitor. Both Harmon's and Isbell's accounts of the meeting are remarkably similar.
The judge professed his innocence, saying that he had never used nor dealt drugs. Isbell told Harmon that his involvement with E&K Trucking Company was incriminating.
Isbell told Harmon that defending notorious dopers and partying with cocaine users and dealers were among the reasons that he was now under suspicion. Harmon said he agreed with Isbell and promised to mend his ways.
Although the 35-minute-long meeting ended amicably, Isbell said, "I was really shook up when I left."
And then something happened.
The first inkling that something was amiss came shortly after Isbell's meeting with Ron Harmon. Several days later, Isbell said that he received a phone call at home from a TBI agent. Even though the caller didn't identify himself, Isbell instantly knew who he was.
The caller, Chris Carpenter, had been assigned to the Hardin County drug case. Carpenter had once lived in Hardin County and attended Isbell's church. He had also chatted with Isbell at his church several times during the investigation.
"There's going to be a meeting in Memphis with a certain car dealer in your town. We're going to be meeting next week. I just thought you ought to know," Carpenter said, according to Isbell. He understood that Carpenter's reference to "a certain car dealer in your town" meant Clark Jones.
WND attempted twice to ask Carpenter about this. Both times he said, "I've been instructed to refer your questions to Nashville for any comment or to answer any questions." Then he slammed down the phone.
The TBI's internal memoranda reveal that Carpenter was ordered not to talk to WorldNetDaily by TBI director Larry Wallace.
By mid-March of last year, Jane Riddell and Randy Isbell had decided to ignore the TBI's prohibition about talking to each another and were actively comparing notes.
Isbell called Riddell and told her about his strange message from Carpenter. Ridell recalls the conversation:
"Is it good or bad?" Isbell asked.
"It has to be bad," Riddell said, "He has pull all the way to the White House," she replied.
While the TBI investigation was ongoing, Clark Jones attended a regular coffee klatch at the Tollhouse Restaurant with about 20 other Savannah movers and shakers. Savannah Mayor Bob Shutt, who was also at the Tollhouse that day, said the hot topic for conversation was drug trafficking in Hardin County.
"Every day the people at the restaurant were asking, 'Who are the police going to catch?' That's all they talked about," said Shutt.
A well-tanned man, Jones argued that drug trafficking in Savannah was negligible. Accounts of drug dealing published in the Courier were "blown way out of proportion," he said.
Shutt, who is now running for the state senate against longtime Gore supporter Lt. Gov. John Wilder, said that Jones became agitated over what he heard from the other attendees and stated that he was driving to Memphis the next day "to straighten this s--t (the drug inquiry) out with the TBI."
Shutt said he was initially skeptical of Jones' statement.
"Even though he was friends with Al Gore, I doubted whether Clark had the clout to shut down an ongoing investigation, " Shutt said. "But as events unfolded, I became absolutely convinced that Clark really did possess the clout."
Shutt says Jones may have mentioned Gore's name in connection with shutting down the TBI investigation.
"The only reason I'm not absolutely sure about Gore's name being used is that Clark regularly threw Gore's name around," he said.
The TBI inquiry was dead in the water, TBI sources tell WorldNetDaily, on the personal instruction of Larry Wallace.
A politically ambitious former Tennessee Highway Patrolman and sheriff of McMinn County, Wallace often boasted about being a close friend of Gore. One high-ranking TBI official said, "Gore's pictures are plastered on all of Wallace's walls." Former U.S. Sen. Harlan Matthews, a force in Tennessee Democratic Party politics for more than four decades, confirmed that Gore and Wallace were close friends and political allies.
Travel expense vouchers obtained by WorldNetDaily from the TBI show that Gary Azbill and Chris Carpenter, two of the agents working on the Hardin County drug case, were in Memphis on Friday, March 19, 1999, the date of the alleged meeting with Jones. Cathy Dent, another agent assigned to the case, arrived in Memphis the next day.
Wallace has ordered these agents not to talk to WND. Although Wallace furnished Azbill's, Carpenter's and Dent's travel vouchers, he didn't turn over any of Roger Hughes' records for the same time period.
David Jennings, the TBI's legal counsel, said Hughes didn't submit any travel vouchers for March, April and May of last year.
Morris, a former senior TBI narcotics agent who is now chief of police in Lavergne, Tenn., said, "That tells me that somebody's hiding something. It doesn't happen that way. The TBI is using the color of their office to lie about the facts."
WND made numerous attempts to talk to Roger Hughes. Although Hughes wouldn't respond to repeated inquiries, he wrote a memo last March to Larry Wallace, denying that he had ever met with Jones.
"I don't know Roger Hughes," Jones said, adding that, "you don't mess with criminal matters."
Not long after the alleged meeting in Memphis, Riddell said she called the Jackson TBI office to pass on some information she had received relative to a large drug shipment coming into the Hardin County area.
Hughes told her that he wasn't interested in her information about the trucks, startling her by saying that the drug investigation in Hardin County was dead.
In response to killing the investigation, two senior law enforcement sources told WND, "That's politics, pure and simple." They blamed Al Gore for having the investigation killed.
Lawson believes Wallace would never have terminated a criminal investigation involving three of Gore's close friends and fundraisers without tipping the vice president off in advance.
Lawson was Wallace's boss when Wallace was a colonel in command of the Tennessee Highway Patrol from 1987-1992. Lawson said he nearly fired Wallace for leaking sensitive investigative material to cabinet officers who had been subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury. Some of these men managed to escape prosecution and later supported Wallace in his successful 1992 bid to become TBI director.
According to Lawson and others, Wallace's principal conduit to Gore is Alberta Winkler, an aide in Gore's Carthage, Tenn., office. Winkler refused to talk to WND about Gore's relationship with Wallace. She also refused to answer questions concerning whether Gore and Wallace conferred about the Hardin County drug case or about other TBI ongoing criminal cases.
"During his entire career, Wallace has exhibited a terror about offending politicians," Lawson said.
Arzo Carson agrees with Lawson's assessment of Wallace. Carson, a hard-nosed former prosecutor from eastern Tennessee, was TBI director for 11 years. He wrote the 1980 statute that supposedly insulated the TBI from political interference by the governor or other politicians.
Also like Lawson, Carson wanted to fire Wallace in 1987 as head of the TBI's criminal investigation division, because in Carson's opinion Wallace lacked integrity.
"Wallace would do anything to keep politicians happy, including killing investigations and leaking sensitive investigative material and sources," Carson said.
After being informed by Hughes that the TBI had bailed out of the Hardin County drug investigation, Riddell didn't waste any time calling Shutt. The mayor told her what Jones had said about killing TBI investigation.
Community leaders were dumbfounded when they learned that the TBI investigation was dead.
Two law enforcement sources told WorldNetDaily that FBI special agents mentioned Judge Ron Harmon and Whit LaFon as targets of a federal public corruption probe during a planning session. Harmon had been a potential target on several law enforcement officers' radar screens for nearly 20 years. His name was first brought up by an informant working for Larry Phelps, who was at that time a narcotics officer for the Shelby County Sheriff's Department in Memphis.
The Memphis drug dealer owned a luxurious home near Pickwick Lake and said he had shared cocaine with Harmon on a Pickwick boat dock.
Phelps had a colleague run a check on Harmon on EPIC, a federal computerized data network which keeps track of illegal drug activity, and discovered that Harmon was listed as a "suspected drug dealer." Very recently, a check of that same data network revealed that Harmon is still on the radar screens as a suspected narcotics trafficker.
Don Cannon and other local police and federal sources say Harmon was also a suspect in the TBI investigation of Sheriff David Seaton, conducted during Carson's tenure. Harmon was never charged with any crime in that case, and he repeatedly claimed he has never used nor sold drugs.
Harmon talked to WND in his private legal office about a block from the Hardin County Court House.
Harmon said he wasn't sure about whether Clark Jones actually met with the TBI in Memphis. But if it did happen, he said, "It's dumb."
Asked about Whit LaFon, Harmon answered, "He talks too much all the time. He's someone who might make a call (to halt the TBI investigation)."
When asked about the FBI investigation, the color drained from his face. After regaining control, he asked what allegations were being investigated. He was told that obstruction of justice, narcotics trafficking and conspiracy were being discussed.
"What the hell would we [Harmon and Clark Jones] have to conspire about?" he asked.
Clark Jones was interviewed at his Savannah auto dealership. Jones, who met Gore when he first ran for Congress, couldn't fully explain why he allowed Junior Sweat to hang around his showroom four days a week.
"Junior visited Gary Wilson (a Jones Motor Company salesman)," he said.
He tried to downplay his involvement with Al Gore, claiming that he only talked to Gore once a year. However, Gore recently purchased a car from Jones for his son, Albert Gore, III, and Gore was expected to attend the wedding of Chad Jones, Clark's son, this summer, but he cancelled at the last minute reportedly due to heavy scheduling demands.
The 24th Judicial District Task Force, a multi-county narcotics unit, conducted a round-up this past May -- the culmination of a year's undercover work done by task-force members, the Savannah Police Department and agents from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs Office of Inspector General.
Some of the investigation took place in public housing projects, and HUD furnished thousands of dollars of "buy money." Task-force members say a number of the suspects have been turned for use as informants.
HUD's anti-drug program was strongly endorsed by the vice president when it was first introduced in 1997, two years before Gore allegedly played a role in terminating the TBI's drug investigation in Hardin County.
Gore and HUD cited Savannah and Hardin County as "success stories," based solely on a May 20, 1997, round-up of 37 individuals for using and selling crack cocaine and marijuana in and around public housing developments.
A number of these individuals were perennial addicts who sold only miniscule amounts of drugs to support their habits. They were charged with simple possession of a controlled substance and released on their own recognizance.
Despite Gore's declaration that Savannah and Hardin County were "success stories" in the war on drugs, numerous local and federal anti-drug sources say the situation in Savannah and Hardin County has dramatically worsened, and that the county's cries for relief have fallen on the deaf ears of Al's pals.
So, what happened in Hardin County? A fair reading of the facts reveals this: A serious inquiry into narcotics trafficking was begun by Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Larry Wallace after a request from a powerful state politician. TBI agents collected information and evidence, interviewed subjects and solicited assistance from local citizens. Then, apparently after a clandestine meeting with one of Al Gore's pals and top fundraisers -- an individual with strong connections to a career criminal even then under investigation for constructing the largest meth lab in the state -- that drug trafficking inquiry stopped cold.
"Clark Jones did me in. I'll never forgive him and Al Gore for that," Jane Riddell said, and then she began to cry.
from TPDL 1999-Apr-17, from NewsMax:
Jones Suspected Clinton Role in Mysterious Deaths
Paula Jones feared for her life while pressing her lawsuit against President Clinton and thinks he may have played a role in a number of mysterious deaths of potential witnesses against him.
Jones, appearing Friday night on FOX News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes", was asked whether she suspected that Clinton was responsible for the deaths; a list numbering, according to some, more than 50 people who were associated with one Clinton controversy or another. Some of the more prominent Clinton friends to die in the midst of scandal were Vince Foster, Ron Brown and James McDougal.
Jones repsonded, "He may not be hands-on in doing it, but I think maybe he has some part in some of this stuff. Because there's just too many of them that have come up dead or missing that have had some kind of bond or have been in business or some kind of dealings with Clinton."
Prior to the stunning comment, Sean Hannity questioned Jones about concerns for her own safety:
HANNITY: Paula, you have stated in the past that you, and Linda Tripp has stated as well, have even feared for your life. You even went on to say that you want the whole world to know that you don't drive crazy, that you wouldn't run off the road, that you're not suicidal, that you love life, you love your children, and you'd never kill yourself. And you wanted to say that to a national audience. Why? What do you fear?
JONES: Well, there's been a lot of people that have come up dead in Arkansas. And I've had a lot of people ask me, 'Aren't you scared for your life?' And actually, I have been. Even (Clinton attorney) Bob Bennett said a quote one time on CNN that his mother always used to tell him that you better be careful for what you ask for because you just might get it. And then he went on to talk about how his dog used to chase cars. And then his dog was dead and he has a new dog now. And I took that even as a threat. There were just so many things and I wanted people to know that I'm not like that and that if I come up strangely dead that I didn't kill myself.
One of the "many things" Jones may have had in mind was the fate of Kathy Ferguson, the ex-wife of the co-defendant named in her lawsuit, Arkansas state trooper Danny Ferguson. Kathy's friends have told reporters that she too claimed that Clinton had sexually harassed her and that she knew, "Paula was telling the truth."
On May 13, 1994, just five days after Jones filed suit, Ferguson was found shot to death in her Sherwood, Arkansas apartment. Police ruled it a suicide.
A month later, her police officer boyfriend Bill Shelton was also found dead; his body sprawled across Kathy's grave. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that Shelton died from a single gunshot wound behind the ear. Police again ruled suicide.
The names of two of Kathy's co-workers, Sherry Butler and Dr. Sam Houston, were included on the Jones supplemental witness list, which was submitted into evidence at Clinton's Senate impeachment trial. Butler and Houston had claimed Kathy told them about her own unwanted encounter with Clinton in the months before her death.
Jones aired her suspicions about possible presidential involvement when pressed for details on the FOX show:
HANNITY: Do you think the president could be responsible for that? When you talk about these people, do you think the president, in part, has been reponsible for some of these deaths? And did you ever receive any direct threats?
JONES: No, I didn't receive any direct threats. But I think, while he may not be hands-on in doing it, but I think maybe he has some part in some of this stuff. Because there's just too many of them that have come up dead or missing that have had some kind of bond or have been in business or some kind of dealings with Clinton.
Gennifer Flowers, Sally Perdue, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Kathleen Willey and other women linked to the president have complained about alleged Clinton-connected break-ins, threats of physical violence and unusual surveillance.
In March, lead House impeachment prober David Schippers told NewsMax.com that the House and Senate leadership refused to allow him time to investigate charges of witness intimidation against President Clinton.
from Progressive Review Undernews 1999-Feb-11, by Sam Smith, from http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/ProRev/indexb.htm:
NOW CAN WE TALK ABOUT SOME OTHER THINGS?
Such as. . . .
Why was Jim McDougal, while in the custody of Clinton's Justice Department, kept locked down and medicated in such a way as to increase significantly the likelihood that he would die of a heart attack?
Who was responsible for the mob style slaying of former White House intern Mary Caitrin Mahoney and other Starbucks employees in Georgetown? Who killed the police informant in the case?
Who put nails in the tires of Kathleen Willey's car, stole her cat, and left an animal skull on her porch to greet her when she came back from testifying in the Paula Jones case? Who subsequently came up to Willey while jogging and asked, "Don't you get the message?"
When is the Washington Post going to report what is in its own clip-files on Nathan Landow?
Who at the White House used any of the 900 illegally obtained FBI files and for what reasons?
Why is the Clinton machine -- with more than 45 associates officially felons and some 100 others refusing to cooperate, answer questions or fleeing the country -- not covered by the RICO anti-racketeering laws?
Why did Vince Foster die? If it was a suicide, who moved his body to Ft. Marcy Park? If it was a murder, who did it?
Why does no one in a public position -- Congress, the media, Kenneth Starr, or Justice Department -- want to find the truth about Mena, drug running and money laundering in Arkansas?
Who put Foster's car keys in his pocket following his removal from the death scene? How did Foster walked across 700 feet of parkland without accruing any dirt of grass stains? What happened to the bullet that killed him? What happened to the blood that should have been there? What happened to the X-rays that were made? Why did his glasses end up in the wrong place? How are scores of other anomalies resolved?
Who was responsible for the death threats and other extortion used against a series of women who had affairs with Clinton?
When will the media show some interest in a pattern of alleged sexual assault by Clinton going back as far as Oxford days?
What files were taken from Vince Foster's office following his death and who destroyed his hard disc drive?
Why did Clinton fire FBI director William Sessions several days before the Foster death and one day before the FBI raided key Whitewater witness David Hale's Little Rock office?
Who killed Jerry Luther Parks, a Clinton security aide in Arkansas known to have been keeping dossier on Clinton -- who was gunned down mob style outside of Little Rock two months after Foster's death?
Was Parks, as his wife has indicated, involved with Vince Foster in money laundering operations out of Mena? Why did Parks say, upon hearing of Foster's death, "I'm a dead man?" Who took the files out of the dead Parks' home?
When is the media going to tell Americans about the deadly blood shipped from Arkansas prisons to Canada during the administration of Governor Clinton? What was Clinton's involvement in this scandal? What was in the "tainted blood" file at the White House that Linda Tripp tried to access but couldn't?
How were the Clintons involved in the false prosecution of the head of the White House travel office?
Who lost the money that Hillary Clinton made in her cattle futures scheme?
Who in the White House was involved in the Ron Brown/DNC extortion policy by which donors had to give the Democrats tens of thousands of dollars for the right to fly on government trade missions? Why is this less important in the media's view than the Olympic scandal?
When is the death of Ron Brown going to be reexamined in light of pathologists finding a perfectly circular hole in his head? When are the anomalies in the crash of Ron Brown's plane going to be reexamined?
When are major media going to report that a top aide in the White House was formerly a key associate of a major Arkansas drug trafficker? When is the media going to report that this drug trafficker had a back door pass to the Arkansas governor's mansion?
How many favors has Clinton done for Indonesian Chinese billionaire Mochtar Riady in the 20 years that they have been close? The Indonesia government? The Chinese?
Why did Kathy Ferguson die five days after her ex-husband was named a co-defendant in the Paula Jones law suit? If she did commit suicide, why were fully packed bags found next to her body? Why was her fiancé, a state trooper, found dead shortly afterwards, again an alleged suicide?
Why did both Janet Reno and congressional Republicans shut down major probes as soon as they started to get close to drug trafficking?
What happened to the $175,000 in cash Ng Lap Seng brought into the country in 1994 two days before he sat at Clinton's table at a fundraiser?
Will the White House propose new legislation regarding perjury, obstruction of justice, campaign financing, sexual assault, corrupt practices, and racketeering to bring the law into compliance with currently accepted standards as practiced or advocated by President and his aides?
from TPDL 2001-Jan-8, from WorldNetDaily, by Paul Sperry:
Revealed: Gun lost on fatal Brown flight
Secret Commerce report says bodyguard's firearm never recovered from crash scene
WASHINGTON -- A handgun carried by a bodyguard assigned to protect the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown "was lost and not recovered" from the wreckage of his plane, which crashed in Croatia in 1996, reveals a still-secret Commerce Department report, a copy of which was obtained by WorldNetDaily.
The internal security report was completed in March 1999 -- 15 months after an Air Force forensic pathologist disclosed that an unusual wound at the top of Brown's head could have been a bullet hole.
Jesse Jackson and other black leaders at the time called for an autopsy to find out if the hole was caused by a bullet.
"I think people have a right to know what really happened," he said in January 1998.
Jackson was joined by NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters in demanding a new investigation into Brown's death.
The Air Force ruled that Brown died of multiple blunt-force injuries sustained in the crash of the Air Force jet in which he was a passenger.
On April 3, 1996, he and his bodyguard, Duane Christian, went down with 33 others traveling on a Commerce trade trip. All 35 aboard died.
But military investigators did not order an autopsy of Brown's body, and failed to recover Christian's weapon when they investigated the crash scene.
"One gun was lost and not recovered in the tragic April 1996 airplane crash in Croatia that killed 12 Commerce employees, including the secretary," found Commerce Inspector General Johnnie E. Frazier in a review of weapon and ammunition inventory.
His findings were part of a department-wide inspection of security procedures. On March 31, 1999, he delivered his 33-page report -- which still hasn't been cleared for public release -- to David Holmes, deputy assistant secretary for security.
Holmes previously had led Vice President Al Gore's Secret Service detail.
The report also says that there has been no internal accounting for the missing gun.
"Because the investigation of the crash was under the jurisdiction of the military, no OSY (Office of Security) report was needed," Frazier added on page 26 of the report.
.357 Magnum
The gun that turned up missing was a .357 Magnum, which fires a .38-caliber round.
"Brown had a .45-inch inwardly beveling circular hole in the top of his head, which is essentially the description of a .45-caliber gunshot wound," Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Cogswell told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in December 1997. At the time, he was a deputy medical examiner with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington.
But another military doctor, who reviewed external examination photos, found the circular wound in Brown's head to be smaller, the Tribune-Review said.
According to Dr. Martin Fackler, former director of the Army's Wound Ballistics Laboratory in San Francisco, the hole was more consistent with a .40-caliber, or 10-millimeter, bullet -- such as the kind used by law-enforcement agencies.
Also, a ballistics expert familiar with the ammunition issued by Commerce told WorldNetDaily that the .38-caliber bullets can flatten on impact and leave a larger hole.
"Given the right conditions," he said, "a soft-point, or hollow-point, slug could leave a .45-size hole."
In an exclusive interview with WorldNetDaily, the former primary agent on Brown's protective detail says there's nothing suspicious about the lost weapon.
He speculates that the impact from the crash may have simply ripped it away from Christian's waist holster, which has a strap that snaps shut over the hammer, and thrown it far enough from the wreckage that investigators overlooked it.
Croatian special forces?
"I figure either that happened or Croatian special forces guys are walking around with the weapon" after picking it up as a souvenir, said James E. Ochs, Brown's top bodyguard, who was busy deploying the secretary's motorcade at the Dubrovnik airport when the plane crashed.
Ochs says Croatian police beat U.S. forces to the mountainous crash site and may have scavenged for such items of value.
As for Brown's gunshot-like head wound, Ochs says it was more likely caused by a rivet, bolt or rod that broke free from the plane on impact and penetrated the top of his skull.
"If the plane plowed into a mountain, there would be a lot of debris flying around," he told WorldNetDaily.
Dr. Cogswell, however, says he looked for such objects at the crash site and couldn't find any that would fit the wound.
Others offer darker explanations.
"My theory is that Brown was still alive. And local Croats who came to loot didn't want anyone to see what they were doing. So they found the gun and shot him," said Accuracy in Media's Reed Irvine, who was asked to comment on the findings in the secret Commerce report. Washington-based AIM has followed the tragic story closely from the start and has argued for an autopsy.
But why in the top of the head?
"They didn't want it to be obvious, so they got down and fired the gun point-blank into the top of his head," he said. "What happened to the bullet? It went down into the body cavity. Investigators wouldn't have found it unless they did an autopsy."
The ballistics expert, however, says that even such a dense area of bone and tissue wouldn't have stopped a bullet fired by a .357 Magnum, which packs a heavy hit.
"It would have gone all the way through," he said. "There would have been a major exit wound."
No exit wound
No such wound was found on Brown's body -- although the forensic photographer who snapped shots of Brown's corpse when it arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, says examiners failed to thoroughly inspect the buttocks and groin area where a bullet probably would have exited. Nor was she asked to take photos of that area.
"They never looked for an exit wound," said Kathleen Janoski, who was the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology's senior lab photographer then. "And I was there for the entire external examination."
A pathologist hired by the Brown family concluded there was no exit wound, she says, but he made his conclusion based on photos.
Other suspicious circumstances surround Brown's death, leading some to suspect foul play on the part of the Clinton administration.
At the time Brown died, a special prosecutor was investigating his financial dealings, including his presidential fund-raising practices. And Brown was reportedly making noises he would rat out the president -- in the middle of an election year -- if squeezed too hard.
Adding to suspicions, Brown's papers -- like the late deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster's -- were spirited away from his office shortly after he died. Some were destroyed, some were locked up in off-site storage and some were taken to other agencies by Clinton appointees.
Internal documents and testimony from Commerce officials gleaned since his death show that Brown coordinated with the Democratic National Committee and the White House to sell seats on overseas trade junkets for campaign cash.
Convicted Clinton-Gore fund-raiser and suspected Beijing agent John Huang was one of the aides who helped Brown arrange the more controversial missions to the Far East, including China. Huang's immediate boss at Commerce, Charles Meissner, also died in the Croatian plane crash.
Perhaps most chilling, though, is the way the White House rushed the examinations of the victims at the morgue, Janoski says.
"There was a lot of pressure from the White House to get the bodies out of Dover and buried," she told WorldNetDaily.
"In fact, our team leader in this -- Dr. Edward Kilbane -- was ordered to the West Wing for a meeting the Friday before the bodies came back" from Croatia on Saturday, April 6, 1996, Janoski added.
A second gun
The inspector general's report also mentions another gun missing, this one from Commerce headquarters.
"The other handgun was reported stolen or missing in HCHB (Herbert Clark Hoover Building)," the report says, "so an internal report was prepared."
It turns out that the other gun, also a .357 Magnum, also belonged to Christian, who died at 42. One day in 1995, he reported it missing from his office.
When he was tapped to accompany Brown on his mission to the Balkans, Christian had to borrow a gun from another security specialist. It was the loaner that was lost on the fateful flight, Ochs explains.
"Duane borrowed that weapon to make that trip," he said.
Ochs, a former firearms training officer for the department, says he still doesn't know the whereabouts of Christian's own gun, which mysteriously vanished from his office.
The serial numbers of both guns were reported to the National Crime Information Center.
"That's a big deal to lose a weapon," a high-level federal security official told WorldNetDaily.
Ochs, an ex-Secret Service agent, agrees.
But he explains that Brown traveled so much that it became impractical for agents to lock their guns up in the department safe when they weren't on the road guarding him. And that made it harder to keep track of them.
"With Brown, the weapons were issued to each agent," he said. "And each agent was charged with the care and well-being of that weapon, because we were always on the road."
After Brown died, Ochs says he "kept them all in a gun safe," and the department didn't have any more problems.
'Lead snowstorm'
Dr. Cogswell, the whistleblower who left AFIP after being demoted and now works as a coroner in Shreveport, La., also cited as evidence of a possible gunshot wound initial X-rays that showed what appear to be small metal fragments in Brown's head -- similar to the "lead snowstorm" left by a slug as it breaks up in the body.
Janoski, a 23-year Navy veteran, claims that the first set of X-rays were "destroyed" because they showed evidence of a possible bullet entry.
And a second set of X-rays were taken and "deliberately" made less dense to try to diminish the lead snowstorm, she says.
How does she know? She says a Navy criminal investigator, Jeanmarie Sentelle, told her so.
Attempts to reach Sentelle were unsuccessful.
She also says Sentelle told her a gift from Brown's alleged mistress, Yolanda Hill, was ordered destroyed.
The gift -- an Indian good-luck charm consisting of a cigarette butt, a feather, turquoise stones and red beads rolled up in a shammy and tied with twine -- was found in Brown's diplomatic pouch.
"Personal effects are never destroyed," she said.
Janoski, a registered Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton and then worked as a White House volunteer, also noted that examiners did not test for gunshot residue around Brown's head wound.
Empty 9-millimeter clip
As body bags were unzipped at the Dover morgue, she noticed something else.
"A burnt 9-millimeter clip was thrown in with one of the bodies" by one of the crash scene workers, Janoski said.
She says that although the gun clip was charred from the plane fire, she could see that it was empty -- except for perhaps one round.
Christian's .357 Magnum was a revolver. So the presence of a clip suggests there was another gun -- a semiautomatic -- on board the plane.
Theories about what created Brown's perfectly round wound are predicated on an airborne object hitting his skull, such as a bullet or rivet, rather than his skull hitting a stationary object.
But close-ups of the hole in his skull show less a tunnel than a shallow but clean-cut indentation, or punch-out, as if Brown were thrown head-first into some kind of protrusion, such as a metal stud, connected to a hard, round surface.
In fact, the top of Brown's skull was depressed and fractured, and his scalp was torn away around the hole -- injuries not caused by just a gunshot.
Janoski allows that she probably never would have spotted the hole if the skull weren't exposed by the large laceration.
Still, she says only an autopsy could rule out a bullet.
"City coroners do autopsies on homeless people," Janoski said. "Yet here we have a dead Cabinet member with a hole in his head, and there's no autopsy."
"What they needed to do was open up the skull with a saw and take the brain out and slice it up like a loaf of bread to find out how far this wound went," she added. "Without an autopsy, we're never really going to know what happened."
Jesse Jackson agrees.
"It may only prove that he was not murdered," he said. "But that would relieve people of reasonable doubt."
Janoski, who was demoted by AFIP after she publicly complained about the cursory examination of Brown's corpse, says she told her story to Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., in a January 1998 meeting.
She said Conyers, one of the founders of the Congressional Black Caucus, taped the conversation in a recording room on The Hill and said "he wanted to look into it." But she says he never followed up.
from the Washington Weekly, 1998-May-14, Citizens for Better Government edit of May 5, 1998:
THE MOB PRESIDENT
The Mob Helped Clinton get Started In Politics.
It is Now Helping Him Escape the Law
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When young Bill Clinton in 1974 made his first run for political office, a crucial $10,000 loan was arranged for him by his uncle, Raymond Clinton. Uncle Raymond has been tied by Clinton biographer Roger Morris to the Hot Springs Mafia.
But it was not until 1984, when Clinton was elected for a second term as Governor of Arkansas, that Mob money really started pouring in. "That was the election when the Mob really came into Arkansas politics, the dog-track and racetrack boys, the payoff people who saw a good thing," a former U.S. Attorney told Roger Morris. "It wasn't just Bill Clinton and it went beyond our old Dixie Mafia, which was penny-ante by comparison. This was eastern and and West Coast crime money that noticed the possibilities just like the legitimate corporations did."
Among the "legitimate corporations" that noticed the possibilities with the rapidly ascending governor thirsting for power and money were front corporations for the intelligence services of the People's Republic of China. The Lippo empire came to Arkansas that year.
By then, Bill Clinton's ties to organized crime had become well- known. His half-brother Roger Clinton was convicted of cocaine distribution in association with Mob figure and Clinton money man Dan Lasater.
In the years that followed, Arkansas became a major cocaine trans-shipment point for the Mafia, crossing paths with the famous CIA Contra resupply operation at Mena.
Bill Clinton had found a most successful formula in U.S. politics: financial backing from a coalition of organized crime and hostile foreign governments.
A MERGER OF THE DIXIE, CHICAGO AND NEW YORK CRIME FAMILIES
So successful was this formula, that in 1992 Bill Clinton used it to reach the highest office, the office of the U.S. Presidency. In return for large campaign donations, the crime families would be represented in the Clinton administration. The New York Mob paid $56 million [1] and won the slot of Deputy Chief of Staff for its lawyer Harold Ickes. The Dixie Mafia paid an undisclosed amount and obtained slots for Patsy Thomasson and Buddy Young. The Chicago political machine sent Rahm Emanuel and David Wilhelm.
Harold Ickes proved his value to the Mob when he held his hand over Mob puppets Arthur Coia and Ron Carey who were under separate RICO investigations by the Justice Department. Patsy Thomasson, in charge of White House drug testing policy, saw to it that criminal figures on the White House staff would not be bothered about past and current drug use.
The People's Republic of China, in return for at least a $3 million loan through Worthen Bank, won a slot for its spy John Huang at the Commerce Department. Later followed access to advanced U.S. military technology, access to the Long Beach Naval Base, MFN trade status, and more campaign contributions.
Peripheral Mob figures Nathan Landow, Richard Ben-Veniste, and their associates Terry Lenzner and Paul Begala became part of the secret police that would keep Clinton in office despite multiple revelations of criminal offenses. Ironically, the only member of the Clinton enforcement team who has threatened the use of Mafia methods in public is James Carville. He said on television that Kenneth Starr was just one mistake away from not having any kneecaps. "Kneecapping" is a Mafia specialty. Yet the only link between Carville and the Mafia that we have been able to find so far is his partnership with Paul Begala, who admitted in a recent deposition for the Filegate trial that he was in close and frequent contact with his friend Richard Ben-Veniste, a Mob lawyer and friend of Mobster Alvin Malnik [2]. Richard Ben- Veniste has defended several drug traffickers and money launderers for the Mafia and for the DNC. Ben-Veniste also defended Bill Clinton on the Senate Whitewater panel in 1995.
It goes without saying that a Racketeering-Influenced Corrupt Organization such as the Clinton administration cannot stay in office long without a very efficient "enforcement" component to its secret police. The methods employed by this "enforcement" team include murder. The 1993 assassination of Clinton private investigator Jerry Parks was carried out by people in Hot Springs associated with Buddy Young [3]. Of all the mysterious deaths and suicides surrounding the Clinton Secret Police, this is the only one that has been solved. That does not mean that it has been prosecuted, though, for corruption of the judicial system is another necessary component of survival. White House Director of Administration, Patsy Thomasson of the Dixie Mafia, has been implicated in several attempts on the life of Dennis Patrick, a former money launderer for the Dixie Mafia who wanted out [3].
CORRUPTING THE PRESS
Survival of the Clinton administration has also been contingent upon successful corruption of the press. The most prominent Clinton operator at this time is Murray Waas, gaining fame in the mainstream media for finding a psychic in Arkansas whose son had seen money given to Whitewater witness David Hale.
Murray Waas has actually been doing opposition research for the Clinton administration for several years. His journalistic "scoops" (or are they merely ventilations of White House FBI files?) include research into the background of Kenneth Starr and into the background of Clinton critics. In this research, his Mafia-style methods have become apparent. Waas threatened to have reporter Michael Lewis killed after Lewis wrote a New Republic story looking into murder and drugs in Arkansas--a story that was unflattering of Waas [4]. Who does Waas know who would be able to enforce such a threat?
THE MISSING PIECE
If China made illegal donations to the Clinton campaign in return for mercantile and military strategic advantages, then what illegal donations have been made by Russia? The favors Clinton has made towards China pale in comparison to the favors he has made towards Russia. Billions of dollars in economic support and the maintenance of a strategic advantage in favor of Russia through the obstruction and delay of modernization of the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal and the development and deployment of a U.S. national missile defense.
Lest gestures as these be interpreted as prudent engagement of a fledgling democracy, one should consider that it has rarely been the democratic forces in Russia, or the Russian people, that have been the beneficiaries of Clinton administration support:
(1) Clinton's point man on Russia policy is the former KGB's point man on propaganda in the U.S. His name is Strobe Talbott, a former editor at Time magazine who built his career on access to KGB officials and their Soviet propaganda [5].
(2) The Clinton administration has worked hand-in-hand with Russian Mobsters to illegally extradite whistleblowers who have revealed massive KGB-Mafia corruption in Russia [6].
(3) The FBI, through its new offices in Moscow, has become an adjunct of the corrupt KGB-Mafia bureaucracy that rules Russian society today. FBI Director Freeh has reversed himself in stating that the Russian Mafia does not pose a threat to U.S. domestic or national security [7]. Only a month earlier, Freeh had warned that 30 Russian Mafia syndicates were conducting the most sophisticated criminal operations ever seen in America based on their access to expertise in computer technology, encryption techniques and money laundering [8].
(4) Monetary aid to Russia has been diverted towards the modernization of its strategic nuclear arsenal, including a new generation of nuclear attack submarines. Other funds have been diverted to the Russian Mob
(5) The engineer of these scams is Strobe Talbott.
Where are the records of illegal campaign donations invested by the Russian KGB-Mafia complex in the Clinton administration to maintain this profitable state of affairs? Apart from the revelation of a $90,000 donation to the DNC on behalf of suspected nuclear arms dealer Grigory Loutchansky [9], the record of this cash pipeline must be hidden inside the DNC's closely guarded campaign finance records. That is a scandal yet to surface.
THE CLINTON LEGACY
The legacy of the Clinton Presidency is the transformation of the United States into a narco republic with parts of the judicial system as corrupt as that of Colombia. Much worse than that, Bill Clinton has helped build a state-of-the-art offensive nuclear strike capability in the most dangerous nations on earth: China, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran. And the nuclear weapons of China and perhaps Russia are targeted at the U.S. Simultaneously with this build-up, Clinton has dismantled, defunded, and starved the U.S. military so that today we have a "hollow army."
The actions of President Clinton will dramatically affect the security of the United States for generations to come. He has sold out his own country in order to win and maintain the Presidency.
