In today’s society people often pay close attention to what happens in politics. They normally make voting decisions on character, past work, and partisan lines. When rumors of indiscretion or impropriety of a public official pops up, people often like to get involved. Like gossiping on the church’s rumor grapevine, people love to get involved in conspiracies and scandals dealing with people of power. If you have watched television at all in the last ten years, you have probably heard about Whitewater. Whitewater is the investigation into Bill Clinton’s life before he became president.
This alleged conspiracy goes much deeper though than just a crooked land deal. It has its fingers into power and manipulation and even death. The conspiracy starts with a real estate deal twenty years ago. According to the Washington Post, in 1978, then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, joined a 50/50 partnership with James and Susan McDougal to buy 220 acres of riverfront land and form the Whitewater Development Corp. James McDougal and Clinton had become acquainted in 1968 when they worked for the re-election campaign of U. S. Sen. F. William Fulbright.
The goal was easy. All they had to do was sell lots for vacation homes. The deal was initially described as a sweetheart deal for Bill and Hillary Clinton. The partners would borrow money to buy land in northern Arkansas along the White River, divide the property into lots, and sell them for a profit. James McDougal also owned a savings and loan association called Madison Savings and Loan. The Clintons’ relationship with McDougals eventually involved them with Madison Savings and Loan. McDougal hired the Rose law firm in which Hillary Clinton worked along side of Vince Foster.
McDougal claims he hired them at the urging of now Governor Clinton, who wanted to help Mrs. Clinton drum up business. The president denies the claim. Some Clinton associates clearly broke the law during these years in Arkansas. The McDougals, most notably, were both found guilty of fraud. Hillary Clinton represented the S&L before the State Securities Department, headed by Clinton appointee Beverly Bassett Schaffer, who also once represented Madison as an attorney. Schaffer approved an unusual stock sale to help save the troubled Madison, despite federal complaints about McDougal’s business practices.
Federal investigators looked into those actions, which are central to the allegation that the Clintons helped keep Madison open long after it was broke, as a favor to McDougal. According to CNN. Com Madison collapsed in the mid-1980s, leaving American taxpayers with a $68 million bailout bill. However, The Rose law firm that Hilary worked for, having once represented Madison, then represented the government in the case. In 1989, McDougal was indicted on charges of bank fraud and other violations related to Madison’s failure.
He was later acquitted in 1990. Madison S & L and McDougal’s travails led to other questions about Bill Clinton’s role — questions of whether Madison funds were diverted by McDougal to pay Whitewater debts or funneled into Clinton’s gubernatorial campaign. The suspicion of funneling arises from a 1985 fund-raiser McDougal organized to cover Clinton’s campaign debt. It raised $30,000, $12,000 of which came in the form of Madison cashier’s checks. Investigators believe the money came directly from the S&L’s deposits.
The main focus however, was still that the Clintons allegedly received a large share of the development without putting up any money and other specific Whitewater happenings. When the development went sour, additional capital infusions were needed, and there is evidence and testimony suggesting that these cash infusions were obtained illegally from the federal government and never paid back. According to the October 31, 1994 editorial “Evidence in Whitewater Case is Now Firm” in the Washington Weekly, in 1985 the Whitewater land investment of the Clintons and McDougals was in trouble.
The individual lots of the land development were not selling and Jim McDougal approached Capital Management Services, Inc. run by David Hale, a former Arkansas banker and municipal judge. Hale’s firm was authorized by the federal Small Business Administration to lend federally guaranteed and subsidized loans to small businesses operated by minorities and the disadvantaged. “McDougal told me he wanted to ‘clean up’ some problem loans with our friends in the ‘political family’,” Hale said.
Just before Christmas, now Governor Bill Clinton approached Hale at the steps of the Capitol building. “Are you going to help Jim and me out? ” Clinton asked according to Hale. This meeting was witnessed by Trooper L. D. Brown who in later confirmed Hale’s version of the story to Whitewater investigators. The next meeting was in February of 1986, where Hale, Clinton and McDougal were all present. Hale said he felt heavily pressured into approving a SBA loan for $300,000 to Susan McDougal who was a partner in Whitewater.
Susan McDougal, who was a millionaire, was not legally qualified for a SBA loan. Clinton, Hale and McDougal conspired to defraud the federal government. The loan was never paid back, and records show that at least $110,000 of this money found its way into the Whitewater account. The Whitewater partnership did poorly and finally dissolved in 1992, leaving the Clintons reporting a net loss of more than $40,000. The McDougals took full control of the business practices. In July of 1993, the FBI raided Hale’s office and found documents outlining the illegal loan.
Hale was now under investigation for unrelated charges and offered to reveal incriminating evidence against now President Clinton in return for a plea bargain. However, the prosecuting U. S. Attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, Paula Casey, a former Clinton campaign worker who had just been appointed by Clinton in an unprecedented “sweeping D. A. massacre” wouldn’t hear the charges against Clinton and refused to plea bargain with Hale. This shows Clinton’s control over the situation. Either through him covering it up or by someone he appointed covering it up.
But when the special Whitewater prosecutor Robert Fiske came to Little Rock in 1994, he struck a plea bargain with Hale, and since then Hale has been a frequent guest of the Whitewater Grand Jury in Little Rock. In February of 1994, Skip Rutherford, now the coordinator of the privately funded Clinton Presidential Library, pressured Trooper Brown who had witnessed the Christmas meeting between Clinton and Hale, not to cooperate with Whitewater investigators. After the meeting, Rutherford met with White House officials Bruce Lindsey and Betsey Wright.
