Moderators: As often as the 'Clinton Body Count' b

Moderators: As often as the 'Clinton Body Count' bat-sh*t is posted so too will the following appear. I'd rather not, you could shut it down on the basis of 'free-range-bat-sh*t-crazy', enough already. Your call.

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The Clinton Body Count (aka "Clinton Body Bags"
By David Emery[/b

]Netlore Archive: Forwarded message dating from the mid-1990s contains a list of dozens of people connected to Bill and Hillary Clinton who, we are told, died under mysterious circumstances.

Description: Forwarded email / Viral text
Circulating since: Mid-1990s

Status: False (see details below)
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_clin..._count.htm


Analysis: "The Clinton Body Count," a paranoia-laden relic of the Clinton-hating '90s, was resurrected in 2007 to coincide with Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency. The widely-circulated text insinuates that several dozen "friends" of the Clintons, some of whom conceivably possessed incriminating information about the former First Couple, died under "mysterious" circumstances — i.e., were secretly done away with.

In more ways than one, it's reminiscent of a similarly paranoid conspiracy theory floated during the Bush-hating '00s, namely the notion that forces within the Bush administration actually conceived and orchestrated the 9/11 terror attacks.

Both theories rest on absurd presuppositions:

1. That a U.S. president could secretly order the murders of dozens (or, in Bush's case on 9/11, thousands) of American citizens without being found out, ratted on, prosecuted, impeached, or even so much as accused of such crime by members of Congress, including staunch political opponents.

2. That a U.S. president could flawlessly carry out such atrocities while demonstrating complete and utter fallibility (if not gross ineptitude) in the face of other, more mundane challenges (e.g., Clinton's inability to squelch accusations of sexual improprieties and avoid impeachment).

Why is it, we must also ask, that special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who spent years and millions of taxpayer dollars attempting to dig up dirt of any kind on the Clintons, never handed down a single indictment pertaining to these alleged murders?

The answer is plain: because the accusations are hogwash.

Origin of "The Clinton Body Count"

According to an article by Philip Weiss in the February 23, 1997 issue of The New York Times Magazine, the earliest version of the Clinton Body Count was authored by Indianapolis attorney Linda Thompson, founder of the right-wing American Justice Federation. The list originally contained the names of 26 alleged victims, though it has grown, and shrunk, and grown again since then, with some variants boasting over 100 names.

Specific examples

It would be redundant to replicate the thorough research already done by others on the 47 cases listed in this version of the Body Count (see resources below), but for good measure I've documented the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the first five "victims" on the list:

James McDougal - Friend and business partner of the Clintons, died of a heart attack — not an apparent heart attack — while serving time on a fraud conviction. McDougal had a pre-existing heart condition. Prison guards placed him in solitary confinement after he refused to take a urine test and failed to provide him with the medications he kept in his cell, according to a subsquent investigation. No foul play was suspected. ("Report Details McDougal's Final Hours," Houston Chronicle, 14 September 1998.)

Mary Mahoney - "One of the first interns to work at the Clinton White House," according to her family. Not one news source reporting on her murder suggests that Mahoney, a lesbian, was poised to claim "sexual harassment in the White House." She died of gunshot wounds along with two other Georgetown, DC Starbucks employees during a botched robbery attempt on July 6, 1997. Per police investigations and a written confession by the killer, Carl Cooper of Washington, DC, Mahoney was shot while struggling with the perpetrator over the keys to the safe. A witness corroborated that Cooper had been planning to rob the Starbucks for at least a month before the crime occurred. ("Starbucks Police Affidavit," Washington Post, 17 March 1999; "Solving the Starbucks Case," Washington Post Magazine Live Online, 3 March 2003.)

Vince Foster - A lifelong friend of the Clintons, White House aide Vince Foster killed himself with a handgun on July 20, 1993. He had been suffering from depression. No fewer than five official investigations were conducted into the circumstances of his death, and none found evidence of foul play. In 1997, special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's own report on the Vince Foster case was unsealed by the U.S. Court of Appeals. It began: "The available evidence points clearly to suicide as the manner of death." ("Case Closed on Vincent Foster - Again," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 15 Oct 1997.)

Ron Brown - Commerce Secretary under President Clinton, Ron Brown died in a plane crash on April 3, 1996. Conspiracy theorists have alleged that X-rays of Brown's head showed "possible bullet fragments" in the vicinity of what some described as a "gunshot wound." A re-examination conducted by Air Force pathologist Col. William T. Gormley and reviewed by a panel of other military pathologists found "no bullet, no bone fragments, no metal fragments and, even more telling, no exit wound," according to Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page. ("The Ron Brown Conspiracy Machine," Chicago Tribune, 15 January 1998.)

C. Victor Raiser II and his son, Montgomery Raiser - The prominent Democratic fundraiser and close friend of Bill Clinton died along with his son and four other people in an airplane crash on a fishing trip in Alaska in 1992. Raiser had no known connection with any Clinton scandal, nor was his death in any way "mysterious." A National Transportation Safety Board investigation determined that the pilot, who survived the crash, had stalled the plane while trying to veer away at the last minute from a dangerous, cloud-covered mountain pass. ("Air Safety Loophole May Close," Anchorage Daily News, 18 June 1995.)

Sources and further reading:
The Clinton Body Count
Snopes.com, 5 February 2007
Did Bill Clinton Run Murder Inc.?
Slate, 18 February 1999
Clinton Crazy
New York Times Magazine, 23 February 1997

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