The real Clinton story: 1996

Forgotten or ignored stories about the Clintons and the state that made them

Bill Clinton gives a speech to a group of Little Rock supporters in which he calls those pressing the Whitewater and other investigations "a cancer" that he will "cut out of American politics."

Barbara Wise, a Commerce Department (International Trade Administration) secretary and associate of John Huang, is found bruised and partially nude in a locked office at Commerce. Cause of death remains unknown.

In late March, a score of witnesses are subpoenaed for a grand jury probe of Ron Brown, who hires a $750/hour criminal attorney. Among the issues: an Oklahoma gas company's alleged funneling of over a half million dollars to in order to get him to fix a lawsuit pending against the firm.

Janet Reno names Daniel Pearson to head the probe. She says he can investigate anything. Brown reportedly urges Clinton to get Reno off his back, but evidence of his crookedness has reached Capitol Hill and the Attorney General apparently feels there is no turning back. It will be later alleged by some close to Brown that the Commerce Secretary has told the president that if he is going down, he is not going down alone.

Four days after the grand jury subpoenas are issued, Ron Brown is dead -- killed when the plane in which he was flying (along with nearly three dozen other Americans) crashes into a mountain in Croatia. From the start, there are a number of anomalies including inconsistencies over the purported state of the weather, where the plane is reported to have crashed, what happened to the plane's black boxes, and the subsequent suicide of an airport official in charge of navigational aids. Further, even though the crash site is a little over a mile from the runway, the first rescuers do not officially arrive on the scene for more than four hours.

Hillary Clinton attempts to conceal the fact that she had $120,000 of editorial help in preparing her book-like substance.

Hillary Clinton tells New Zealand television that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. At the time of Mrs. Clinton's birth, Hillary was an unknown beekeeper.

Senator Bob Kerrey, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, tells Esquire that Bill Clinton is "an unusually good liar."

Convicted cocaine distributor Dan Lasater testifies before Congress. The New York Times, among others, does not cover the story even though Lasater is close to Clinton and paid off Roger Clinton's debt to the drug cartel. Lasater also raised race horses and was a track buddy of Virginia Kelly, through whom he met her son Bill. When Lasater started a bonding company, Bill Clinton recommended to him highway commissioner Patsy Thomasson, who would become vice president of the Lasater firm and have power of attorney while he was in jail. Thomasson would eventually become director of White House Management and Administration, responsible for drug testing among other things. While with Lasater, Thomasson hired Clinton's half-brother as a limo driver. Roger was also employed as a stable hand at Lasater's Florida farm. In his trial, and in testimony before the Senate Whitewater committee, Lasater admits to being free with coke, including ashtrays full of it on his corporate jet. He also admits to having given coke to employees and to minors. But he takes umbrage at being called a drug dealer since he didn't charge for the stuff.

According to some witnesses, Lasater also had a back door pass to the governor's mansion. One state trooper reported taking Clinton to Lasater's office regularly and waiting forty-five minutes or an hour for him to come out.

Jim McDougal tells a reporter that he doesn't expect to leave prison alive.

An independent investigator finds evidence of an electronic transfer of $50 million from the Arkansas Development Financial Authority to a bank in the Cayman Islands. Grand Cayman has a population of 18,000, 570 commercial banks, one bank regulator and a bank secrecy law. It is a favorite destination spot for laundered drug money.

The Associated Press reports: "Some of the Clinton White House employees who were placed in a special drug testing program had used cocaine and hallucinogens and were originally denied White House security passes, Secret Service agents testified Wednesday. The testing program was created as a compromise so the new administration's workers could keep their jobs, according to Arnold Cole, who supervised the Secret Service's White House operations. Another agent's deposition revealed the background checks turned up use of hard drugs. "I have seen cocaine usage. I have seen hallucinogenic usages, crack usages," said Jeffrey Undercoffer, when asked to describe the types of drugs used by employees who were placed in the special programs. The Associated Press reported  that 21 Clinton White House workers had been placed in the special testing after their background checks indicated recent drug abuse."

The son of the man Vince Foster's widow married is killed in a single car crash against a brick wall. There are reports that he had been talking to reporters and that Neil Moody had discovered something unsettling among his stepmother's private papers and was threatening to go public with it just prior to the beginning of the Democratic National Convention. Witnesses say they saw Neil sitting in his car arguing with another person and suddenly speeding off out of control and hitting a brick wall.

