Did Ron Brown die for Enron's sins?

"ENRON CORP. CONFIRMS NO ENRON EXECUTIVES ON BOARD COMMERCE SECRETARY RON BROWN'S MISSING PLANE." (April 3)

Throughout the day on April 3, 1996, even as America's power brokers scrambled to spin their respects, the man whom they presumed to honor lay face up amidst the mud and debris of a barren Croatian hillside.

Death, as it often does, humbled its victim, this man of impeccable style, and left his body in ironic disarray, his arms thrown helplessly over his head, the shirt ripped clean off his back, his pants severed at the knees like a careless frat boy's, the mocking vestige of a tie draped around his neck.

His name was Ron Brown, the United States secretary of commerce and an all too appropriate icon of this time and place. No man's life more clearly embodied the cynical ethos of official Washington and yet, given that cynicism, no man's death was more fully welcome therein.

For the two most desperate years of the Clinton presidency, 1994-1996, Ron Brown found himself at the nexus of White House machinations, the central exchange, the point where presidential power alchemized into hard cash more crudely and less discreetly than at any time in a century. Here, Brown was both exploiter and exploited, victimizer and ultimately victim, the classic "man who knew too much."

"Why Ron Brown Won't Go Down." So declared the grimly ironic title of a just-released article in the American Spectator. But the article's author miscalculated the physics of Washington power. Ron Brown did go down. Just before 3 p.m. Croatia time, the Air Force CT-43A that bore him drifted "inexplicably" off-course, sideswiped a hill nearly two miles from the Dubrovnik airport where it was headed and skidded to a wrenching stop.

Hours before the first American arrived at the crash site to confirm Brown's death, while at least one American passenger still lived, President Bill Clinton descended on the Commerce Department and, in the artless words of CNN, "eulogized his friend nonetheless."

"His favorite Scripture verse was that wonderful verse from Isaiah," said Clinton of Brown. "They who wait upon the Lord shall have their strength renewed. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and faint not."

This verse would provide the essential metaphor for Brown in the days to come. He was the man "who walked and ran and flew through life." This was all fabrication. Brown did not know the Bible. He could not cite a single verse. His quest for spirituality had begun only in the last weeks of life and only then out of desperation. Still, on the dishonesty scale, this bit of presidential dissembling barely registers.

To be sure, eulogies almost invariably aggrandize the virtues of the deceased, but Clinton was not so much eulogizing Brown as he was constructing his own defense:

[W]hen we met earlier this week, right before he left for the Balkans, he was so excited because he thought that, along with these business leaders and the other very able people from the Commerce Department on this mission, that they would be able to use the power of the American economy to help the peace take hold in the Balkans, to help people in that troubled place have the kind of decent, honorable and wonderfully ordinary lives that we Americans too often take for granted. In truth, Brown was not excited at all. When they met earlier in the week, Brown begged not to go. At this, the most anxious moment of his life, he dreaded the prospect of the trip. There was nothing decent or honorable about it. There no longer was anything approaching decency or honor on such junkets. He was sick of being, in his words, "a mother-f---ing tour guide for Hillary Clinton."

And this leads to the essential deceit of Clinton's hasty eulogy. The president and his wife did not love Brown as Clinton avowed. Nor did they enjoy much, if any, of "his friendship and his warmth." No, the relationship, always cool, had turned cold. Brown feared the Clintons, feared to even call them, and they deeply distrusted him.

This, the opinion-shapers in the major media chose not to know. They had already chosen their story line. Rather than recount Brown's fate as a cautionary tale on the perils of power, the media routinely meshed the death of "this great American hero" on April 3 with Martin Luther King's death on April 4, 28 years earlier. President Clinton, in fact, unblushingly claimed Brown, like King, died "answering a very important challenge of his time," and no one dared to call the comparison profane.

And so the story would have ended: Ron Brown buried at Arlington National Cemetery with more pomp than any government official since RFK, a nation in mourning for its fallen hero and a president bereft. But Ron Brown's body had one more story to tell.

At the U.S. Army base at Dover, Del., three days after his death, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology photographer U.S. Navy CPO Kathleen Janoski noted a nearly perfectly circular hole in the top of Brown's head. It would measure just about .45 inch in diameter.