Notes:
[1] F.C. "Duke" Zeller in the Washington Times, October 28, 1996
[2] The Miami Herald
[3] "The Secret Life of Bill Clinton," by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
[4] "The Seducer," by Michael Lewis, The New Republic Nov. 18, 1996
[5] "Strobe Talbott: Russia's Man in Washington," by Kenneth R. Timmerman, The American Spectator, April 1998.
[6] "Clinton Administration Aids KGB in Cover-up of Communist Party Loot," Washington Weekly, Aug. 25, 1997.
[7] "Freeh Says Russian Mafia Poses no Threat," Washington Weekly, Nov. 24, 1997
[8] "FBI's man in Moscow quits after spying row," London Telegraph, Nov. 27, 1997.
[9] "Suspected N-dealer attended Clinton fund-raiser," by Christopher Ruddy, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Oct. 30, 1996.
Published in the May 4, 1998 issue of The Washington Weekly Copyright 1998
The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com)
Reposting permitted with this message intact
from TPDL 2000-Mar-27, from Insight Magazine, by J. Michael Waller:
Mounties: Clinton Donor a Gangster
Canadian police have identified Clinton donor and Macao gambling tycoon Stanley Ho as the leader of a triad gang of organized criminals with strong ties to Communist China.
President Clinton personally accepted $250,000 from a Macao gambling tycoon whom Canadian police identify as a ``leader'' of a Chinese triad, or organized-crime syndicate. Insight has obtained a copy of the Asian Organized Crime Roster of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, listing Stanley Ho - who handed the check to Clinton at a 1997 White House reception to fund the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial - as a suspected ``member/leader'' of the notorious Kung Lok triad. (Click to read the document.)
This is the first concrete indication that a major Western law-enforcement agency considers Ho an organized-crime figure. Earlier reports characterized Ho as ``associated'' with the triads, but not a ``leader'' or ``member.'' According to a separate Canadian Security Intelligence Service report, the triads are involved in ``drug trafficking; money laundering; corruption; computer-software piracy; credit-card forgery and fraud; counterfeit currency and identification operations; and migrant smuggling. They will often provide direction to Chinese gangs in exchange for the `muscle' needed in some triad operations.''
The alleged Ho triad connection broke March 9 as a local story in a Vancouver newspaper, which reported Ho's ties to two former premiers of British Columbia, the Canadian province of which Vancouver is the capital. Ho owns real estate in the city. Vancouver also is Canada's principal center for trade with Asia and home to a vibrant ethnic-Chinese community.
The Vancouver Province reported that senior Canadian politicians - including former prime minister Brian Mulroney and members of current Prime Minister Jean Chretien's Cabinet - have ``feted and wooed'' Ho, and that ``despite the listing 10 years ago, Ho has unfettered access to Canada and its top politicians and is a major contributor to political parties in Canada.'' The RCMP roster, first issued in 1990, remains current, according to the report.
Ho spokeswoman Julie Fernandes categorically denies any links between Ho and organized crime, telling the Province, ``Dr. Ho has been cleared by the Americans and also your government [in Canada]. Why don't you believe your own government?''
Ho is fighting allegations in the congress and news media of the Philippines, where he has new gambling and restaurant ventures, that he is connected with the triads. ``I have nothing to do with the triads,'' he said on Philippines television in January. ``I don't think I have ever heard of such a name.''
For centuries the triads have operated in and around China, as well as in the former Portuguese colony of Macao, where Ho's gambling empire is based. A National Defense University study says that ``the triads could become the most dangerous organized criminal group in the 21st century.''
Insight's copy of the RCMP roster identifies Ho Hung Sun, alias Stanley Ho, as born in Hong Kong on Nov. 25, 1921, and provides addresses in Toronto and Macao. After classifying Ho as a ``member/leader'' of the Kung Lok triad organized-crime syndicate, it assigns him the ``gang file number'' 89-1170.
A 1988 Justice Department list authored by then assistant attorney general William Weld identified Ho as ``associated'' with the triads, former congressional investigator Edward Timperlake tells Insight. Timperlake is coauthor of Year of the Rat, a book documenting ties between Clinton-Gore administration political fund-raising from Chinese interests and their effects on U.S. national-security decision-making. The book reported that ``Ho's triad connections are really quite extensive'' in his gambling partnerships.
Has the Justice Department ``cleared'' Ho since Clinton and Gore were elected in 1992? A Justice Department spokeswoman would not comment, citing privacy concerns. Certainly, the Mounties have not cleared Ho: An RCMP Asian Organized Crime detective familiar with the roster labeling Ho as a triad figure told the Vancouver Province, ``Nobody gets off it unless they die.''
Ho and his business partners have been mired in international controversy in recent months. One of his partners is Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, whose Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. company has taken control of port facilities at both ends of the Panama Canal, prompting concerns that they may become a strategic beachhead for Beijing. The Clinton administration has gone out of its way to portray Li and Hutchison Whampoa as posing no security threat to U.S. interests, but not everyone is convinced.
Peter Zhang writes in the New Australian, a weekly published in Melbourne, that Li is a ``front man'' for the Communist Chinese People's Liberation Army, or PLA. Commenting on Li's planned investments in Australian electric power and telecommunications infrastructures, Zhang warns, ``Ordinarily I would advise any country to welcome a foreign investor. But Li is no ordinary investor. Just as British imperialism followed trade, Chinese military intelligence always follows Li.''
Li's Beijing connections ``are hardly a state secret,'' according to Zhang. ``He had been a close friend of Gen. Ji Shengde, former military-intelligence director of the PLA, who recently was arrested for corruption, and still is close to Gen. Xiong Guangkai, who had been Gen. Ji's superior. He is equally close to [Chinese President] Jiang Zemin. Most telling of all, probably, is Li's corrupt real-estate dealings with the brutal Chen Xitong, who is infamous for the instrumental role he played in the Tiananmen Square massacre.'' Li Ka-shing strongly has denied nefarious connections with the PLA. No allegations have been raised associating Li directly with the triads.
Another Ho business partner is Ng Lapseng. Described as a Macao ``criminal-syndicate figure'' with hotel operations in the former Portuguese colony, Ng also reportedly is linked to prostitution rackets - and allegedly ran hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal money into the Clinton-Gore campaigns. ``At least $2 million, much of it illegal, made its way from Macao and other Asian crime centers to Clinton-Gore money projects,'' according to Timperlake and Year of the Rat coauthor William Triplett. Ng disappeared ``back into the murky world of Macao as soon as congressional investigators started looking for him.''
In the Philippines, President Joseph Estrada is embroiled in a Clinton-Gore-style fund-raising scandal that has the Manila stock exchange and Roman Catholic Church up in arms and made him the subject of a major investigation by the Philippines congress. According to Philippines news reports, Estrada crony Dante Tan helped persuade Ho to invest in the Philippines gambling industry and was a major stockholder in BW Resources, a holding company that Ho chairs and that is under investigation for stock-price manipulation and insider trading. Tan reportedly was a substantial donor to Estrada's 1998 presidential campaign.
The Philippines Stock Exchange Commission found gangster connections and what it described as ``prima-facie evidence'' against Tan and other leaders of the Ho-chaired company. Estrada vehemently has defended Ho. In a January news conference he proclaimed that the Macao gambling tycoon was ``clean,'' claiming ``these [allegations against Ho] are based on rumors.'' The Philippines president said, ``Show me the documents that this Mr. Stanley Ho is really a criminal or has a criminal record. We have no evidence.'' Later Estrada announced, ``We have checked with Interpol in Hong Kong, Macao, England, the U.S. and Portugal. There is no [link] whatsoever.''
Philippines military-intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Jose Calimlim told journalists that his service has no files on Ho relating to alleged drug-syndicate ties. According to the Philippines Star, Calimlim ``admitted though that the military has seen the intelligence reports from the United States and Canada concerning Ho's alleged activities but said matters concerning criminal syndicates are under the ambit of the Philippines National Police [PNP].'' Calimlim would not comment on the contents of the U.S. and Canadian reports.
PNP Chief Panfilo Lacson, a longtime friend of Estrada, says he found ``nothing'' on Ho, whose investments include positions in the China Ocean Shipping Co., or COSCO - considered the merchant marine of the PLA - and in Norinco, a PLA-associated manufacturer of automatic weapons. The Philippines Star reported, ``As far as the PNP is concerned, Macao gambling mogul Stanley Ho is `Mr. Clean.''' The PNP Center for Transnational Crime told a Manila congressional panel that it has ``nothing incriminating'' on Ho. A local group called United People Against Crime claims that Hong Kong police told Lacson that Ho allegedly was head of a criminal syndicate operating in Hong Kong and Macao.
Ho has taken out newspaper ads in the Philippines calling the allegations ``so vilifying and bitter and cynical as to be completely unacceptable.'' Ho said, ``The allegations are unsupported by any evidence and are groundless,'' adding that he looks forward to being vindicated by the PNP. ``I understand there is some sort of investigation being undertaken and I look forward to having my good name cleared.''
Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin blasted Ho for his gambling empire and for bringing a plague on the Philippines. The cardinal also denounced Ho for publicizing a photograph of himself with a papal award, which Ho received a decade ago for large contributions to Catholic charities in Macao. The Philippines Star quotes the cardinal as accusing Ho of having ``abused'' the ``papal award and the graciousness of the Holy See by his having engaged in gambling,'' adding, ``The Church can be victimized by her unfaithful sons.'' The prelate added, ``The Church has no control over the business undertakings of its members and honorees. The papal knighthood should have challenged him to lead a morally upright life.''
Estrada tried to defend Ho's respectability by saying that President Clinton personally had received him at the White House for making the large donation to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, but being received by Clinton cut little ice in Manila.
The scandal could have major effects on the security of the Philippines and on U.S. interests in the region. ``It comes back to this: How can you modernize your defenses [in the Philippines] when the highest officials in your government are bought by the people you need to defend against?'' asks Al Santoli, a senior adviser to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who has chronicled Beijing's military projection into Philippines territory.
A 1994 RCMP report says the triads seek legitimacy by ``ingratiating themselves with police, government officials and politicians. The easiest way for them is by making substantial contributions to charitable organizations, joining service clubs, donating funds to universities, sometimes obtaining honorary doctorate degrees, or contributing to political parties. Public photographs of triad figures with politicians is another favorite technique.''
One of the most successful means of reaching decision-makers, apart from helping them succeed in their private businesses, is to donate to their political campaigns or their favorite charities. Ted Sioeng, a businessman and partner with Ng in a firm called Ang-Du International, is reportedly a Chinese agent with alleged triad ties. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Ang-Du International ran a prostitution operation acquiring women from Thailand for Macao brothels.
Sioeng sat with Clinton at a Democratic Party fund-raiser and was photographed sitting next to Vice President Al Gore during the now-infamous 1996 Buddhist temple fund-raiser in California. Sioeng reportedly funneled at least $400,000 in illegal contributions to the Democratic National Committee. Like Ho, Sioeng refused to cooperate with congressional investigators. ``He's a Communist Chinese spy, now in Beijing,'' Timperlake tells Insight. ``He was identified as a PRC [People's Republic of China] agent and fled the country.''
The Communist government in Beijing has built operational relations with the triads and often acts as a silent partner in their activities, according to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. The 1997 report said that the late Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung ``wrote on the need to include triads in the united front'' in Hong Kong. ``In a May 1997 conference at Hong Kong's Baptist University, former deputy secretary general of Xinhua [the Chinese government-controlled `news' agency] Wong Man-fong said that in the early 1980s he was instructed to ingratiate himself with Hong Kong's triad `dragon heads' and offer them a deal. According to Wong, Beijing was prepared to turn a blind eye to the triads' illegal activities if they could promise a peaceful handover of the territory come 1 July [1997]. `I told them that, if they did not disrupt Hong Kong's stability, we would not stop them from making money,' said Wong. If Wong is to be believed, the timing of the beginning of Beijing's outreach to the triads dovetails nicely with Deng Xiaoping's resurrection of united front work in 1978.''
Triad enterprises also partner with businesses owned or run by the Communist Party and PLA. Hence there is no line of distinction between a Chinese criminal syndicate and the Chinese military or government apparatus, creating a danger that Beijing could use the triads for intelligence purposes.
The new Ho scandal is breaking just as House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois has released the second-annual CIA and FBI report on Chinese intelligence operations against the United States. ``Beijing continues to view the United States as one of its major targets for political [intelligence] collection. It focuses on the foreign policies and intentions of the United States as well as information on U.S. leaders and sensitive bi- or multi-lateral negotiations,'' according to the CIA-FBI report.
``China continues to devote attention to building political influence in the United States,'' the report says. ``The increased emphasis dates from the June 1995 visit of Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui - a visit that caused Chinese leaders to redirect resources towards gaining a better understanding of Congress and greater political influence in the United States. The same year, Chinese leaders created a Central Leading Group for U.S. Congressional Affairs to oversee the task of increasing support for Chinese objectives.''
The CIA-FBI report continues: ``Much like the rest of the world, the Chinese government continues to seek influence in Congress through various means, including inviting congressional members to the PRC, lobbying ethnic Chinese voters and prominent U.S. citizens and engaging U.S. business interests to weigh in on issues of mutual concern.''
However, there are big holes in the report. Its cover letter admits that it ``does not incorporate or contain any Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, grand jury or federal criminal investigative information.'' That has some China-watchers steaming. Says a disgusted GOP congressional source, ``The speaker's office won't do sh*t about this.''
from Randall Terry Radio Broadcast Interview, 1996-May-1:
TRAIN DEATHS - Randall Terry Interviews Jean Duffey
Jean Duffey headed a drug task force for the law enforcement community in Arkansas. Duffey and three other law enforcement agents have come forward in a new video called "Obstruction of Justice: The Mena Connection." The video deals with the murders of two boys and their connection with drug money. All four law enforcement agents came from different agencies. All of them met with stonewalling and opposition from highly placed officials.
Randall Terry: As many as nine people who were potential witnesses in this case have been murdered already. If you could say anything you wanted for the next ten or fifteen minutes, what would you say?
Jean Duffey: I would like for people to wake up and understand the massive amount of drugs that have been transported into the United States and that the war on drugs is a myth. That our government is very well aware, and in some cases is a participant in the drug smuggling. I believe that is incredible for people to understand as it would have been for me had I not been involved in it and [understood] how it happened and why it happened. I would like for people to buy our video, "Obstruction of Justice."
Randall Terry: Why?
Jean Duffey: It will begin to explain all of the connections of drug smuggling and how it affects people's lives. It will help people to understand how it is allowed to continue, and why it is allowed to continue. There will be a sequel to "Obstruction of Justice" that will go more in depth into the actual drug-smuggling operation. But our video explains very poignantly how it affected the life of an American family. Linda and Larry Ives, the parents of Kevin Ives, who was killed when he was 17-years-old because he stumbled upon a drug drop. [There was also the death of his friend, Don Henry]. As if their murders were not bad enough, they were murdered by law enforcement officers who were part of the drug-smuggling operation.
Randall Terry: Let's just stop right here.
Jean Duffey: All right.
Randall Terry: I watched this video yesterday and when I was done, I took my entire staff up after yesterday's show and told them "you all have to watch this." They all went home late for dinner. I don't usually react to things this bad[ly]. The clear implication of the video is that Dan Harmon and other law enforcement agents murdered these boys.
Jean Duffey: Well, that's absolutely correct.
Randall Terry: You're not a crackpot - you're involved in law enforcement. There are other law enforcement [officers] in the film, all risking life and limb and future careers to say things against some very powerful people. You really believe that these boys were murdered by law enforcement agents?
Jean Duffey: I don't think there's any doubt about it. And I believe the law enforcement agents were connected to some very high political people because they have never been brought to justice and I don't think they ever will be. I think they are protected to avoid exposing the connection.
Randall Terry: To who? To higher-ups?
Jean Duffey: Yes, absolutely to higher-ups.
Randall Terry: How high?
Jean Duffey: Well, I know that there were CIA people involved in this drug-smuggling operation, that's pretty much undisputed. I can't really say whether the CIA people were acting officially or whether they were rogue operators, acting outside their official capacity and taking advantage of an opportunity to make private profits off of this drug-smuggling operation. Obviously they were connected to very high-up people. The U.S attorney who first shut down a federal investigation was appointed by a Republican president - he was appointed by President Bush and I don't believe he had any direct connection with any of this, but he certainly took orders from someone to close down that investigation.
Randall Terry: This all sounds so fantastic. How unbelievable. I mean how the average American just cannot grasp that state officials in Arkansas, or federal officials were somehow even remotely connected with drug-smuggling, and then to say that some of the lower officials actually murdered these boys - I've got to stop myself. I'm a Christian and I'm a Calvinist and I believe in the wickedness of man's heart, so it should not surprise me that wicked men can do wicked things. Do you believe that Dan Harmon was involved with these murders?
Jean Duffey: I don't think that there is any doubt that he was.
Randall Terry: Explain to the listeners who Dan Harmon was at the time and who he is now.
Jean Duffey: At the time he was a person who was in and out of politics in Saline County. He had been a judge. He had been a prosecutor and, at the time the boys were murdered, he was in private practice. After they were murdered, he approached the parents of the two boys and [offered] his services to find out who had murdered the two boys. And he was subsequently appointed to be special prosecutor to head a county grand jury. Now for years the parents thought that Dan Harmon was trying to solve their murders, but later found out that he had very wisely put himself into a position of not only orchestrating the coverup, but being in the position of controlling the information that came in and the information that went out.
Randall Terry: Well, it's worse than that. People who came forward and said that they had information on these murders ended up getting murdered, themselves.
Jean Duffey: There have been several murders of potential witnesses. Anyone who could have solved this murder many years ago has been systematically eliminated.
Randall Terry: What did these boys see that was so critical that they were murdered that night - that the third boy who was with them, and then escaped - who ran away, was tracked down and murdered a year later - what was so critical to this whole process that all these people had to be killed? It's just - it sounds crazy!
Jean Duffey: It really does. I've been called crazy before - that's for sure.
Randall Terry: Before you answer the question, I just want to say in your defense ... these people are just doing their duty as law enforcement agents and they stumbled into this black, bloodstained hole involving the murder of these two boys. So go ahead Jean, if you could answer my question.
Jean Duffey: I will - what you said brought up a point I would like to make. When I was investigating this, I was crucified in the media by public officials who were involved in this, and I was labeled a whacko, a fruitcake, a nut case. In the U.S. attorney's office there were people who were supposed to be helping in this investigation who turned their backs on any of the information that my drug task force took in, because we had been so discredited. When this video came out, one of the people [who had been] in the U.S. Attorney's office back then saw the video, took it to work nd asked every person in the U.S. Attorney's office to sit down and watch [it]. He said, "this will change your mind about what we thought about Jean Duffey back in 1990."
Randall Terry: I am going to take a break and when we come back you can ask Jean Duffey why it was necessary that these two boys be murdered, and subsequently nine other witnesses were murdered....
Randall Terry: Before we took the break, Jean, I asked what these boys saw that caused not only them, but several other potential witnesses to their murder to be murdered.
Jean Duffey: Well, it's really quite simple. They stumbled upon a drug drop from an airplane that was part of the major drug-smuggling operation out on Mena, Arkansas.
Randall Terry: But, drug drops happen every day and there aren't 11 people murdered as a result.
Jean Duffey: This drug-smuggling operation had been set up in Mena by Barry Seal and was part of a CIA covert operation. To expose the murders would have exposed some very [highly placed] political people - in fact I believe if it's ever solved completely it's going to expose a lot of Democrats and Republicans alike. And it's my personal opinion that's why it is not going to be investigated thoroughly by either party. Both parties stand to lose from exposure of this drug-smuggling operation.
Randall Terry: Have you heard of Terry Reed's book, "Compromised?"
Jean Duffey: Yes, I have. I've read it.
Randall Terry: Do you think it's credible?
Jean Duffey: Ah - I think without really knowing...
Randall Terry: Terry was a co-pilot with Barry Seal, and Barry Seal was the one who was gunned down - he was murdered a little more than 10 years ago. The book "Compromised" basically says the same thing you guys are saying, only that Terry Reed was an insider.
Jean Duffey: Yes, absolutely. I try not to report anything that I don't really know first hand. But reading his book certainly helped me to understand how the Mena operation was set up. And nothing in his book is inconsistent with what I know first-hand from what my task force developed.
Randall Terry: Tell us some of the things. You had several informants working for you. Tell us some of the things your informants uncovered.
Jean Duffey: They immediately linked drug traffic at the local level to local political people - local public officials. And because of that we routed-out information to a federal U.S. Assistant Attorney, who was a good guy.
Randall Terry: You say you found local political figures involved. And your informants were credible? They had concrete evidence?
Jean Duffey: Oh yeah. When one informant tells you something independently of one or two or three other informants, and they're all giving exactly the same information...
Randall Terry: Do they know that the other informants exist?
Jean Duffey: No.
Randall Terry: These are all separate?
Jean Duffey: They would be independent. It would be foolish to just listen to one informant and try to build a case based on what that one informant said. But the informants we used had been tested and proven. Also we had informants and witnesses who passed polygraph tests. So there are several different ways to determine the credibility of an informant or a witness and one is corroborating testimony.
Randall Terry: So you gave this testimony to federal law enforcement agents and thought that you were going to get justice at that point.And you were told by the federal prosecutor that they were going to indict some of these local political figures?
Jean Duffey: Oh, I was absolutely assured that there would be indictments and prosecutions of key public officials and in fact the same public officials who were conducting the media smear campaign against me at the time. This had been going on for several months, but the U.S. Attorney that was in charge of the federal grand jury investigation said "just hang on, because any day now..." I heard this week after week, and the weeks turned into months. Then he said I'm ready to have the grand jury indict and I'm ready to prosecute these same people, and as soon as that happens then everyone will understand the smear campaign and why they tried to discredit me professionally.
Randall Terry: We have about a minute left. You can say anything you want. This is Jean Duffey who headed up a drug task force. How many investigators did you have working for you?
Jean Duffey: I had seven undercover officers.
Randall Terry: And five of them resigned in protest over the way you were treated.
Jean Duffey: They did.
Randall Terry: That's unbelievable. You have the last minute to tell the listeners anything you want.
Jean Duffey: [Encourages listeners to order the video "Obstruction of Justice" which will be used to fund a civil action].
Randall Terry: I want to commend you again for putting your life on the line by stepping forward like this. Obviously some very powerful people have already murdered nearly a dozen people in connection with the drug smuggling there, starting with the two young boys. Certainly other law enforcement officials have been threatened. Were you threatened at all?
Jean Duffey: There was a $50,000 price on my head back in 1990, when I left the jurisdiction, and I was actually in hiding for nine months.
Randall Terry: They put a $50,000 hit fee on you?
Jean Duffey: That was the information my parents were given, and they were certainly very fearful. But once I left the jurisdiction and stopped doing the investigation they left me alone. They stopped the smear campaign. I didn't feel like anyone was looking for me. What they wanted me to do was just shut up and go away. When I did that they didn't have a problem. When I got involved again in 1994, at the request of the FBI, the FBI agent I was working with got the information that Harmon was looking to have my body laid out on the railroad track and run over. The agent was pretty fearful that that was a direct threat, but I was really not very intimidated by that.
Randall Terry: Ben Harmon, folks, is the fellow who eyewitnesses said was seen with the boys on the tracks the night they were murdered. And he is a prosecutor there.
Jean Duffey: He is the prosecuting attorney there and has been since 1991.
Randall Terry: If the allegations that our friend Jean Duffey has been telling us are true, then he is a monster. Jean, thank you very much for taking the time,and we applaud your courage...We hope that justice is done for these boys, and that all of the political power players who are involved in this coverup are exposed.
Jean Duffey: Thank you very much for your concern.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The FBI knows who murdered Kevin Ives & Don Henry
Sharlene was surprisingly frank about her job at the Mena Airport in the mid-1980s. The cocaine was flown in on twin-engine Cessnas, sometimes as often as every day. "I'd pick up the pallets and make the run down to Texas. The drop-off was at the Cowboys Stadium. I was told that nobody would ever bother me, and I was never bothered....If there was a problem I was to call Dan Harmon."
A lot of cocaine that came into Mena was taken up to Springdale in northwest Arkansas, she said, where it was stuffed into chickens for reshipment to the rest of the country.
But she had another job, which she revealed to me two years later when we were allowed to meet and talk in relative privacy at the prison library. This time she was trembling with emotion, giving free rein to the terrible remorse that had been eating at her for nine years. She used to pick up cocaine deliveries on the railway tracks near a little town of Alexander, thirty miles south of Little Rock.
"Every two weeks, for years, I'd go to the tracks, I'd pick up the package, and I'd deliver it to Dan Harmon, either straight to his office, or at my house....Sometimes it was flown in by air, sometimes it would be kicked out of the train. A big bundle, two feet by one and a half feet, like a bale of hay, so heavy I'd have trouble lifting it....Rodger the Dodger picked it up a few times."
But in the summer of 1987 one of the drops disappeared. Furious, Harmon brought out some of his men to watch the delivery on the night of August 22. They were expecting a delivery of 3 to 4 pounds of cocaine and 5 pounds of "weed." Sharlene was supposed to make the pickup that night but she had been "high-balling" a mixture of cocaine and crystal and was totally "strung-out." They told her to wait in the car, which was parked off Quarry Road. It was around midnight.
"It was scary. I was high, very high. I was told to sit there and they'd be back. It seemed forever....I heard two trains. Then I heard some screams, loud screams. It... it...," she stammered, breaking into uncontrollable tears. She never did finish that sentence.
"When Harmon came back, he jumped in the car and said, 'Let's go.' He was scared. It looked like there was blood all down his legs."
She later learned that a group of boys had been intercepted at the drop site. According to Sharlene some of the them had managed to get away, but Kevin Ives, 17, and Don Henry, 16, were captured. Harmon's men interrogated them as they were lying on the ground, face down, hands tied behind their backs. They were kicked and beaten, and finally executed. One of the boys was stabbed to death with a "survival knife." The bodies were wrapped in a tarpaulin, carried to a different spot on the line, and placed across the railway tracks so that the bodies would be mangled by the next train.
The following day Harmon told Sharlene that she would have to ditch her car. He gave her $500 in cash and told her to deliver a packet of cocaine to an address in Rockford, Illinois. She went to an auto auction and bought an Olds Cutlass Supreme for $450 in cash and drove to Rockford. From there she fled to the obscurity of Nebraska.
....Cournan( Phyllis Cournan - FBI Agent) contacted Jean Duffey in Texas, persuading her to open the files of the drug task force. She went to see Sharlene in the penitentiary. "She asked me if Rodger Clinton had been on the railway tracks that night," said Sharlene.
..."The boys were murdered, said Phyllis, and the FBI knew who did it. But the forensic evidence was contaminated. We couldn't get anything out of the DNA," she said. "All we had were witnesses with huge credibility problems; we couldn't go to trial with that...What were we suppose to do?"
She was putting the best face on it, trying to convince herself. I could sense her slipping away into the embrace of the Bureau. She had poured her heart and soul into the case, but when it came to the crunch she was going to be a team player.
THE SECRET LIFE OF BILL CLINTON - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
MENA/Iran-Contra
excerpt from The Secret Life of Bill Clinton (1997), by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:
THE DIXIE MAFIA
BANNED BY EDICT from smuggling drugs, the Italian American Mafia missed out on the most lucrative crime wave of the twentieth century. It was left to others to profit from the $100 billion a year market in cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamines. Those best placed, by geography and criminal tradition, were the loose-knit groupings of the South, known to law enforcement as the "Dixie Mafia."
The term was first coined by Rex Armistead, the Director of the Organized Crime Strike Force in New Orleans in the 1970s. Less famous than the Cosa Nostra, the Dixie Mafia was, and still is, far more dangerous. During a ten year period from 1968 to 1978 when the Italian Americans were in the headlines for a spree of thirty murders, their redneck counterparts quietly dispatched 156 victims.
"There wasn't a well from Mississippi to West Texas that didn't have a dead body floating in it," said Armistead. "The big difference was the lack of ceremony. It was just 'I'm going to get rid of Ambrose today; I don't need permission; and I go out and do it.' As simple as that. And that's the end of Ambrose. It hasn't changed much either."
"I see."
The Dixie Mafia formed a ring of interlocking interests that covered Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Tennessee, and above all Arkansas. Their spiritual capital was Bill Clinton's hometown of Hot Springs, famous for its racetrack, its ornate bathhouses, its casinos, its prostitution, and its epic defiance of Prohibition.
The coat-and-tie yuppies of the modern Dixie Mafia are the children and grandchildren of bootleggers, a provenance they share with Bill Clinton. The trade has evolved. Clinton's grandfather used to serve moonshine from behind the counter of his store in Hope. Now the business is a high-tech operation involving fleets of aircraft, off-shore banking, and reach deep into the U.S. federal government.
Armistead warned me not to push my luck anywhere in the old Confederacy, but especially not in Arkansas. That counsel was on my mind as I drove through the backroads of the state with a box of documents slipped to me by dissidents in law enforcement. I had been given comprehensive intelligence files from the Criminal Investigations Division of the Arkansas State Police, going back as far as the early 1970s. I was told to copy what I needed, check that I was not followed, and return the archive within 24 hours. I did exactly that, and as I fed the stack of papers into a photocopy machine at a Kinko's in Little Rock, I was scarcely able to believe what I was seeing. Among the famous names of the Arkansas oligarchy that jumped out from page after page of criminal intelligence files was Don Tyson, the billionaire president of Tyson Foods and the avuncular patron of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.
A gruff barrel-chested man with a cropped beard and a reputation for ruthless business practice, Don Tyson is one of the great characters of Arkansas. He presides over the biggest chicken processing operation in the world from his "Oval Office" -- a replica of the real one--with door handles in the shape of eggs. He usually wears khaki overalls with "Don" stitched on his breast pocket, and gets his hands dirty working side by side with his 54,000 employees. It is said that half of all American people eat a piece of Tyson chicken every week. The family business, based in Springdale, has grown at an explosive rate since the 1960s, swallowing up rival companies in a relentless quest for market share. "There's no second place. First place is the only place in the world," says Tyson.
But it was a high-wire act getting there. By 1979 the company's debt-to-equity ratio had soared to 1.3 at a time when interest rates were soaring. Already faced with a mushrooming debt service cost, Tyson was then hit by a severe cyclical downturn in the poultry industry. "It's like an airplane running out of gas," said Tyson at the time. "I can feel it. The engines are getting rough." But somehow he managed to prosper. Over the next five years Tyson Foods was one of the fastest-growing Fortune 500 companies in the country. The turnaround was a feat of magic, a testimony to his inventive spirit.
The documents I was looking at made me wonder about the origins of his liquidity. Here were files from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, marked DEA SENSITIVE, under the rubric of the "Donald TYSON Drug Trafficking Organization."
One was from the DEA office in Oklahoma City, dated December 14, 1982. It cited a confidential informant alleging that "TYSON smuggles cocaine from Columbia, South America inside race horses to Hot Springs, Arkansas." It cited the investigation tracking number for Don J.Tyson, a/k/a "Chicken Man," as Naddis 470067. A second document from the DEA office in Tucson, dated July 9, 1984, stated that "the Cooperating Individual had information concerning heroin, cocaine and marijuana trafficking in the States of Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri by the TYSON Organization." The informant described a place called "THE BARN" which TYSON used as a "stash" location for large quantities of marijuana and cocaine. 'THE BARN' area is located between Springdale and Fayetteville, Arkansas, and from the outside the appearance of 'THE BARN' looks run down. On the inside of 'THE BARN' it is quite plush."
The files contain raw police intelligence. Such allegations have to be treated with great caution. But these DEA informant reports are buttressed by a much bigger collection of state intelligence documents. Files marked "VERY CONFIDENTIAL" trace allegations about Tyson and drug trafficking as far back as 1973.
A memo by the Criminal Investigative Section, dated March 22, 1976, states that Don Tyson "is an extremely wealthy man with much political influence and seems to be involved in most every kind of shady operation, especially narcotics, however, has to date gone without implication in any specific crime. TYSON likes to think of himself as the 'King of the Hill' in northwest Arkansas, and quite possibly this might not be erroneous." The memo was triggered by a dispute between Tyson and the Teamsters Union over allegations of drug dealing and prostitution at a Teamsters'-owned hotel leased by Tyson. Two sets of documents refer to alleged hit men employed by Tyson to kill drug dealers who owed him money. Another report alleged that Tyson was using his business plane to smuggle quart jars of Methamphetamine. All told, it was a staggering portrait of a drug baron.
None of the allegations led to criminal charges, and it would soon become clear why. Police officers who tried to mount a case against Tyson were destroyed by their superiors in the State Police. The first to try was Beverly "B.J." Weaver, then an undercover narcotics officer in Springdale. Working the streets and bars of northwest Arkansas, disguised as a deaf woman, she collected detailed intelligence on Tyson's alleged smuggling network.
"There were loads going out with the chickens, live chickens. That's how they'd move it."
As the allegations from her informants mounted, she requested the intelligence files on Don Tyson. That is when her problems began. Her collegues in the Springdale office--who she now believes were "on the take" from the Tyson machine--put out the word that she was "not stable," that she had "flipped out." Then it got rough. "They started passing out my photo on the streets, which put my life in danger. I became paranoid. I didn't trust my phone line. There was nobody I could really trust."
She drove to Little Rock to seek the support of Colonel Tommy Goodwin, the Commander of the State Police. He brushed her off. "You narcs are all paranoid," he said. "You see too many shadows in the dark."
By 1987 her position was untenable. Her career in ruins, she resigned from the police and found a job as a security guard in the Bahamas. "I went as far away as I could go, just to fade into nothing," she told me.
After she left, the State Police drove the knife in even further, accusing her of making off with police funds, a charge she vehemently denies. She felt so ashamed she could not face her own family. "For seven years I haven't been home again," she said, weeping.
When I visited her in 1994 she was working at the cosmetics counter of a department store in Florida. Brittle, highly emotional, she had come to terms with her ordeal. "I believed in what I did, and I was proud of what I did," she kept saying, plaintively. But they had broken her spirit.
The next to take up the challenge was Trooper J.N. "Doc" Delaughter, then 38, who drew on Weaver's work to launch a second investigation of Don Tyson in 1988. A soft-spoken man, with a cherubic face and golden hair, he had been elected Sheriff of Arkansas's Nevade County four times before joining the State Police. He came from a wealthier background than most officers in the force. With a modest inheritance from his father, and an extra stipend from his duties as a captain in the Arkansas National Guard, he enjoyed a degree of independence that was extremely threatening to the old-boy network. He also had ties to federal officials through his service in the National Guard. In July 1988 friends in the Guard set up a meeting with Michael Fitzhugh, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, who agreed that the allegations against Tyson were serious enough to warrant a full-scale investigation.
The next day Delaughter fired off a memo to the chief of Criminal Investigations at the State Police. "The conversation was centered around Don Tyson's illegal use and distribution of cocaine. Mr. Fitzhugh told this investigator that he was interested in prosecuting a criminal conspiracy to process or distribute a controlled substance. Mr. Fitzhugh went on to say that he wanted a combined investigation team of the FBI, DEA, IRS, and the State Police."
The memo set off alarm bells at the headquarters of the State Police. Sergeant Larry Gleghorn warned Delaughter that he would be hammering "the nails in his own coffin with this department" if he persisted. Delaughter was pulled off the case soon afterward. The Tyson matter would be transferred to the Springdale office, he was told by Major Doug Stevens, the head of criminal investigations. That was the end of it. The U.S. Attorney said that he did not know why the probe fizzled out, when I interviewed him years later. "The ball was in their court. For whatever reason I never heard another word from them about the thing," he said.
The State Police commander, Colonel Goodwin, said that "there was not enough information to start an investigation." Asked about the DEA intelligence documents, he told me that "they weren't in the Tyson file back then." This was not true. The DEA files were already available to State Police investigators.
