Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

There is enough evidence here to prove to any objective person the Clinton Body
count, mentioned as having some merit in a number of your posts, is claptrap.

"I’ll admit it when I’m proved wrong... I stand by all the other info I have posted."

Clinton Body Bags

Decades-old political rumor claims Bill Clinton quietly did away with several dozen people who possessed incriminating evidence about him.

Snopes Staff Published 24 January 1998

Claim

Bill Clinton has quietly done away with several dozen people who possessed incriminating evidence about him.

Rating False

Origin

Multiple versions of lengthy lists of deaths associated with Bill Clinton have been circulating online for about twenty years now (including the latest iteration, titled “The List of Clinton Associates Who Allegedly Died Mysteriously. Check It Out”). According to those lists, close to fifty colleagues, advisors, and citizens who were about to testify against the Clintons died in suspect circumstances, with the unstated implication being that Bill Clinton or his henchmen were behind each untimely demise.

We shouldn’t have to tell anyone not to believe this claptrap, but we will anyway. In a frenzied media climate where the Chief Executive couldn’t boff a White House intern without the whole world finding out every niggling detail of each encounter and demanding his removal from office, are we seriously to believe the same man had been having double handfuls of detractors and former friends murdered with impunity?

Don’t be swayed by the number of names listed on screeds like this. Any public figure is bound to have a much wider circle of acquaintance than an ordinary citizen would. Moreover, the acquaintanceship is often one-sided: though many of the people enumerated on this list might properly claim to have “known” Clinton, he wouldn’t know or remember having met a great number of them.

“Body count” lists are not a new phenomenon. Lists documenting all the allegedly “suspicious” deaths of persons connected with the assassination of John F. Kennedy have been circulating for decades, and the same techniques used to create and spread the JFK lists have been employed in the Clinton version:

* List every dead person with even the most tenuous of connections to your subject. It doesn’t matter how these people died, or how tangential they were to your subject’s life. The longer the list, the more impressive it looks and the less likely anyone will be to challenge it. By the time readers get to the bottom of the list, they’ll be too weary to wonder what could possibly be relevant about the death of people such as Bill Clinton’s mother’s chiropractor.

* Play word games. Make sure every death is presented as “mysterious.” All accidental deaths are to be labelled “suspicious,” even though by definition accidents occur when something unexpected goes wrong. Every self-inflicted death discussed must include the phrase “ruled a suicide” to imply just the opposite. When an autopsy contradicts a “mysterious death” theory, dispute it; when none was performed because none was needed, claim that “no autopsy was allowed.” Make liberal use of words such as ‘allegedly’ and ‘supposedly’ to dismiss facts you can’t support or contradict with hard evidence.

* Make sure every inconsistency or unexplained detail you can dredge up is offered as evidence of a conspiracy, no matter how insignificant or pointless it may be. If an obvious suicide is discovered wearing only one shoe, ignore the physical evidence of self-inflicted death and dwell on the missing shoe. You don’t have to establish an alternate theory of the death; just keep harping that the missing shoe “can’t be explained.”

* If the data doesn’t fit your conclusion, ignore it. You don’t have to explain why the people who claimed to have the most damaging goods on Bill Clinton (e.g., Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr), walked around unscathed while dozens of bit players were supposedly bumped off. It’s inconvenient for you, so don’t mention it.

* Most important, don’t let facts and details stand in your way! If you can pass off a death by pneumonia as a “suicide,” do it! If a cause of death contradicts your conspiracy theory, claim it was “never determined.” If your chronology of events is impossible, who cares? It’s not like anybody is going to check up on this stuff …

Multiple versions of this “body count” list have been circulating online for two decades now. New victim names are routinely added and old ones taken off, forming an endless variety of permutations. At this point, there is no one “official” list.

But where did all this craziness start? In a 1994 letter to congressional leaders, former Rep. William Dannemeyer listed 24 people with some connection to Clinton who had died “under other than natural circumstances” and called for hearings on the matter.

Dannemeyer’s list of “suspicious deaths” was largely taken from one compiled by Linda Thompson, an Indianapolis lawyer who in 1993 quit her year-old general practice to run her American Justice Federation, a for-profit group that promotes pro-gun causes and various conspiracy theories through a shortwave radio program, a computer bulletin board, and sales of its newsletter and videos.

Her list, called “The Clinton Body Count: Coincidence or the Kiss of Death?” then contained the names of 34 people she believed had died suspiciously and who had ties to the Clinton family. Thompson admitted she had “no direct evidence” of Clinton’s killing anyone. Indeed, she said the deaths were probably caused by “people trying to control the President” but refused to say who they were. Thompson said her allegations of murder “seem groundless only because the mainstream media haven’t done enough digging.”

Ah, but they had. If not before she put her list together, at least afterwards. Anyone who continues to state the mainstream media has given these claims short shrift is being disingenuous.

Since 1994, various respected news outlets have been confronted with versions of the “Clinton Body Count” list, run their own investigations of a few of the claims, and found nothing to substantiate what they looked into. Those investigations would culminate in yet another story about an oddball conspiracy rumor.

But conspiracy theories don’t die that easily. These “body count” lists and the many specious claims contained therein continue to circulate in cyberspace and beyond: yesterday’s newspaper articles are forgotten with the next day’s delivery, but e-mail lives forever.