The pathologists who heard her cry and heeded it would soon enough wish they hadn't. They opened the door on a mystery that simply refuses to stay shut. And, like many others who questioned the official story line during the Clintons' most desperate years, they have suffered for it.

"We do not know for sure what happened there," said Clinton of the crash in Croatia. This much was likely true, at least not the details of what happened. It is also true he did not want to know. His administration's lack of curiosity would stoke the already overheated fires of conspiracy and forge an astonishing range of theories.

The theorists, credible or not, were starting with the wrong question. The right question – the first question – was not why did the plane come down. The right question was why did it ever go up.

The lesser of two evils? New York voter Gregory Palast is ruffled by murky episodes in Hillary Clinton's past
The Observer (London)

Sunday, November 5, 2000

My wife would kill me if she knew what I was doing to that blonde, but I don't see how I can vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton. My vote against her in the New York Senate race could put Republican bats in charge of Congress and the White House, where they are certain to suck the blood of the working class - by privatising social security.

Yet I hesitate about Hillary. It all goes back to something Ron Brown, the late Commerce Secretary, said about our dear First Lady: 'I'm not Hillary's mother-f***ing tour guide.'

To know what that's all about, turn back to Arkansas 1976, when Bill Clinton won election to the powerful state post of Attorney General. I hunted down Clinton's old ally Zack Polatt, of Little Rock, to talk about those glory days.

Clinton ran his campaign on fighting the despised local electricity company, Arkansas Power. Funny thing was, Polatt told me, Arkansas consumer organisations were defeated in court by the power company's sharp lawyers, Webster Hubbell and Hillary Rodham of Rose Law.

At the time, Hillary would not use her husband's name. She strategically switched to 'Mrs Clinton' only while crying crocodile tears for the oppressed. The official biography of the 'Flotus' (government-speak for First Lady of the United States) lists her six-month stint on a child-protection task force. Yet nowhere does it mention her six years on the board of Wal-Mart Corporation, notorious during her directorship for alleged abuses of child labour. Sam Walton called her 'My little lady' and paid her fees equal to 60 per cent of her income as a lawyer.

Fast forward to 1994 and the Brown 'tour guide' business. According to Nolanda Hill, the Commerce Secretary's long-time business partner and love interest, Brown, who died in 1996, endorsed a Hillary cash-for-access scheme ($10,000 for coffee with the President, $100,000 for a night in the Lincoln bedroom), but resented the discount rate the Flotus put on US executives joining his lucrative trade missions. 'I'm worth more than $50,000 a pop!'

A reflection of the Brown-Hillary scheme is visible in a document The Observer obtained through the US Freedom of Information Act, dated June 1994. In the memo, Jude Kearney, Commerce Department officer (and Clinton chum from Arkansas) warned someone called 'JCB' of power company Entergy that his employer would be locked out of Brown's upcoming China mission unlessit was 'politically connected'.

By the end of the month, Entergy, whose partner in the China venture was the Riady family of Indonesia, would connect big time to both Flotus and 'Potus' (the President) and get its spot on the China mission, on which it signed a billion-dollar deal with the Chinese.

On 27 June James Riady paid Webster Hubbell, Hillary's former law partner, $100,000. How strange. Hubbell was under indictment for fraudulently inflating his legal bills, a felony. I've conducted investigations of lawyer overbilling. How can one law partner to fake detailed time logs without the complicity of another lawyer in the firm? Hillary's logs were worth close inspection by authorities.

Funny thing about Hillary's billing records: when requested for disclosure in an unrelated matter they disappeared. First, her law firm's computers went ka-blooey. Then the paper printouts vanished, but not before, during the 1992 Presidential campaign, they were secretly combed over, line by line, by two of her partners, Vince Foster and Web Hubbell.

Hubbell knew his own logs were phonied, and he understood the consequences of exposure. Ultimately, bloated hours on those records caused him to lose his law licence, his ministerial post (the President had appointed him Assistant US Attorney General) and his freedom - 21 months in the slammer.

What did Foster and Hubbell see and know about Hillary's logs? Hubbell won't say, except for a cryptic remark, after seeing her bills, that 'every lawyer' fabricates records. Hubbell pleaded guilty, but refused to answer investigators' questions, a requirement in any plea bargain, so the judge had to sentence him to prison.