For Delaughter it was the end of his career in law enforcement. He was transferred to highway patrol, and his department began a nitpicking scrutiny of everything he did. When that did not provoke his resignation, they sent him off for a mental evaluation. It was the B.J. Weaver treatment, tainting him with comments about his mental stability. The police psychologist deemed him a "danger to society" on grounds that he had "built up a lot of anger" and was confrontational. It was recommended that Delaughter be suspended from service. An evaluation by a private psychologist disputed these findings, but by then Delaughter knew that he was beaten. He resigned in 1990 and went into the lumber business.
"Trying to bring these guys down is not conducive to a good career," he said, with a wry smile as we sat drinking beer on the veranda of his remote lakeside cabin. "You develop leprosy. Fast."
But the past is beginning to catch up with Don Tyson. He has been named as an official target in a criminal probe by Independent Counsel Donald Smaltz, who was appointed to investigate bribery allegations against Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, who was later indicted. His chief lobbyist, Jack Williams, has been indicted for lying to investigators in the case. From small beginnings, the Smaltz investigation has widened into a full-scale probe of the Tyson business empire, provoking vehement accusations that it is a "politically motivated witch hunt."
The Espy affair is a textbook case of Arkansas mores penetrating the U.S. Federal government. CBS New's 60 Minutes reported that Espy was flown to Arkansas to seek the blessing of Don Tyson before he was nominated to his cabinet post. Once installed at the Agriculture Department, Espy proved to be a friend of the chicken industry. The department scuttled a plan for tougher standards on poultry fecal contamination. This required shifting the bureaucratic machinery into reverse gear. The plan had already been drawn up, approved, and was set for implementation. The effect was to reduce the likelihood that Tyson products would face random inspection.
The Smaltz probe has produced a surprising spin-off. In December 1994 Time magazine reported that Joseph Henrickson, 43, the number two pilot of the company's aviation division, had been interviewed for three days by Smaltz and a team of FBI agents about alleged deliveries of cash to the Governor's Mansion. Henrickson said that he carried sealed white envelopes containing a quarter-inch wad of $100 bills, on six occasions, from Tyson's headquarters to Little Rock. He was led to understand that the envelopes were going to Bill Clinton. In one case, a Tyson executive handed him an envelope of cash in the company's aircraft hangar in Fayetteville and said, "This is for Governor Clinton."
"I nearly fell off my chair when I heard Joe make the allegation. I took over the questioning," Smaltz told Time. But Smaltz did not have the mandate to investigate Bill Clinton. His probe was confined to the alleged "gratuity giver," Tyson Foods. After Henrickson was called to testify before a federal grand jury in Washington in early 1995, Smaltz made a formal request to the Justice Department for broader jurisdiction. Attorney General Janet Reno refused, ordering Smaltz to stick more closely to his original brief.
In light of the Henrickson allegations, and the fact that two investigations into Tyson's alleged drug activities were shut down by the upper echelons of the Arkansas State Police, any commerce that ties Don Tyson to Bill and Hillary Clinton demands close scrutiny. This includes the brokerage account in Hillary Clinton's name that turned $1000 into $99,537 between October 1978 and July 1979. This speculative venture was the initiative of James Blair, the general counsel of Tyson Foods.
Having done a fair amount of trading myself on exotic markets, often with high leverage, the ratios in themselves do not surprise me. These sorts of profits can be made. But they are not made in the way that Hillary Clinton made them. The trades began three weeks before the 1978 elections, when Bill Clinton was riding high in the polls and seemed set to win his first term as Governor of Arkansas. It was shortly after the Clintons had signed up with Jim McDougal in a sweetheart land deal called Whitewater. Perhaps this was coincidence, but I doubt it.
The first transaction was a bet that rising cattle prices were due for a snap correction, a temporary fall in a buoyant market. That is exactly what happened. By the end of the day, October 11, 1978, cattle prices had fallen one and a half cents a pound. Mrs. Clinton netted an instant profit of $5,300. Within a couple of weeks she felt confident enough to start making large cash withdrawals from her account: $5,000 on October23; another $15,000 for Christmas. The money was rolling in.
When New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth first broke the story in 1994, Hillary Clinton claimed that she had conducted the transactions herself after studying the market pages of the Wall Street Journal. This caused a good deal of mirth on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. "Buying iceskates one day, and entering the Olympics a day later," wrote Mark Powers, editor of The Journal of Futures Markets. The White House subsequently retreated step by step until it was acknowledged that Hillary Clinton's broker had exercised complete discretion in handling the day-to-day trades.
His name was Robert "Red" Bone, a former truck driver and personal bodyguard for Don Tyson. Bone rose to become vice president of Tyson Foods, where he was in charge of the egg division. It was a position he used for lucrative insider trading--both for himself and for the Tyson operation--until regulators suspended him for a year in 1977 for allegedly trying to corner the eggshells futures market. He was later sanctioned by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for "repeated and serious violations of record keeping functions." When he regained his broker's license he joined the commodity brokerage firm REFCO, which had privileged information about daily movements in cattle prices. Indeed, REFCO chairman Thomas Dittmer had such vast cattle holdings himself that he could flood the market and cause snap changes in futures prices.
In his book Bloodsport, James Stewart offers a detailed account of Bone's modus operandi at REFCO's offices in Springdale. It describes how Bone gleaned his inside tips each day on the hotline to REFCO's headquarters in Chicago. Stewart implies that although Bone was engaging in shady practices, Hillary Clinton's transactions were clean. But in the lightly regulated commodities markets of the late 1970s it was easy to "cherry pick" trades at the end of the day, allocating gains to one account and losses to another. This loophole was well-known in financial circles. It was part of market folklore that the most effective way to carry out the illicit transfer of money from one party to another was through a "straddle." By placing one bet that the market would go up, and an off-setting bet that it would go down, the profitable trade could be allocated to the beneficiary, while the "donor" swallowed the loss. It was absolutely foolproof. "During the late 1970s and early 1980s, straddles were used for all kinds of illegal activities, ranging from tax evasion to money laundering and bribes," wrote David L. Brandon, former chief of the commodities section of the IRS, in an article in The Wall Street Journal.
To make it look plausible, the beneficiary would have to have a few losing trades mixed in with the gains, but in reality there was no risk at all. An investigation by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1978 suspected that REFCO was doing precisely this. One of REFCO's Springdale brokers in fact admitted under oath that the office had been manipulating the futures contracts by "allocating them to customer's after the market closed."
Stewart reports that Hillary found the experience nerve-racking and decided to retire from the market after a fresh windfall of $40,000 in July 1979, which brought her total profits to almost $100,000. But three months later, she was plunging back into the commodities market, this time with a broker at Stephens Inc., in Little Rock. When CBS New's 60 Minutes asked Don Tyson if Hillary Clinton's cattle trades were a "payoff" from him, he vehemently denied it.
If Tyson was funneling money to the Clinton's, it is possible that the Clinton's were not entirely aware of what was being done. This is the notoriously grey zone of mens rea, but it would not be the first time that a political family was suborned by degrees like a lobster being cooked slowly in the pot. The thought occurred to me after I was told an anecdote by Larry Patterson, An Arkansas State Trooper assigned to the Governor's detail in the mid to late 1980s.
He remembers standing in the foyer of Tyson's house one evening, waiting for Clinton to finish dinner. Tyson appeared, struck up a conversation and invited him to take a trip on his 63' yacht in Baja California. "Bring your friends along," Tyson added, offering his corporate aircraft as transport. Tyson put his arm around Patterson, pressing the invitation, just as the Governor appeared.
"What was all that about?" Clinton said, as they got into the limo. "He asked me out on the yacht." "Listen to me," said Clinton sternly. "Don't go. If Don Tyson gives you something, it's because he wants something back. You'll never shake him off."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[addendum by "Uncle Bill" (Freeper):]
Larry Nichols - The Clinton Chronicles: " There was a hundred million a month in cocaine coming in and out of Mena, Arkansas. They had a problem. They were doing so much money in cocaine, a hundred million, that you create a problem in a little state like Arkansas. How do you clean one hundred million dollars a month.
ADFA until 1989 never banked in Arkansas. What they would do is they would ship the money down to Florida, a bank in Florida which later would be connected to BCCI. They would ship money to a bank in Atlanta, Georgia, which by the way was later connected to BCCI. They'd ship to Citicorp in New York, which would send the money overseas. And there was an interesting one, a bank in Chicago. And that bank, by the way, is partially owned by Dan Rostenkowski.
Dan Lasater would get the bonds. He would become the broker for the bonds. He would transfer money back to ADFA. He never sold a bond. The money then would leave ADFA, go into one of the various banks for the specific bond loan, and they would zero it out. When they zeroed it out they were giving it back to Lasater less their handling fees.
The Secret Life of Bill Clinton - " Lasater was a player in the cocaine trafficking network of the Dixie Mafia........In February 1984 Lasater, accompanied by Patsy Thomasson, flew to Belize in his private jet to negotiate the purchase of a 24,000 acre ranch. The deal fell through because of a dispute with "the governor of Belize who was hard to deal with." One member of the Lasater party boorishly proposed "that the governor should be wasted."......Ostensibly, Lasater was looking for a horse farm. But the property, known as the Carver Ranch, was in fact a refueling stop for smugglers coming up from Columbia.
The Secret Life of Bill Clinton - Sharlene Wilson: " Sharline was surprisingly frank about her job at the Mena airport in the mid-1980s. The cocaine was flown in on twin-engine Cessnas, sometimes as often as every day. "I'd pick up the pallets and make the run down to Texas. The drop-off was at the Cowboys Stadium. I was told that nobody would ever bother me, and I was never bothered. If there was a problem I was to call Dan Harmon."
"A lot of cocaine that came into Mena was taken up to Springdale in northwest Arkansas, she said, where it was stuffed into chickens for reshipment to the rest of the country."
The Mena Cover-Up Video - Narrator: " With the United States drug war defense in ruins, a Clinton appointee to the Dept. of Defense, on May 1, 1995, abruptly shut down radar tracking of drug shipments coming from Columbia and Peru. According to U.S. Intelligence officials, an estimated 1000 plane loads of Cocaine and Heroin per year, would now be free to enter the United States.
from the Portland Free Press, January/February 1997, by Ace R. Hayes:
New York Mob at Mena
Yet another CIA-Mafia drug connection: Richard Brenneke puts mob boss John Gotti and CIA boss Donald Gregg in the middle of contra drug operations at Mena Airport
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In December 1996, the Portland Free Press secured a copy of Richard Brenneke's 21 June 1991 sworn deposition before Congressman William Alex-ander, Jr., and Chad Farris, chief deputy attorney general of Arkansas.
PFP is running late with the January/February 1997 issue with some semi-good reasons. As a result, we secured former congressman William Alex-ander's fax number and sent him a request for confirmation. We got more than we hoped for, 7 January 1997: ". . . the Brenneke transcript along with other evidence of money laundering by Barry Seal at Mena, Arkansas, was delivered to Judge Walsh for action. Nothing followed.
"I agree that the American people deserve to know the truth about our government. Thank you for providing it.
"Good luck" (signed Bill Alexander, with seven pages of deposition).
Mr. Alexander did the direct questioning and Bushman Court Reporting, Inc., did the recording. Combining the pages Mr. Alexander faxed and the parts we had received from our original source will have to do until we can get the entire unredacted transcript. What we do have is the red-hot smoking cannon. (We left a message on Mr. Brenneke's answering machine to advise him he is going to be back on the front page.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Joint Investigation by the Arkansas State Attorney General's Office and the United States Congress:"
Q. And when you landed at Mena, what would be the disposition of the cargo?
A. On one or two occasions the cargo was taken off by people who were not residents of the Mena area and put into other aircraft which departed from there. However, the most frequent activity was that the aircraft would be unloaded in front of [deleted]'s hangers and it would be stored in the back of the hanger....
Q. And go back in your mind to the first trip you took and describe to me the disposition of the cargo; that is, the cocaine, once it returned to Arkansas, once it was delivered to Arkansas? And I am especially -- I am particularly interested in the identification of persons other than [deleted]. You've talked about [deleted]. You've identified him. Can you identify other people who might have received this cocaine?
A. Yes. I can identify people who in fact received the cocaine, not "might have." And --
Q. Can you tell us who they were?
A. I can tell you that they were members of John Gotti's family in New York. One of them was an individual know[n] to me by the name of Sal Reale.
Q. Could you spell that name for us?
A. R-E-A-L-E. . . .
Q. Salvatore Reale?
A. Correct.
Q. And how did you know Mr. Reale?
A. Mr. Reale at that time was the Director of -- I believe it was that time, was the Director of Security of Kennedy International in New York City.
Q. . . . Speak to the subject of your knowledge of Mr. Reale and his activities as the head of security at Kennedy? Tell us what you know about him and what he did?
A. Okay. Mr. Reale was a -- was one of Mr. Gotti's lieutenants. I watched the two of them interact. Mr. Gotti would provide directions, Mr. Reale would carry them out. It was his job to make sure that cargo being shipped through Kennedy was not lost, but properly located, and in some cases avoiding . . . the customs procedures.
Q. Are you saying that you saw Mr. John Gotti, the famous head of the organized crime syndicates, in New York together with Mr. Reale?
A. Yes, sir, I did.
Q. Where did you see them?
A. That was in New York City.
Q. . . . What was the occasion that permitted you to see them together, do you recall?
A. I don't recall the nature of it. I do recall that it was a private club that I was taken to, and I had an opportunity to meet with them at that time.
Q. And so -- okay. Do you remember when it was you saw them together?
A. It was either late '84 or early 1985. But in that three-or-four-month time span, it would have had to have been one or the other.
Q. Was your notice of Mr. Gotti and Mr. Reale in any way connected with your contractual job with the Central Intelligence Agency?
A. Yes. As far back as 1968 and early '69, we had begun to launder money from organized crime families in New York. At that time, Mr. Gotti was an up-and-coming member of the families. I got to know them at that time. We used to wash their money out overseas and put it in Switzerland in nice, safe places for them.
Q. So you worked for Mr. Gotti as well as for the CIA?
A. Actually the CIA told me to do that on his behalf.
Q. So the CIA was in, would you say, partnership or association with Mr. Gotti?
A. Yes, sir. I would say a partnership.
Q. And can you describe the nature of that partnership?
A. Sure. The organized crime members had a need for two things: they needed drugs brought into the country on a reliable, safe basis; they needed people taken out of the country or people brought into the country without alerting customs or INS to the fact that they were being brought into the country; they also needed their money taken offshore so that it would not be subject to United States tax where they might have to declare its source. And so we performed these kinds of functions for them.
Q. Mr. Brenneke, are you saying that the CIA was in the business of bringing drugs into the United States?
A. Yes, sir. That's exactly what I'm saying.
Q. And that they were in partnership with Mr. Gotti in this operation?
A. I would say that they worked with Mr. Gotti and his organization very closely. Whether it was a formal partnership, I don't know. But there certainly was a close alliance between the two.
Q. All right. Now let's go back to the Mena Airport in Arkansas for a moment. At a time when you saw Mr. Reale there, did he receive any of the shipment, the cargo of the drugs that you brought back from Panama?
A. He did not personally take any of the drugs. He did, however, see that they were transferred into aircraft and vehicles so that they could be moved off the field, and that was his function. His function was not to load the vehicles, but to see that nothing got lost on transit.
Q. Are you saying that drugs that you brought back from Central America to Mena were for the purpose of delivery to Mr. Reale, who was in the employ of Mr. John Gotti, the New York crime syndicate boss?
A. Yes, sir. I would say that.
Q. And Mr. Reale was there to manage the transshipment of those drugs?
A. From time to time there were other people from the family down there.
Q. Did you have any conversations with him about where he intended to take those drugs?
A. Yes, sir. I asked on more than one occasion where the drugs would be taken, and I was told the New York City area, specifically Kennedy International Airport.
Q. Now, do you have any knowledge of the CIA, quote, "black bag," operations at Rich Mountain Aviation? . . . And maybe a more interesting way to ask that question would be, you knew that you were dealing with criminals; is that correct?
A. That's correct, sir.
Q. You were dealing with criminals that were transporting and selling cocaine in the United States? . . .
Q. Now, did the Gotti organization, through Reale, pay money to the CIA for the drugs?
A. Yes, they did.
Q. Do you know how much money?
A. Firsthand knowledge, somewhere in the $50,000,000 bracket.
Q. How do you know how much money?
A. Because I banked that money for them in Panama City, and ultimately transferred it to other locations in Europe.... . . .
Q. Can you recall any conversations you had with any of the CIA agents about the money, and tell us the nature of that conversation, the scope of it?
A. Sure. When I found that we were bringing drugs into the United States, and that we were receiving money which was being put into accounts which I knew to belong to the United States Government, as I'd set them up specifically for that purpose, I called Mr. Don Gregg, who was a CIA officer with whom I was acquainted, and complained about the nature of what we were doing.
Q. Now, who is Mr. Don Gregg?
A. At that time, he was . . . Vice-President George Bush's National Security Advisor. . . .
Q. And can you tell us what you remember about that conversation?
A. I surely can. I was told that it was not my business, what I was flying in and out of the country. That I was hired to do specific things, and if I would do those things and not pay any attention to anything else, we would all be very happy. I didn't like that.
Q. Well, what else did he say?
A. Shut up and do your job.
Q. He said, "shut up and do your job?"
A. Essentially, yes.
Q. Did you have further contact with him?
A. Yes. Subsequently I talked to Mr. Gregg on a number of occasions as well as to other people in the Vice-President's office to voice my concern over the use of drugs in -- importing drugs into the United States and using the cash generated from that to perform operations which I perceived to be not put before Congress in any form....
The accuracy and validity of Mr. Brenneke's sworn deposition, taken by former Congressman William Alexander, 21 June 1991, is strongly supported by documents that have never before been published for the general reader. A small sample of these documents are herewith provided.
First is a hand-written letter to a State Department official working with the Bush/North/Gregg contra-cocaine operation. It was labeled "confidential," dated 6 January 1986, and addressed to "Ralph:"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As I explained, there would be a separate enclosure. This is it, and it will not make anyone happy. You understand why I'm writing this for you only. I strongly urge you to destroy this. But, don't destroy the thoughts. They are very real.
I am leaving the Central America program. I have no choice. For your own good, you should do the same.
I have closed my eyes to the damn drug scene too long. As we have discussed, Israel and the United States (no, Ralph, there is no distinction) have allowed business to continue as usual. The same people are doing business in all the same places, only now they're doing business with our assistance. We're doing the importing. I told you last year that even I fell victim to the trap. Now our so-called "friends" are blackmailing me. Ralph, we're not the good guys any more. As I have tried to tell you, we are the bad guys. You know where all this will lead just as well as I do. We both have children. You are fortunate, yours don't use drugs. You know that mine does.
This is why I'm writing you without all the fancy codes. I want you to see reality in black and white.
What can the new people do? They will fall into the same trap we did. You cannot get away from these people. You know that.
Neither of us started this business, but together we can stop it. I've been quiet way too long. You tell the boys in the basement* that everyone has run out of time. If this continues I'm going public, blackmail or not. I'll take my chances and we can all live with the consequences.
Ralph, I think you should destroy this letter. It scares me
[page 2] me just to write it.
It would be wise to discontinue contact now. You know what you have to do and so do I.
Would you also tell Don the details of this letter? He needs to know where I stand now. I know that you and he still talk.
Pass the word along that there will be no more use of my company. [See following stock certificate.] It is over.
Finally, please calm our friend down. I'm going to get him his originals next month.
For your reference, I am arranging to give the Iran material to Mr. Bush when he comes to Portland. Not, of course, this letter. This is between us and whoever runs the show now. I'm not willing to listen to any more protestations. Shut it down or we all go public is the only thing you can say regarding my position.
Yours, Dick [Brenneke]
* "The boys in the basement" refers to the National Security Council, offices located in the basement of the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB). During the 1980s, the Raygun-Casey cabal used the Constitution for toilet paper. The extra-legal gimmics employed to evade law, congress and media ran through an alphabet soup beyond the old-time CIA, FBI, DEA, ONI, NRO, etc.
Within the National Security Council evolved the National Security Planning Group (NSPG), the Restricted Interagency Group (RIG) and the Terrorist Incident Working Group (TIWG). These had evolved by 1985 and were transitioned into new forms by the end of 1986 with the blowout of Iran-contra.
". . . Casey handed McFarlane a sheet of paper on which he had outlined plans for a new CIA anti-terrorism unit . . . [it] officially sanctioned a secret entity with a mandate to coordinate our government's response to international terrorism -- preemptively if possible, retroactively if necessary. I became its first chairman . . ." (Oliver L. North, Under Fire, 1991, p. 197).
"My associates on the Task Force [members of the treasonous secret unit] included Noel Koch (and later Richard Armitage) from Defense, Dewey Clarridge and Charlie Allen from the CIA, Buck Revell and Wayne Gilbert from the FBI, Bob Oakley from State, and Art Moreau (and later General Jack Moellering) from the Joint Chiefs of Staff" (ibid., p. 198).
Frederick Kempe, a former Wall Street Journal diplomatic correspondent, wrote Divorcing the Dictator: America's Bungled Affair with Noriega in 1990. This documents the Israeli connections with CIA in the contra-cocaine program in Central America and confirms Brenneke's story: "Noriega, the new Comandante, made clear he was willing to be more cooperative than his predecessors. He was also feeling more heat for Panama's role in laundering money for international drug traffickers, and he interpreted a George Bush visit in December 1983 as an appeal for more help for the Contras. . . . In Noriega's mind, he thought Bush was saying that if Panama helped the Contras it could defuse criticism about money laundering. He passed this interpretation to a trusted adviser.
"Coincidentally, perhaps, in December 1983 the Israelis allegedly started using a CIA front company in Panama to start funneling support to the Contras. That company was IFMA Management Company, which had originally been created in 1969 in Panama as a conduit for CIA 'black' funds." (p. 162.)
The American people, since World War II, or World War I, or the Spanish American War -- take your choice -- have witnessed the tip of many criminal icebergs. The official investigations of the criminal icebergs almost always stopped at the waterline. The other 90 percent of the criminal icebergs were never hauled onto the beach for complete examination, prosecution and correction.
The criminal cases of 1980 to the present are in perfect harmony with this honored tradition. This is, of course, why Americans are the most profoundly ignorant people on planet earth. The illusion of knowledge is far worse than knowing you don't know.
The Iran-contra-cocaine criminal iceberg was subjected to a series of bogus investigations and damage control "exposé&s." "The Tower Commission and Select Committee of the House and Senate on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition in 1987," began the damage control operation for the Imperial state. But, the hall of shame did not stop with John Tower, Ed Muskie and Brent Scowcroft or Dan Inouye and Lee Hamilton. It included Senator John Kerry and his Special Counsel Jack Blum and Staff Aid Dick McCall. It reached to the Special Counsel, Judge Lawrence E. Walsh, and to The Iran-Contra Scandal: the Declassified History, edited by Peter Kornbluh and Malcolm Byrne for the "National Security Archive," 1993.
The two most respected government investigations of Iran-contra turn out to be as bogus as the original "Select Committee of the House and Senate on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition." "The Kerry Report" of December 1988 and the "Walsh Report" of 4 August 1993 are both obstructions of justice, just as were the "Select Committee" and "Tower Commission."
The "Committee Print: Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy -- a Report, Prepared by the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, of the Committee of Foreign Relations United States Senate, December 1988" (commonly called "The Kerry Report") is a cover-up of more than it "uncovered."
The International Center for Development Policy, founded by Ambassador Robert White, provided "The Brenneke Report: An Assessment of the International Center's Investigation, Prepared for Sen. John Kerry, Jack Blum and Dick McCall" (25 August 1988).
All had "The Brenneke Report," with 31 pages of analysis and 53 pages of documents, along with a "closed deposition" taken 23 April 1988.
"The Kerry Report," pages 130-32, blows Brenneke and Ambassador White off:
"Brenneke said that he had worked closely with a number of Israeli agents active in the Central American weapons project who were running drugs into the United States. He said that he was told by White House officials that the operation was officially sanctioned, and he had personally discussed the operation with members of the Vice President's staff." (p. 130.)
The next paragraph claims an "exhaustive effort to determine whether Brenneke's sworn statement had any basis in fact" involving the review of "thousands of pages of documents from government files relating to him [Brenneke]." Then the entire evidence is dismissed because "Brenneke was never officially connected to US intelligence" and "there is no evidence that any of them [arms deals] ever came to fruition" (pp. 130-31).
This is technically known as a non sequitur and is utterly dishonest. Brenneke had reported drug dealing and Kerry denies he ever sold guns. Brenneke reported he was a "contract operative" and Kerry denies he was a sworn officer.
This constitutes a willful and deliberate lie by Kerry, Blum and McCall. In addition, where are the "closed deposition" and "the thousands of pages of documents from government files relating to him"? Strange, is it not, that a "phony nobody" like Brenneke would have "thousands of pages of documents from government files relating to him." Perhaps Mr. Brenneke should be filing FOIAs.
Then came the "Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters -- Lawrence E. Walsh, independent counsel, 4 August 1993," commonly called the "Walsh Report." It, like the Kerry Report, is a con job and cover-up.
Congressman William Alexander of Arkansas deposed Dick Brenneke about Mena, 21 June 1991, and all of the evidence developed by Congressman Alexander was provided to Special Counsel Walsh. None of it was used by Walsh.
The "Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters," Vol. I, 4 August 1993, tells us on page xxi of the "Executive Summary" where Mena, Gotti, CIA and drugs may have disappeared: "In addition to the unclassified Volumes I and II of this report, a brief classified report, Volume III, has been filed with the Special Division. The classified report contains references to material gathered in the investigation of Iran/contra that could not be declassified and could not be concealed by some substitute form of discussion."
Another cover-up was put in place. We, the people, have been scammed again.
Both Kerry in '88 and Walsh in '93 have come across as honest, upright efforts to clean up the crimes of the CIA. Wrong! Both were clever cover-ups of CIA crimes.
Then the loyal opposition at the National Security Archive piles on another layer of cover-up with The Iran-Contra Scandal: the Declassified History, 1993. The effusive praise for Judge Walsh and his "unparalleled contribution to uncovering the truth" (p. viii, Acknowledgments) is highly suspect.
There is not a word in the so-called "Declassified History" about drugs. Yet Scott Armstrong, founder of the Archive and its first executive director, had direct knowledge of contra-CIA drug dealing through his work with Ambassador White, et al., at the International Center.
This is precisely the threat that John Stuart Mill warned of in his brilliant 1859 essay, On Liberty: "Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil . . ."
The quiet suppression of half the truth is the Orwellian reality of American pathology. A very few people have told the other half of the truth and they have been systematically ignored and/or smeared.
In his 1993 book, The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic, former-DEA agent Michael Levine describes it this way: "For decades, the CIA, the Pentagon, and secret organizations like Oliver North's Enterprise have been supporting and protecting the world's biggest drug dealers. Those brave freedom fighters in Afghanistan, the Mujahedin, supply a major portion of the heroin used in the United States. The Contras and some of their Central American allies like Honduras have been documented by DEA as supplying us with at least 50 percent of our national cocaine consumption. They were the main conduit to the United States for Colombian cocaine during the 1980s. The rest of the drug supply for the American habit came from other CIA-supported groups, such as DFS (the Mexican equivalent of the CIA), the Shan United Army in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, or any of a score of other groups and/or individuals like Manual Noriega. . . .
"So with the help of American bureaucrats and gutless politicians, they put on a dog-and-pony show to demonstrate to the American taxpayers how committed they are to our war on drugs. And out of gratitude we pay them billions in aid and hundreds of millions in 'drug war funds.' Yet incredibly, after almost three decades of international cooperation and statistic-spouting politicians who tell us again and again how we are now 'turning the corner in the drug war,' drugs keep pouring across our borders at an ever-increase rate." (pp. 463-64.)
Former DEA agent Celerino Castillo, along with Dave Harmon, gave the following account in their 1994 book, Powder Burns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War: "He [Hugo Martinez, a Salvadoran who worked at Ilopango] explained the operation in detail. The Contra planes flew out of hangars four and five, and Hugo could identify their planes by the black cross painted on their tail. The CIA owned one hangar, and the National Security Council ran the other. I knew the CIA, like DEA, had a long history of hiring men with less than stellar reputations. In this case, they were narcotics traffickers. Hugo said the pilots often brought the drugs to Ilopango from either numerous private airstrips in Costa Rica, or the U.S. military base in Panama. They flew weapons, cash, and cocaine from these safe havens, taking the powder to the United States.
"Ilopango reminded me of O'Hare Airport in Chicago, bustling at all hours of the day and night. Murga was one of the busiest men on the base, tending to a continuous line of pilots waiting for their flight plans. Like Aparecio, Hugo had no trouble picking up incriminating information; many times pilots told him outright they were taking cocaine to the United States. The CIA had hired them, they boasted, and nobody could touch them. Hugo would quietly jot down their names after they left. Most of the time, Hugo simply poked his balding head into the planes as he made his rounds. When he spotted the tightly wrapped kilos, the pilot's name joined the others on his list.
"As Hugo described it, every pilot had his own preferred technique for getting his illegal payload to U.S. soil. Some liked the John Wayne approach, flashing their CIA credentials at Florida airfields and unloading the drugs in plain view. Those who wanted to maintain a lower profile shipped the kilos out in innocuous cargoes like towels, seafood, frozen vegetables or auto parts. Many landed at military bases around the United States, knowing no one would inspect a Contra plane. The air drops were probably the least risky and the most popular, since many of the pilots had plenty of experience dropping bundles in the Bahamas or off the Florida coast.
"They returned with cash to Ilopango. Hugo said some of the pilots flew the money to Panama for deposit in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, later indicted for money laundering and bribery. From Panama, the money was wired to a Costa Rican bank account held by the Contras. They used the money for supplies and arms, completing the cycle.
"When I ran Hugo's list of names through the computer, they all came back as narcotics traffickers in DEA files. Little wonder the Contras used them, I thought. Nobody knew the terrain like drug pilots, and their dive-and-dump flying skills perfectly matched the job description for covert operations. (pp. 138-39.)
A further account can be found in Jack Terrell's and Ron Martz' 1992 book, Disposable Patriot: Revelations of a Soldier in America's Secret Wars: "He [Francisco "Paco" Chanes] was offering me a million dollars if I helped get cocaine into the States hidden in the frozen lobsters. Drug-sniffing dogs had trouble smelling cocaine through the iodine in the seafood and if Customs thawed out the lobsters looking for drugs and there were none, the government would have to compensate Ocean Hunter for the loss.
"It would have been very easy for me to get rich. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut, play their game and do business with Frigorifico de Puntaremas. If I did that, I could be living in a mansion in Brazil, or wherever I wanted.
"I'll run guns, but I draw the line at drugs. The idea that someone was using this war to run drugs into the United States infuriated me. I knew I was being self-righteous about this, but there are certain things I do not condone and will not justify. Drug running is never justifiable, no matter what political cause its profits may advance. I may put a gun to someone's head and pull the trigger, but I won't put a hypodermic needle in his hands.
"Those principles made me a liability within the FDN and a liability to myself. I was ruthless in one sense and morally rigid in another. I would only go so far in what I would allow myself to be involved in. Political assassinations and war, yes. Drugs, no.
"If we had gotten involved in the cocaine business, we would have had the one thing we needed most --money. But I knew we were not going to fight one evil with another evil.
"When the deal to bring in cocaine fell through, Frigorificos de Puntarenas became a prime launderer of drug money. Later investigations by the Miami police and the FBI indicated Ocean Hunter was using 'narcotics transactions' to fund the Contras." (pp. 247-248.)
Terry Reed and John Cummings put out Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, How the Presidency was Co-opted by the CIA in 1994. (The referenced 20 April 1992 article by Time reporter Richard Behar, "Anatomy of a Smear," which was pure US Government/CIA damage control, is reprinted in Chapter 36 of their book as Figure 36-2.)
"'I thought you wanted to write an article about Jack Blum's coverup, about Lawrence Walsh's coverup,' Reed said referring to an earlier conversation with Behar, in which Behar stated he felt there was strong evidence to prove Senator John Kerry's investigator, Jack Blum, had actually helped to stymie the Mena investigation.
"Blum's job as Special Counsel to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations was to not only provide investigative services to Kerry's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, he was to also funnel off pertinent leads he developed during the course of his investigation to Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh's office, which was seeking indictments involving the Iran-Contra Affair. It was Blum who[m] the Reeds had interviewed extensively with in Washington in 1988.
"Behar had confided to Reed he felt Walsh, probably in concert with Blum, was indeed part of the Iran-Contra cover-up since Walsh's office had taken no action on Mena. Behar earlier cited the foundation for his suspicions stemmed from Walsh's lack of action on the preponderance of credible evidence provided directly to his office by federal, state and county law enforcement agencies, as well as the materials provided him by Arkansas Attorney General Winston Bryant and U.S. Congressman William Alexander concerning the activities at Mena.
"Behar responded, completely reversing his earlier position on the Mena affair, 'I'm not convinced there is a coverup.'"
Dick Brenneke first hit the news in November of 1986 over illegal arms dealing with Iran by then-President Raygun. The New York Times got copies of his memos and went public 28 November 1986.
In the past decade, he has been chewed up and spit out by damned near every outfit in the USA. On 12 May 1989, the Department of Justice charged him with five counts of perjury for his sworn testimony on the October 1980 treason of Raygun and company. He was trashed by ex-CIA officer Frank Snepp in the Village Voice, 10 September 1991. Others, who will remain nameless at this point, have seriously questioned his authenticity and honesty.
From 1980 with the October Surprise to 1997 with the Mena-CIA-cocaine story, Dick Brenneke has had a lot to say that a lot of people have not wanted to hear. If one reads Robert Parry's Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery (1993), Brenneke is hammered severely. However, Pete Brewton, in his book The Mafia, CIA and George Bush: Corruption, Greed and Abuse of Power in the Nation's Highest Office (1992), treated Brenneke with respect and appreciation.
Brenneke was found not guilty of all charges by 12 Portland, Oregon, federal jurors, in May 1990. "After the trial, jury foreman Mark Kristoff said that the panel of eight women and four men believed Brenneke's entire story. There was not a single 'guilty' vote on any of the five counts.
"'We were convinced that, yes, there was a meeting, and he was there and the people listed in the indictment were there,' Kristoff told Willamette Week after the trial." (Willamette Week, 10-16 May, 1990, Jim Redden).
In the conclusion of Jim Redden's "Brenneke Papers" in "A Question of Treason," he provides a major insight into the reasons why the federal government runs like the Mafia. "Q: Given the verdict, will Congress hold hearings on whether the Reagan-Bush campaign broke the law to win the 1980 election?
"A: That's very unlikely. Republicans don't want to raise the issue for obvious reasons. But the Democrats have been very reluctant to pursue these questions as well. Brenneke believes that the Democrats are nervous because the Israelis did much of the dirty work -- both in the Middle East and Central America, where some of the profits from subsequent arms sales to Iran were diverted. The Democratic Party has long supported Israel, and many Democratic candidates have received sizable campaign contributions in return" (ibid.).
In The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present (1992), George and Douglas Ball laid out some details of the Israel payoffs to the so-called Democratic party: 33 key Democrats received, from 1980-1990, close to $11,000 per year for a total of almost $110,000 each for the decade (p. 212).
This buyout of the so-called Democrats was the best investment ever made. "In inflation-adjusted terms, the cumulative total of America's aid to Israel exceeds the aggregate assistance the United States gave Western Europe under the Marshall Plan. Yet Israel's population of 5.2 million (of which 4.4 million are Jewish Israelis) is barely two percent of the population that shared in the Marshall Plan" (ibid., p. 256).
In the 10 years that 33 key Democrats received $3.5 million in campaign funds from Israeli supporters, Israel received over $40 billion in US aid. This has to be world history's greatest return on investment since the Spanish conquest of Latin America (ibid., p. 281).