A 2007 version of the “Clinton Body Count” list was headed with this entry:

James McDougal — Clinton’s convicted Whitewater partner died of
an apparent heart attack, while in solitary confinement. He
was a key witness in Ken Starr’s investigation.

James McDougal, a key witness for Whitewater prosecutors when the investigation centered on an Arkansas land deal in which the president and McDougal were involved, had a pre-existing heart condition and died of a heart attack on 8 March 1998 while in solitary confinement at the Federal Medical Center prison in Fort Worth. The ailing McDougal had been placed in solitary as punishment for failing to provide a urine sample for a drug test. On the day before his death and while still in his regular cell (where he had access to his heart medications), he had complained of dizziness, and while being processed for isolation he threw up. However, once in isolation, he did not ask for his medicines and appeared to guards “alert, well-oriented and absent any visible signs of distress” right up until his death. An investigation into the circumstances of his demise did not find evidence of foul play.

(The McDougal entry was not part of the “Clinton Body Count” list as it circulated in 1998.)

1. Mary Mohane — former White House intern gunned down in a coffee shop. Nothing was taken. It was
suspected that she was about to testify about sexual harassment at the White House.

Former White House intern Mary Caitrin Mahoney, 25, manager of a Georgetown Starbucks, was killed along with two co-workers (Emory Allen Evans, 25, and Aaron David Goodrich, 18) on 6 July 1997 during a robbery of the shop. In March 1999, Carl Derek Havord Cooper (29) of Washington was arrested and charged with these murders.

Yes, it is unusual that three employees were killed in the course of a robbery during which nothing was taken. According to Cooper’s 26 April 2000 guilty plea (he received life with no hope of parole), he went to the Starbucks to rob the place, figuring the receipts from the July 4 weekend would make for a fat take. He came in after closing, waved a .38, and ordered all three Starbucks employees into the back room. Once there, Mahoney made a run for it after Cooper fired a warning shot into the ceiling. She was ordered back to the room, but then went for the gun. Cooper shot her, then afterwards shot the other two employees. He left empty-handed, afraid the shots had attracted police attention. As regrettable as these three deaths were, this was nothing but a case of a robbery gone wrong.

And, right away, we have come to the first big lie of the “Clinton Body Count” list: Any unexplained death can automatically be attributed to President Clinton by inventing a connection between him and the victim. Mary Mahoney did once work as an intern at the White House, but so have hundreds of other people who are all still alive. There is no credible reason why, of all the interns who have served in the Clinton White House, Mahoney alone would be the target of a Clinton-directed killing. (Contrary to public perception, very few interns work in the West Wing of the White House or have any contact with the President. The closest most interns get to the chief executive is a single brief handshake or group photo.)

The putative reason offered for Mahoney’s slaying, that she was about to testify about sexual harrassment in the White House, was a lie. This absurd justification apparently sprang from a hint dropped by Mike Isikoff of Newsweek just before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke that a “former White House staffer” with the initial “M” was about to talk about her affair with Clinton. We all know now, of course, that the “staffer” referred to was Monica Lewinsky, not Mary Mahoney. The conspiracy buffs maintained that White House hit men rushed out, willy-nilly, and gunned down the first female ex-intern they could find whose name began with “M.”

[...]

4. Paul Tully — DNC Political Director, was found dead in a Little Rock hotel room. No cause was ever determined and no autopsy
was allowed. Tully was a key member of the damage
control squad and came up with some of the Clinton strategies.

Paul Tully died on 24 September 1992. Problem is, there wasn’t anything the least bit unusual about his death, so whoever cooked up this list had to lie and claim that “no cause was ever determined” and “no autopsy was allowed.” However, an autopsy was performed, and Tully’s cause of death was determined: a massive heart attack. (Not a surprising demise, given that Tully was extremely overweight, a heavy drinker, and a chain smoker.) According to Steve Nawojczyk, the Pulaski County coroner, “An autopsy by the Arkansas medical examiner’s office discovered advanced coronary artery disease.” He added that investigators found no evidence of external trauma to the body.

Note again that the conspiracy buffs offer no putative reason for Tully’s “killing” and would have us believe that Clinton ordered his chief strategist rubbed out while the most important election of his career was a little over a month away.

5. Ed Willey — Clinton fund raiser. Found in the woods in Virginia
with a gunshot wound to the head. Ruled a suicide.

Ed Willey was a former Virginia state senator and a lawyer; his wife Kathleen was active in Democratic state politics, worked as a volunteer (including some fund-raising efforts) on behalf of the Clinton campaign in Virginia in 1992, and later served as a volunteer in the White House Social Office. Ed Willey’s death was as clear cut a case of suicide as one is likely to find: he was a desperate, unstable man who (along with his wife) spent money lavishly, stole $275,000 of a client’s money, and was about half a million dollars in debt to the IRS. He took his own life on 29 November 1993, leaving behind a suicide note found by his wife reading: “Saying I’m sorry doesn’t begin to explain. I hope one day you will forgive me.”

At the same time as Willey was killing himself, his wife was allegedly being groped by Bill Clinton. She said she’d gone to the Chief Executive looking for a job to help her family out of its financial crisis and found herself fending off his advances. Clinton admitted to the meeting but denied her version of what took place. Kathleen Willey testified in Paula Jones’ sexual harrassment suit against Clinton, but she never claimed that Clinton had her husband killed.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-body-bags/