Why would Hubbell choose to do time on the chain gang over testifying about the Flotus? His prosecutors did not know at the time of a $100,000 Riady payment, the first of over half a million dollars Hubbell would receive from Clinton friends in the weeks up to his entering jail.

Foster didn't speak either - and now he can't. Hubbell, a jovial good ol' boy, had the temperament to suffer a brush with ruin with a grin... and wait for friends of Bill and Hill to stuff his piggy bank. Foster, who Clinton made a White House counsel, had a less flexible personality. On 20 July, 1993, as Rose Law fake billings were about to become public, Foster committed suicide.

Files of the Flotus were removed from Foster's White House office prior to the arrival of the FBI. Her billing records reappeared two years later just outside her office, right after Hubbell's refusal to testify against her.

By overbilling, Hubbell admits he stole from his partners and clients. Some sued Hubbell, but the Flotus did not. Imagine: Hillary, a supposed victim of the overbilling scam not only refused to sue the thief who cheated her, she helped make him wealthy on his way to prison. The lady's a saint, unless - and I'd never believe this - she was in on Hubbell's scam.

Maybe the Clintons knew nothing about the big money flowing to prison-bound Hubbell. Knowledge of the payments would suggest they were buying Hubbell's silence. In 1996, when the LA Times uncovered the payments, the President stone-cold denied he knew anything about it.

Then, this past April, in a deposition by the Justice Department weirdly unreported by the US press, Clinton changed his tune. Investigators confronted the President with this: on 20 June 1994, Hubbell met with the Flotus. Two days later, James Riady met with Hubbell for breakfast, then went to the White House, met again with Hubbell, then made two more treks to the White House. Two days later, a videotape shows the beginning of a meeting in the Oval Office between Clinton and Riady before the tape goes blank. Two days after that, Hubbell gets his $100,000 through a Riady bank.

Lying to journalists is a venal sin, but lying to the Feds is perjury. In his deposition, the President's denial transformed into amnesia. He couldn't remember if Riady mentioned the payment. Then, the President slyly opened the door to the truth. 'I wouldn't be surprised if James told me,' Clinton said. Neither would I.

Riady said other surprising things to Clinton. According to FBI debriefing papers, on 14 August 1992 the Indonesian billionaire, riding with candidate Clinton in a limousine, promised to give $1 million to Clinton's campaign. Riady made good on his promise through sham donors, a violation of US laws against concealed and foreign donations.

What did Riady get? The Flotus herself, says Nolanda Hill, forced Brown to accept the appointment of Riady's bag man, John Huang, as a Commerce Department deputy. Huang's first order of business was to wheedle his way into confidential CIA briefings on Indonesia and China, then call Riady and his Entergy partners.

The very day Riady met the President, diaries show he called on a Clinton crony at the top of the department's Export-Import Bank. 'We just came over from the Oval Office,' is a nice way to provide assurance of the 'political connection' required for help. These and other Riady team meetings at Commerce are marked 'social'. Yet, shortly thereafter, the department agreed to promote and fund the Riady-Entergy China venture.

Influence is not a victimless crime. Riady and his minions' visits to the White House (94 times!) included successful requests for the President to meet Indonesian dictator Suharto and to kill negative reports on East Timor and working conditions in Indonesia. Timorese and Indonesians paid for these policy flips with blood.

As a loyal Democrat, I will never accept that the $1m slipped to the Clinton campaign and the cash for Hillary's tight-lipped partner Hubbell connect in any way with Clinton administration actions - no matter what the evidence says. But it does shake my belief in the Flotus.

Which leaves me with her Republican opponent, Congressman Rick Lazio, the disarming young man with the little-boy grin. Little Ricky, whom I remember trying to sabotage a government racketeering case. Ricky the Rat? Forget it.

So, Hillary, I'm back, flowers and vote in hand.

In 1994, Ron Brown led a delegation of U.S. businesses to China. Among the businesses allowed to fly with the Commerce Secretary was Entergy Corp., a U.S.-based utility company that did business in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas.