Shelly Kelly is the flight attendant on Ron Brown's ill fated flight. James Nugent of the Wall Street Underground writes, "Four hours and 20 minutes after the crash, the first Croatian Special Forces search party arrives on the scene and finds only Ms. Kelly surviving. They call for a helicopter to evacuate her to the hospital. When it arrives, she is able to get aboard without assistance from the medics. But Kelly never completes the short hop. She dies enroute. According to multiple reports given to journalist/editor Joe L. Jordan, an autopsy later reveals a neat three-inch incision over her main femoral artery. It also shows that the incision came at least three hours after her other cuts and bruises."

Chief Niko Jerkuic, technician in charge of the radio beacons used during the fatal Ron Brown flight commits suicide. Christopher Ruddy and Hugh Sprunt write, "Brown's plane was probably relying on Croatian ground beacons for navigation. In the minutes before Brown's plane crashed, five other planes landed at Dubrovnik without difficulty, and none experienced problems with the beacons. But additional questions about the beacons and the crash will remain unanswered because, as the Air Force acknowledges, airport maintenance chief Niko Junic died by gunshot just three days after the crash and before he could be interviewed by investigators. Within a day of his death, officials determined the death was a suicide."

The three major networks spend an average of one hour and twelve minutes each on the Clinton scandals during all of the year.

In his 2004 book, "Rewriting History," Dick Morris will allege that Clinton improperly influenced U.S. District Court Judge Henry Woods to dismiss Whitewater charges against then-Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, who had threatened to go public about Hillary's involvement in the fraudulent Castle Grande land deal. After Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno ruled that Starr had jurisdiction over Tucker's involvement in Whitewater, Tucker was "furious," said Morris. Using Morris as a go-between, Tucker sent a warning: "Tell the president that if that SOB wants to play the game this way, I know all about the IDC," the formal business name for Castle Grande. 

When Morris passes on the threat to Clinton, "he turned white as a sheet."

"Clinton sat down, put his head in his hands and said, 'Oh my God, do you know what he means?" Morris said he replied, "No, but I think you know what he means."

Later that night, Morris said Clinton told him, "I took care of that problem today." Three weeks later Judge Woods tossed out the Tucker indictment. Though the case was later reinstated, Tucker never followed through on his threat.

Hillary Clinton's Rose law firm billing records, sought for two years by congressional investigators and the special prosecutor are found in a back room of the personal residence at the White House.

Two Arkansas bankers are indicted on bank fraud and conspiracy charges in connection with Clinton's 1990 run for governor.

It is revealed that the White House has been improperly in the possession of large numbers of FBI files on people including political figures.

The CIA admits to having operated out of Mena but denies involvement with drug trafficking and other illegal activities. Writes the Wall Street Journal's Micah Morrison, "Three days after the 1996 presidential election, the CIA issued a brief report saying it had engaged in 'authorized and lawful activities' at the airfield, including 'routine aviation-related services' and a secret 'joint-training operation with another federal agency.' The agency said it was not 'associated with money laundering, narcotics trafficking, arms smuggling, or other illegal activities' at Mena."

Boris Yeltsin, as he will later recount in his memoirs, learns of Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. He thinks Lewinsky is part of a GOP plot to bring Clinton down. Says Yeltsin: "Clinton's enemies planned to plant a young provocateur in his entourage who would spark a major scandal capable of ruining the president's reputation."

Years later, Yeltsin will be interviewed by Giles Whittell for the Times of London: "It seemed the moment to ask about a claim in the new book, Midnight Diaries, that Russian intelligence warned Yeltsin as early as 1996 that US Republican party activists intended to plant an attractive young woman in the Clinton White House to embarrass its most senior occupant. Did he know then that this woman would be Monica Lewinsky?". . . 'I knew,' Yeltsin replied. . . Why then did he not tell President Clinton, whom he famously referred to as 'Friend Bill?'. . . 'He had enough problems already,' Yeltsin said. 'But it was not only because of that. I decided not to mention it because I didn't fully believe it, and because we are very sensitive to such issues in Russia. I was also convinced that he would overcome the problem himself, which in the end he did.'"

The NY Post will take a less benign view, reporting that US intelligence was worried about "indications that the Russians were aware of Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky well before the scandal broke" and that "the Russian SVR spy agency, successor to the KGB, may have intercepted Clinton's phone-sex conversations with her." If true, the Russians could have blackmailed Clinton beginning almost at the start of his second term.

The conservative British journal Brookes News later writes:"In her testimony for Ken Starr's grand jury, Lewinsky told of a curious comment of Clinton's after she performed her services: that he was worried about a 'foreign power listening in' to their activities and conversations. He was especially concerned about the many phone-sex conversations he had with her, calling her from the White House and Air Force One."