The following is brought to you thanks, in part, to the kind assistance of CyberNews and the fine folks at Cornell University.
("Quid coniuratio est?")
RON BROWN: THEY CAN'T INDICT HIM NOW
July 30, 1992: C. Victor Raiser II, former finance co-chairman of Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, dies in a plane crash near Anchorage, Alaska.
July 20, 1993: Vincent Foster, Clinton's counsel for Whitewater, dies under mysterious circumstances in Washington, D.C.
September 26, 1993: Luther "Jerry" Parks, gunned down while driving home from a restaurant in Little Rock, Arkansas. Parks had been owner of American Contract Services, supplier of guards for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign and transition headquarters. Says Parks' son, Gary: "They had my father killed to save Bill Clinton's political career."
March 1, 1994: Herschel Friday, who had been a member of C. Victor Raiser's team (see above), dies when his plane crashes in Arkansas.
March 3, 1994: Dr. Ronald Rogers, a dentist critical of Clinton, enroute to meet with Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, a reporter from the London Sunday Telegraph, dies when his plane crashes in Oklahoma.
April 19, 1995: According to Sherman Skolnick and others, Hillary Rodham Clinton had been indicted just two days earlier. On April 19, with the indictment apparently about to be made public, the Murrah building is bombed, apparently by professionals. The bombing is blamed on Timothy McVeigh by a press obviously eager to do so.
April 3, 1996: Clinton Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, under investigation and possibly about to be indicted, dies in a plane crash in the former Yugoslavia.
Brown had had unsavoury connections for years. According to Newsweek (10/11/93), Nguyen Van Hao, confidant of the prime minister of Vietnam, "wanted Brown's help in easing the American ban against trade with his country." Hao's former business partner, Ly Thanh Binh, claimed that Brown agreed to "work for lifting the trade ban in exchange for $700,000 to be deposited offshore, and a secretly paid cut of any development deals Hao and Binh obtained." Wrote authors Howard Fineman and Bob Cohn in the Newsweek article, "If Brown is indicted" it could threaten "the current era of good feelings in the White House."
But Brown apparently wasn't indicted back then. Was he perhaps warned at that time, "Stay out of trouble from now on -- or else"?
Were Brown's recent troubles about to threaten "the current era of good feelings" as the November elections approach? In February of 1995, twenty-two House Republicans had written to Bill Clinton demanding that Brown be fired because of his financial dealings. [AP, 02/03/95] A month later, Representative William F. Clinger said that an investigation by his staff "developed a large body of information and documentation that seems to indicate Secretary Brown may have violated federal law in several instances." [Washington Times, Nat. Weekly Ed., 3/6- 12/95] Then, in July of 1995, Daniel S. Pearson, a former appeals court judge, was chosen to investigate Brown by a panel of federal appellate judges. Notes an article by David Johnston in the July 7, 1995 New York Times: "The judges, following Ms. Reno's request [for an independent prosecutor], directed Mr. Pearson to investigate whether Mr. Brown improperly accepted nearly $500,000 from a business partner and filed inaccurate financial disclosure statements." In its January 29, 1996 issue, The Spotlight turned attention to activities allegedly involving Brown's son, Michael. Notes The Spotlight: "While fighting to keep his department from being eliminated, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown is keeping his eyes on a lawsuit charging his son, Michael, with peddling his father's influence."
Had Brown & Co. become (as had Vince Foster, according to Debra von Trapp) "overly entrepreneurial"? One thing is for sure, there's no shortage of "entrepreneurs" amongst Clinton & Co.... Also investigated during the reign of Mr. Bill: former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy and Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros. [New York Times, 07/07/95]
The "Brown problem" wasn't going away. According to the Associated Press [02/08/96], an Oklahoma gas company was the latest to be "under scrutiny" by prosecutors. Did they spend $150,000 to assist a Democratic congressional campaign? Was Ron Brown's son involved in the "fund-raiser"?
Cui bono? Who benefits? Brown's death seems to have lifted a major election-year embarrassment off Bill Clinton's shoulders.
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
See also: http://www.europa.com/~johnlf/cn.html
See also: ftp ftp.shout.net pub/users/bigred