Entergy CEO Edwin Lupberger traveled to China with Brown and later received a personal letter congratulating Entergy for its success in China. Entergy signed a $2 billion deal with the North China Power Group to build a 1200-megawatt power plant in Datong, China. Brown provided U.S. financial backing for the deal.

The Entergy deal was worth quite a bit to the Lippo Group. In fact, the Red Chinese North China Power Group renamed the project the "Lippo Entergy Datong Power Plant," giving top billing to the largest investor and financier.

According to an interoffice memorandum written by J. "Chip" Brown, head of the Hong Kong office for Entergy Corp., Entergy officials met Jude Kearney, Clinton's deputy assistant secretary of Commerce in Washington. Chip Brown sought a spot for Entergy's chief executive on the August 1994 trade trip to China.

According to Brown's memo, Kearney "indicated competitive nature of being selected to ride on the plane with the secretary. Also indicated that politics of the situation were important and he as a political employee would push those that were politically connected."

According to Kearney, the fact that Entergy executives made more than $80,000 in contributions to the Democratic Party qualified it as "politically connected" and thus, eligible to a ride paid for by American tax dollars.

There are more contacts between old Clinton friends and Arkansas businesses. According to a 1994 document obtained from the Commerce Department, William Cravens replacement at Systematics, John Steuri, sought and obtained clearance to accompany Ron Brown on foreign trade trips. The Commerce Office of General Counsel "vetted" (cleared) the Jackson Stephens owned company Systematics and the new CEO to travel to South America with Brown.

Additional testimony before Sen. Fred Thompson's committee shows that the Lippo Group is a joint venture of China Resources, a trading and holding company "wholly owned" by the Chinese communist government and used as a front for Chinese espionage operations.

Current allegations of espionage inside the Clinton White House center on Mochtar Riady. For example, a Riady "gardener" contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clinton-Gore campaign. In fact, the same gardener was caught on video tape, shaking Clinton's hand and saying "James Riady sent me."

Another focal point is former Lippo executive John Huang and what he did while employed at Ron Brown's Commerce Department. Huang is clearly associated with advanced encryption chip technology, and large amounts of illegal money flowing from the far east into the Clinton-Gore campaign.

While at Commerce, Huang attended 37 classified briefings given by the CIA on encryption technology. After each briefing, Huang would walk across the street from the Commerce Department to the Lippo-Stephens office. Once inside the Stephens Group -- safely away from prying eyes -- Huang made hundreds of phone calls and faxes to points unknown.

Huang also attended secret White House meetings in June 1994 with Bill Clinton, Webster Hubbell and James Riady. The secret meetings resulted in a quick payment to Hubbell of over $100,000 by a Lippo company.

There is no question the Chinese generals selected American "encryption" technology as a prime target. The Red Chinese technology "focal point" was secure computers and communications. The red generals wanted to know if there were any secret Clipper-like "back-door" features built into the U.S. systems they purchased.

Motorola, Hughes, and Loral all made huge sales of "encrypted" satellite communication systems to China. Each sale required the personal signature of Bill Clinton to waive laws passed by Congress prohibiting such export. Each sale was preceded by a long series of memos to Ron Brown all begging to sell encryption technology to China.

Another example of the central focus on encryption is the Hua Mei fiber-optic project which included encryption computer source code. The one and only contract for Hua Mei is the General Logistics Division of the Chinese army. Still another focus of the Red Generals in Beijing was the encrypted -- secure -- satellite Air Traffic Control (ATC) system transferred to the Chinese air force under Bill Clinton's signature.

In order to inspect a computer chip one must first obtain access. It is often difficult to obtain access to a working satellite in orbit without a space shuttle. That problem was solved by the Chinese when they simply ripped the chips out of a working satellite exported to the PRC for launch. The missing "encryption" control board of chips from the Loral Intelsat came from a launch that crashed, killing 200 innocent Chinese civilians.

The Intelsat crypto-board provided the Chinese army with significant amounts of information on the operation of radiation hardened circuits. It was also an opportunity to see (at the microchip level) if the U.S. had installed secret back doors to eavesdrop on the Chinese army satellite communications. The fact that it cost some 200 lives to obtain also reflects how valuable the information was to the Chinese generals.