Ari Ben-Menashe wrote Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network in 1992: ". . . the congressional hearings into the Iran-contra affair unfolded. . . . For me, it was highly entertaining to watch official after official lying through his teeth or pleading complete ignorance.
"All America was gripped by a confusing spectacle that never seemed to go anywhere or result in anything substantive. Several years later, in 1991, I discussed the events of 1987 with Spencer Oliver, the chief counsel for the House Foreign Relations Committee, who had been involved in the Iran-contra hearings.
"'Didn't you know they were all lying?' I asked.
"'Yes,' he said, 'we knew it was a coverup. But at the time the Democratic congressmen and senators were very weak, and also "for the good of the nation" we did not want to start a scandal that would bring down the president. We did not want to hear the "I-word" -- impeachment.'
"'To lie to the nation is for the good of the nation?'
"'No. But the Democrats did not have the backbone to do what they had to do. They all knew that the witnesses were lying or telling half-truths. Everybody knew it was a cover-up, but not many knew the real truth. Casey was sick and dying. Gates and Bush were untouchable. To get them, we had to bring down the whole administration. We weren't ready for it. The Democrats didn't have any strong leadership. The only thing we did manage later, when Casey died and Robert Gates's nomination was put forward in 1987, was to force the nomination to be withdrawn.'
"There was a clue to the future, perhaps, in Robert McFarlane's suicide attempt during the congressional hearings. He overdosed on pills, I suspect, because he was afraid his role with the Israelis would surface. But no one was able to connect his attempt to kill himself with a national scandal that went far beyond the wildest imagination. All that happened, of course, was the decision by an independent prosecutor, Judge Lawrence Walsh, to put North, McFarlane, and Poindexter on trial. They were convicted of lying to Congress, but none of them went to jail. Later, North's conviction was thrown out. So, for the time being, the truth was buried. America was to continue living under the Big Lie." (pp. 193-194.)
"Looking back, I can say that the 1980s were a mean decade, perverted in their lack of humanity. It would be too easy to say simply that I regret my role -- though I am deeply sorry for the human suffering of the Iranians and Iraqis. I also regret that Israel continued to develop its capacity for nuclear destruction and that we were unable to bring about peace with the Palestinians.
"But I do not regret that my experience allowed me to see first-hand how secret intelligence agencies increasingly dominate the foreign policy of nations like the United States and Israel. Whereas once intelligence was supposed to inform leaders and guide them in making policy decisions, today covert intelligence operations and foreign policy are too often inseparable, one and the same. The tools of secret slush fund money, covert operations, and disinformation have been used on such a grand scale that they have changed the nature of the entire political process. A handful of people never elected by anyone are now able to manipulate politics. [And what became of all that slush-fund money? There was approximately $780 million (including interest) in the Israeli slush fund, and another $780 million (including interest) in the American CIA slush fund. To a clever politician or a secret intelligence service, this would be a formidable sum, especially because it is not on any budget line and can be used without accountability. (p. 351)]
"And my former colleagues, the international arms merchants, with whom I had so many dealings, are not out of business, not by a long shot. If there isn't a big war going on at any given time, there are always a number of small wars. The events in Eastern Europe -- in Yugoslavia and in the former Soviet republics -- continue to generate profits for them. As I sit here I imagine them around their tables, waiting for the next big one, just like Iran and Iraq. Perhaps India and Pakistan. Plenty of cannon fodder to be equipped, a balanced enough conflict to last a long time, no one in the West to care who gets killed -- a real goldmine.
"I am a humbler man today than I was in the 1970s when I joined Israeli intelligence. I've learned the hard way that everyone make mistakes, some of them so big that they were irrevocable. I've also changed my view of Israel and the Jewish people. When I was young, I shared with many Israelis a deep nationalistic feeling -- the self-righteous and arrogant belief that we were right and everyone else was wrong, that it was more important for Jews and Israel to survive than others, that we were -- as the Bible says -- the chosen people.
"I still believe that Jews are chosen. But no longer can I accept the premise on which the Iranian arms deals were based: 'Better that their boys die than ours.'
"People are people. We are all chosen." (pp. 351-352.)
Failure by the people, media and government to face the reality of high crimes and cover-ups is corrupting the heart and soul of America. Our nation is dying of its own cowardice.
Brenneke has told the same story as Ari Ben-Menashe, Jack Terrell, Celerino Castillo, Mike Levine, Fred Kempe and Terry Reed, and this is only a once-over lightly of the mountain of evidence. So, how has CIA, Mossad, Mafia drug-dealing through Mena been kept effectively as a "secret"?
How has the CIA-crack story of Gary Webb at the San Jose Mercury News of August 1996 already begun to drift into the fog of DC and Wall Street daily scandals?
Because America is losing its mind.
The two-party system has been utterly homogenized by corrupt money. The mob and Mossad have cut a deal with Wall Street and the CIA to run the world as a global plantation for the benefit of the global plutocracy.
Only impoverished presses like the PFP, some talk radio and the Internet are yet outside the hegemonic power of transnational corporate fascism. However, when the Imperial pigs succeed in driving 80 percent of the world into the new serfdom, they will probably wish they had not let their greed glands run wild.
When the middle class discovers that they are part of the impoverished and imprisoned rather than the privileged, they will lead the "underclass" in a revolution against the plutocracy and its gun thugs.
Failure to deal with the Mena cesspool will continue to erode the credibility of a terminally corrupt governing class.
from TPD 1999-Oct-21, from the Washington Post p.A1, by Bill Miller:
Jury Awards $98 Million In Slaying of D.C. Informant
The D.C. police department and four of its officers were ordered yesterday to pay nearly $100 million in damages to a woman whose son was slain while working as an informant on the Starbucks triple slaying investigation, the largest jury verdict ever returned against the D.C. government.
Terry Butera cried as the jury announced its decision, ending a two-week trial that exposed a host of police lapses. Her son, Eric, was robbed and beaten to death by three men after he tried to make an undercover drug buy at a Southwest row house for police. The suit accused police of failing to protect him.
Authorities later determined that there was no connection between the Starbucks case and the people in the row house.
"I feel very drained," said Terry Butera, 53, adding that she filed her suit to demand accountability as well as answers from the police. "I know that I did this for the love of my son. I hope that no other family will have to endure what I've endured. If that's the case, then this was a victory."
On Monday, the eight-member jury found the police department and the officers liable for damages. The panel then heard two days of testimony concerning damages. After three hours of deliberations yesterday, it returned to Senior U.S. District Judge June L. Green's courtroom with a final decision.
The jury ordered the District and the officers to pay $70.5 million in compensatory damages and $27.5 million in punitive damages. The previous largest judgment against the District was returned last year when a jury ordered the city to pay $24.2 million in a medical malpractice case. The District subsequently settled that suit for $8.25 million. The District can appeal this week's verdict as well as the size of the judgment, but even if the amount is scaled back, the result still could be costly.
In interviews afterward, jurors said they believed the police failed to take basic steps that would have prevented Butera's death. An expert witness for the plaintiff said that the operation was poorly planned and that police should have constantly monitored Butera the night he died.
The jury foreman, noting that the four officers were never disciplined, said the internal police investigation "was a joke." Another juror, Marion Wilson, said jurors quickly agreed that a message had to be sent to police with a large award. "You're dealing with somebody's life," she said. "There's no price tag you can put on that."
The Dec. 4, 1997, killing came as police were scrambling for leads in the slayings of three employees at a Starbucks coffee shop just north of Georgetown five months earlier. Acting on a tip from Butera, police arranged for him to make a drug buy at the row house so they could search the place for evidence related to the killings.
Butera was turned away at the door. As he walked away, he was accosted and robbed of the $80 in marked money police had given him. The officers were stationed on nearby blocks but were too far away to realize what had happened. Forty minutes after Butera was attacked, a neighborhood resident called 911, and patrol officers were the first to find his body.
"They signed Mr. Butera's death warrant when they dropped him off that night," Peter C. Grenier, an attorney for the family, told the jury.
The officers who worked with Butera that night were Lt. Brian McAllister, Sgt. Nicholas Breul and Detectives Anthony Brigidini and Anthony Patterson.
The four officers showed no reaction as yesterday's verdict was read and left the courthouse without comment. D.C. officials said they would review the verdict and explore legal options, including appeal. Sources familiar with the matter said the D.C. corporation counsel's office had offered Terry Butera $1.5 million during the trial to settle.
Eric Butera, 31, was a drug user who had been in and out of trouble since 1993, but his mother says he was trying to turn his life around. He told police that soon after the slayings, he had overheard people talking about the Starbucks case in a row house where he occasionally had purchased drugs. And Butera said he had seen weapons during his visits to the place.
Homicide detectives decided to have Butera return to the house, in the 1000 block of Delaware Avenue SW, to buy crack cocaine.
The plan was haphazardly designed and executed, according to expert witness James Bradley Jr. Bradley, a former D.C. police official, testified that it was doomed to failure and that the officers violated national standards and D.C. police rules.
Among other things, the team failed to alert the 1st Police District about its plans or put them in writing. Patrol officers had gone to the house the night before on a drug complaint, Bradley said, making it highly unlikely that anyone in the house would then sell drugs to Butera.
Although Brigidini was brought into the operation at the last minute, Bradley said, he was chosen to drop Butera off near the row house. Brigidini then waited in his unmarked car a block or so away, where he could not keep constant watch on Butera. Breul and Patterson waited in another car on a nearby street. The detectives explained they wanted to keep their distance to lessen any suspicion that Butera was aiding the police.
Throughout the trial, the police defended their conduct and said they believed Butera would be able to safely carry out the plans.
"Many things went horribly wrong," Assistant Corporation Counsel Thomas Koger told the jury yesterday. He said no amount of damages could reverse what happened and argued that punitive damages were not appropriate.
Three men were convicted in Butera's death. Carl Derek Cooper, who had no connection to Butera, is awaiting trial on federal murder charges in the Starbucks slayings.
from PDL 1999-Mar-3, from UPI 1999-Mar-2:
Police name Starbucks killings suspect
WASHINGTON, March 1 (UPI) - Search warrants have been issued (Monday) for the homes and vehicles of a 29-year-old man in connection with the 1997 slayings of three employees of a Georgetown Starbucks coffee shop. On the same day that Carl Cooper was arrested for allegedly attempting to kill a police officer, authorities searched the man's home, his sister's home, and two cars for evidence linking him to the early morning shootings of Aaron Goodrich, Mary Caitrin Mahoney and Emory Evans.
from PDL 1999-Mar-4, from UPI:
Report: Confession in Starbucks murders
WASHINGTON, March 4 (UPI S) - WTOP radio is reporting that 29-year-old Carl Cooper has confessed (Thursday) to his role in the 1997 triple murder of three Starbucks coffee shop employees. Cooper - arrested earlier this week for attempting to kill a police officer - reportedly implicated two others in the crime, and police have begun executing search warrants for the suspects.
from the Washington Post, 1999-Mar-5 p.A26, by Philip P. Pan, staff writer:
Lawyers Assail Lengthy Interrogation
Fifty-four hours after he arrived at Prince George's County police headquarters, homicide detectives continued yesterday evening to question Carl Derek Havord Cooper. But he still had not been taken before any judicial officer in the county or moved to the county jail.
Police said Cooper, 29, who has been charged in a warrant with wounding an off-duty county officer in 1996, is cooperating with detectives who have been interviewing him on and off about several violent crimes in the area, including the July 6, 1997, triple slaying at a Starbucks coffee shop north of Georgetown.
Throughout the marathon questioning, Prince George's police officials said, Cooper has waived his right to counsel repeatedly and has never asked to see an attorney, and no attorney has asked to see him. A high-ranking police official said Cooper has been given "steaks, hamburgers, whatever he wants," and others said he has been allowed to take breaks between sessions. They said he slept a total of 19 hours Tuesday and Wednesday.
Despite the apparent comfort of his surrounding, defense lawyers are likely to challenge the admissibility of any statements Cooper has made.
During a hearing in D.C. Superior Court on Tuesday, Cooper's court-appointed lawyer said his client would consent to no questioning about D.C. matters without having an attorney present.
"It's outrageous. I don't care what spin anybody puts on it. I can't think of a set of circumstances where somebody should be held for 54 hours and not talk to a lawyer," said Stephen A. Friedman, legal director of the county chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's going to become an issue in the case. The police know if he talks to a lawyer, the discussion will probably end, and they want to keep it going. People are under psychological coercion to cooperate."
Police Chief John S. Farrell defended the continued questioning of Cooper, saying that he was "being afforded all of his constitutional privileges."
He acknowledged that questioning had continued "longer than usual," but said detectives were "talking to him about a number of different situations. There's no hard-and-fast rule about how long the process should be. You look at each situation on a case-by-case basis."
Farrell said detectives had planned to end their questioning of Cooper by midafternoon and then present him to a court commissioner. But investigators abandoned those plans after FBI agents and D.C. police detectives arrested a second person and transported him to Prince George's police headquarters for questioning about the Starbucks case, sources said.
Keith Covington, 32, was arrested at his home in Mount Rainier on federal firearms charges and taken to the FBI's Washington field office yesterday morning. He was taken to Prince George's in the afternoon. It was unclear where Covington was last night.
Neither man has been charged in the Starbucks killings.
Cooper was arrested as a fugitive from Prince George's County about 6:30 p.m. Monday near his home in Northeast Washington, and then was questioned overnight at the FBI field office. He appeared in D.C. Superior Court about noon Tuesday, waived an extradition hearing and was taken immediately to Prince George's.
Police declined to say how many hours Cooper has been questioned. Deputy Police Chief Clark Price said detectives have read him his rights -- and he has waived his right to an attorney -- at least five times.
"He's waiving his rights and cooperating. He can stay here as long as he wants, as long he wants to cooperate," Price said.
Under Maryland court rules, police are required to present a defendant to a court commissioner "without unnecessary delay and in no event later than 24 hours after arrest." The law also states that a violation of that rule does not automatically cause statements made during such questioning to be suppressed by a court.
In 1988, a Prince George's judge acquitted former hospital nurse Jane F. Bolding on multiple murder charges after throwing out incriminating statements she made during nearly 23 hours of questioning.
from the Washington Post, 1999-Mar-5 p.A1, by Maria Elena Fernandez and Cheryl W. Thompson, staff writers:
Detained Man Names 2 Others in Starbucks Case
The Washington man whom police have been questioning in connection with the triple slaying at a Starbucks coffee shop is cooperating with authorities and has led them to two other men with knowledge of the case, including one who lived in the same building as one of the victims, law enforcement officials said yesterday.
Prince George's County police said Carl Derek Havord Cooper, 29, repeatedly waived his right to have an attorney present as he was questioned by authorities at county police headquarters over the course of more than two days.
Cooper "has provided some information about the case that we regard as useful, but we still have to have sufficient information to justify charging any individual," D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said yesterday.
Cooper steered authorities to Keith Covington, 32, of Mount Rainier, who lived in the same building as Emory Allen Evans, one of the Starbucks victims. Covington was arrested yesterday on an outstanding warrant and charged with possession of a firearm by a felon, authorities said. He was taken to the FBI Washington field office and later to Prince George's police headquarters for questioning. Cooper also identified a third person to police, but that person has not been questioned, Ramsey said.
Covington's mother, Lois, said yesterday that her son had previously lived in an apartment below Evans's. The two men were acquaintances, and the morning Keith Covington learned about the killings, his first thought was to buy flowers to place at Evans's apartment door, she said.
"We were talking about it," said Lois Covington, who paid her son's rent when he lived in the Northeast Washington apartment. "He said he wanted to get some flowers, and I took him to get them. It was either a rose or a carnation in a vase. That's the kind of person he is."
The slayings of Evans, 25, Mary Caitrin "Caity" Mahoney, 25, and Aaron David Goodrich, 18, on July 6, 1997, shocked the upscale Burleith neighborhood in Northwest Washington and received national media attention. The three coffee shop employees were shot execution-style during a botched robbery attempt, police said. Nothing was taken from the cash register, and the safe was unopened, they said.
Although it is known that two handguns of different caliber were used in the shootings, police have not determined how many shooters were involved.
"There's a variety of scenarios that we're looking at," Ramsey said. "Just because an individual has knowledge or was present during a crime does not mean that you have enough evidence to charge him with an offense. We are at a very sensitive point in this investigation. We are aggressively following up on all the leads, and we feel very good about this recent break."
D.C. police and the FBI began watching Cooper last summer after a tip from a female acquaintance, law enforcement sources said. D.C. police had a wiretap authorized last year on Cooper's home phone. Cooper has criminal records in the District and Montgomery County on a variety of charges, including armed robbery, drug possession with intent to distribute, and stealing a vehicle.
Police have charged Cooper in the 1996 shooting of Bruce Howard, an off-duty Prince George's police officer, in a Hyattsville park. In addition to questioning him about the Starbucks slayings, they have questioned him about another homicide in the District and other crimes in Prince George's and Pennsylvania, Ramsey said. Although Prince George's Police Chief John S. Farrell said Cooper has implicated himself in some crimes, Ramsey said he could not speculate whether charges against any of the men are imminent.
"Charges will not be filed until we're comfortable that we know what happened on the night that those three individuals were killed inside that Starbucks, and we're just not there yet," Ramsey said. "Our goal is to close this investigation with the arrest and successful prosecutions of the participants, to bring closure to the families of the victims, the community who has been affected and the company which has been affected. This has touched a lot of people in a lot of different ways."
Dean Torrenga, Starbucks regional director of operations, said in a statement: "We are very hopeful about the events of the past few days. We are monitoring the situation in cooperating with authorities. We would like to reemphasize that we will not rest until this case is solved."
The Starbucks company offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible. The Georgetown Business Association offered $10,000.
Covington, whose nickname is "Boo," has been convicted of four felonies and two misdemeanors in the District since 1986.
Two of his most recent arrests stem from run-ins with his parents, Lois and Hinton "Chuck" Covington. In 1993, D.C. officers were called to the Covingtons' home in the 4600 block of Seventh Street NE, where Lois Covington said her son had stolen her car from in front of the house three days earlier.
In interviews with courthouse staff, Keith Covington said he underwent drug addiction treatment in a city program in 1994 and was counseled for "emotional problems" at Washington Hospital Center in 1996.
Lois Covington said yesterday that her son knew Cooper but that the two were just "acquaintances."
Yesterday, neighbors described Cooper as a nice man whom they had watched grow up in the North Michigan Park neighborhood. He lives in his childhood home with his wife, 4-year-old son and mother.
A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said she knew the whole family well. "The Coopers are very nice people, I can tell you that," she said. "His father was a deacon in a church at Ninth and P streets Northwest. He died about five years ago. But they are a Christian family, and they do go to church."
She added: "I'm shocked. We're all shocked. I'm grieving for his mother, and I'm praying it's not true about Carl."
Staff writers Philip P. Pan, Peter Slevin and Linda Wheeler and Metro researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.
from PDL 1999-Mar-6, from the Washington Post p.A1, by Cheryl W. Thompson and Maria Elena Fernandez, Staff Writers:
Starbucks Charges Filed
Police Say Suspect Acted Alone in Triple Slaying
Carl Derek Havord Cooper, the man questioned this week by law enforcement authorities about the 1997 triple slaying at a Starbucks coffee shop, was charged yesterday as the lone gunman in the case.
Cooper, 29, was charged with three counts of first-degree felony murder while armed in connection with the execution-style shootings of Mary Caitrin Mahoney, 25; Emory Allen Evans, 25; and Aaron David Goodrich, 18, at the store in Burleith, just north of Georgetown. If convicted of the charges, Cooper could be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Two handguns of different calibers were used in the shootings; they have not been recovered.
Cooper, who was charged earlier this week in the 1996 shooting of an off-duty Prince George's County police officer, allegedly used two handguns in that crime. When Cooper was arrested in a case in Montgomery County in 1988, police found ammunition for two different-caliber handguns in the car Cooper was driving.
Authorities also have released a man arrested Thursday on a felony weapons charge who had been questioned in connection with the killings. The U.S. attorney's office dismissed the weapons charge yesterday.
"It's one that took a lot longer than anybody standing here would have liked . . . but it was one of those that had to take this long," D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said at a news conference yesterday announcing the charges against Cooper. "I know this doesn't completely relieve the families of the victims, but hopefully this will help them get some peace of mind."
The victims were killed sometime after 9 p.m. on July 6, 1997, in an apparent botched robbery attempt. Their bodies were found in the coffee shop's back room the next morning by a female employee arriving for work. There were no signs of forced entry, and no money was taken from the cash register. The safe was unopened.
When detectives arrived at the scene, the only physical evidence was 10 shell casings. No witnesses ever came forward, but police believe two weapons were used in the killings.
D.C. Detective Tony Patterson, the first homicide detective on the scene in the Starbucks case, called it "one of the most difficult cases I've ever handled."
"It was one of those things that I knew was going to take time to prove, but I always knew it would be closed," said Patterson, who got a phone tip about Cooper two months after the killings.
A break in the case came last year when the television show "America's Most Wanted" repeated an episode about the slayings, law enforcement sources said. A woman who was dating someone who knew Cooper called D.C. police with a valuable tip: Cooper had told her boyfriend that he was the Starbucks killer.
The woman agreed to wear a wire for D.C. police and recorded her boyfriend's comments about Cooper's involvement. Prince George's police were simultaneously investigating Cooper in the shooting of an off-duty police officer. The two police departments worked with the FBI to build evidence against Cooper.
Cooper was raised in a red brick duplex in the 1200 block of Gallatin Street NE and continued to live there with his mother, his wife and their 4-year-old son. His father, who died about five years ago, a neighbor said, was a church deacon. Neighbors described Cooper as a nice man whom they had watched grow up in their North Michigan Park neighborhood.
However, Cooper also has been in and out of the criminal justice system since 1988, when he was convicted in Montgomery County of possession of cocaine.
Cooper's arrest ends a 20-month search for the killer of three young victims whose lives were taking shape. The grisly crime unnerved a city with one of the highest homicide rates in the country.
"He's given up everything," a source close to the investigation said, meaning Cooper told police enough during questioning to tie him to the killings.
Cooper initially was arrested Monday by Prince George's police and charged with shooting Officer Bruce Howard in a Hyattsville park. Authorities questioned him for more than 50 hours about that shooting and about a homicide in the District, other crimes in Prince George's and the District and the Starbucks slayings.
Cooper implicated Keith Covington and another person whom authorities haven't identified. Cooper told detectives that he and Covington tried to rob the Starbucks shop, and that Covington killed the employees, sources said.
Covington, 32, was arrested Thursday morning at his apartment in Mount Rainier on a felony weapons charge and questioned by eight FBI agents for 15 hours.
"I thought it was one of those times in my life that I was being framed," Covington said in an interview yesterday. "I thought Satan was trying to step on me just as I was trying to get my life together."
Covington, who lived in an apartment below Evans, said he knows Cooper but denied involvement in the case. He said he took a polygraph test and "prayed" that authorities would clear him. Law enforcement sources said yesterday that Covington passed the test.
"If I killed them, I'd say I killed them," Covington said. "But that's not me. I'm not saying I'm a saint, but I'm not going to go out and kill people."
Authorities said they were suspicious from the beginning when Cooper named Covington and another person because an earlier statement by Cooper was "100 percent consistent with the evidence" found at the crime scene, a source close to the investigation said.
Covington attended Coolidge High School but dropped out and later got his General Educational Development diploma. He enrolled in a medical assistant program but didn't complete it. He and Cooper grew up in the North Michigan Park neighborhood in Northeast Washington. The two played basketball together as youths at a community recreation center, Covington said.
"He was a little, skinny dude who talks fast and laughs at everything," Covington said. "I was one of the people he looked up to. He was always waving and speaking to me, and I'd speak to him and keep on going."
Covington said he was surprised that the young man he knows as "Li'l Cooper" is accused of one of the most heinous crimes in the District's history.
"I didn't know that Cooper," Covington said. "You've got to be a dummy or a psycho to do something like that. That was evil."
Covington was shot several times in the stomach in 1995 and wears a colostomy bag. His injuries have left him "unable to work much," according to his mother, Lois.
"I knew all the time he wasn't guilty," Lois Covington said. "I'm happy all this is over."
In the days following the homicides, D.C. detectives freely discussed possible suspects and released information about evidence. But after several mistakes, including a failure to seize a pair of shoes with a dark stain on them that may have belonged to the killer, few detectives were willing to discuss the case.
On the first anniversary of the killings, police officials said they were close to charging a suspect. Eight months passed before that suspect, Cooper, was charged.
Staff writer Linda Wheeler contributed to this report.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Starbucks Investigation
Sunday, July 6, 1997: Assistant Manager Mary Caitrin Mahoney, 25, Emory Allen Evans, 25, and Aaron David Goodrich, 18, close the store about 8 p.m. Police believe an intruder took the employees into the store's office and killed them after a struggle with Evans. A bypasser enters the store at 9:15 p.m. and is told the store is closed. Another person finds the door unlocked at 9:30 p.m. but sees no one in the store.
July 7, 1997: The bodies are discovered about 5:15 a.m. when a shift supervisor arrives to open the store. The employee, screaming and crying, runs out of the shop and into the street, flagging down a Metro bus driver who calls 911. Nothing was taken from the cash register, the safe was unopened, there were no signs of forced entry and no keys to the business were missing, according to police.
July 8, 1997: The Starbucks Corp. offers a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer(s). Later, the reward is doubled and the Georgetown Business Association offers an additional $10,000.
Dec. 4, 1997: Eric Michael Butera, a police informant who had given officials information related to the investigation, is beaten to death during an undercover operation in Southwest Washington.
July 6, 1998: One year after the slayings, D.C. police continue to search for the killers. Police say they believe two people, perhaps three, were involved; two guns were used; robbery was the motive. A former employee who was once a prime suspect is no longer considered to be a suspect.
Summer 1998: D.C. police and the FBI begin watching Carl Derek Havord Cooper after a tip from the girlfriend of an acquaintance of Cooper's. D.C. police have a wiretap authorized on Cooper's home phone.
March 1, 1999: Cooper is arrested Monday on charges in the 1996 shooting of Bruce Howard, an off-duty Prince George's police officer, in a Hyattsville park. Cooper is also questioned by D.C. police and the FBI about the Starbucks slayings, another homicide in the District and other crimes in Prince George's and Pennsylvania.
March 2, 1999: Cooper waives extradition and is taken to Prince George's police headquarters for additional questioning. Prince George's police say Cooper waived his right to have an attorney present during questioning that ultimately lasts more than two days.
March 4, 1999: Cooper steers authorities to Keith Covington, of Mount Rainier, who lived in the same building as Emory Allen Evans at the time the slayings occurred. Covington is arrested about 9 a.m. on an unrelated weapons charge and taken to the FBI Washington field office and later to Prince George's police headquarters for questioning. Authorities say Cooper also identified a third person to police, but that person was not questioned.
YESTERDAY: Covington is released by police and the weapons charges are dropped. Cooper is charged with three counts of murder in the Starbucks case and law enforcement officials now say they believe he acted alone.
This is a real strange one. I include the Free Republic chatter that accompanies the article, from http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a36e19ef57a1f.htm.
from the Associated Press via Fox Newswire, 1999-Mar-6, by John Diamond:
Arab emir died five minutes after meeting with Cohen
MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) - Defense Secretary William Cohen sensed immediately Saturday that the emir of Bahrain was ailing. Only later would Cohen learn that five minutes after his courtesy call, one of the world's longest-serving leaders was dead.
Cohen, in Bahrain as part of a swing through several Persian Gulf states to discuss defense issues, had a hectic day in which normal diplomatic courtesy turned to stunned mourning for a longtime U.S. ally.
The death of Sheik Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa "was a true shock to everybody,'' Cohen told reporters as his hulking C-17 military transport plane taxied for takeoff from Bahrain for his next stop in Saudi Arabia.
"I've met with him on many occasions over the years, and I consider him just a great friend,'' the defense secretary said. "I could tell even this morning as I was talking with him there was something that wasn't quite right. He is a very warm, generous spirit with a light in his eyes that was not there today.''
Cohen's day began with a staff breakfast, then a motorcade to Bahrain's Government House for a meeting with the 65-year-old emir, a short, energetic figure known for his sense of humor.
The two talked about regional peace, the threat posed by Iran and Iraq, the spread of chemical and biological weapons and terrorism. During their chat, the emir told Cohen he would like to visit New York City and stay at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, noting as an aside that he always traveled with a physician.
The meeting ended at 11:15 a.m. (3:15 a.m. EST).
Cohen had been invited to an open-air lunch in the desert by Bahrain's defense minister, Sheik Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa. The phone rang in his limousine: Plans changed, the lunch would take place at Bahrain's officers' club.
There, Sheik Khalifa took two telephone calls. He hung up from the second one and said simply: "The emir just died.'' [an error occurred while processing this directive] Reporters traveling with Cohen were being shuttled to Bahrain International Airport. Suddenly traffic was halted, and an ambulance escorted by two security vehicles and followed by several Mercedes limousines sped by in the opposite direction.
It was the emir, senior Bahrain officials said. He was already dead. He collapsed about five minutes after Cohen left their late-morning meeting. Crown Prince Sheik Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the emir's son, was now the head of state.
An airport news conference was canceled, and even before any official announcement, Bahrain state television and radio had interrupted regular programs and played Koranic verses in mourning.
Cohen traveled to the palace in Manama to pay his respects and give condolences to the new emir, then continued on to Saudi Arabia.
In Washington, President Clinton issued a statement expressing "deep sadness'' and calling Sheik Isa "a good friend of peace.''
The emir was buried before sundown Saturday, a private and traditional Muslim ceremony in which his body was wrapped in white cotton cloth and lowered into the ground without a coffin.
Sheik Isa has ruled Bahrain, a Persian Gulf nation of 35 islands with a land area about 3 1/2 times the size of the District of Columbia, since 1961. That put him when he died in a class with Fidel Castro among the world's longest-serving heads of state.
A staunch ally of the United States, host for 51 years to a major U.S. naval presence, the emir visited Washington last June where he received a 21-gun salute at the Pentagon. He also traveled to Cleveland for treatment of his heart condition.
The emir was not immune to criticism in Bahrain for backing the United States. The government has been anxious not to appear overly supportive of airstrikes on Iraq even as it allowed an Air Force expeditionary wing to fly from Bahrain last year.
But U.S. diplomats said the emir generally was regarded in Bahrain as a father figure. At the U.S. Embassy, a Bahraini woman employee wept inconsolably at news of his death.
At the airport, Cohen was to announce sale of 26 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles for use on Bahrain's 12 U.S.-built F-16 fighters. The missiles, made by Hughes Missiles and Space and Raytheon Co., They will be delivered at a cost of $386,000 each by 2002 at the earliest, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said.
But instead of an announcement of missile sales, the secretary issued a statement of condolence.
"I will miss his wise counsel, warm friendship and steady support for the efforts of the United States to promote peace in the region,'' Cohen said.
Then Cohen flew on to Saudi Arabia to meet with King Fahd.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, this is too funny to miss a comment. "Then Cohen flew on to Saudi Arabia to meet with King Fahd." I wonder if King Fahd will get the message after Sheik Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa didn't. LOL
Posted by: Sawdring (Truth_Death@hotmail.com) *
03/06/99 13:32:36 PST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Sawdring
You get anywhere close to a clinton cohort and you ___________. You can fill in the rest.
From: shaman_898 (delta69-70) *
03/06/99 13:37:21 PST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Sawdring
You beat me! Cohen should drop in on Saddam. Was anyone carrying an umbrella? Gad...
From: Thinkin' Gal (thinkin_gal@usa.net) *
03/06/99 13:37:45 PST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Sawdring
He never should have hired Blanche Taylor Moore's son as his chef.
From: ParrotsUp (parrotsup@yahoo.com) *
03/06/99 13:42:16 PST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Thinkin' Gal
the cloud of demons that surrounds Clinton, also follows his loyal advisors in their world travels. occasionally one such imp will take note of a passerby and sink its talons deep into the unfortunate's heart.
From: crypt2k (emailname) *
03/06/99 13:42:50 PST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Sawdring
The Sheik died of shock after being told that the cigar he had smoked with Cohen was from Clinton's own personal collection.
From: cabbie (emailname) *
03/06/99 13:43:03 PST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Sawdring
Didn't another leader die about a year ago while meeting with Madelyn Notsobright?
From: The Sons of Liberty (REMOVE & INCARCERATE the Rapist@ 1600 PA AVE!) *
03/06/99 13:44:45 PST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: The Sons of Liberty
remember also the congress cloakroom and Senate clerk deaths...
From: crypt2k (emailname) *
03/06/99 13:46:18 PST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Thinkin' Gal
No. The Saddam rubout is going to be handled personally by Donna Shalalalala.
From: Old MacDonald () *
03/06/99 13:50:35 PST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: The Sons of Liberty
King Husseing of Jordan also. I am not saying he was assasinated by the Mayo Clinic, but it is definetly a good pursuit for us to see the changes in leadership in the Middle East and elsewhere.
From: Sawdring (Truth_Death@hotmail.com) *
03/06/99 13:52:09 PST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Sawdring
"...Arab emir died five minutes after meeting with Cohen..."
Great impression you made on a crucial ally of the United States, Mr. Secretary!
From: A Whitewater Researcher (awhitewatrrsrchr@hotmail.com) *
03/06/99 13:53:15 PST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: The Sons of Liberty
NEVER Shake hands with anyone in the Clint admin.. unless you have surgical gloves.
From: KING OF ITHACA (emailname) *
03/06/99 13:53:43 PST
Background on the above story:
from Reuters, 1999-Feb-10:
Bahrain says will not help in anti-Saddam action
MANAMA, Bahrain (Reuters) -- Bahrain, host to the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet headquarters, said Wednesday it opposed military attacks against Iraq and would not allow its territory to be used to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
The official Gulf News Agency reported: ``Defense Minister Sheik Khalifa bin Ahmed al-Khalifa reiterated that Bahrain objects to any attack against Iraq or changing its current regime.''
``Bahrain has and will not allow the use of its territory or its skies to achieve these goals,'' the agency quoted Sheik Khalifa as saying after meeting visiting British Defense Secretary George Robertson.
Bahrain is the headquarters for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, which patrols the Gulf to enforce sanctions imposed by the United Nations on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
U.S. and British planes patrolling southern Iraq fly from bases in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and from ships in the Gulf. There have been a number of air strikes on defense installations in Iraq over the past several weeks, after U.S. planes were targeted by Iraqi radar.
Robertson told reporters Britain had no intention of toppling Saddam Hussein and that British forces were in the area only to protect Gulf Arab states against Iraqi threats.
``It's not part of our mission to overthrow Saddam Hussein. We are interested only in reducing the threat that he represents to this region. It would be for the Iraqi people themselves to remove this dictator,'' Robertson said.
The United States recently appointed a special representative to coordinate U.S. aid to opposition groups seeking to end Saddam's regime.
Robertson, who arrived in Bahrain Wednesday as part of a Gulf tour, has already visited Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar.
He said Iraq was sitting on stocks of medicines which should have been distributed to Iraqis.
``We discovered that Saddam Hussein has in locked up warehouses a total of $286 million worth of medicines and drugs that he is refusing to distribute to his people,'' Robertson said.
Under the United Nations oil-for-food program, Iraq is allowed to sell up to $5.25 billion in oil every six months to buy mostly food, medicine and other humanitarian goods for its people.
The U.N. has said Iraq is facing logistical problems in distributing medicines outside Baghdad.
Robertson noted Britain had supplied humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people worth 100 million pounds ($163 million) since 1990.
from TPD 1999-Oct-18, from USA Today:
Witness: White House sold trips for funds
WASHINGTON - A former business partner of the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown said Monday that Brown told her presidential aides instructed him to withhold documents proving the White House was selling U.S. trade mission slots for campaign donations.