Knowing that Arkansas is a violent state”, Trooper Brown recorded a fully protected disclosure of all the illegalities he witnessed during his service on Clinton’s security detail, and started singing to Whitewater investigators. This shows he was probably afraid for his life, but still wanted to do the right thing. Special Counsel Kenneth Starr, appointed by the Justice Department succeeded Robert Fiske, who was a Clinton appointee. Starr and a small army of lawyers and investigators looked into charges surrounding Whitewater and Madison.
The wide-ranging investigation yielded indictments against Jim and Susan McDougal and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker. According to CNN. com all three went on trial in early 1996. They were accused of conspiring to defraud the saving and loan and defrauding the federal government by obtaining $3 million in loans from a lending company run by David Hale. His company issued loans on behalf of the federal Small Business Association. The conspiracy charge against Mrs. McDougal was dismissed. Hale has pleaded guilty to two felony charges for fraudulently running his business and has testified against the defendants.
He was sentenced to two years and four months in prison. In one allegedly fraudulent deal, Hale claims Clinton pressured him in 1986 to make an illegal $300,000 SBA loan to Susan McDougal, to be repaid by Clinton and James McDougal. Hale approved the loan for one of her companies, which he qualified as a disadvantaged small business, or a minority-owned firm. The money has not been repaid. President Clinton has called Hale’s allegations “bull” and testified in the trial by videotape. The Whitewater investigation reached deeply into the workings of the Rose law firm in Little Rock.
It led to a guilty plea from former Rose partner Webster Hubbell to fraud charges arising from his billing practices at the firm. Hubbell had followed the Clintons to Washington to serve in the No. 3 position at the Justice Department. He is now serving time in federal prison. These are just a few of the people surrounding the Clintons who have been caught. And yet Bill and Hillary keep slipping away. Over time, the investigation known as “Whitewater” grew well beyond allegations related to the Clintons’ financial, legal dealings, and misuse of power in Arkansas.
It also encompassed the Clintons’ responses to the allegations – and such unrelated events as the firing of White House travel office clerks and Bill Clinton’s extra-marital affairs with Monica Lewinsky and others. One of the most interesting parts of this conspiracy, and yet the part that is kept the quietest is its cover-up. Whitewater is just the icing on the cake. The true conspiracy is the power and control that Bill Clinton has been able to wield. He shows this by his distancing himself from the situation, his using lackeys to control things, and eliminating those who get in his way.
According to “The Clinton Body-Count” by the website www. everwonder. com/david/suspicious. html several people associated with the Clintons have ended up dead under mysterious circumstances. This group of people all died in order to hide Clinton’s involvement in his shady deeds. New additions to this list are coming in faster than closets can be found to hide the bodies in. Mary Mahoney a White House Intern died July of 1997. An attractive 25-year-old woman, Mary was a former White House Intern for Bill Clinton working as the Assistant Manager at a Starbuck’s Coffee shop in Georgetown.
In the pre-trial publicity surrounding Paula Jones lawsuit, and mere days after Newsweek’s Mike Isikoff had dropped hints that a “former White House staffer” was about to go public with her story of sexual harassment at 1600 Pennsylvania, gunmen entered the Starbuck’s while the crew was cleaning up after closing. Mary’s two associates were taken to a room and shot. Mary herself had five bullets in her. No money was taken. As of this writing, Mike Isikoff’s “former White House staffer” has never appeared. Another of these deaths is Vincent Foster who was a White House Counsel.
He died on July 21, 1993. He was found dead in Ft. Marcy Park in Washington, DC, of a supposed suicide by gunshot. A suicide note was supposedly found a few days later, torn into several pieces, in his briefcase, after White House staff had entered his office and materials removed. The gun that he supposedly used to kill himself was reported to be still in his hand, but the person who first found the body reports that there was no gun at that time. Many irregularities surround the death and the investigation of it. Foster was also from Hope, Ark. ike Clinton, and also worked for the Rose Law firm.
Foster had intimate knowledge of the Clintons’ personal finances. Foster was involved in an investigation of their finances, and reportedly made a phone call to Hillary Clinton, in Little Rock, just hours before his death. Another strange “coincidence” is the number of dead bodyguards who were to have guarded the Clintons during the time when most of the alleged misconducts occurred.
The first of these are Maj. Gen. William Robertson who was the Deputy Commanding General, V Corps, in Europe, Col. William Densberger a V Corps Chief of Operations and Plans, Col. Robert Kelly of the V Corps Chief of Intelligence, and Spec. Gary Rhodes a Crew Chief all died on February 23, 1993. All of these men were killed when their helicopter crashed in Weisbaden, Germany. No cause was ever determined. The 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 U. S. S. Roosevelt all died within 4 months of each other.
Five Navy aviators who were Clinton’s bodyguards / escorts whose names could not be determined died on March 26, 1993. They all died in a crash of an E-2C Hawkeye in Italy. The crash occurred shortly after the plane was “waved off” from a landing attempt on the Carrier U. S. S. Roosevelt, due to a “foul deck”. All five men had been Clinton’s escorts during Clinton’s visit to the Roosevelt two weeks prior. Three other men, who had flown Clinton to the U. S. S. Roosevelt for that visit also died later in a helicopter crash.
Staff Sgt. Brian Haney, Marine Sgt. Tim Sabel, Maj. William Barkley, and Capt. Scott Reynolds all were Clinton bodyguards and died on May 19, 1993. All four men died when their helicopter crashed in the woods near Quantico, Virginia. Reporters were barred from the site, and the head of the fire department responding to the crash described it by saying, “Security was tight,” with “lots of Marines with guns. ” The Marines seized a videotape made by one of the firefighters. All four men had escorted Clinton on his flight to the carrier U. S. S. Roosevelt shortly before their deaths.