All this brings us back to Foster and Hubbell, non-technical lawyers with access to highly technical, classified information. The ties between President Clinton, Foster, Hubbell and the Chinese army scream to be investigated. So far, Janet Reno has yet to explain why she is not in conflict of interest investigating her former right-hand man Webster Hubbell.

Information warfare is defined by humans. The Foster data was covered by "National Security," and thus carried the death penalty if illegally released. The absolute value of what he carried is rated as being worth a life or many lives. Clearly, of all the data that Foster had at the time of his death, none was more valued, nor more dangerous, than the secrets hidden on a micro-chip.

Enron and Bill Clinton

Charles R. Smith
Thursday, Feb. 28, 2002

Trade Trips to Russia, India, Bosnia and Indonesia

I must admit to an error in my most recent article on the Enron scandal. Lovers of ex-President Bill Clinton will be overjoyed to find that Enron's top exec Ken Lay did not stay at the White House 11 times.

However, the bad news for those who still worship Mr. Clinton is that Enron not only donated $100,000 to Clinton's 1993 inauguration but, according to the records, also added an additional $25,000 to the Clinton 1993 celebrations.

The documented evidence shows that Enron did make it into the Clinton White House by special invitation. Senior Vice President Terrance H. Thorn had coffee with Bill Clinton on March 5, 1996.

Many of the other attendees of the Clinton White House coffee sessions also make up a long list of convicted criminals, arms dealers and bagmen for illegal DNC contributions.

For example, Wang Jun had coffee with Clinton in 1996. Wang is also the president of Poly Technologies, the largest arms trading firm owned by the People's Liberation Army. Poly Tech is currently banned from doing business in the United States after several of its top executives conspired to smuggle machine guns into the U.S. for sale to a major drug dealer – who later turned out to be a Customs agent posing as a gangster.

Charlie "Yah Lin" Trie, who was later convicted of illegally passing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clinton/Gore re-election campaign, brought Wang into the White House. Trie also gave an additional $645,000 to the Democratic National Committee, and most of this money was from illegal foreign sources.

Trip to Russia

Enron's association with the Clinton White House comes even closer to home when you consider the many corporate foreign trade trips paid for by your tax dollars. In 1994, Enron's CEO Ken Lay surfaced on a list of attendees wishing to travel to Russia with Ron Brown.

One person who did make the trade trip to Russia was Roger Tamraz. Interpol then wanted Tamraz, a Lebanese oil financier, for embezzling nearly $80 million from a Middle Eastern bank. Tamraz, who made most of his money selling Libyan oil, would later give more than $300,000 to the DNC after having coffee with Bill Clinton in the White House.

Russia was not the only target of Enron wheeling-and-dealing with the Clinton administration. Enron execs traveled on a profitable trade trip to India with Ron Brown, landing a major contract for a power plant. The India power plant deal later fell apart with allegations of illegal payments and bribery.

Trip to Bosnia

Enron also traveled in 1997 to Bosnia with Commerce Secretary Kantor in hopes of landing a U.S. taxpayer-backed energy deal in the war-torn state. According to the Chicago Tribune, Enron made a $100,000 donation to the DNC just days prior to the trade mission to the former Yugoslav province. Commerce Department documents clearly note that Enron was interested in the "Zagreb" portion of the trip.

Even in the last days of Bill Clinton, Enron execs were on the go. Enron traveled to South Korea with Commerce Secretary William Daley in 1999. Daley would go on to run Vice President Al Gore's failed bid for the White House in 2000.

Trip to Indonesia

The most damning evidence linking Bill Clinton and Enron to corruption is the documentation that shows Enron received U.S. taxpayer monies in order to finance a corrupt deal with Indonesia.

P.T. East Java Power Corp., which was then 50.1 percent owned by Enron, wanted to conclude a deal for a 500 megawatt power plant in East Java, Indonesia. The 20-year deal was later signed by Enron with P.T. PLN Persero (PLN), Indonesia's state-owned electric utility, which agreed to purchase the power from the natural-gas-fired plant.

According to Enron, the natural gas for the project was to be provided by Pertamina, Indonesia's state-owned oil and gas company. Commerce Department documents noted that Pertamina stalled the project with excessive demands for gas prices.