Appearing in federal court, Nolanda Hill said Brown raised the possibility of destroying a 1-inch-thick packet of Commerce Department letters she said linked donations and trade mission slots. She said she advised him not to destroy the documents, but never saw them again after their discussion. She said the discussion occurred shortly before Brown died in a plane crash in Croatia in April 1996.
No such documents have been turned over to the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which is suing the Commerce Department in an effort to determine if U.S. trade slots are being sold for political donations.
Hill and Brown were in business together and she is under indictment for allegedly conspiring to divert hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies she controlled to her partner. Though not named in the indictment, Hill's partner in the company was Brown.
In a three-page affidavit released at the start of a federal court hearing in which she testified, Hill said: "I became aware, through my discussions with Ron, that the trade missions were being used as a fund-raising tool for the upcoming Clinton-Gore presidential campaign and the Democratic Party.
"Ron told me that domestic companies were being solicited to donate large sums of money in exchange for their selection to participate on trade missions of the Commerce Department," Hill's affidavit stated.
"Ron expressed to me his displeasure that the purpose of the Commerce trade missions had been and were being perverted at the direction of the White House," she added.
"I further learned through discussions with Ron that the White House, through Leon Panetta and John Podesta, had instructed him to delay the case by withholding the production of documents prior to the 1996 elections, and to devise a way not to comply with the court's orders," Hill added.
Hill said the five or six documents which she reviewed in the 1- inch-thick packet of papers were written by Commerce Department employee Melissa Moss of the Office of Business Liason. She said Brown used profanity in describing how Moss had written such letters, apparently without his knowledge.
Under questioning by Judicial Watch attorneys before U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, Hill said that she was asked by Brown whether he could get rid of the documents and whether that would constitute obstruction of justice.
"I said it looked to me like it would be" obstruction, Hill said she replied.
"I pointed out to him that it was taking an awful big risk" in destroying the documents because copies of them existed elsewhere, Hill said on the witness stand in the lawsuit by Judicial Watch.
Hill's affidavit outlining the alleged scheme was signed Jan. 17 and was publicly released Monday in open court. In it, Hill says that Moss "based on my knowledge, ... has not told the truth in response" to "a number of questions concerning Commerce Department trade missions, as well as other representations she has made under oath.
Attempts Monday to locate Moss for comment were unsuccessful.
Hill said that she is concerned that "the Clinton administration, and more particularly its Justice Department, will try to retaliate against me" and she asked that the affidavit be kept under seal. She said she had "a fear for my personal and my family's well-being and safety."
from TPD 1999-Oct-18, from ABC NEWS Primetime Live, from http://more.abcnews.go.com/onair/ptl/html_files/transcripts/ptl0618a.html:
Mystery Woman
Nolanda Hill On Her Relationship With Ron Brown
SAM DONALDSON Good evening. Diane is on assignment. We begin with the story of one woman in the middle of controversy and scandal in official Washington. Her name is Nolanda Hill, a businesswoman from Texas who's never worked in the White House and never held a government job. But her close relationship with a member of President Clinton's Cabinet, the late Ron Brown, put her in a position to see and hear a lot.
She may tell her story to Congress and to prosecutors before long. But first, she's telling her story tonight to chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross. ("Taps" playing)
PRES. BILL CLINTON Ron Brown -- a trail blazer, a builder, a patriot. BRIAN ROSS, ABC NEWS (VO) At the funeral last year of Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, she was described by some as the mystery woman, the woman who wasn't supposed to be there. Her name is Nolanda Hill.
LARRY KLAYMAN, JUDICIAL WATCH Nolanda Hill is one of the people who was the closest to Ron Brown.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) And now, more than a year after the death of Ron Brown, a lot of people in Washington are very worried about what Nolanda Hill may know and be willing to talk about.
WILLIAM CLINGER, FORMER CONGRESSMAN She clearly was in a position to know a number of things that, frankly, we never got answers to.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) A former Democratic Party chairman, Ron Brown at first was seen as one of the rising stars of the Clinton administration.
RON BROWN, FORMER SECRETARY OF COMMERCE It is, indeed, an honor and a privilege to be named Secretary of Commerce.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) But Brown soon became perhaps the most investigated member of the Clinton administration, surrounded by questions of bribery and influence peddling, the target of a federal grand jury and a special prosecutor. And behind the scenes through it all was the so - called "mystery woman," Brown's little - known business partner, Nolanda Hill.
NOLANDA HILL, BUSINESSWOMAN I was a friend, a close friend. We loved each other.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Now coming forward to tell her story, Nolanda Hill describes what she says was a seven - year long business and personal relationship that put her in the middle of Ron Brown's Washington.
NOLANDA HILL I talked to him at least once a day.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) His dealings with President Clinton.
NOLANDA HILL Ron often referred to as "Bubba."
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Taking orders from Hillary Clinton.
NOLANDA HILL No, he was not happy about it.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) The Democratic fund - raising scandal.
NOLANDA HILL The White House wanted him to meet with some damn Chinaman.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) And the pressures that she says made Brown, as Secretary of Commerce, vulnerable to corruption and susceptible to illegal drugs, which, if true, would be very risky behavior for a government official at the center of power.
NOLANDA HILL He came up in the era of drugs are OK. I mean, you know, he was a '60s child.
BRIAN ROSS (on camera) As Secretary of Commerce, did he use drugs?
NOLANDA HILL Um, yes.
BRIAN ROSS Were you there?
NOLANDA HILL Yes.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) It happened, she said, frequently at her Washington apartment, where Brown would come to relax after work.
NOLANDA HILL He smoked pot, and he once did a line of cocaine.
BRIAN ROSS (on camera) And you didn't smoke pot with him?
NOLANDA HILL I've smoked pot.
BRIAN ROSS With him?
NOLANDA HILL Mm - hmm.
BRIAN ROSS Wasn't he afraid that if it was -- if he was ever caught with that, his career would be ruined?
NOLANDA HILL He was reckless a lot.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) In fact, Hill now blames Brown for all the legal troubles that she says eventually cost her her business and led her into a clinical depression. But Brown's friends and family are outraged that Hill is going public and making what they consider to be unfair and uncorroborated allegations, such as the charges about illegal drugs.
REID WEINGARTEN, RON BROWN'S ATTORNEY Preposterous. I mean, I guess anything's possible. There may be a tyrannosaurus rex outside when we leave this building. It sounds preposterous to me.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Reid Weingarten was Ron Brown's lawyer.
REID WEINGARTEN I never had the slightest indication that Ron ever used drugs. I have no idea why she's saying what she's saying.
BRIAN ROSS (on camera) Is it not true, though, that she did have a close relationship with Ron Brown for many years?
REID WEINGARTEN I think that's true.
NOLANDA HILL (FROM VIDEO) I'm Nolanda Hill. I own my own business, and so can you.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Nolanda Hill was the millionaire owner of two television stations when she first met Brown, whose high - powered Washington law firm did work for Hill's company. She soon took him in as a business partner.
WILLIAM CLINGER She was really a mover and a shaker. And I think the two of them were a pretty formidable team.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Former Republican congressman Bill Clinger led an investigation of Ron Brown's finances, focusing on hundreds of thousands of dollars Hill paid Brown for his interest in their business which had cost him nothing. WILLIAM CLINGER Everybody would like to have a deal where you don't make any investment and then a few years later you make a half million dollars profit.
NOLANDA HILL Well, Ron really wanted money, period. I mean, he was not one to leave a nickel on the table, you know? So ...
BRIAN ROSS (on camera) This is the man you're talking about who you say you loved?
NOLANDA HILL Sure.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Trouble with money began, she says, as soon as President Clinton asked Brown to serve as Secretary of Commerce.
NOLANDA HILL We sat down and we looked at what his monthly expenses were versus what his known income was going to be, and he was, you know, $7,000 in the hole when he woke up on day one of any month.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Which Nolanda Hill says would twice lead Brown into schemes involving under - the - table money. The first, an offer from the group claiming to represent the government of Vietnam, seeking to get American trade restrictions lifted. Hill says Brown met with them both before and, more significantly, after his selection as Secretary of Commerce.
NOLANDA HILL And he said, "Do you think it would be worth a million dollars?" And I said, "Ron, this is crazy. I mean, it's nuts."
BRIAN ROSS (on camera) But he was trying anyway?
NOLANDA HILL He was considering it. He saw it as an opportunity to afford to be Commerce Secretary.
BRIAN ROSS And were bank accounts set up overseas?
NOLANDA HILL There was a bank account set up, as I understand it.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) In the middle of it, one of the men allegedly involved -- a Vietnamese - American named Binh Ly -- went to the FBI telling of a plan to funnel some $700,000 to Brown through a secret bank account in Singapore.
REPORTER Mr. Secretary, what can you tell us about this report that says you received money in exchange for helping lift the trade restrictions on Vietnam?
BRIAN ROSS (VO) It was big news when the investigation broke in 1993, and, at the time, Brown denied everything.
RON BROWN An absolutely ridiculous report, has no validity to it. I have never been involved with any such thing.
BRIAN ROSS (on camera) Is that truthful?
NOLANDA HILL No.
BRIAN ROSS He lied?
NOLANDA HILL Yes.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) But Hill says no money ever changed hands, and the bank account was not used because Brown got a tip the FBI was on to him, something FBI agents on the case have told ABC News they always suspected.
NOLANDA HILL We knew that the FBI investigation was going on.
BRIAN ROSS (on camera) It was known? NOLANDA HILL We knew.
BRIAN ROSS How did you know?
NOLANDA HILL Ron told me.
REID WEINGARTEN The Justice Department completely exonerated Ron Brown.
BRIAN ROSS For lack of evidence?
REID WEINGARTEN Lack of evidence. There was no evidence. There was no evidence to support the allegation whatsoever.
BRIAN ROSS Nolanda Hill did not testify.
REID WEINGARTEN She had no connection with the investigation. She had no direct information except this bald lie about what Ron Brown may or may not have said.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) The most serious charge Hill makes is that two big Democratic contributors, Nora and Gene Lum, shown here at Brown's funeral, actually did pass money to Ron Brown when he was Secretary of Commerce.
NOLANDA HILL The first number was $60,000. We discussed $60,000.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) The Lums, who just this month pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, have been under investigation by federal prosecutors for several years over their relationship with Ron Brown and the Democratic party.
In 1993, the Lums took over an Oklahoma gas company called Dynamic Energy Resources that sought special government contracts as minority - owned business. Then, the Lums hired Brown's 28 - year - old son, Michael, and made him a well - paid officer of the company - - a convenient way, Hill says, to move money to the father.
NOLANDA HILL I know that Ron received money that had been paid to Michael.
BRIAN ROSS (on camera) From the Lums at Dynamic Energy?
NOLANDA HILL Yes.
BRIAN ROSS Why would the son give the father money?
NOLANDA HILL Well, the official version from Reid Weingarten is to pay back some of his law school fees, which I fought with Ron about and told him that was the dumbest thing I ever heard. And I even told Reid that that was stupid to say that.
BRIAN ROSS What did Ron tell you was going on?
NOLANDA HILL Ron needed money to pay his taxes.
REID WEINGARTEN Let's start with the facts. It's always a good place to start. The Lums never paid off Ron Brown. And Ron Brown never did anything for the Lums.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) When pressed, Weingarten said just what Nolanda Hill predicted he would.
REID WEINGARTEN Ron was an incredibly generous dad. When Michael came of age -- when Michael started kicking in professionally, Michael would be in a position to repay some of the responsibilities that Ron assumed.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Hill says she tried to get Brown to use a different story.
NOLANDA HILL I talked to Ron about this, and I said, you know, "Why don't you say, 'There's nothing I can do for the Lums as Secretary of Commerce'"? And he said, "But that's not true. I don't want to say that, because that's not true." And I said, "Well, it's not true that this all of a sudden is to pay you back for college either." He said, "Well, nobody can prove that."
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Michael Brown, now a lawyer at his father's old firm, declined to talk with PrimeTime about the allegations. In addition to talking about Ron Brown, congressional investigators also hope Nolanda Hill can, in a way, talk for Ron Brown, particularly about the role Brown and his Commerce Department may have played in the Democratic fund - raising scandal.
LARRY KLAYMAN, JUDICIAL WATCH The Commerce Department was an opportunity for the Clinton administration, if it wished to do something illegal, to have it done there.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) Many of the revelations involving the fund - raising scandal have come from this Larry KLAYMAN, who heads a conservative group called Judicial Watch.
LARRY KLAYMAN Nolanda Hill is someone who would be in a position to know, directly from the horse's mouth, what Ron Brown and the Commerce Department were doing.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) One question many want answered is how the man now at the center of the FBI's investigation of illegal fund - raising -- John Huang -- how did he get a top - level job at Ron Brown's Commerce Department? Nolanda Hill says she knows.
NOLANDA HILL Ron told me that the White House put him there, and it was Ron's opinion the White House meant Hillary in this instance.
BRIAN ROSS (on camera) That she put him there.
NOLANDA HILL He believed that she was the person that had made the call.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) The White House denies that, but Hill says it was also the White House that sent Brown on this 1994 trip to China ...
RON BROWN Mr. President.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) ... to urge government officials to approve a billion - dollar power plant project involving the Indonesian Lippo Bank, a bank owned by a family that has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bill Clinton's various campaigns.
NOLANDA HILL He said the White House -- this is the one the White House wants him to do.
BRIAN ROSS (VO) That allegation is also denied by White House. The day after the plane crash that killed Secretary Brown in Bosnia, the special prosecutor shut down his investigation of Brown. But the investigation into those around him continues. And going public now is a risky move for Nolanda Hill, as she, herself, remains one of the subjects of a grand jury looking into how and why she paid Ron Brown so much money just before he became the Secretary of Commerce. (on camera) Did he ever help you in his official position as Secretary of Commerce?
NOLANDA HILL Never, ever, never. I didn't need to buy influence with money. I had all I needed.
REID WEINGARTEN I think there's perhaps a likelihood that she's going to be indicted and charged with serious felonies.
BRIAN ROSS If she is indicted, will it not be essentially also an indictment of Ron Brown?
REID WEINGARTEN I believe not. Absolutely not.
BRIAN ROSS A posthumous indictment?
REID WEINGARTEN I believe not.
NOLANDA HILL Ron's dead. They can't indict him. I mean, maybe I'm sitting here indicting him, and I'm sure I am. I have. But the other side of this is that I believed what he did was wrong. I have to put that chapter of my life -- that part, that 10 years -- away. And to do that, I have to close the book.
SAM DONALDSON We may be seeing a lot more of Nolanda Hill this summer. Congressional investigators are currently negotiating with her lawyer so that she can testify in connection with the Democratic fund - raising scandal.
from NewsMax, 1999-Sep-24, by Carl Limbacher et al.:
Documents Reveal Two May Have Survived Initial Impact of Ron Brown Plane Crash
Confidential Commerce Department documents obtained by Judicial Watch and shared exclusively with Inside Cover reveal that two people aboard Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's death plane may have survived its initial impact into a Croatian mountainside three years ago.
Within days of Brown's April 3, 1996 death, it was known that one passenger, Tech. Sgt. Shelly Kelly, was still alive when rescuers first reached the crash site. Kelly is said to have died while enroute to a Dubrovnik hospital some 11 hours after Brown's plane went down.
But news that another passenger may have been spotted alive could have startling implications. Questions raised by four senior military doctors in 1997 suggest that Brown himself may not have died from injuries sustained in the crash - opening the possibility that the Clinton cabinet official could have been the mystery survivor.
The document, labeled "A Chronology of Events as Logged by Personnel at Embassy Zagreb in Connection with Secretary Brown's Plane Crash," was prepared for then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher. The log offers a minute by minute history of information from the crash site as it became known.
At 8:25pm local time, Wednesday April 3, the first fatalities were recovered, according to the log:
"Croatian President Tudjman announced on television that the plane had crashed on St. John's Mountain and the search and rescue operations had so far found two bodies."
The log notes that another four bodies had been located in the next 25 minutes. The first report of survivors came at 8:58pm:
"Commerce Dept. has heard from Advance Ira Sokowitz in Sarajevo that two individuals have been recovered alive from the crash. No confirmation at this time."
Croatian rescuers reached the site while Tech. Sgt. Kelly was still alive, but U.S. personnel did not arrive for another seven hours, nearly an hour after she expired. Her cause have death has alternately been attributed in published reports to a broken neck and blood loss from a severed leg artery.
Before Judicial Watch released the confidential log to Inside Cover, there had been no suggestion from any official source that Kelly was not the only survivor.
Complicating the question of whether others besides Kelly had survived the crash is this notation, made the next day, Thursday, 1:40pm:
"After the investigation is completed, the bodies will be removed to a temporary morgue at Dubrovnik Airport....There is ongoing concern over discrepancy. The manifest shows 35 names and they only have 33 bodies. It is unclear whether this includes woman removed who died on the way to the hospital."
Even if Sgt. Kelly's remains were left out of the count, adding her name to the list makes only 34. Who was the 35th? And why wasn't this body included among those counted at the crash site?
When Secretary Brown's body arrived at Dover Air Force Base on April 6, it was examined by members of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Navy Chief of Forensic Photography Kathleen Janoski first noticed what she said looked like a bullet hole on top of Brown's skull. Three senior pathologists also observed the gunshot-like wound and recommended that Brown's body be autopsied. All four were overruled by their superiors.
The cause of Brown's head wound has never been determined.
Some have speculated that Brown was shot at the crash site by local looters, who would have had run of the scene for four hours while European and American search and rescue teams looked for plane wreckage at sea. Unholstered weapons were later recovered amidst the crash debris.
Could the missing 35th body have been Ron Brown's?
The Clinton Justice Department refused to open a probe into Brown's death, despite pleas from then-Congressional Black Caucus chairwoman Maxine Waters, NAACP cheif Kweisi Mfume and Rainbow Coalition leader Jesse Jackson.
Brown's daughter Tracey complained in 1998 that the Air Force probe into her father's death was woefully inadequate.
"The investigation into my father's plane crash - the Air Force wrapped up in six weeks," Brown said, after noting that the TWA 800 crash probe remained open two years later. Still, she remains convinced that her father died as a result of injuries sustained when his plane went down.
Ms. Brown's concern about a rushed investigation is borne out by the Commerce Department's secret chronology. At 1:40pm Thursday, the day after the crash, this notation appears:
"Identification will take up to 24 hours. Departure of remains for U.S. forecast at earliest Saturday evening."
But unidentified officials in Washington wanted the bodies of Brown and the others returned ASAP. At 3:25am Saturday the log notes:
"Mark Post called to apprise that Washington now wants a 12:45 pm departure."
Five hours later, the log reports:
"Washington adamant on 5 pm arrival at Dover."
On Wednesday, less than an hour after the report of two survivors, secrecy seems to have become a priority. At 9:40 pm the log reports:
"Poloff Hovenier called to relay strong request from [Deputy Secretary of State] Strobe Talbott that HRT TV team in Dubrovnik not film at crash site. DCM called State Protocol Chief Misetic who said he was already trying to get in touch with the team to stop it."
The log also raises new questions about official denials that Brown's CT-43 plane was equipped with a black box. A notation made at 9:50 am Thursday, buried amidst a host of otherwise mundane scheduling details, suggests otherwise:
"Chief of protocol Misetic called. President Tudjman will chair a GOC commemoration ceremony this evening at 2030. He would like Ambassador Galbraith to join. Expects Prime Minister Matesa to fly back this afternoon. Ambassador could accompany. The flight data recorder has been recovered. Reports from GOC medical personnel at site said that bodies have not been destroyed."
Judicial Watch, a Washington based public interest law firm, is currently the only legal entity investigating Commerce Secretary Brown's role in the Clinton administration's fund-raising scandal and related matters.
from TPDL 1999-Sep-28, from NewsMax 1999-Sep-27, by Carl Limbacher et al.:
State Department Stonewalls New Ron Brown Crash Questions
A State Department spokesperson told Inside Cover on Monday that it would be "a waste of taxpayers' money" to respond to questions raised by a newly uncovered log detailing Clinton administration actions after late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's plane vanished from radar screens on April 3, 1996.
The document, labeled "Confidential, Department of Commerce" and kept secret for more than three years, offers an internal government account of events on the day Brown died that is starkly different from the official government version on a number of key points. (See Documents Reveal Two May Have Survived Initial Impact of Ron Brown Plane Crash.)
Among the most disturbing revelations is a log entry made April 3 at 9:40 pm Croatian time, an hour and twenty minutes after the plane's wreckage was discovered, which shows concern at the highest levels of the Clinton administration about videotaping at the crash site:
"Poloff Hovenier called to relay strong request from [Deputy Secretary of State] Strobe Talbott that HRT TV team in Dubrovnik not film at the crash site. DCM called state protocol chief Misetic who said he was already trying to get in touch with the team to stop it."
The "no video" entry was logged just 42 minutes after Ira Sokowitz, then a Commerce Department official who was in Sarajevo at the time, notified Washington that two passengers "have been recovered alive from the crash." One of those survivors was Tech. Sgt. Shelly Kelly, who later died while being transported to a Dubrovnik hospital.
Sokowitz's report of a second impact survivor became known only when Judicial Watch released the secret Commerce Department log to Inside Cover on Friday. The alleged survivor's identity remains a mystery. It is not known how long he or she may have lived after rescuers reached the crash site.
When asked why Talbott wanted the HRT TV team to stop filming, the State Department spokesperson, who would speak only on background, declined to elaborate on the log entry, suggesting only that it might be understandable if Talbott didn't want "the carnage of dead administration officials" to be filmed.
The spokesperson refused Inside Cover's repeated offers to make the secret Commerce log available for his examination and refused to relay questions about Talbott's "no video" order to Talbott himself.
Instead, the official launched into an attack on Judicial Watch, saying:
"If this [document] was faxed to you by [Judicial Watch Chairman] Larry Klayman, I've got to believe there's something hateful behind it all.... I just think letting Larry Klayman use up another minute of anybody's time in government is just a waste of taxpayers' money. The guy is hateful. That's all there is to it."
from Accuracy In Media, 1999-Mar-5, by Reed Irvine:
A Shocking Analysis of a Deadly Crash
Hugh Sprunt, a lawyer and CPA, with degrees from MIT and Stanford Law School, has an interesting hobby. He uses his analytical skills to investigate investigations. He studies official investigative reports painstakingly to see if the conclusions are supported by the evidence, and he often finds errors, some sloppy and some deliberate, that call the findings into question.
Sprunt has carefully studied the 7,000-page report on the Air Force investigation of the crash that killed Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown. Several things bothered him about the case. Why was the plane eight degrees off course even though it was making a simple instrument approach? Why was Niko Jerkic, the man who was responsible for maintaining the navigational aids at the airport, found shot to death before investigators could question him?
The Air Force investigation concluded that the flight crew disregarded the instructions on their charts. It said that instead of tuning their navigational radio to the beacon designated as CV, which is located 1.9 miles in front of the runway where they were to land, they kept their radio tuned to the beacon they had just passed, KLP, which is located 11.8 miles away.
That was contrary to what both the charts and common sense said they should do. If they tuned to the CV beacon, their radio display would show an arrow pointing directly to the runway. It would also tell them when they reached the missed approach point, the point at which they would have to abort the landing if the ground was not clearly visible.
If they stayed tuned to the KLP beacon, the arrow would be pointing back to it. They could navigate that way, but it would be more complicated and more risky. The Air Force investigators decided they had made that choice. For one thing, that made it easier to explain why they were off course. For another, the cockpit channel selector indicator on the navigational radio was tuned to the KLP beacon. However, the control head was tuned to the CV beacon. It appears that someone changed the channel selector after the crash to make it appear that the accident was caused by the failure of the crew to tune to CV. Perhaps they didn't know that changing the channel selector when there is no electric power doesn't change the control head, but it worked. The Air Force investigators ignored the discrepancy.
The Air Force investigation report includes radar data from an AWACS plane that was tracking the Brown flight. Sprunt's analysis of these data indicates that the crew tuned to the CV beacon. The radar data show that a minute after they passed KLP, when they were only three minutes away from landing, they made a sharp turn to the left followed by a less-sharp right turn, straightening out on a course that took them straight into the mountain 75 seconds later.
Pilots don't make major course adjustments when landing, without good reason. Sprunt suggests that when the crew tuned their receiver to the CV beacon, the arrow on the display showed that they were much farther off course than they expected. They made the two sudden turns to get on what they thought was the correct course.
Sprunt says, "If the signal had been coming from the CV beacon near the airport, the directional arrow in those last 75 seconds would have fairly shouted to the crew that the aircraft was well off course. It crashed 2 miles to the left of the runway. If, as the Air Force claims, the plane's navigational radio had remained tuned to the KLP beacon, any turns necessary to correct its course would have commenced immediately after over-flying the beacon and would have been relatively small."
This means that during those last three minutes, the navigational radio was tuned to a beacon located eight degrees to the left of the runway, at the foot of the mountain, operating on the same frequency as CV. Absent a better explanation, it seems clear that someone lured the plane off course by a portable beacon, turning it on when the pilots radioed that they were approaching KLP and turning off the CV beacon for five minutes.
That would have required the cooperation of Niko Jerkic, who was responsible for maintaining the beacon. He was found shot to death three days after the accident and was never questioned by the investigators. His death was quickly ruled a suicide. The Air Force reported that a beacon had been stolen from the airport sometime before the crash.
The sudden radical changes in the plane's course are not even mentioned in the Air Force investigation report. Maj. Gen. Charles H. Coolidge, who headed the investigation board, claims that his technical experts told him that the sudden turns were anomalies of no significance but he hasn't responded to Hugh Sprunt's request for an explanation of why they are not significant.
from TPDL 1999-Feb-26, from Conservative News Service 1999-Feb-25, by Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid:
Ron Brown's Death Still A Mystery
When the Air Force plane carrying Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown crashed in Croatia in April 1996, rumors immediately circulated that the beacon that was supposed to guide the plane to the airport had been set to guide the plane into the mountain nearby. This was allegedly done by an employee at the arport who was found shot to death three days later. His death was declared a suicide. When it became known that the beacon at the airport had a fixed setting that could not be changed, the story changed. It was said that a portable beacon had been set up on the mountain to lure the plane off course.
At the time, we were skeptical of this story, which was widely circulated by a publication called Wall Street Underground. It seemed to us to be a concoction based on imagination, not on factual evidence. However, thanks to the persistent efforts of Hugh Sprunt, a Texas tax expert and part-time investigator of political crimes, we now have evidence supporting the rumor that the plane carrying Ron Brown was deliberately guided to crash into the mountain.
Hugh Sprunt, who has studied all the investigative reports of the Brown plane crash, has discovered in an official Air Force report on the crash detailed data showing the plane's course based on AWACS airborne radar. The radar shows that when the plane was within four minutes of touching down at Dubrovnik, it suddenly changed course radically. It turned to the left almost 90 degrees. A few seconds later, it made a U turn back to the right. It then fixed on a course with a heading of 110 degrees, which it followed for over a minute, ending with the plane crashing into the mountain, nearly two miles off course.
The Air Force jet, carrying the Secretary of Commerce and 14 business executives who were accompanying Brown on a trade mission, crashed into a mountain, killing all aboard. The pilots, who were making an instrument landing through a low cloud cover and a light rain, obviously thought they were being guided to a safe landing by a beacon at the Dubrovnik airport. But that beacon would have put them on a course with a heading of 119 degrees, 9 degrees farther to the right than the course they followed.
Maj. General Charles Coolidge, who headed the Air Force investigation of the accident, won't explain why his report failed to mention the radical course correction by the plane that sent it into the mountain. He told Hugh Sprunt that his technical advisers said this was an anomaly of no significance, but he has not answered Sprunt's request for an explanation of that judgment.
Maj. General Coolidge knows that when pilots are landing they don't make radical changes in their course without a very good reason. It appears clear that when Brown's plane tuned in to the beacon at Dubrovnik, the instruments told them they were off course and would have to make a quick correction. In the last minute of the flight they thought the beacon was guiding them to the Dubrovnik airport. They didn't know that it was guiding them to their deaths.
from TPDL 1999-Feb-1, from NewsMax 1999-Jan-31:
House Investigators Express Fears
While the mainstream press giggles over "wing nut" concerns about the dozens of Clinton connected folks who have met mysterious untimely ends, House investigators aren't laughing.
At least according to Dick Morris, who revealed a chilling tidbit Saturday night on FOX TV. Matt Drudge asked the former Clinton guru why NBC has suddenly gone wobbly over its blockbuster interview with alleged Clinton rape victim Juanita Broaddrick.
Here's what followed:
DRUDGE: What is the fear factor surrounding (the Broaddrick) case?
MORRIS: When I was called by the House Judiciary Committee just last weekend to testify, or to meet with them, I met with three investigators of the committee. They asked me not to use their names and I won't. But they were each fifty years of age or over. They weren't kids. They had decades of experience working for the IRS, the FBI and all kinds of other investigative organizations. They told me that they were physically afraid of retalliation. They asked me if I would testify....
DRUDGE: The ones questioning you were afraid?
MORRIS: Exactly. They asked me if I would testify and I said, yeah. And they said, "Aren't you afraid of retalliation?" And I said, "What, are they going to expose my sex life?" You know, we've done all that already. And I've taken the trouble not to sin since.
And they said, "No, no - don't you know the list of the twenty five people who have died under mysterious circumstances in connection with this investigation?"
And I said, "Are you guys out of your minds?"
And they said, "No, no." And one of them said, "I guarantee you that each of us will have an IRS audit when this is over." He said, "I'm saving my receipts. I know I'm going to have an audit."
And I said, "How does that work?" And he said, "Well, the head of the IRS and Hillary are very good friends."
DRUDGE: So, let me get this straight. Those even questioning people at this point are afraid?
MORRIS: And we're not talking here about some right wing nuts or some people who are really paranoid. We're talking about guys who have spent twenty or thirty years as top level investigators for the IRS and the FBI, who have retired, and now are on leave and been brought back by the Judiciary Committee. And they specifically asked me not to mention their names on the air.
DRUDGE: Well, we won't.
Morris' answer begs the question: If even House investigators probing Monicagate can be intimidated, then how likely is it that NBC executives are immune from pressure to kill their Broaddrick expose?
Morris began working for Clinton the year before Broaddrick's friends say she was raped. And though he didn't address the assault charge directly with Drudge, the pollster turned pundit does seem to know something.
"It was date rape if it was anything. I mean, (Clinton) didn't jump out of the bushes with a knife," Dick Morris told Hannity and Colmes last year.
from TPDL 1999-Feb-13, from the Los Angeles Times, by Judy Pasternak:
Tripp Says She Feared For Her Life, Cites Threats
Actions Attributed To 'Patriotic Duty'
In her first substantive interviews since the sex-and-lies investigation of President Clinton began, Linda R. Tripp said yesterday she was worried that she might be killed and Monica S. Lewinsky might commit suicide in a world where, in her view, the White House schemed and plotted against the two of them.
While providing no specific details, Tripp accused Lewinsky of having passed along threats -- "to my life . . . to the lives of my children" -- that she presumed came from Clinton. At the same time, she characterized Lewinsky as so hysterical that the former White House intern would not be alive today if Tripp hadn't secretly recorded her friend's confidences and then exposed the presidential affair.
The spokesman for the White House counsel's office, Jim Kennedy, said Tripp's allegation was "such a bizarre accusation that it's ludicrous."
Tripp also claimed Lewinsky is still lying to protect the president.
Lewinsky spokeswoman Judy Smith said her client's immunity agreement with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr prohibits her from talking about the case without approval. But Smith said Tripp's versions of events "are at the top of the list of things that Monica's going to straighten out" when she can comment.
Tripp's statements in an NBC interview and with the New York Times added flavor to earlier disclosures in her testimony before Starr's grand jury and in taped telephone conversations between Tripp and New York literary agent Lucianne Goldberg -- all revealing intense fears of imminent physical harm that jurors, and sometimes even her friends, appeared to discount.
In one transcript of a September 1997 talk with Goldberg, Tripp worries aloud about a sudden invitation to spend the weekend at the Connecticut estate of Norma Asnes, a wealthy acquaintance who also was a friend of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. The offer came soon after the president realized that Tripp would be subpoenaed in Paula Jones's sexual harassment lawsuit against the president.
"You don't think they're going to poison me, do you?" she asked Goldberg, who replied: "Uh, no. They're going to try to co-opt you."
Tripp insisted that given a chance to make choices again, she would repeat her actions, because she was trying to save Lewinsky and to fulfill "my patriotic duty."
The president, Tripp said, "emotionally abused Monica and discarded her." After a year of keeping Lewinsky's secrets, she said, she became appalled to the point where "there was absolutely no doubt in my mind I wanted this behavior exposed."
And she was scared. "Monica made those threats and passed them along to me, I believed, from the president," Tripp said. "I believed I was in jeopardy."
In the end, she said, her effort saved Lewinsky's life.
"Embarrassing, yes. She's alive today. She has a future today. I would not have given you odds on that in December," Tripp said.
Separately, the Associated Press reported:
Tripp's lawyer pulled back from a statement she made in the televised interview that raised questions about the accuracy of testimony Starr gave Congress.
Tripp said she may have told Starr's FBI agents on a crucial day in the investigation of President Clinton that she was preparing to talk to Jones's lawyers.
Tripp's lawyer, Anthony Zaccagnini, later said she never specified to the FBI that she was set to meet with members of the Jones camp. Starr had testified to Congress that his office was unaware of the contact with the Jones lawyers. And Tripp also had testified that she did not inform Starr's office of her impending meeting with the Jones lawyers.
Clinton supporters have suggested that Starr's prosecutors knew that their key witness was funneling to Jones's lawyers information about Clinton and Lewinsky the night before the president's Jan. 17, 1998, deposition in the Jones case.
"Linda maintains that she never advised" Starr's office "of the fact that she was meeting with the Jones attorneys," Zaccagnini said. "She believes that she mentioned to the agent transporting her that day that she was in a hurry because she had to attend an interview. She never told that agent it was an interview with the Jones attorneys."
from http://www.primenet.com/~tevans/newamerican/021996n3.html:
THE NEW AMERICAN -- February 19, 1996
Copyright 1996 -- American Opinion Publishing, Incorporated P.O. Box 8040, Appleton, WI 54913
ARTICLE: Revolution and Terrorism Sidebar
TITLE: Russian Mafia: Organized Crime Is Big Business for the KGB
AUTHOR: William F. Jasper
According to Dr. Walter Zarycky, professor of political science at New York University, the Russian organized crime syndicates in America have brought a new level of sophistication, technical prowess, and ruthlessness to an already fiendishly competent and highly competitive criminal marketplace. "The Russian mafia groups have access to the best facilities and talent for making false documents, unlimited supplies of weapons, the best professional killers, the use of diplomatic and state machinery without parallel, a huge Russian domestic market, and a vast global network," says Zarycky. "They have plugged into our welfare bureaucracy and are terrorizing our ethnic communities of Russians, Ukranians, Georgians, Armenians, and Balts."
We have heard, read, and seen news reports covering this dreadful specter in terrifyingly vivid detail. What has been missing in virtually all of the coverage of this important story in the Western media, however, says Dr. Zarycky, is the most vital information of all: the use of this new global scourge as a strategic weapon by the Russian KGB. Many stories have indeed made note of the fact that "former" members of the KGB are now prominent in the new Organizatsiya, but they have given the impression that the new Russian gangsters are in competition with the "post-communist" governments. Many media accounts, in fact, play on the theme that the mean, nasty mafia thugs are running roughshod over the poor, helpless "reform" government of Boris Yeltsin and his fellow "democrats." And it is in America's national interest, we are told, to help out Boris and Company with an alliance between the FBI and the KGB. That has already been set in motion with the opening of FBI offices in Moscow and other Soviet cities.
Partners in Crime
According to Zarycky and other Russian experts, such evaluations of the Russian gangster phenomenon are deadly delusions. "The Russian mafia and the KGB are allies, not enemies, and in many cases they are one and the same," says Zarycky. "The First Directorate of the KGB couldn't afford -- both because of economics and for appearance sake -- to keep all its agents, so it reorganized and put about half [of its personnel] under the Economics Department. Now they are businessmen and bankers. The best estimates are that 80 percent of the joint ventures with Western businesses are KGB-controlled."
In his new book Le Phenix Rouge (The Red Phoenix), Hans Graf Huyn, the German expert on Soviet deception, provides some details on the extent of the recent transformation: "[T]he Russian mafia has direct control over 40,960 commercial enterprises, among them 449 banks, 37 stock exchanges, 678 markets and 566 joint ventures with Western participation. About 55% of Russian capital is in the hands of 'the mafia.' Approximately 80% of all shares eligible to vote are in the hands of organized crime. Some 693 gangs have in the meantime founded their own 'legal' institutes for laundering money. Some mafia groups operate internationally, especially in Germany, Austria, Israel and the United States. Two-thirds of Soviet state property has been bought by mafia groups or their straw men. When housing space is 'privatized,' the legal occupants are often assassinated."
But Graf Huyn is quick to point out that this new arrangement is not without precedent and direct parallel in Soviet history. Lenin's ruthless Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB, relied in large measure on recruits from the criminal underworld: murderers, robbers, rapists, thieves. "We stand for organized terror," declared Felix Dzerzinski, the first head of the Cheka. That hideous truth did not change with the succession of organizational restructurings and the succession of bloodthirsty archcriminals who followed in Lenin's wake. Soviet Russia and its minion communist states have ever exemplified the ultimate enthronement of criminality.
In the present Russian paradigm, the criminal state has merely -- as a matter of expediency and long-range strategy -- spun off certain expendable features of its raw power into deniable assets which still very effectively serve to keep its victim populace in abject bondage. The former Lithuanian vice president, Algirdas Katkus, apparently understands this fact. Katkus was quoted in Libre Journal of Paris last year as remarking that popular lore has led many in the West to believe that the Russian mafia is in mortal conflict with the KGB, when "in reality it is organized, staffed, and controlled by the KGB."
Likewise, Bernd Schmidbauer, the state secretary in charge of the German intelligence services, in a March 1994 interview in Kapital, stated: "We have realized that members of the former KGB are playing today an important role in the field of organized crime, that structures of the KGB are active in dealing with drugs, arms and white slavery [and that] they are counterfeiting money and dealing with nuclear material."
Excuse for Military Expansion
The spectral menace posed by the Organizatsiya provides the Soviet strategists a number of propitious benefits, not the least of which is a plausible pretext (to the gullible, that is) for an expansion of Soviet military power to combat these forces of mayhem and anarchy. That, in fact, is what is happening. In October 1994, the Frankfurt-based Institute for Soviet Studies released the results of its research into the strength of the Russian armed forces. According to the Institute's report, Russian forces totaled more than 4.8 million men under arms, more than twice as many as the 2.3 million cited by Russian officials and Establishment "experts" in the West. When troops of the other "former" republics of the USSR are factored in, the total strength of the Soviet forces is closer to six million. The director of the Institute, Nikolaij Nor-Mesek, told the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag that "a militarization and build-up is taking place under the cover of crime-fighting and catastrophe response."
Even more important, the global crime threat feeds the unremitting communist drive for world government. Former Russian Interior Minister Viktor Yerin made this conspicuously plain in the June 1995 issue of International Affairs, the official organ of the Russian Foreign Ministry: "Russia fully supports the concrete and substantive steps [by the United Nations] to promote interaction between its members in fighting crime.... Consideration of an international strategy for organized crime control is a logical continuation of the work started at the UN to fight organized transnational crime." Comrade Yerin welcomed the UN's "Global Plan of Action on Organized Transnational Crime," which he proclaimed "should form the basis of an International Strategy for Organized Crime Control whose elements could be formulated in greater detail by the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. Russia is ready to take the most active part in this work." Of that you can be certain.
Concerning Yerin's proposal, Christopher Story, editor of the authoritative London-based Soviet Analyst, wrote: "Thus the 'problem' of transnational crime and global terrorism is being 'addressed' ever more intensively, as Governments respond to the perceived 'need' for international cooperation in this area and even as the 'former' Soviet Bloc states with which the West is seeking to cooperate ever more anxiously, intensify their global criminal operations. In all probability, many high-profile 'international' terrorist incidents, culminating in a 'nuclear accident,' are planned. Urged on by agents in the West and the United Nations, Western Governments are being 'softened up' for 'global solutions' to this 'international crime' epidemic." (Emphasis in original.)
Story noted that "in the tradition of classical Hegelian dialectical engineering, the 'problem' itself is being created by the evil power with which the West is most anxious to cooperate. Naturally, since it has created the problem in accordance with its Leninist tradition and remit, that power seeks to dictate the outcome -- a system of 'global justice' which must be established, not to address the overt 'global crime epidemic,' but to advance the covert aim of World (Communist) Dictatorship and its need for a supranational legal system." (Emphasis in original.)
This article explores a web of connections between Bill Clinton, Peter King, Jack Quinn, the AFL-CIO, the IRA, and the Khartoum cruise missile attack.
from TPDL 1998-Dec-5, from Silicon Valley Logic:
Anti-Impeachment Republican Gurus Peter King and Jack Quinn
Pigged Out with "Buddy" Clinton at White House
Super Bowl Pizza Party!
December 5 - In an attempt to learn more about why Republican Peter King (R-NY) is pushing a censure resolution so aggressively in the face of impeachment proceedings, SVL checked up on the history of relations between King and President Clinton.
King was elected in 1992, the same year as Clinton. The close relationship between King and Clinton began in the fall of 1996, as King became a White House darling for his heavy criticism of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. For his efforts to get Gingrich ousted, King won a trip to a White House Super Bowl pizza party, and he was joined by a cadre of Democrats, as well as fellow Republican impeachment-nixer Jack Quinn (R-NY).
Why does Clinton take the time to pig out with King and Quinn? Well, for one thing, they share bedfellows. King and Quinn are two of only ten Republicans nationwide to receive Congressional endorsements from the AFL-CIO, who Clinton also owes big-time for his re-election in 1996. (Democrats received the other 425 Congressional endorsements from the labor union, along with over $50 million in campaign contributions.) King has also earned brownie points with the President by attacking Clinton's attackers; King has talked trash about the "moral fervor" of the Christian Coalition on several national news shows.
King and Clinton see eye to eye on the Irish Republican Army (IRA) which neither see as a terrorist organization despite its atrocious, bloody history. King is an admitted supporter of the IRA, but curiously, he recently chastised the magazine National Review for "allowing itself to be sullied by the writings of admitted murderer Sean O'Callaghan," a former member of the IRA. King also has supported giving his longtime friend, Irishman Gerry Adams, the Nobel Peace Prize, a bauble that Clinton reportedly also covets. Largely based on requests from King, Clinton invited Adams, an admitted IRA terrorist, to the United States to discuss the Irish-British conflict.
King was the most vocal Republican in the House in support of Clinton's raid on "terrorist" sites in Africa and Asia in August, the day after Monica Lewinsky's testimony exploded across the nation's newspapers. Within hours of the strikes, King was the only Republican prepared to give interviews to CNN supporting the President's decision to attack.
King has done his best to highlight the "human" aspect of Clinton's misdeeds while minimizing the legal implications. While his fellowing Republicans were preparing to investigate perjury and obstruction of justice, King was quoted in Newsweek as saying, "It's painful to see the leader of the free world go through a perpetual 12-step program."
Likewise, King was the first and only Republican to adopt the White House spin regarding impeachment, over a month before the November election:
"If the elections [are] stalemate that will be a signal from the American people not to do impeachment, but to do something."
King supports many middle-of-the-road propositions that Clinton doesn't, like the end of the marriage tax penalty, but it is curious that he and Quinn, Clinton's two Super Bowl pizza buddies, would be the men standing the tallest between Clinton and impeachment. Having a defender from across the aisle may be exactly what Bill Clinton had in mind as he cultivated a long-term friendship with the moderate Republican, Peter King.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WorldNetDaily Exclusive - September 24, 1998
The Clinton 'body count'
New alarm over growing list of dead close to president
By Michael Rivero
Copyright 1998, WorldNetDaily.com
"Dear Sir," began Monica Lewinsky's somewhat peevish letter of July 3rd, 1997. In it, according to the recently released report by Kenneth Starr, the former intern chided the president for failing to secure for her a new White House job, and hinted that continued stalling would result in word of their affair leaking out.
The next day, Monica confronted Bill Clinton in an Oval Office meeting she described as "very emotional"; a meeting which ended when the president warned her, "It's illegal to threaten the president of the United States."
Three days later, another former White House intern, Mary Mahoney, was shot five times in the back of the Georgetown Starbuck's she managed. Two of her co-workers were also killed. Even though cash remained in the register, the triple murder was quickly dismissed as a botched robbery. No suspects have ever been arrested.
Coincidence? Maybe.
Former Democratic National Committee fundraiser and Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was under criminal investigation. Indictments seemed imminent. Ron Brown had reportedly told a confidante that he would, "not go down alone." Days later, his plane crashed on approach to Dubrovnik airport during a trade mission excursion to Croatia. Military forensics investigators were alarmed by what appeared to be a .45-caliber bullet hole in the top of Brown's head.
Coincidence? Maybe.
Yet another fundraiser was Larry Lawrence, famed for his short residence at Arlington National Cemetery. Less well known is that he had been under criminal investigation by the State Department for three weeks when he died.
Coincidence? Maybe.
But for a growing number of Americans, the sheer numbers of strange deaths surrounding the career of Bill Clinton has begun to raise serious questions. In a meeting with Vernon Jordan, Monica Lewinsky reportedly expressed fears that she might, "end up like Mary Mahoney," and began to make sure that others knew of her affair with Bill Clinton.
Of all the strange deaths surrounding the Clintons, none has come under more renewed scrutiny than the fate of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster, who was found dead in Fort Marcy Park on July 20, 1993. The official investigation concluded that Foster inserted a gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Yet according to the lab results neither Foster's fingerprints nor blood was on the gun, nor were powder granules or bullet fragments traceable to that gun in his wounds. The purported "suicide note" was found to be a forgery by three independent experts. The record of a second wound on Foster's neck, and an FBI memo that contradicts the official autopsy, strongly suggests that Foster's wounds were misrepresented in the official report. The FBI's own records revealed that deliberate deception was used to link Foster with the gun found with his body. Partly on the basis of that evidence, the FBI is now in federal court on charges of witness harassment and evidence tampering in the case.
In normal police procedure, homicide is assumed right from the start. Suicide must be proven, because homicides are often concealed behind phony suicides. Yet in the case of Foster, serious doubts persist regarding the credibility of the evidence offered up in support of the claim of suicide, and a recent Zogby Poll revealed that more than two-thirds of all Americans no longer think the official conclusion of suicide is believable
The official conclusion regarding Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's death was that his plane was brought down by, "the worst storm in a decade." However, the Dubrovnik airport weather office, just two miles from the crash site, could not confirm the existence of any such storm, nor did any other pilots in the area. According to the April 8, 1996, Aviation Week & Space Technology, three separate radio links to the aircraft all quit while the aircraft was still seven miles from the crash, evidence that the plane suffered a total electrical failure in flight which was never investigated. The perfectly cylindrical hole in Ron Brown's skull never triggered an autopsy. After Ron Brown's death, his co-worker, Barbara Wise, was found locked in her office at the Department of Commerce, dead, bruised, and partially nude. Following Brown's death, John Huang's new boss at Commerce was Charles Meissner, who shortly thereafter died in yet another plane crash.
These and other questionable deaths have been collected together in a document known as the "Dead Bodies List," which can now be found in many locations on the World Wide Web. Some of the cases are poorly documented and have been dismissed until now as "conspiracy theory." However, analysis of the "Dead Bodies List" by experts on the Internet revealed that in many cases, deaths whose circumstances demanded an investigation had been ignored.
Some events officially declared to be accidents seem to stretch the bounds of credulity. In one case, Stanley Heard, member of a Clinton advisory committee and chiropractor to Clinton family members, and his lawyer Steve Dickson were flying to a meeting with a reporter. Heard's private plane caught fire, but he was able to make it back to his airport and rent another plane to continue his journey. The rented plane then caught fire. This time, Heard did not make it back to the airport. Gandy Baugh, attorney for Clinton friend and convicted cocaine distributor Dan Lasater, fell out of a building. Baugh's law partner was dead just one month later. Jon Parnell Walker, an RTC investigator looking into Whitewater, interrupted his inspection of his new apartment to throw himself off of the balcony.
Nor does the pattern of suspicious deaths discriminate by gender. Susan Coleman was reportedly a mistress to Clinton while he was Arkansas attorney general; she was seven months pregnant with what she claimed was Clinton's child when she died. Judy Gibbs, a former Penthouse Pet and call girl, reportedly counted Bill Clinton among her clients. Shortly after agreeing to help police in an investigation into Arkansas cocaine trafficking, Judy burned to death. Kathy Ferguson, a witness in the Paula Jones case, was killed with a gunshot behind the ear and was declared a suicide, even though her suitcases had all been packed for an immediate trip. One month later, Bill Shelton, Kathy's boyfriend and a police officer who had vowed to get to the bottom of Kathy's murder, was also dead of a gunshot, his body dumped on Kathy's grave.
Another alarming trend observed in these deaths is how society's safeguards against murder appear to have been compromised. Many of the questionable deaths involved either negligence or the complicity of medical examiners.
Dr. Fahmy Malek was the Arkansas medical examiner under then-Gov. Bill Clinton. His most famous case involved his ruling in the "Train Deaths" case of Don Henry and Kevin Ives in which Dr. Malek ruled that the two boys had fallen asleep on the railroad tracks and been run over by a train. A subsequent autopsy by another examiner found signs of foul play on both the boys' bodies and concluded that they had been murdered. According to Jean Duffey, the prosecutor in the Saline County Drug Task Force, the two boys accidentally stumbled onto a "protected" drug drop and were killed for it. Dan Harmon, the Arkansas investigator who concluded there was no murder, is now in prison on drug charges. Despite the evidence for murder and national exposure, the Henry/Ives case has never officially been re-opened, and Jean Duffy has since left Arkansas out of fear for her life. Several witnesses in the Henry/Ives case later died and were ruled as either suicides or natural causes by Dr. Malek, whose willingness to provide an innocuous explanation for these deaths is illustrated in one case where he claimed that a headless victim had died of natural causes. Malek claimed that the victim's small dog had eaten the head, which was later recovered from a trash bin. When pressed to fire Dr. Malek, Gov. Clinton excused the medical examiner's performance as the result of overwork and gave him a raise.
Dr. Malek's Washington D.C. counterpart was Fairfax, Virginia, Medical Examiner James C. Beyer. Long before his autopsy on Vincent Foster, Beyer's work was disputed. In the case of Tim Easely, Beyer ignored obvious defensive wounds, and eyewitness reports of an argument between Easely and his girlfriend, to conclude that Easely had committed suicide by stabbing himself in the chest. When an outside expert called attention to the fact that Easely had been stabbed clear through one of his palms, the girlfriend confessed to the murder. In the case of Tommy Burkett, Beyer ignored signs of violence done to Burkett to rule it was a simple suicide. A subsequent autopsy showed that Beyer had not even done the work he claimed in his original autopsy. Even though Beyer showed X-rays to Burkett's father, Beyer later claimed they did not exist. When Beyer performed the Foster autopsy, he wrote in his report that X-rays had been taken, then again claimed they never existed when asked to produce them.
In some cases, the deaths simply have no innocuous explanation, One witness, Jeff Rhodes (who had information on the Henry/Ives murders) was found with his hands and feet partly sawn off, shot in the head, then burned and thrown in a trash bin. Another obvious murder was Jerry Parks, Clinton's head of security in Little Rock. Immediately following news of Foster's death, Parks reportedly told his family, "Bill Clinton is cleaning house." Just weeks after the Parks' home had been broken into and his files on Clinton stolen, Parks was shot four times in his car.
Ron Miller, on whose evidence Nora and Gene Lum were convicted of laundering Clinton campaign donations, went from perfect heath to death in just one week in a manner so strange that his doctors ordered special postmortem tests. The results of those tests have never been released, but toxicologists familiar with the case suggest that Miller's symptoms are consistent with Ricin, a cold war assassin's poison.
For a fortunate few the murder attempts have failed. In the case of Arkansas drug investigator Russell Welch, his doctors were able to identify that he had been infected with military anthrax in time to save his life. Gary Johnson, Gennifer Flowers' neighbor whose video surveillance camera had accidentally caught Bill Clinton entering Flowers' apartment, was left for dead by the men who took the video tape. Gary survived, although he is crippled for life. L.J. Davis, a reporter looking into the Clinton scandals, was attacked in his hotel room but survived (his notes on Clinton were stolen). Dennis Patrick, whose bond trading account at Dan Lasater's company was used to launder millions of dollars of drug money, has had four attempts on his life.
But the real importance of the "Dead Bodies List" isn't what it tells us of modern political intrigues, but what it tells us of ourselves, in how we respond to it. The list has been around for quite some time, largely ignored by the general public, completely ignored by the mainstream media. The common reaction has been that such a list is unbelievable, not for its contents, but for its implications. For that reason, most Americans have, until recently, accepted at face value the official assurances that all these deaths are isolated incidents with no real meaning; that all the indications of foul play and cover-up are just an accumulation of clerical error and "overwork"; that it's all just "coincidence."
On Aug. 17, as Bill Clinton admitted his "inappropriate relationship" with Monica Lewinsky on nationwide television, Americans began to confront the unavoidable fact that this president and his administration had lied to the public about a rather trivial matter. Americans came to realize that this president and his administration could no longer safely be assumed to have told the truth on more serious matters.
In this new climate of doubt, the "Dead Bodies List" has enjoyed a new vogue, albeit a dark one. Talk radio discusses it. Total strangers e-mail it to each other. What was unthinkable a few months ago has become all too plausible. Political murder has come to America. Those cases on the "Dead Bodies List" where hard evidence directly contradicts the official conclusion have come under renewed scrutiny.
It takes courage for the average citizen to accept that the government has lied to them, for by doing so, the citizen also accepts the obligation to do something about it. Americans know beyond a doubt that they have been lied to. Americans are discovering that they cannot ignore the fact of being lied to without sacrificing that part of the American self-image that holds honor and justice as ideals. But as the above poll would suggest, such a sacrifice is no longer acceptable.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I received the following from the father of Tommy Burkett and am posting it verbaim:
My son, Tommy Burkett, was murdered in 1991, during the presidency of George Bush. On September 24 you recently sent out an article Michael Rivero wrote for WorldNetDaily titled "Clinton's Body Count." That article includes incorrect information regarding Tommy's case, and Tommy's father and I hope you will send out a correction. Rivero writes the following in an effort to compare the coverup of Tommy's murder to the Vince Foster case:
"in the case of Tommy Burkett, Beyer ignored signs of violence done to Burkett to rule it was a simple suicide. A subsequent autopsy showed that Beyer had not even done the work he claimed in his original autopsy. Even though Beyer showed X-rays to Burkett's father, Beyer later claimed they did not exist. When Beyer performed the Foster autopsy, he wrote in his report that X-rays had been taken, then again claimed they never existed..." (M Rivero)
The truth is that Dr. Beyer, according to his report, DID NOT take X-rays of Tommy's body, although he should have. He took many photos, which Tom Burkett (Tommy's father) saw and asked questions about. Beyer's written report was extremely sketchy and he told Tom he did not write down all of Tommy's injuries,but he had taken photos to document them. Then he showed Tom several photos of Tommy's nude body lying on a steel lab table or gurney. The injuries were evident. When our attorney accompanied Tom to Dr. Beyer's office for a second visit, Beyer would not let the attorney see the photos, claiming they were "police" photos, although both the attorney and Tom glimpsed them lying in the drawer when Beyer opened it. When we wrote and asked for the photos, and Tom made additional visits asking for copies, Beyer would say only "They're not in the drawer." Later, after we involved Dr. David Weiking, Chief ME for the state of Virginia, Beyer claimed to have only two photos (identical blurred shots, very close up of Tommy's face, washed, and with mouth held closed). Beyer then insisted he never took any other photos, never had any others and never showed Tom any others. His report indicates "photos taken". Dr. Weiking said everything was fine. At the second autopsy, which was performed by a different doctor following an exhumation of Tommy's body, dozens of photos were taken, as well as X-rays. The X-rays show multiple fractures, including a "through and through" fracture of the lower jaw at the midline, which Beyer did not indicate anywhere in his report. That broken lower jaw and the bludgeoned right ear were the first things we noticed when we found our son's body. We were astounded that Beyer did not list them, along with multiple abrasions, cuts and other injuries that were obvious. We have one thing we wish to say very clearly about Dr. James Beyer: he is a liar. And Beyer's accomplice, Dr. Weiking, who could have used his voice and position to do the right thing and get justice for Tommy, can no longer speak (stroke). Both Beyer and Weiking acted as stooges for the authorities in Tommy's case.
We hope you will send out this correction to your readers, for the sake of accuracy. Beyer's failure to preserve photos from the autopsy in Tommy's case is much worse than what he did in the Foster case. Regarding Dr. Donald Haut, the local ME who handled both Tommy Burkett's case and Vince Foster's case: In the Foster case, Dr. Haut DID perform his official duties: Haut went to the scene at Fort Marcy Park, did a lengthy examination of the grounds, viewed Foster's body and signed the ME report. In the case of Tommy Burkett, Dr. Haut did not come to the crimescene in our home at Muirkirk Lane in Fairfax County, VA, never viewed Tommy's body, and did not even sign the ME report, an official state document. Haut's name is forged on that report declaring cause and manner of death, and which was completed and dated the day BEFORE Beyer's bogus autopsy was even done.
We wish to remind your readers again that Tommy was murdered, and the coverup by Dr. Beyer and Dr. Weiking occurred, while George Bush was President. The school Tommy attended, (Marymount University just outside Washington DC in Arlington VA) also actively covered up much information related to Tommy's case, with the help of Marymount's Board of Trustees, which included Marlene Malak, wife of Fred Malak, aide to President George Bush.
Beth and Tom
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tommy had things he wanted to do.
Tom Burkett & Beth George
(703) 435-3112 (Voice/Fax)
http://www.clark.net/pub/tburkett/pacc/PACC.html
from TPDL 1999-Jan-12, from WorldNetDaily, by Joseph Farah:
Another very suspicious 'Arkancide'
An Arkansas medical examiner has once again concluded "suicide" in a case where common sense might determine otherwise.
On Nov. 17, Charles Wilbourne Miller, 63, was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in a shallow pit about 300 yards from his ranch house near Little Rock.
Police found a .410 gauge shotgun near Miller's body and a Ruger .357-caliber revolver submerged in water. Investigators concluded the Ruger was the weapon used by Miller to kill himself. Yet, two rounds in the handgun's cylinder had been spent.
Only in Arkansas does a suicide victim use two shots -- not to mention two weapons -- to kill himself.
Worse yet, Miller was no ordinary citizen of Arkansas. He had long served as executive vice president and member of the board of directors for a company called Alltel and was deeply involved in his own software engineering company until the day he died. Alltel is the successor to Jackson Stephens' Systematics, the company that provided the software for the White House's "Big Brother" data base system and that was behind the administration's plan to develop the secret computer "Clipper" chip to bug every phone, fax and email transmission in America.
There has been at least one other high-profile "suicide" among the inner circle involved with this secretive project -- Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, who, we now know attended critical National Security Agencyl planning meetings on the Clipper chip project, along with then-Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell, Attorney General Janet Reno and then-White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum.
Just last week, WorldNetDaily columnist Charles Smith revealed that a newly de-classified FBI document confirmed that Reno personally appointed Hubbell as the Justice Department's liaison to the computer chip project.
The document, a 1993 letter from FBI Director William Sessions to Reno, was obtained by Smith under the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI letter to Reno stated: "During the June 30, 1993, meeting with the National Security Council staff to discuss the status of the Presidential Decision and Review Directives concerning key-escrow encryption technology and telecommunications trends, which was attended by Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell, the issue of a recommended solution to the law enforcement access problem, or the digital telephony issue, was discussed."
The existence of the White House computer system and data base -- known as WHODB, White House Office Data Base, and containing as many as 200,000 names -- was revealed by Paul Rodriguez in the Washington Times.
NSA worked with Systematics, half-owned by billionaire Jackson Stephens, a major contributor to Bill Clinton's political campaigns dating back to his Arkansas days and a close associate of Mochtar and James Riady, the Indonesian billionaires and suspected Chinese government agents.
It was Stephens' effort to get Systematics the job of handling the data processing for the Washington, D.C., First American Bank that led to the BCCI takeover of the institution. Hillary Clinton and Foster represented Systematics in that endeavor. Later Foster became an overseer of NSA's relationship with Systematics. And later still, he got dead. No matter what Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr says, his death has never been explained adequately as a suicide.
Foster's deep connections to the Whitewater scandal, the Travelgate scandal, the Filegate scandal and this spying scandal have never been examined by any of the official probes into his death.
Hoe big and how sensitive was Clipper chip project? According to a 1996 report to Vice President Al Gore by former CIA Director John Deutch, Reno proposed an all-out federal takeover of the computer industry. The Justice Department, proposed "legislation that would ... ban the import and domestic manufacture, sale or distribution of encryption that does not have key recovery," Smith found
Prime targets for monitoring would be foreign governments, banks, corporations, and individuals opposing the Clinton administration. The keys were to be held by "key recovery agents" licensed by the Commerce Department. Key recovery is a government back-door system designed to secretly monitor computers.
Mention all this to most people in the United States and you will be labeled a "conspiracy theorist." But one thing is clear from the government documents now available to the American people: There was a broad conspiracy to at the highest levels of government to profit from a policy inimical to freedom, national security and civil liberties.
Whether the death of Charles Miller has anything to do with that plan or not, his strange and mysterious demise -- like so many others in Arkansas and Washington in the last six years -- bears more scrutiny than it is receiving.
from TPDL 1999-Jan-4, from NewsMax:
Brown Witness Hospitalized
Inside Cover is glad to report the New Year brings some good news.
Kathleen Janoski, a chief petty officer in the United States Navy, was released from Bethesda Naval Hospital on New Year's Day after undergoing emergency surgery earlier this week.
Janoski is a central figure in the controversy involving Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. As head of the forensic photography unit of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, she discovered what appeared to be a bullet hole to Brown's head as it was being examined in Dover Air Force Base in April of 1996.
Janoski also photographed the wound and head X-rays that suggested Brown may have been shot.
The original X-rays later disappeared, and Janoski's testimony has remained the smoking gun of the case. She claims that Brown was likely not re-X-rayed, as the military has claimed (producing new X-rays they claim that do not show bullet fragments). She also alleges that the senior law enforcement officer present at Dover, Jean Marie Sentell, told her Brown's head X-rays were purposefully destroyed by the military to hide evidence of a bullet.
Shortly before Christmas Janoski developed a strange cough. After being short of breath, she visited the hospital to learn her that one of her lungs had collapsed. After treatment and an inflatement of the lung, she had a serious relapse over the Christmas weekend. During surgery, doctors found a blistered area of the lung, and were perplexed by the cause.
Janoski has been in good health, and has no history of smoking.
Janoski plans on retiring from the service within the next month.
from TPDL 1998-Oct-12, from NEWSMAX, by Carl Limbacher:
Clinton-Connected Bribes, Break-ins, Beatings, Death Threats
Reportedly, Ken Starr is investigating Kathleen Willey's allegation that her property was vandalized and her children threatened just before she appeared before Starr's Monicagate grand jury.
But if Henry Hyde waits for the methodical Starr to complete his work on the Willey allegation, Bill Clinton could be pensioner back home in Little Rock before Congress gets a referral. Hyde need not depend on Starr when the list of witnesses with published accounts of scandal-connected threats, break-ins, beatings, and bribe attempts is as long as his arm.
Here are just a few of them:
Americans know about Gennifer Flowers' 12-year affair with President Clinton. But they aren't familiar with what Flowers says happened to her just before she went public with her story.
"I was getting threats. I had some saying I was going to be beaten up. I had some saying that I would be killed," Flowers told a New York radio audience in July 1997.
Flowers even fingered Clinton himself, whom she believes ordered agents to search her apartment for any evidence that could expose their relationship. Though portrayed by the media as a gold digger, Flowers' real reason for tape-recording her lover and then going public was self-preservation.
"Some very scary things were going on," she said. "... I made those tapes for my own protection."
Sally Perdue alleged only a brief affair with Clinton in 1983 but ran into similar trouble when Clinton embarked on his quest for national office nine years later.
She told the London Telegraph in 1994 that a Democratic operative had approached her, offered a bribe, and told Perdue that he "couldn't guarantee the safety of her pretty little legs" if she didn't cooperate. His name, according to Perdue, was Ron Tucker.
Afterwards, Perdue's car window was mysteriously broken. A spent shotgun shell was found on the car seat.
Loren Kirk had merely once shared an apartment with Gennifer Flowers, but that was enough for her to be chased down. San Francisco private eye Jack Palladino -- referred to as a "knee buster" by one Republican personally familiar with his 1992 work -- paid Kirk a visit that summer. And according to the American Spectator in April 1994, Palladino posed a chilling question to her.
"Is Gennifer Flowers the sort of person who would commit suicide?" the enforcer wanted to know.
Palladino was paid over $100,000 for his work as an alleged bimbo silencer. Dick Morris has questioned whether Palladino was paid from federal funds, which he rightly says would be a devastating development if proved.
Morris, who's spent the last few months warning about the "Clinton secret police," is apparently unaware that the Clinton watchdog group Citizens United published a copy of the pertinent page from the Clinton campaign's 1992 Federal Election Commission disbursement report. It suggests that at least $17,000 worth of Palladino's expenses were paid with campaign monies that had federal matching funds mixed in.
Another Flowers-related victim would be her Quapaw Towers neighbor, Gary Johnson, who says his videotape of Clinton standing outside her door was stolen by thugs who beat him to a pulp and left him for dead.
America could learn a thing or two from Johnson's testimony, and Hyde might supplement it with a deposition from writer L.J. Davis, who claims he was knocked unconscious in his hotel room while researching a report for the New Republic on Hillary Clinton's Rose Law Firm.
Former Miss America Elizabeth Ward Gracen has recounted in two recent interviews the incredible pressure brought to bear to win her silence about her own 1982 one night stand with Clinton. Her digs were also broken into in an apparent attempt to round up damaging evidence before it fell into the hands of Paula Jones' lawyers.
Arkansas state Trooper L.D. Brown claims he was approached in London last year by Clinton operatives who offered him $100,000 to change his Whitewater testimony. Trooper Danny Ferguson alleged in late 1993 that the president himself called and offered a federal job for his silence about the women he procured for Clinton, one of whom was Paula Jones.
The press was compelled to pick up the original "Troopergate" reports, broken first in the Los Angeles Times and the American Spectator, largely because of Ferguson's bribery charge. Both USA Today and the American Lawyer have reported that friends of Ferguson strongly suspect that he has the Clinton bribery call on tape.
Is anyone in the main press interested in all this? Not so far. But unless Henry Hyde wants to see his hearings degenerate into a squabble about the relevance of perjury about sex, he'd better get interested. For instance, how about a subpoena for Danny Ferguson and the Clinton tape his friends believe he has?
Partisans can argue till the cows come home about whether lies about sex are impeachable. But a similar debate about Clinton-connected bribery, blackmail, and beatings should be rather short.
from TPDL 1998-Nov-15, from The Journal of Scientific Sleuthing, by Professor James E. Starrs, Nov-14:
A Failure to Autopsy Perpetuates a Homicide Theory
A fate worse than death! Can there be such a thing? Is the death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown on April 3, 1996 while on a trade mission to Croatia illustrative of his having avoided a fate worse than death?
Brown was Under Investigation
At the time of Secretary Brown's death while a passenger in an Air Force Boeing 737 which crashed into a mountainside while attempting to land at Croatia's Dubrovnik airport he was under intense investigation by independent counsel Daniel Pearson. Brown had been targeted by the probe on evidence that he had taken money improperly or even illegally just before he took the post of Secretary of Commerce.
There was also more than a suggestion that DNC fund-raising had wormed its way into the decision-making at the Commerce Department, courtesy of Secretary Brown. Subpoenas were flying in the probe, with the names of Brown and his son Michael listed among those scheduled to receive such subpoenas, even as Brown's plane soared toward Croatia.
With Death Came a Termination
But Brown's death brought a close to the investigation of any financial finagling or perfidy by him. Indeed just six hours after Brown's death Pearson, without ado or fanfare, terminated his probe of Brown.
Out of this rich and fertile pasturage, suggestive of things more foul than fair, have burst Brobdingnagian rumblings on the death of Secretary Brown.
Might the results of the aborted Pearson's probe and that of Judicial Watch, a private conservative group, into Brown's alleged insider-trading shenanigans have caused Brown a fate worse than his death? Did his death save him and the others with or for whom he trafficked in fund-raising affairs from the public obloquy that might have been theirs if all that could be told of his financial dealings was told?
Could the potential of such public and professional scorn have been a motive for him to commit suicide for fear of a fate worse than death? Or could it even have moved others to assassinate him to insure that their fate would not be worse than Brown's death?
More Grist for the Conspiracy Mill
Other circumstances can be read as indicative of foul play in the death of Brown. Why was it initially reported that "the worst storm in a decade was raging" when Brown's plane sought to land when, in fact, an Air Force investigation concluded "the weather was not a substantially contributing factor to this mishap?" In the minutes before Brown's plane crashed, five other planes landed without difficulty at the same airport. Brown's plane was piloted by seasoned pilots with many hours of flying time in such an aircraft.
Could it be that the Brown plane was misled by ground navigational aids? If so we may never know for the airport maintenance chief at the Croatian airport died from gunshot wounds just three days later. Officials have said his death was a suicide.
The Air Force's investigative report reveals that a backup portable navigation beacon at the airport had been stolen before the crash and never recovered. Could the Brown plane have been "spoofed" - which is aviation vernacular for using a spurious navigational aid to trick a pilot to change course?
These are the sinister intimations, some might say the maunderings, of those who view the death of Secretary Brown as being sufficiently suspicious to warrant a thorough investigation of its cause, particularly in light of the nettlesome scientific evidence.
A Melee of Scientific Intrigue
The scientific investigation began on the gurney at Dover Air Force base where Secretary Brown's body lay some four days after his death in Croatia. As Chief Petty Officer Kathleen Janoski, then a photographer for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and a member of the United States Navy for twenty-two years, tells it she looked at Ron Brown's skull and exclaimed "Look at the hole in Ron Brown's head. It looks like a gunshot wound." Janoski's off-hand assertion caused all heads to turn to Brown's body.
Among those who hastened to view the wound was United States Army Lt. Colonel David Hause, a deputy medical examiner with the A.F.I.P. Hause agreed with Janoski that the head wound appeared to be a gunshot wound and added that it "looked like a punched-out .45-caliber entrance hole." But the A.F.I.P.'s Colonel William Gormley, the pathologist who was examining Brown's body did not concur with the Janoski-Hause evaluation.
Gormley did not see the wound as having penetrated the skull. For that and other reasons it could not be a wound from a bullet, in his estimation. As a consequence Gormley did not perform an autopsy on Brown's body, save for an external examination of it, which was not informative on the possibility of a bullet wound to Brown's skull. Gormley's decision has caused the manner of Brown's death to hit the conspiracy fan in such a way that sparks are spurting in all directions.
Hause's gurney-side opinion has been seconded by Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Cogswell who reviewed the records as well as the photographs and X-rays of Brown's body. It was his opinion that "Brown had a .45-inch inwardly beveling circular hole in the top of his head, which is the description of a .45-caliber gunshot wound."
Col. Gormley, however, has remained convinced and adamant that Brown's head wound was accidentally inflicted and not by a bullet. He reviewed the skull X-rays (see adjoining page) and saw no evidence of an exit wound or a bullet or fragments from a bullet. Gormley emphasized that, in his view, the circular hole "didn't go all the way through the skull." The "punched out" bone plug had simply been depressed into the skull, and was evident, to Gormley for one, as covering the brain. To Gormley the skull hole was most likely to have been caused by a rivet or other fastener in the downed plane and not a bullet.
Joining A.F.I.P.'s Hause and Cogswell in dissent from Gormley's opinion was Air Force Major Thomas Parsons, another A.F.I.P. pathologist. But in January 1998 the Justice Department and Attorney General Reno announced that they found no "credible evidence" of homicide in Brown's death. But that affirmation has not made the issue disappear.
All those who have espoused the possibility of homicide in Brown's demise have been silenced by the military in one way or another. Chief Petty Officer Janoski, the prime whistle blower, has further fueled a conspiracy flame by pointing to the fact that the X-rays of Brown's skull have vanished. Other body X-rays are still in existence but the whereabouts of the skull X-rays as they were displayed (for the last time?) in the light box at Dover Air Force base is not known. Her photographs of the X-rays appear on the opposite page.
As sure as shooting, the death of Secretary Brown will continue to fester in the minds of both those who demand answers and those to whom answers will never be satisfactory. Declaring a brownout on those at the A.F.I.P. whose opinions are deemed insubordinate will only propel the matter to a more frenzied height of conspiratorial complexity. The forced closing of mouths has a nasty propensity to foment legitimate skepticism among those who are informed of it. It may also be a fate worse than death in a democratic society.
from Pittsburgh Tribune Review 1994-Nov-4, by Christopher Ruddy:
Ruling Doubted in Suicide with Ties to Paula Jones Case
Several co-workers of a deceased woman with apparent links to the Paula Jones case have serious doubts as to the accuracy of an official coroner's report concluding that she committed suicide. Jones is the former Arkansas state employee who is suing President Clinton on charges he sexually harassed her.
The deceased woman, Kathy Ferguson, 38, was the ex-wife of an Arkansas state trooper, Danny Ferguson, who is a co-defendant in Jones' suit. Jones alleges that it was Tpr. Ferguson who asked her to meet Clinton at a hotel room; and that it was he who stood guard at the door as Clinton made sexual advances toward her.
Last May in Sherwood, Ark., Kathy Ferguson was found dead of a gunshot wound in the apartment of her boyfriend - who himself, in a bizarre twist of an already strange case, was to die shortly thereafter. Police ruled Ferguson's death a "suicide.'' But interviews with six hospital colleagues indicate that Arkansas officials seem to have overlooked critical information relating to her wounds.
Police say that Ferguson, despondent over a breakup with the boyfriend, Bill Shelton, shot herself while sitting on Shelton's couch. They say Ferguson's clothing was found packed in shopping bags. According to police reports, Ferguson was found in a sitting position on the couch, slumped slightly to the right. A gun, said to be Shelton's, was found on the floor directly below her right hand, which rested at her side on the edge of a cushion.
Just over a month after her death, Shelton, 31, a Sherwood police officer, was found dead of a gunshot wound behind the right ear, with his body sprawled across Ferguson's grave. The police say that he, too, committed suicide. Ferguson's suspicious death, occurring just four days after Jones filed her lawsuit against President Clinton on May 6, has been the source of much speculation in Arkansas, as well as on the national talk radio circuit.
But at Little Rock's Baptist Memorial Medical Center, where Kathy Ferguson worked as a unit secretary, there is much more than idle speculation. Three Baptist Memorial nurses and a nurse's aide who worked with Ferguson viewed her body at Huson's Funeral Home in Sherwood and their observations are in decided conflict with the official ruling: that Ferguson fired a .380 semiautomatic pistol into her right temple, with the bullet exiting her left temple.
THE EXAMINATION
One nurse, an RN whose almost 15 years' experience includes emergency room duty, noted that, curiously, the woman's right temple "was pretty much blown away.'' "Usually exit wounds blow out and entry wounds are clean,'' she explained.
The three nurses were puzzled by what looked to them to be an exit wound in the right temple, since they knew Ferguson to be right-handed. This prompted them to look for an entrance wound on the left side, which they could not find. "It made me go on and look further, and I started looking at her hair,'' said one of the nurses. She recounted how her concern had led her to roll the corpse's head to the side for verification.
Eventually, one of the nurses located the apparent entrance wound. Contrary to the subsequently released official report, it was directly behind her left ear about midway between the top and bottom of the ear, and was the size of a "quarter and stuffed with cotton.''
All three nurses - one the RN, the other two LPNs - also clearly saw this cotton-stuffed wound behind Ferguson's left ear. At least two other hospital colleagues subsequently visited the funeral home and made the same observation. One such colleague, a trained medical assistant, recalled visiting the funeral home shortly after the family had left. At the time, the mortician, in response to complaints by Ferguson's family, was trying to improve the appearance of the body.
"It looked horrible,'' said the colleague, who told of volunteering to help the mortician in his task. She said she worked on "her hair, dress and everything else'' - including the right temple area, because of "the large gaping wound filled with pancake makeup that wasn't smoothed out.''
That's where the bullet came out, she recalled thinking to herself, prompting her to search for the entrance wound. "I saw it behind the (left) ear, plugged with cotton,'' she said.
CONCERNS FOR SAFETY
Yet another colleague, Sherry Butler, then an LPN with four years' experience and perhaps Ferguson's closest friend, saw no wound in the left temple. She, however, could not verify that there was a wound behind the left ear since she did not look for it.
Still, there are five other hospital employees - three of whom are trained nurses with many years of combined experience - who examined Ferguson's wounds. All of them were interviewed on tape for this report (and all have requested anonymity, citing concerns for their safety). They agree there was a small circular wound typical of an entrance wound behind the left ear, and no exit wound in the left temple area, where the autopsy report had it.
Such an exit wound on the left side would have been difficult to miss - especially to trained professionals. The autopsy report noted that it was a jagged wound of approximately an inch in width and height, and almost three inches above her left ear.
Ferguson's co-workers recalled that when they learned of her death they were stunned that she had supposedly committed suicide and were confused by the unusual wounds - which almost certainly would have to have been administered by a gun held by the left hand. "For her to use her left hand, and then in an awkward place ...,'' said one nurse, her voice trailing off into incredulity.
"Kathy had these little delicate hands,'' said another. "We laughed about her being right-handed. Kathy said she couldn't do anything with her left hand - her curling iron or makeup ... she just couldn't do it with her left hand.''
But what started as confusion has turned to outright fear as Ferguson's colleagues speculate on the why of the apparent inconsistency contained in the autopsy report - which has not circulated until fairly recently. A number of others who knew Ferguson have their doubts about the suicide verdict.
VICTIM REMEMBERED
"She was in a pretty good mood, very vivacious, upbeat,'' said Dr. Samuel I. Houston, recalling the day before Ferguson's death. Houston is a highly respected urologist at Little Rock's Baptist Memorial Hospital. His patient list once included Hillary Rodham Clinton's late father. Houston found the suicide ruling "unacceptable'' based on his acquaintance with Ferguson and the knowledge that women who take their own lives don't ordinarily use guns.
Vernon Geberth, author of an authoritative police text titled, Practical Homicide Investigations, held a similar opinion to that of Houston's. "If I have a woman with a gunshot wound to the head, that raises the hair on the back of my neck. Women will usually not blow their heads up.''
Geberth is a retired New York City Police lieutenant commander who headed up the Bronx homicide task force and has been involved in some 5,000 death investigations. Without benefit of the autopsy photos, Geberth said he couldn't determine which wound was the exit and which the entrance, explaining that wounds can often be confused. But he cast grave doubts that a suicide victim would shoot herself behind the ear.
"People don't commit suicide by putting a gun behind their head. People who are shot behind the ear are usually executed.'' (Bill Shelton, Ferguson's boyfriend, was also found dead of a gunshot behind the ear.)
Houston suggests that the autopsy report does not give the correct entrance location, behind the left ear, because it would have been doubly suspicious: the location is unusual and Ferguson was right-handed. All the nurses have relayed their observations about the wound to Houston and he accepts them. He said the nurses work in the hospital's "post-op'' (post-operating room). Their experience ranges from four to almost 15 years.
"We handle our share of gunshot wounds,'' one nurse in the section noted.
Houston agreed. "The post-op nurses are well-trained in multiple areas: surgical, medical, trauma,'' he said, emphasizing their expertise in treating wounds of all kinds.
ALLEGED HARASSMENT
"They've seen gunshots, they've gone to nursing school. There is no way they would have missed the wound described on the autopsy as having been on her left temple.'' While it's unknown why Ferguson died, just before her death she was the center of conversation among her colleagues because of her former husband's work for then-Gov. Clinton and the controversy over Clinton's alleged sexual hijinks, especially the one involving Paula Jones.
Houston recalled his last conversation with Ferguson, on the day before she died. "There are times I wish I didn't know as much as I know,'' he remembers her saying during a discussion of her former husband's work for Clinton.
Houston said he had once asked her if she had ever been harassed by Clinton when her former husband served on the governor's security detail. She responded with an account - which is consistent with what other personnel at the hospital say Ferguson told them on separate occasions - of having been "blocked in the kitchen'' of the governor's mansion as the then-Gov. Clinton made unwelcome advances on her.
Sherry Butler said that Ferguson, in speaking of that same incident to her, had said that Clinton "shoved her against a counter'' and wouldn't let her leave the kitchen. Butler added that Ferguson had been firm in her belief in Paula Jones' testimony. "That girl is telling the truth,'' Butler remembers her friend saying about Jones in the presence of several hospital workers sitting at a cafeteria table. "Don't put anything past'' Clinton, Ferguson said.
The White House did not return a call for comment on this matter. The Arkansas chief medical examiner's office referred press inquiries to the Sherwood Police Department and the Pulaski County Coroner's Office. The coroner's office did not return repeated calls for comment.
Sgt. John Dodd, a spokesman for the Sherwood Police Department, said the case was initially treated as a homicide as police procedure calls for in apparent suicides. He said that the investigation revealed there "is no reason to believe it is anything but a suicide.'' Dodd also said he knew of no "controversy'' concerning the wounds and that the police stand by the report.
Dodd was irate about suggestions that Ferguson's death and any connection to the Paula Jones case. "Pure and utter b---s---,'' he said. "It's just a rumor someone started. So what if she did (know about Paula Jones), she shot herself , in the head.''
FAMILY REACTS
And Ferguson's father, Lorris Carter, acknowledged being skeptical at first because of the nature of the wounds, but that he has subsequently accepted the autopsy report based on an explanation by his son-in-law, who happens to be a pathologist. (Called about this matter, the son-in-law declined to comment.)
But despite his acceptance of the autopsy report, Carter said he'll "never be 100 percent satisfied she did kill herself.'' Carter is bothered by what the police claim was a suicide note. "It's not'' a suicide note, he said, "it's just a note.'' Indeed, the note seems to be simply a few lines written to Shelton telling of her intent to leave the apartment.
But, notwithstanding the father's ambivalence and the others' denial, almost every person interviewed for this report had the same nagging question: Why would this very beautiful and vain woman kill herself - especially with a gun, when drugs, for instance, were so available to her at the hospital?
One colleague who worked with Ferguson throughout the latter's career at the hospital described her as "the most dynamic young woman I ever met in my life ... Miss Personality Plus. She had a figure out of this world, her hair was long, never an eyelash out of place; she worshipped her body, exercised daily.''
Dr. Houston charges that the handling of the case was "unbelievable,'' and that police reached the conclusion of suicide "at supersonic speed.'' He faults the police for never having come by the hospital to talk with Ferguson's co-workers, and he finds the police report on the death puzzling.
The report notes that the fatal bullet was found lodged in the ceiling 12 feet in front of Ferguson and the bullet's casing in an ashtray next to her. Houston has difficulty reconciling a bullet that supposedly went from temple to temple winding up in the ceiling, and similar problems with a casing (which flies off to the side of the gun) landing next to the body in an ashtray, given the position the gun would have to have been in when fired.
The police report claims that gunpowder was found on Ferguson's right hand and that the fired bullet was found to her left, an indication that she might have fired the gun from her right side.
KIND OF A MESSAGE
Houston said that in mid-October he made a complaint about the Ferguson case to FBI agents in the office of Kenneth Starr, who is the independent counsel investigating alleged illegal dealings of the Clintons. Along with his complaint, he turned over his notes and other pertinent documents.
Several days later longtime Clinton critic Larry Nichols showed up at Houston's office with the very documents Houston had turned over to Starr's office. Nichols said that he had found these documents stuffed into his mailbox. Houston doesn't for a moment think Starr had anything to do with this. "It was kind of a message'' from someone in Starr's office, he said. "We're stuffing it back, screw you.''
Debbie Gershman, a spokesperson for the independent counsel Starr, confirmed that Houston had met with the FBI, but was baffled as to how any of his papers would have been relinquished by her office. She refused to confirm that the Ferguson matter is under investigation.
Brief preface to the following death lists: the Clinton camp sometimes makes it very obvious that an individual has been murdered for crossing the Clinton camp. Sometimes this is because of incompetence, but at least some of the time this is a deliberate calculation. It frightens those who remain a potential threat to the Clinton camp, so that they are less likely to cross the Clinton camp.
the continuation of http://www.devvy.com/death_list.html:
This next section is one which cannot be overlooked and must be exposed. Let me use the words of former Congressman William E. Dannemeyer who wrote to "leaders" of both the Senate and House of the U.S. Congress. In his letter, he starkly pointed their befuddled minds to the number of people who have died under other than natural causes who hold a connection with Bill Clinton and stated that "the number has reached a total that can only be described as frightening." Below is that list of dead human beings. This is not a conspiracy [Ed. note: this IS a conspiracy orchestrated by the Clinton camp; the writer's intent is to assert that the list of deaths was not confabulated as part of a conspiracy opposed to Clinton]. These people are dead and their relationship to Clinton is well documented. Wake Up America.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mary Mahoney. Died July 1997. Was a former intern working for Bill Clinton. In the pre-trial publicity surrounding Paul Jones' lawsuit, and mere days after Newsweek's Mike Isikoff had dropped hints that a former White House staffer was going to go public with her story of sexual harassment at the White House, gunmen entered the Starbuck's coffee house in Georgetown while the crew was cleaning up after closing. Mary's two associates were taken to a room and executed. Mary had five bullets in her.
No money was taken. Isikoff's former White House staffer never appears and the Georgetown police steadfastly refuse to comment on this heinous killing - a killing the police say is extraordinary since they never have even one shooting in this area, much less three people executed in the same place on the same night and nothing taken.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vincent Foster. White House Counsel. Died July 21, 1993. Everyone's heard the whitewash from two independent prosecutors but if you want the truth and not "spin", order Chris Ruddy's book, The Strange Death of Vince Foster. Suicide my foot.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maj. General William Robertson, Deputy Commanding General, V Corps, Europe, former bodyguard to Clinton.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel William Densberger, V Corps Chief of Operations and Plans, former Clinton bodyguard.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Robert Kelly, V Corps Chief of Intelligence. Former Clinton bodyguard.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Specialist Gary Rhodes, Crew Chief. All died February 23, 1993. All were killed when their helicopter crashed in Weisbaden, Germany. No cause ever determined. V Corps figured prominently in the US Bosnia-Serbia peacekeeping operations, along with the carrier Roosevelt. These men and 8 others associated with Clinton's visit to the Roosevelt all died within four months of each other.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Willis, Clinton Bodyguard. Robert Williams, Clinton bodyguard. Conway BeBleu, Clinton bodyguard. Todd McKeehan, Clinton bodyguard. All executed by gunfire in the Waco, Texas assault on the Branch Davidians. All four were examined by a private doctor and died from nearly identical words to the left temple. All deaths blamed on the Branch Davidians. Amazing that the Branch Davidians could place the gunshots to each of their heads in roughly the same places. Amazing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Staff Sgt. Brian Haney, Clinton bodyguard. Marine Sgt. Tim Sabel, Clinton bodyguard. Major William Barkley, Clinton bodyguard, Capt. Scott Reynolds, Clinton bodyguard. All died May 19, 1993 when their helicopter crashed in the woods near Quantico, VA. All four men had escorted Clinton on his flight to the carrier Roosevelt shortly before their deaths.
My husband was in the Army 27 years and is a retired Colonel. We have been absolutely stunned by the overwhelming number of crashed military planes and helicopters since Clinton took office. It is unprecedented and in case you are unaware, Clinton stated in his evasion letters to avoid the draft back in the '60's that he "hated the military."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dead Fund Raisers:
C. Victor Raiser II, National Finance Co-Chairman for Clinton for President Campaign. Montgomery Raiser, son of C. Victor Raiser: both men died July 30, 1992 in a private plan crash in Alaska en route to a fishing expedition. No cause was ever determined. Five others not connected to Clinton died with them.
Paul Tully, Democratic National Committee Political Director. Died September 24, 1992. Found dead in a hotel room in Little Rock, Arkansas of unknown causes. No autopsy allowed.
Ed Willey, Real Estate Attorney, Clinton Fund Raiser. Died November 30, 1993 of a gunshot wound to the head. Body found deep in the woods in Virginia. Ruled a suicide. No note was found nor motive ever determined. THE Kathleen Willey of 60 Minutes Deception fame- her husband.
Hershell Friday. Attorney and Clinton fund raiser, dead March 1, 1994 when his plane exploded. No known cause ever determined.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jerry Parks, Head of Clinton's Gubernatorial security team in Little Rock. Died September 26, 1993. Gunned down in his car at a deserted intersection outside Little Rock. His family reported that shortly before his death, they were being followed by unknown persons and their home had been broken into; Parks had been compiling a dossier on Clinton's illicit activities; the dossier was stolen and never recovered.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
James Bunch, influential Texan died in 1993 from a gunshot wound similar to Vince Foster's. Was discovered to have a "little black book" which contained the names of many influential people in Texas and Arkansas who visited certain prostitutes. A good friend of Bill's.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Wilson, former Washington, DC Councilman. Died May 18, 1993. Found dead from an apparent hanging suicide. Was getting ready to start talking about Clinton. Dead men tell no tales. Bill Shelton, Arkansas State Trooper and Fiancee of Kathy Ferguson. Died June 1994 by allegedly committing suicide by shooting himself at the grave site of his fiancee, Kathy Ferguson. Ferguson was the ex-wife of Trooper Danny Ferguson. Kathy also committed "suicide" in June 1994 when she shot herself in her living room. Strangely, next to her body were her packed bags as if she was expecting to go somewhere. I guess she was packed for her after life...Danny Ferguson is a co-defendant along with Bill Clinton in Paul Jones' sexual harassment suit. Kathy was reported as a corroborating witness for Paula Jones.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gandy Baugh, Attorney representing Mr. Lassiter in a case concerning alleged financial misconduct. Died May 1994 in an alleged suicide by jumping out of a window of a multi-story building. Lassiter was a close associate of then Gov. Clinton and was later indicted and convicted on cocaine charges and was PARDONED by Bill Clinton. Slick has now started his big ad campaign on the war on drugs yet he pardons his close cocaine dealing bud. Hello out there, does anyone see anything wrong with this picture????
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Ronald Rogers was killed in a plane crash. Dr. Rogers was a dentist and was on his way to an interview with a London Daily Telegraph reporter to reveal information on Bill Clinton that he just couldn't live with anymore - and he didn't. He died with the truth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stanley Huggins, partner in a Memphis law firm in 1993, found dead at the age of 46. Law firm headed a 1987 investigation into the practices of Madison S & L; his 300 page report has never been released.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Florence Martin, accountant subcontracting to the CIA , found dead in 1994 in Mabell, Texas, the victim of three gunshot wounds to the head. Ms. Martin had the documents and paperwork, including the PIN number for an account that had been set up in the name of Barry Seal for $1.5 million at the Fuji Bank in the Cayman Islands. Oddly enough, following her death, the money was transferred to the Guaranty Bank in the Cayman Islands and then to another bank in the Virgin Islands.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Wilhite, associate of Mack McClarty's former firm. Many remember the sleezy McClarty from Clinton's first administration. Wilhite died in a skiing accident on December 21, 1992. Michael Kennedy and Sonny Bono should have paid attention to history - it has a habit of repeating itself and some people relive it. As a side-note, during the Waco whitewash congressional hearings, Bono, in tears, said Janet Reno was a mass murderer. Well, he's not around to criticize her anymore and no doubt, she will get away with gassing and burning 100 Americans.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Susanne Coleman. Had an affair with Bill Clinton when he was Attorney General down in Arkansas. She was another ASS victim: Arkansas Suicide Syndrome. Gunshot to the back of her head. No autopsy performed, she was pregnant at the time of her murder; rumors around Little Rock: Bill was about to become a pappy again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paula Grober, Clinton's speech interpreter for the deaf. Died December 9, 1992 in a one-car accident with no known witnesses. I have seen a photo of Paula and she was very attractive; traveled extensively with Clinton from 1978 until her death.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Wilcher, Washington attorney investigating government corruption. Died June 22, 1993. Found dead on a toilet in his Washington apartment. No cause of death ever determined. At the time of his death, he was investigating connections between the alleged October Surprise, which involved Reagan, "Ollie" North, Pointdexter and Secord - another cover-up, as well as Waco and the drug and gun-running still going on outside Mena, Arkansas. Wilcher had delivered his 100+ page report to Janet the Butcher of Waco Reno a week before his death. I have a copy of this report.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Parnell Walker, RTC investigator [Resolution Trust Corporation - as in bank fraud investigations] who mysteriously fell to his death from an apartment balcony at the Lincoln Towers in Arlington, VA. This apartment is reported to be the one Vince Foster used as a retreat. Back in 1992, Walker contacted the Kansas City RTC office for information concerning the ties between Whitewater and the Clinton duo. What exactly was he looking for? A reported $50 million transfer from an RTC fund in Chicago to Madison Guaranty S & L to cover up a $47 million dollar embezzlement. I watched the hearings on C-SPAN with the RTC group. Those who tried to tell the truth were slayed by the Demarats on the committee. Another whitewash on Whitewater.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Brown, Former Chairman of the DNC and Commerce Secretary. The Liars for Hire aka the establishment media, have done their best to smear anyone trying to get to the bottom of this very convenient and horrible plane crash in which 39 people were killed. May 3, 1996 the T-43 carrying this trade mission group on a trip to Bosnia crashed while approaching Dubrovnik airport. Ron Brown was on the verge of being indicted and had prior to his departure, made it known that he "wasn't going down alone."
On May 3, 1996 at approximately 11:00 am MT, I, along with at least a hundred other people I know, saw the first coverage of this plane crash on CNN. What did we all see: A CNN reporter at the Dubrovnik airport, lots of activity in the background. This female reporter said the military rescue craft were just lifting off - lots of activity in the background - to begin recovery efforts in the ocean! She said the reporters were told that the tail section of the plane was in good condition and sighted by rescue planes. She went on to say that the weather was kinda rough but that rescue operations were underway.
Later that day, I saw, again on CNN, the first pictures of the crash - on the side of a hill. I saw the tail section, shiny and white, like it had been washed, on the side of the hill with some other wreckage. Imagine my surprise. I guess this must be another vast right-wing conspiracy by my eyes....Later that same day, CNN carried a quick blip: Ron Brown's business partner, while in South Africa on business, was shot in an assassination attempt but had survived. I have no further information on whatever became of him.
What I find so odd is that Mrs. Ron Brown got the run-around from the White House when Chris Ruddy's story and photos of a possible bullet hole in her husband's head broke. To this day, I cannot understand why she hasn't had her husband's body exhumed and autopsied. Of course, that would let any cat out of the bag. Or, perhaps, since it is now public knowledge, everyone knows her husband was cheating on her for years with Nolanda Hill and Mrs. Brown has had her faced rubbed in it, sadly in a very public way.
My heart goes out to Mrs. Brown but I sincerely wish someone could convince her to have Commerce Secty Brown's body exhumed so we can get to the truth and if he was murdered and those responsible punished. Thirty nine people died on that plane, their families deserve the truth, America deserves the truth. All the military personnel who have blown the whistle on this are having their previously untarnished careers trashed because they came forward with legitimate questions. When is this going to stop?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chief Niko Jerkuic, committed suicide May 6, 1996. He was Air Traffic Maintenance Chief for the plane Ron Brown died aboard in his "accident." Dead men tell no tales.
If you can, get a copy of the April 1996 American Spectator [703-243-3733]. It came out six days before Brown's plane crash and gives a thorough, chronological accounting of why Brown was to be indicted by the Justice Department. This issue also carries the feature story, incredibly well documented on how the traitor, William Perry, former Secty of Defense sold all our technology and military secrets to the Reds and was known as the darling of Peking. This man collaborated with the Communists and if it were you or me, we'd be tried for treason and sedition. Instead, Perry collects his fat government retirement and continues to collaborate with our enemies. And for those Clinton supporters who want to spew their usual bilge that this magazine is funded by Richard Mellon Scafe, try reading the article and then do the research - you'll come up with the same sickening facts.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Barbara Wise, Commerce Department Staffer. Found dead November 29, 1996, partially nude and covered with bruises in her locked office at the Department of Commerce. No cause of death has been announced and the police refuse to comment on this death. It surely must be a conspiracy, except that official records show that Bill Clinton made an unscheduled return from Camp David to the White House the morning she died and before her body was discovered.
The President of the United States claims he flew back from Camp David to retrieve a book of poetry he needed to finish his inauguration speech. Really? Doesn't he have staffers to do this? He interrupts his Thanksgiving break to fly all the way back to the White House to get a book of poetry? And sure I believe that, folks.
Something I find frightening is the fact that Ms. Wise's murder so closely resembles the story line in a Clint Eastwood film titled Absolute Power. Eastwood just happens to observe the President of the U.S. beat up and murder his sexual paramour and then the cover-up begins. This is not the type of video I rent but on a recommendation that I would find the similarity between Clinton and the president in this movie overwhelming, I rented it and found it bone chilling.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Meissner, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for International Economic Policy. Following Ron Brown's death, John Huang was placed on a Commerce Dept., contract that allowed him to retain his security clearance by Charles Meissner - something considered nothing short of astounding. Shortly thereafter Mr. Meissner died in a small plane crash, Mrs. Meissner still works in the Clinton administration.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Ives & Don Henry. Initial cause of death was said to be falling asleep on a railroad track in Arkansas on August 23, 1987. Next the local sheriff said it was a double "suicide". Later it was determined that Kevin died from a crushed skull prior to being placed on the tracks. The other teenager, Don Henry had been stabbed in the back. These two young boys allegedly had stumbled on the drug running operation still going on outside Mena, Arkansas.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keith Coney died in a motorcycle accident in July 1988; Keith was fleeing an attacker. Keith had a great deal of information on the Ives/Henry deaths.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keith McKasle, stabbed to death in November 1988. Also had information on the Ives/Henry deaths.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gregory Collins. Had information on the Ives/Henry deaths. Mr. Collins died from a gunshot wound to his face in January 1989.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Rhodes had information on the Ives/Henry and McKaskle deaths. His burned body was found in a trash dump in April 1989 with a gunshot wound to the head, body mutilation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
James Milam died shortly thereafter. He had information on the Ives/Henry deaths. Although he was decapitated, Fahmy Malak, the Arkansas State Medical Examiner ruled his death as a result of "natural causes." No lie, read his report.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Winters was a suspect in the deaths of the two teenage boys, Ives & Henry. He was killed in a "robbery" in July 1989 by a man with a sawed off shotgun; this robbery was later proven to be a set-up. Dead men tell no lies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jordan Ketelson, also had information on the Ives/Henry deaths. He was found shot to death [shot gun blast] in the front seat of his pickup in June 1990.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Danny Casolaro, 1991, a reporter investigating a number of the Clinton "scandals"; found dead in a bathtub in a hotel room in West Virginia, his wrists had been cut. Had done what so many of us have done: told our families that we are not suicidal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stanley Heard, Chairman, National Chiropractic Health Care Advisory Committee. Steve Dickson, counsel to Mr. Heard. both died in a plane crash September 10, 1993 outside Dulles airport; fire reported on board. Their plane developed unexplained trouble so they had to use another plane which just happened to be available at the time. In addition to serving on Clinton's advisory council, he also personally treated Clinton's mother, stepfather and cocaine using brother, Roger.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1989: A bank president, Dan Short, abducted from his home in Benton Co., Arkansas and allegedly forced to open the State Bank in Noel, MO were $71,000 was allegedly taken. Mr. Short's body was allegedly found in Grand Lake in Delaware County, OKlahoma even though eye color, hair color and dental records did not match. Three days before his abduction, he had told friends that he had been laundering drug money and was in trouble. The Mena and Bill connection is strong here. Where is the real Dan Short?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Johnson: Not dead but beaten half to death and left for dead. He had videotapes of Clinton going in and out of Jennifer Flowers' apartment building; Mr. Johnson lived next door. The tapes were taken and never recovered.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dennis Patrick. Court Clerk in Kentucky. Mr. Patrick had at least four documented attempts on his life. Why? The Little Rock brokerage firm of Lassiter & Co, owned by the convicted cocaine dealer, Dan Lassiter - pardoned by Slick Willie Clinton - laundered millions of dollars through Mr. Patrick's account at Lassiter & Co., without his knowledge. You can imagine the paper trail of documents Mr. Patrick has in his possession. Mr. Patrick went into hiding and is no where to be found.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
L. J. Davis. Reporter investigating Clinton scandals. Attacked in his hotel room in Little Rock; his notes were stolen, he survived.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1983: Sheriff Gene Matthews was shot and killed allegedly by federal officials. Sheriff Matthews crime: Looking into the drug activities at the Mena airport.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1986: Russell Welch, an Arkansas State Police Investigator who was stricken with what his doctor called military grade anthrax poisoning while conducting his own probe of the Mena drug operations.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And, from investigative journalist, Pat Shannan:
"In 1986, Barry Seal [previously mentioned] was ambushed and machine-gunned in his home in Baton Rouge, LA. A Hollywood movie called "Double Crossed" was later made of the story of Seal's escapades as a cocaine-running pilot hauling his periodical loads into Florida and Arkansas. The film did not detail his true and close association with the Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton." The information being given here by Pat Shannan is a matter of public record in a number or courthouses involving the trial of Dan Lassiter and in references given below in the reference section. This is not, I repeat, not, some soap opera or some future script for Steven Segal. This material is factual as are all the deaths being recounted in this section.
"...on my radio show was presented a video tape showing Governor Clinton inspecting a load of cocaine inside Barry Seal's airplane, along with his crony Dan Lassiter. Lassiter was the wealthy businessman who later took the fall for the drug conviction and was then pardoned by Clinton." This is a matter of public record. On September 23, 1996, former Congressman Robert Dornan spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives about Clinton, the surveillance tapes the drug enforcement people made of his brother Roger referring to Clinton sniffing the coke and what a vacuum cleaner Bill's nose was for cocaine. Dornan did not survive his reelection bid in November 1996. Clinton under no circumstances will release his medical records. Gee, I wonder why?
These surveillance tapes are real and were made by undercover law enforcement, not the vast right-wing conspiracy elves Hillary whines about. Dornan and a lot of other people in Congress have heard them. Where's Dan Blather or Tom Broken Jaw or any of the other hot-shot reporters? Where's Woodard & Bernstein? These media people all listened to the Lewinsky tapes. How come no interest in these other tapes made by law enforcement? How about the C-130 that went straight into a mountain in Wyoming in 1996, all military crew and one Clinton former bodyguard who was aboard, all killed. Experienced air men and pilots flying straight into a mountain? Give me a break. That's right - it's all just a vast right-wing conspiracy!
April 17, 1995, near Alexander City, Alabama, another plane crash. I requested under a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] Request from the NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] & FAA [Federal Aviation Administration], their accident/incident files on this plane crash; I received them in April 1997. This crash was a USAF C21 (Learjet 35). I have all the notes, radar, pilot conversations with tower, etc. This was another one of those incredibly strange crashes. The Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, Clark Fiester was among the eight people killed on this flight.
My interest in this flight was the one Army member on board who was flying on a "space available" basis and the documents he allegedly was carrying at the time - documents "unfriendly" to Bill Clinton. Since I am still looking into this, I won't elaborate any further. All AF personnel, the one Army individual, all killed on this routine flight that ended up dumping fuel, who radioed they would be ready to land in 28 minutes after the fuel dump - four minutes later they were all dead.
On January 29, 1995, the London Sunday Telegraph ran a story titled Arkansas Drug Expose Misses the Post. This was a well documented story about the drug running in Mena, implicating political figures, law enforcement and Bill Clinton. In this article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, he points out the fact that the Washington Post was going to run a story on this, roughly 4,000 pages and 11 weeks of research. Guess what? The piece was canceled the prior Thursday. Free press in America? There's a hoot. Only an idiot can't see that the "free press" in this country, 88% of them voted for Slick in '92, are protecting this criminal couple.
And for all those "pro-choice" supporters of Slick Willie, this: In a 1986 letter to the Arkansas Right to Life group: "I am opposed to abortion and to government funding of abortions. We should not spend state funds on abortions because so many people believe abortion is wrong." And, a little extra for your money: In 1977, Richard Gephardt: "Life is the division of human cells, a process that begins with conception. The Roe ruling was unjust and it is incumbent upon Congress to correct the injustice." I guess both of them decided there was more money to be had in taking the side of those who think nothing of murdering of unborn babies. Funny, I have yet to see Gephardt begin the correction process by Congress of this "injustice."
March 8, 1998, James McDougal. Former Whitewater partner of the Clinton's. Died in solitary confinement less than 24 hours before he was due back in front of a grand jury. The details of how he was transferred to Texas, the unusual and weird way in which he was treated has led to at least one prisoner there to give a full accounting of what about 150 other prisoners saw the afternoon McDougal was put into solitary confinement. This one stinks real bad and if I were Jim Guy Tucker, I'd be very concerned. Can all these deaths of individuals with the same common denominator - Bill Clinton - can they all be just coincidence????
I have suggested to some independent media investigators that they look into this: Prior to Susan McDougal going to jail for refusing to testify in front of a grand jury re Whitewater, her two brothers in Arkansas barely kept their heads above water regarding their business dealings. Suddenly Susan sacrifices herself for truth, integrity and the America way and whala! her two brothers are now drowning in work and their personal finances have taken a miraculous turn for the better. I know, it's just a coincidence.
In a recent interview on big network TV, Miss Susan said, "There are worse things in life than a few months in jail." This was in response to a question as to what Susan thought Monica Lewinsky should do about testifying in front of a grand jury. It is reported by those who have listened to the Linda Tripp tapes that Ms. Lewinsky made one comment to the effect that she "didn't want to end up like Katy Mahoney." Remember the Starbuck's executions?
March 29, 1998, Johnnie Laughton. Found a cashier's check made out to Bill Clinton from Madison Guaranty (1997), cashed but not endorsed. Found in the trunk of a car at an auto salvage dealer in Arkansas after a tornado. How unbelievably convenient and how did this car with all this incriminating material end up where it did and then found after all those years? Some say it was the Fifth Column at work. All material turned over to Ken Starr. Clinton testified under oath that he never took a penny in loan money from Madison; this cashier's check in the amount of $27,000 was made out to Clinton, cashed with no endorsement on the back. Johnnie may have been called to the Whitewater grand jury someday. Well, that problem is solved. Another coincidental death? Dead men tell no tales.
March 31, 1998, Neal Moody, the step son of Lisa Foster, widow of Vincent Foster. She married Judge Moody, a Clinton appointee, two years after her husband's incredible suicide. Neal met a violent car death while carrying allegedly incriminating documents regarding the death of Vince Foster. Another coincidence?
I could fill a hundred pages with the truth about people like Alphonso D'Amato, Fred Thompson, Joe Biden, the very dangerous wacked out Communist sympathizer, Al Gore and on and on and on. However, seeing is believing and you will believe the truth when you do the homework. I'm providing you with more than enough reference material, by category, to get educated so you understand just how serious the situation is and why you must get involved. Yes, I'd rather be fishing but if your house is on fire, do you sit around and watch TV or do you get up and get the fire hose going?
Are there any more Clinton related deaths I've missed? Who knows. Patrick Henry had some words of wisdom which so appropriately apply here: "It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth." Millions of Americans have indulged in the illusion of hope offered up by the Clinton duo. Those same millions seem willing to shut their eyes against the painful and well documented truth. Not me.
alternative deaths list, "Slick's Skeleton List" from http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a48156.htm (with integrated corrections). I must note that I am personally convinced that an indeterminate number of these deaths are sincere accidents, and am equally convinced that an even larger number of them are sincere cold-blooded murder/assassination.
Slick's Skeleton's list..,
I hope you come away as horrified as I did from it.
*****
1. Ron Brown's Lawyer 04/96 - Murdered - Drive by shooting, day after Ron Brown's plane crashed.
2. Ron Brown 04/96 Plane Crash
3. Adm. Boorda - Chief of Naval Operations 1996 - Suicide?
4. Bill Shelton -06/94 Suicide ? Alledgedly shot himself at gravesite of fiancee, Kathy Ferguson, Alledgedly shot himself behind the left ear.
5. Kathy Ferguson - 05/94 Suicide ? Ex Wife of Ark. trooper Danny Ferguson, engaged to trooper who assisted Bill Clinton Alledgedly shot herself behind left ear.
6. Attorney for Dan Lasater -05/94 Suicide ? Alledgedly jumped out of a building to kill himself. He represented Dan Lasater, a close friend of Bill Clinton, who was indicted on drug charges and sent to prison.
7. Ronald Rogers 03/94 Plane Crash (Ark.) dentist for Clintons, killed on way to interview with a "London Sunday Telegraph" reporter to reveal info.
8. Hershell Friday -03/94 - Plane Crash Clinton attorney and fund raiser. Plane blew up.
9. Ed Willey -11/93- Suicide -Alledgedly shot himself in head in Virginia. Attorney and manager of Clinton presidential campaign finance committee.
10. Luther Parks - 09/93 -Murdered - Head of Clinton's security team in Little Rock, gunned down in his car outside of Little Rock. Home broken into before his death, dossier on Clinton stolen from his possessions.
11. Stanley Heard -09/93-Plane Crash Chair of Chiropatric Health Care Advisory Comm. for Clinton who had treated Clinton's mother, stepfather & brother. Killed when airplane crashed after reporting fire on board.
12. Steve Dickson - 09/93 Plane Crash - Counsel to Mr. Heard, killed in same crash. (see above)
13. Vincent Foster 07/93 -Suicide ? - Close friend of Clintons. Alleged possible affair with Hillary, tracked Clinton finances.
14. Paul Wilcher 06/93 Murdered - Wahington attorney, investigating federal corruption, including Mena and BATF assault on Branch Davidians. Found Dead on the toilet before meeting with Danny Casolaro's attorney.
15. John Wilson 05/93 Suicide ? Alledgedly hung himself. Involved in WhiteWater and was going to talk...
16. Sgt. B. Haney 05/93 Helicopter Crash - escort to Clinton on flight to Roosevelt
17. Sgt. Tim Sabel 05/93 Helicopter Crash - escort to Clinton on flight to Roosevelt
18. Maj. William Barkley 05/93 Helicopter Crash - escort to Clinton on flight to Roosevelt
19. Capt. Scott Reynolds 05/93 Helicopter Crash - escort to Clinton on flight to Roosevelt
20. Gen. Robertson 02/93 Helicopter Crash -escort to Clinton
21. Col.W Densberger 02/93 Helicopter Crash -escort to Clinton
22. Col.R Kelly 02/93 Helicopter Crash -escort to Clinton
23. Spec. G Rhodes 02/93 Helicopter Crash-escort to Clinton
24. Steve Willis 02/93 Waco Assault Killed in assault on Davidian compound. - Accidental Shooting? Gunshot to left temple
25. Robert William 02/93 Waco Assault Killed in assault on Davidian compound. Accidental Shooting? Gunshot to left temple
26. Conway LeBleu 02/93 Waco Assault Killed in assault on Davidian compound. Accidental Shooting? Gunshot to Left Temple
27. Todd McKeehan 02/93 Waco Assault Killed in assault on Davidian compound. Accidental Shooting? Gunshot to Left Temple
***
Steve Willis, Robert William, Conway Lebleu, and Tod McKeehan were (see above) transferred from the Secret Service, where they were Clinton guards - to BATF prior to the assault - Killed by friendly fire. All died with gunshot wounds to the left temple.
***
28. Jim Wilhite 12/92 Skiing Accident -Vice Chair. of Arkla, Inc. with ties to Clinton & Mack Mclarty, whom he called just hours before his death.
29. Paula Grober 12/92 Car Accident - no witnesses - he was a speech interpreter for deaf for Bill Clinton. Traveled extensively with Clinton from 1978 `til death.
30. Paul Tully 09/92 Murdered? -Democratic Nat'l Committee Dir. found dead in hotel. "Dear friend" of Clinton and a trusted advisor. Authored key strategies for Clinton and the Democratic party. - No autopsy performed.
31. Victor Raiser 07/92 Plane Crash - finance co-chair in Clinton organization who soured. His plane went down in Alaska on a fishing expedition.
32. Monty Raiser 07/92 Plane Crash Victor Raiser's son, killed in the same plane crash.
33. James Bunch ????? Suicide similar to Vince Foster. Texan w/"black book" of influential Texans & Arkansans who visited prostitutes.
34. Stanley Huggins ????? Murdered -Partner in Memphis law firm - investigating Madison Guarantee. His 300 page report has never been released.
35. Florence Martin ????? Murdered Accountant subcontracted to CIA in the Barry Seal case. Dead of three gunshot wounds to the head.
36. Sue Coleman ????? Suicide - Had affair with Clinton while he was attorney general. Gunshot wound to the back of her head. Was pregnant.
37. Danny Casolaro 08/91 Suicide? Reporter investigating Whitewater, Mena, BCCI, & ADFA. About to receive info linking Iran-Contra to the Inslaw scandal when found in bathtub with wrists slit.
Six Ark. people who came forward with info about the death of 2 teens near the Mena operations. All killed before testifying. John Brown, reportedly solved the Richard Winters case and gave findings to FBI which sat on them. According to Brown, "We now who killed these kids. The reason this case has been stopped ... is because it tracks to Bill Clinton being involved in the cover-up".
38. Kevin Coney - 07/88 - Died in a motorcycle accident - Came forward with info about the "Kevin Ives and Don Henry" Murders. Died before testifying.
39. Gregory Collins 01/89 - had information on the Ives/Henry deaths. He died from a gunshot wound to the face
40. Kieth McKaskle -11/88 Had information on the Ives/Henry deaths. He was stabbed to death
41. Jeff Rhodes -04/89 - He had information on the deaths of Ives, Henry & McKaskle. His burned body was found in a trash dump in He died of a gunshot wound to the head and there was some body mutilation, leading to the probably speculation that he was tortured prior to being killed.
42. Jordan Ketelson 06/90 had information on the Ives & Henry deaths. He was found shot to death in the front seat of his pickup
43. James Milam -??? had Info on the Ives & Henry deaths. He was decapitated - initially ruled death due to natural causes.
44. Richard Winters - July 1989 - was a suspect in the deaths of Ives & Henry. He was killed in a "robbery" which was subsequently proven to be a setup.
45. Kevin Ives - 08/23/87. - Witness to Mena? - Offical cause of death falling asleep on railroad track. But apparently Kevin had died from a crushed skull prior to being placed on the tracks
46. Don Henry - 08/23/87 - witness to Mena? - Offical cause of death - falling asleep on railroad track... Later findings showed he had been stabbed to death before placed on the track.
47. Mary Mahoney died 7/97 - White House Intern for Bill Clinton. Shot to death in a starbucks coffee shop - in an alledged robbery attempt - but no money was taken.
48. Barbera Wise -11/29/96 Commerce Department Staffer Found dead in her locked office at the Department of Commerce, partially nude and covered with bruises. No cause of death has ever been announced. (ed. note- recently announced as alcohol poisoning)
49. Charles Meissner - Assistant Secretary of Commerce for International Economic Policy, immediate superior of John Huang. Died in same plane crash as Ron Brown.
50. ??????
*****
Since the above compilation of deaths was assembled, Jim McDougal has died in solitary confinement as a result of forced injection with Lasix, a diuretic known to cause heart failure in medicated heart patients unless simultaneously administered with a potassium salt. Jim McDougal was a central witness in Ken Starr's investigation, and had in the months before his death become prodigiously cooperative and at the time of his death was about to formalize an arrangement of testimonial cooperation with Starr.
from TPDL 1999-Jan-21, from the New York Post, by Bill Sanderson:
Ex-Aide: Bill Feared Mcdougal Bombshell
President Clinton worried about being asked under oath whether he had sex with former Whitewater business partner Susan McDougal, former Clinton political adviser Dick Morris said last night.
Speaking on Fox News Channel, Morris said Clinton asked him in May 1994 what to do if he was asked, in testimony during the trial of then-Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, if he had sex with McDougal.
"I just replied, 'If you had sex with her, admit it, tell the truth,'" Morris said on the "Hannity and Colmes" program.
Morris, now a Post columnist, recalled advising Clinton that such an admission would cost him at the polls - "you won't win by 17 points, you'll win by 10 points, but you'll win."
Morris said he advised Clinton against lying under oath, telling him: "Don't commit perjury, because then nobody can help you."
Asked why Clinton would ask him such a question, Morris answered: "I leave that question to your imagination. I can't think of a reason."
McDougal has adamantly denied a sexual relationship with Clinton. But her late ex-husband, Jim McDougal, said he suspected Clinton had an affair with his wife. McDougal died last year.
Clinton testified by videotape in the 1996 trial of the McDougals and Tucker. All three were found guilty of fraud and conspiracy charges involving a $300,000 loan.
Susan McDougal spent 18 months in prison for refusing to testify before one of independent counsel Kenneth Starr's grand juries.
She is now awaiting trial in Arkansas on federal obstruction-of-justice and criminal-contempt charges.
from TPDL 1998-Dec-14, from the Washington Weekly, by Wesley Phelan:
MCDOUGAL ALERTED FBI, LAWYERS AND NEWS MEDIA TO BOP CONSPIRACY
Segregation in 'The Hole' Shown to have been Groundless
On October 21, 1997, federal Bureau of Prison inmate Jim McDougal was placed on the suspect list for urine testing. As previously reported [1], prison documents in our possession do not provide a satisfactory explanation for this decision on the part of prison staff. On October 23, McDougal was asked to provide a urine sample, which he was unable to. As a result, the officer in charge filled out an incident report charging McDougal with "Refusing to Provide a Urine Sample." Since this was his first offense he was not immediately placed in Administrative Detention.
The incident report was forwarded to a Unit Discipline Committee (UDC), which considered the matter on October 27. The UDC then referred the matter to the Discipline Hearing Officer (DHO), who conducted a hearing on November 6. According to Section II of the DHO report, McDougal did not waive his right to have a staff representative present at the hearing. Instead, he requested that his Unit Manager act as his staff representative. According to the DHO report, "Requested staff representative declined or could not appear but inmate was advised of option to postpone hearing to obtain another staff representative . . ." Although he did not appear at the hearing, the Unit Manager provided the following statement for the report: "McDougal did come to me the day following the incident stating he could not give a UA (urinalysis). He did offer to give a blood test to show he does not use drugs."
The hearing commenced without a staff representative present on McDougal's behalf. The DHO asked McDougal if he denied the accusations, which he did. McDougal then made the following statement:
"I did not refuse to give a urine specimen. I tried to give a UA, but could not. I drank several cups of water, but could still not urinate. I drank so much water that I almost regurgitated. I'm taking several medications. Some of them can prohibit me from urinating. I've got a printout from Lexington stating that fact and I've already contacted the FBI to look into this matter. I do not use drugs or drink alcohol. This is just part of the conspiracy. I've already contacted my attorneys and the news media. I told Dr.[redacted] about my problem urinating. I tried six or seven times to give a UA and told the officer I had medical problems that caused me not to be able to give a UA. I have never given a UA before and it's a little embarrassing. I've already talked to the psychologist about this."
QUESTION BY DHO: When did you speak to the psychology staff?
ANSWER: I spoke with the psychologist after all this happened.
QUESTION BY DHO: Did you speak with the psychologist about this prior to the incident?
ANSWER: No, I did not talk to the psychologist prior to the incident because I had never given a UA before.
QUESTION BY DHO: Did you say you have a document for the DHO to consider?
ANSWER: You've already made your decision.
QUESTION BY DHO: Mr. McDougal, do you have a document that you wish me to consider?
ANSWER: Yes. (Inmate provided a 3 page document to the DHO).
QUESTION BY DHO: Where did this document come from?
ANSWER: They gave it to me at Lexington.
QUESTION BY DHO: This document reflects the possible side effects of the medication you were taking at Lexington and the medication you are currently prescribed?
ANSWER: Yes. It says right there that this medication can cause me not to be able to provide a specimen.
QUESTION BY DHO: The document says that these are possible side effects, correct?
ANSWER: Yes.
Included in the documents obtained by the Washington Weekly are 'Patient Information Leaflets' for Maxzide and diphenhydramine, two of the eleven prescription medications McDougal was taking at the time of the hearing. Under 'side effects' the leaflets state: "the patient may experience difficulty urinating." These are presumably two of the three documents McDougal presented to the DHO during the hearing.
The DHO found that McDougal had "committed the prohibited act of Refusing to Provide a Urine Specimen, Code 110." The finding was based mostly on the written statement of "the Clinical Director (and M.D.) [redacted], who attests that his review of your medical records revealed no physical reason for you to be unable to urinate and supply a specimen for drug testing." [2] The information from the leaflets was dismissed because McDougal had not previously notified the prison medical staff of experiencing difficulty urinating.
There is no indication that the psychology staff provided any written information for the consideration of the DHO at the November hearing. At the conclusion of the hearing McDougal was sanctioned with 7 days in the hole.
McDougal was released on November 10, after serving 3 days of his 7-day sanction. Three days later he met with a prison psychologist, who determined that he was suffering from performance anxiety and should be placed in a dry cell if required to give samples in the future. As the Washington Weekly reported last week:
According to the Focus Review report, the psychologist's assessment and recommendation were reviewed and endorsed by the prison Medical Officer, who forwarded a memorandum to that effect to the Captain in charge. Unfortunately for McDougal, the memorandum of endorsement was misfiled into a Special Investigative Supervisor file and was not discovered until after his death. The Focus Review Report does not explain why the psychologist, the Medical Officer, and the Captain to whom the memorandum was sent all failed to follow-up to ensure the dry cell recommendation was actually implemented.
Further review of prison documents indicates that the memorandum from the Medical Officer was sent not only to the Captain, but also to McDougal's Unit Team. However, this Unit Team either did not receive the forwarded document, or failed to place it in his file.
Sometime before February 2, one of the officers on McDougal's Unit Team informed him "that his central file did not contain a copy of the recommendation that he be given dry cell status for future tests." He requested another meeting with the psychologist to discuss this problem. The report from the counseling session indicates that McDougal was told that another copy of the recommendation would be sent to the officer in charge of his Unit. The Focus Review report indicates that the second copy of the recommendation was received by McDougal's Unit Team "sometime after February 2, 1998." The Focus Review report does not specify whether the Unit Team received the recommendation before or after the events of March 7-8 that led to his death.
It is clear from the record that the number of those who knew why McDougal was having difficulty providing urine on demand included at least four prison personnel. These are: the psychologist; the Medical Officer; the Captain to whom the Medical Officer sent the psychologist's memorandum; and the member of the Unit Team who informed McDougal that the psychologist's recommendation was not in his central file.
By March 7 the psychologist, the Medical Officer, the Captain in charge, and at least one officer in McDougal's Unit Team knew that he was supposed to receive dry cell status. At least two of these staff members knew that the recommendation had not made it to his central file, and that the recommendation had not been implemented. It fell to McDougal himself to take the responsibility for getting a copy of the recommendation to his Unit Team. Unfortunately for him, he could not force the BOP to comply with its own policy recommendations in time to avoid the events of March 7.
That trained prison personnel should fail to place an important recommendation from qualified medical staff into McDougal's central file is negligent. That they should fail in responding to his request that the document be resubmitted in a timely manner is inexcusable. That all those aware of the recommendation should stand by while he was required to give urine samples in violation of the recommendation is unspeakable.
The Focus Review report concluded its assessment of these failures with the following statement: "The staff misconduct allegation, which was unrelated to inmate McDougal's failure to provide a urine specimen, had been investigated and closed in accordance with Bureau of Prisons policy regarding staff investigations."
This statement and finding is, to put it bluntly, self-serving. The simple fact is the Bureau of Prisons failed to provide James McDougal a level of care its own staff recognized as required by his condition. The extent to which this failure contributed to his death in the hole on March 8 remains to be determined.
NOTES 1. http://www.federal.com/dec07-98/McDougal.html
2. The statement from the Clinical Director is disputed by several pharmacists contacted by the Washington Weekly. One, with 21 years experience in hospital and clinical settings, affirmed that the medications in question might indeed cause difficulty in producing urine on demand, as stated in the Patient Information Leaflets.
Wesley Phelan can be reached at wphlen@mtco.com
from http://www.eagle-net.org/bbs/opsmessages/331.html:
Strange Death of Jim McDougal
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted by Clintoonist on March 23, 1998 at 18:56:14:
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 05:22:28 -0800
From: cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart)
To: piml@mars.galstar.com
Subject: piml] McDougal
This comes from someone whom I consider to be credible.
Carolyn
***********************************************
I am corresponding with an activist who was falsely arrested and persecuted into pleading guilty as the leader of the Viper Militia in Arizona last year. He is his sentence at the Ft. Worth Federal Prison, where Whitewater Conspirator Jim McDougal was also serving time.
My contact is a rational, thoughtful, clear-headed grassroots activist who is not concerned with blue helmets, Trilateralists, or the Rockefellers. He is in prison because he sincerely believes that the Second Amendment means exactly what it says and thought he had a right to exercise it.
I'm interested in what you think I should do with this information. Does anyone know Ken Starr's phone number?
For his safety, I will not reveal his identity. These are entirely his words without embellishment or comment:
3/11/98
I thought that my stories of interest had ended with my sentencing and being sent to the prison hospital facility here in Ft. Worth. Until my friend Jim McDougal died last Saturday night.
I believe that he was murdered! So does every other inmate in this prison. All 1,442 of them.
So many bizarre things occurred last Saturday afternoon that the Govts. story doesn't hold much water.
It started at 4 o'clock count when an olive drab "Blackhawk" helicopter with NO markings on it whatsoever, landed outside the fence of the prison. Count was completed and we went to dinner. Upon completion of our evening meal at 6:05 the helicopter took off and flew over the compound at maybe 150 ft.
Hundreds of us (inmates) saw this helicopter take off. At 6:10 the compound was locked down and at the same time Jim was taken to give a urine specimen for drug testing which is very odd in itself because he's not here for drugs.
When I had lunch with Jim at noon on Sat., he was in good health and was even jovial. He was looking forward to testifying before Ken Starr's Grand Jury, and the release of his book.
During the compound lookdown after dinner, he was injected with a drug in the clinic, supposedly "Lasix" to make him urinate, then put into the hold by himself, where he died.
It was not the right time for urinalysis; he was not taken to the right place where it's done; he shouldn't have even had a UA, and even though a doctor had previously noted on his file that he had urinary tract problems, and should not be forced to urinate on command. He was given an injection of what was said was "Lasix" a diuretic.
He was taken to John Petersmith Hospital, which is odd in itself, because ALL inmates are taken to Ft. Worth Osteopathic Hospital were the B.O.P.'s [Bureau of Prisons] contract is.
I am NOT a black helicopter conspiracy nut. I saw this with my own eyes close enough that I could have hit it with a rock.
[END]
from TPDL 1998-Nov-27, from NewsMax 1998-Nov-25, by Betsy Gibson:
For the story behind the story...
Jim McDougal Whistleblower
The feisty, left-wing newsletter, CounterPunch, reports that "Jim McDougal's death in a federal prison, apparently caused by medical negligence, is having a sinister sequel."
According to CounterPunch -- among the first to report the suspicious circumstances of Jim's March 6, 1998 death -- the man who told them about the murky events surrounding McDougal's death has now been targeted by federal prison officials.
CounterPunch names that man as inmate T.J. Lowe. Lowe had been in a holding cell at Fort Worth Medical Center near to McDougal on the day of his death.
He told CounterPunch that McDougal had been taken to solitary confinement where officials denied McDougal life-saving medications.
As McDougal's condition worsened, his cries for help were ignored by prison officials. McDougal later died of cardiac arrest.
CounterPunch says that last month prison officials conducted a raid on Lowe's cell, and "seized all of his correspondence on the preposterous claims that it posed a fire hazard."
Officials also took medications Lowe needed for a serious medical condition.
Lowe, who has been put in solitary confinement, is serving the last year of a six year term for having grown marijuana. A friend tells CounterPunch he might not make it through.
Though McDougal was a key cooperating witness for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr on the Whitewater matter, Starr has yet to investigate McDougal's death. McDougal was said to have implicated Hillary Clinton in efforts to defraud Madison Guaranty bank.
INSIDE COVER notes that McDougal died on March 6, six years to the day that Jeff Gerth of the New York Times first broke the Whitewater story, linking the Clintons to the land development scam.
from TPDL 1998-Oct-28, from WorldNetDaily, by David T. Nash M.D.:
Medical mayhem:
The Jim McDougal story
Jim McDougal was an interesting man. He was the friend, financial adviser and confidant of some very bright and very powerful people. He enjoyed more than his 15 minutes of fame that most of us are entitled to according to Andy Warhol. Yet there are a number of loose threads in his story that most have never heard of, and many don't seem to want to know about. From a purely medical aspect his final illness points out that even celebrities can have really poor care, if we are to believe the limited amount of data that has been grudgingly released.
Some background might be helpful to the uninitiated. Long ago Jim and his wife were partners with another couple, Bill and Hilary Clinton. They participated in a land development scheme that to put it as charitably as possible did not do well and resulted in real and maybe not so valid losses, at least for tax purposes. But the fact was that he was tried, and after a period of several years was found guilty and sent to jail. The role of others in the failure and financial hanky panky is a matter of some debate, and it sort of depends on whether you are a member of one or another political party. What has not really been discussed or even really investigated is the most interesting part -- the medical aspects.
Let's start with the facts -- we do have an autopsy which shows (I quote from official records):
Severe hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (This means that he had heart disease from high blood pressure, and hardening of the arteries)
Cardiomegaly (his heart was enlarged to 546 grams, a normal male would be 350-400 grams, so he had a big heart, and it was not from being a wonderful giving gentleman, it was because his high blood pressure had not been treated adequately enough)
Left ventricular hypertrophy (this means that the wall of his heart was thickened, again this would mean that he could have a severe heart problem because not enough oxygen would be available to meet the extra demands on his heart in case of stress or strain, or cold)
Occlusive coronary atherosclerotic disease (hardening of the arteries of his heart which would cause chest pain if he were under stress or frightened or cold (more on this later)
Scars of carotid endarterectomy ( He had hardening of the arteries of his neck and an operation was done to clear away the cholesterol filled plaque or narrowing, like rust in an old pipe)
Status post aorto-femoral bypass grafts ( This means that he had hardening of the arteries of his legs bad enough to require surgery, and, I believe he used a cane)
Once in jail he was given Prozac, an antidepressant, but evidently not other drugs according to some witnesses. (There was Prozac in his blood at autopsy. There is no evidence that he received high blood pressure medicine.)
He was asked to give a urine specimen, and did not, saying he could not (an effect of antidepressants). The jail people gave him Lasix ( a diuretic) to force his urine (a drug he did not require otherwise). He was placed in a cold (60-degree) cell in isolation. He complained of chest pain but he was not under observation when he collapsed and died after transfer to the hospital.
Now the fascinating part is that here is a man in a nationally discussed case, under supervision in a jail, who is known to have high-blood pressure, known to have high cholesterol, and has had not one but two surgical operations directed at the effects of his cholesterol, and they are not treating his cholesterol. He gets a drug he does not need, when they simply could have given him several glasses of water or tea and waited and he would have given them their requested urine sample.
Just think about it, a famous witness dies a needless death with clearly less than adequate medical care. If this is the case with this celebrity, what would you guess is the care of the average Joe/Jane who does not meet the radar of a close examination because they are only important to their loved ones.
It seems to me that a closer look at this McDougal Medical Mayhem might be instructive. Maybe he really received excellent care that was not documented. Maybe?
David Nash is a medical doctor and clinical professor of medicine.
Obviously there's a conflict between the above story, which is based on the published report of the government, and the other accounts, which are not. The conflict is this: according to the government, McDougal was not receiving medication for his acute hypertension. Thus, the administration of Lasix would not constitute prima facie malpractice (as a consequence of the drug interaction). Nonetheless, even in this government-described scenario, the failure to supply McDougal with hypertension treatment, combined with the other established elements of the case, likely constitute manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, or likely, depraved indifference, on the part of the responsible agents. Curiously, the sequence of events alleged by the government does not mitigate the crime. And of course, case elements yet to be established will likely demonstrate that in fact McDougal was the victim of intentional, rehearsed homicide.
from http://www.worldnetdaily.com/exclusiv/980331.ex.whitewater.death.lawhon_johnny.html dated 1998 March 31.
Another Whitewater figure, 29, killed
Johnny Lawhon discovered cashier's check in trunk of car
Copyright 1998, WorldNetDaily.com
Johnny Franklin Lawhon Jr, 29, the transmission shop owner who discovered Whitewater documents and a cashier's check made out to Bill Clinton, was killed when his car struck a tree in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Witnesses to the car wreck said it occurred immediately after Lawhon drove "like a shot" from a service station in his black 1998 Corvette about 1:20 a.m. into a utility pole, breaking it and then striking a tree.
Lawhon made the news last November after reporting he had found Whitewater documents left at his shop in the trunk of a tornado-damaged car. The documents included a 15-year-old cashier's check for more than $20,000 made out to Clinton. The deposit date on the check seemed to indicate it was used to pay off a loan to the Whitewater Development Corp.
The car belonged to Henry Floyd, a former Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association employee who said he was expected to deliver the papers to a warehouse in 1988. Floyd said he took his car to the repair shop and left it after a dispute about the repair bill.
Lawhon turned the check over to Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.
The family had no immediate comment on Lawhon's death. Another Whitewater figure, James McDougal, Clinton's former business partner in the Whitewater real estate deal, died in an Ft. Worth prison three weeks ago.
from Wayne Mann's TPDL of 16 May 1998
In new book, McDougal alleges payoffs to Clinton
Associated Press, 05/16/98 01:06
WASHINGTON (AP) - Alleged cash payoffs to Bill Clinton of $2,000 a month. A supposed presidential promise to pardon Susan McDougal. Convicted felon James McDougal, in a new book, fired off one last round of accusations before his death - all of them denied by the president's Whitewater lawyer.
McDougal's first-person account, written with Boston Globe reporter Curtis Wilkie, quotes President Clinton as saying in 1996 that ``you can depend on that'' when McDougal requested a pardon for his former wife.
At the time, Ms. McDougal was in the midst of a bank fraud trial that ended with her conviction on four felony counts. She is serving a two-year prison term and earlier served 18 months for refusing to answer grand jury questions. She was indicted last week on charges of criminal contempt and obstruction.
Clinton lawyer David Kendall called McDougal's accusations ``scurrilous falsehoods'' and said McDougal's book, ``Arkansas Mischief,'' ``belongs on the `fiction' side of the aisle.''
The Associated Press obtained pre-publication excerpts of the book Friday. In them, McDougal offered no evidence to corroborate his allegations beyond his own word.
The flamboyant former savings and loan operator once was one of Clinton's staunchest supporters, frequently insisting the president had done nothing wrong in the Whitewater financial dealings.
But after his conviction in 1996 on charges he defrauded his S&L, McDougal became a cooperating prosecution witness, turned on Clinton and made several serious allegations against the first family.
He died in prison in March after years of failing health.
McDougal wrote ``I knew there was no way'' Clinton ``could pardon me without an uproar. But I considered Susan a sympathetic figure.''
The book alleges the conversation about a pardon took place in the White House Map Room following the president's videotaped deposition in 1996 for the trial of the McDougals and then-Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker. All three defendants were convicted.
``I know for a fact that Mr. McDougal's statement about his conversation with the president on April 28, 1996 is absolutely false,'' attorney Kendall said in a statement. ``I was with the president every moment he was in the presence of Mr. McDougal precisely to assure that no one could ever credibly make an outlandish allegation like this.''
McDougal alleged that in the 1980s, he and a longtime businessman at McDougal's S&L, Henry Hamilton, ``developed a system to pass money to Clinton,'' then governor of Arkansas. ``I considered it just another way of helping to take care of Bill.
``A contractor agreed to pad my monthly construction bill by $2,000,'' McDougal stated. ``The contractor put the figure on his invoice as a cost for gravel or culvert work. After I paid the full amount ... the contractor reimbursed me the $2,000. I turned the money over to Henry to give to Clinton.''
Hamilton is dead.
``Once, after I handed Henry his latest consignment of 20 hundred-dollar bills to relay to the governor's office, he turned the bills over and over in one hand, like a magician,'' McDougal said. ``Henry grinned. `You know,' he said, `Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First had Cromwell. Clinton could profit from these examples if he crosses us.''
The alleged $2,000-a-month cash payment and other accusations ``are simply made up out of whole cloth,'' Kendall declared.
McDougal wrote that Hamilton ``insisted that under-the-table payments would solidify our connections in state government.'' He said Clinton appointed his recommended candidates to state jobs, including state securities commissioner.
Kendall pointed out that a previous McDougal accusation that turns up again in the book - that Clinton urged Whitewater figure David Hale to make a fraudulent $300,000 loan - was contradicted by McDougal's own testimony at his 1996 criminal trial.
In the book, McDougal said one of Ms. McDougal's brothers, Jim Henley, witnessed a meeting in which Clinton allegedly urged Hale to make the fraudulent loan.
McDougal said Clinton appeared unexpectedly at the end of a meeting where the loan was discussed and asked, ``Did you discuss Susan's loan?''
``How did Bill know about Susan's loan?'' McDougal wrote. ``Why did he care about the loan?'' McDougal said he concluded that Clinton and Ms. McDougal had resumed an affair ``and she had asked him to make it clear to David Hale, the man he had appointed judge, that the governor was interested in Susan's loan application.''
To repeat: "McDougal became a cooperating prosecution witness, turned on Clinton and made several serious allegations against the first family. He died in prison in March after years of failing health. [...] McDougal alleged that in the 1980s, he and a longtime businessman at McDougal's S&L, Henry Hamilton, ``developed a system to pass money to Clinton,'' then governor of Arkansas. [...] Hamilton is dead." Do the math, as they say.
from http://www.worldnetdaily.com/btlines/980514.btl.clinton.global..html:
Joseph Farah - Thursday, May 14, 1998
Clinton's global crime plan
The Clinton administration this week announced a comprehensive plan to target the growing power of sophisticated international organized crime syndicates.
It's called the International Crime Control Strategy, which identifies the major global threats to the United States as drug trafficking, acquisition or sale of weapons of mass destruction by criminal, the transfer of sensitive U.S. technology to rogue foreign states and trafficking in women and children.
Drug trafficking? Transfer of sensitive technology? Trafficking in women? These are certainly areas in which the Clinton administration has expertise. He has long associated with drug dealers, even pardoning one as governor, and his connections to activity at Mena Airport in Arkansas has long been a matter of suspicion. As president he was responsible for perhaps the single most serious transfer of sensitive technology since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, with his approval of the sale of missile guidance systems to China. And, as far as trafficking in women, does it count when it's for your own use?
Seriously, folks, if I didn't know better I would think this plan, announced at this moment, was a practical joke -- an idea worthy of "Saturday Night Live."
If the administration is serious about stamping out organized crime, it could begin by cleaning out its own house. Here's just a partial, quickie list of the felony convictions in and around Bill Clinton since he took office: Webster Hubbell, Jim McDougal, Susan McDougal, Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, David Hale, Robert W. Palmer, Chris Wade, Neal T. Ainley, Henry Espy, Michael Brown, Eugene Lum, Nora Lum and Johnny Chung.
Then there are those indicted or targeted for indictment: Ron Brown, Herby Branscum, Mike Espy, Henry Cisneros, Archie Schaefer, Charlie Trie, Maria Hsia, Nolanda Hill, Bruce Babbitt, Ron Carey, Monica Lewinsky and Webster Hubbell (again).
Then come the executive privilege claims: Bruce Lindsey, Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary Clinton, Secret Service agents and James Hamilton.
Let's not forget about Clinton's criminal associates -- from Jorge Cabrera to Dan Lasater to Wang Jun.
And, perhaps, the biggest benchmark of criminal conspiracy -- the Fifth Amendment pleadings and refusal to answer under oath: Susan McDougal, Susan Thomases, Webster Hubbell (again), Maggie Williams, Bruce Lindsey, Hillary Clinton, John Huang, Johnny Chung, David Wang, Keshi Zhan, Gin F.J. Chen, Siuw Moi Lian, Yi Chu, Mark Middleton, Seow Fong Ooi, Bin Ue Jeng, Hsiu Chu Lin, Larry Wong, Duangnet Kronenberg, Jen Chin Hsueh, Na-chi "Nancy" Lee, Chi Rung Wang, Hueutsan Huang, Jou Sheng, Yue Chu, Yogesh Ghandi, Judy Hsu, Man Ho, Steven Hwang, Jane Dewi Tahir, Manlin Foung, Gilbert Colon, Maria Mapili, Yumei Yang, Irene Wu, Jie Su Hsaio, Mike Lin, Hsiu Luan Tseng, Hsin Chen Shi, Zie Pan Huang, Mark Jiminez, Shu Jen Wu, Michael Brown, Woody Hwang, Charles Intriago, Simon Chen, Sioeng Fei Man, Jessica Elinitiarta, Kent La, Craig Livingstone.
Speaking of international criminal syndicates, there are the foreign witnesses refusing to answer: Ng Lap Seng, Stephan Riady, Roy Tirtadji, Ken Hsui, John Mucy, James Lin, Eugene Wu, Mochtar Riady, Stanley Ho, Suma Ching Hai, James Riady, Daniel Wu, Ambrose Hsuing, Lay Kweek Wie, Li Kwai Fai, Bruce Cheung.
And, of course, those avoiding testimony by fleeing the country: Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Pauline Kanchanalak, Ming Chen, Antonio Pan, John H.K. Lee, Aug Setiawan, Ted Sioeng, Dewi Tirto, Subandi Tanuwidjaja, Sorya Wiriadinata, Felix Ma, Susanto Tanuwidjaja, Suryant Tanuwidjaja, Subandi Tanuwidjaja, Yanti Ardi, Nanny Nitiarta, Yopie Elnitiarta, Maureen Elinitiarta, Sandra Elinitiarta, Sundari Elnitiarta.
Of course, there are lots more name we could add -- the suicides, the murders, the accident victims, those who have been harassed and intimidated for daring to cross the administration. ... It all begins to look suspiciously like a pattern of racketeering, organized crime, a mob-style operation.
My first thought upon reading of Clinton's plan is that the initiative sounds more like a way to rub out the competition. It sounds like there's going to be a good, old-fashioned gang war.
If I were an international organized crime figure not paying sufficient tribute to Don Clinton, I'd be nervous. It looks like the Godfather is getting ready to make a move.
That's it for now!
Posts