"Enron is now engaged with Pertamina over access to natural gas. These discussions may prove difficult," states a 1994 Commerce Department advocacy document.

"Enron is registered for OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corporation) insurance," states the document, noting that the giant corporation obtained U.S. taxpayer-backed insurance if the Indonesian deal fell apart.

Ron Brown Letters for Enron

Ron Brown personally sought approval for the Enron electric power plants inside Indonesia. According to a personal letter directed to the Indonesian Minister for Trade and Industry, Brown endorsed two Enron deals for gas-fired power plants with the corrupt Suharto regime.

"Enron power, a world renowned private power developer, is in the final stages of negotiating two combined cycle, gas turbine power projects," wrote Brown in his 1995 letter.

"The first, a 500 MW plant in East Java, should bring commercial power generation by the end of 1997 if it can promptly negotiate a gas supply Memorandum of Understanding with Pertamina. The other project, a smaller plant in East Kalimantan, also awaits a gas supply agreement.

"I urge you to give full consideration to the proposals," concluded Brown to the Indonesian minister. In October 1995, Brown wrote another letter, this time to Hartarto Sastrosurarto, Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Trade and Industry, pressing him to conclude the Enron power plant deals.

"I would like to bring to your attention a number of projects involving American companies which seem to be stalled, including several independent power projects. These projects include the Tarahan power project, which involves Southern Electric; the gas powered projects in East Java and East Kalimantan, which involves Enron," wrote Brown.

"Your support for prompt resolution of the remaining issues associated with each of these projects would be most appreciated," concluded Brown.

On Nov. 18, 1996, Enron CEO Ken Lay announced that the deal with Suharto was complete. According to Enron's public statement, the U.S.-led energy company had finally won the East Java Power project.

Corruption, Collusion and Nepotism

Yet the Enron success was clouded by allegations that the power plant deals were filled with kickbacks for the Suharto family. In October 1998, U.S. Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy wrote a diplomatic cable that he had recently met with Indonesian Director General of Electricity Endro Utomo Notodisoerjo.

"Commenting on corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN), Endro said that in the past there was no separation between 'power' (not electric but former first family power) and business. 'All the IPP's (Independent Power Projects) have a relation with power, and it is still going on,' added Endro."

According to State Department documents, Enron signed on to a deal filled with "corruption, collusion and nepotism." One State Department cable included an entire section titled "Dealing with unwanted partners" that detailed corruption inside the two Enron power plants at East Kalimantan and East Java.

"Unocal executives told resources officer that the firm is close to reaching a deal with its partner, PT Nusamba (controlled by former President Soeharto crony Bob Hasan) to sever ties in two production sharing contracts (PSC) in East Kalimantan and East Java," notes the State Department cable.

Eventually, the Indonesian economy collapsed and Suharto was overthrown. The resulting economic mess forced Indonesia to default on its payments for the Enron power plants. The U.S. taxpayer using its insurance, however, paid off Enron. One such policy for Enron was obtained through the World Bank Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency or MIGA.

"In June of this year, MIGA paid $15 million to Enron Java Power Co. for its investment in P.T. East Java Power Corporation in Indonesia," states the 2000 official public release from the World Bank.

"The venture was one of many suspended by the presidential decree of September 20, 1997, issued in response to the country's economic crisis," noted MIGA officials.

The Washington Times reported Thursday that the Clinton administration coughed up more than $1 billion in taxpayer-subsidized loans to Enron Corp. just when the energy giant was kicking in almost $2 million for Democrat causes. And as we have previously reported, to help persuade then-President Bill Clinton to push the disastrous Kyoto Protocol, Enron gave $420,000 to Democrats.

Times reporter Patrice Hill writes that, according to the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corp., the agencies that provided the subsidies, the Clinton administration turned down only one out of 20 Enron projects to build power plants, natural-gas pipelines and other "big-ticket energy facilities" between 1993 and 2000.

Moreover, the Clinton administration, "which lauded Chairman Kenneth L. Lay as an exemplary 'corporate citizen,' granted about $200 million worth of insurance against political risks for nine Enron projects in such politically volatile areas as Argentina, Venezuela and the Gaza Strip, according to documents the agencies provided to the Senate Finance Committee."

"These projects obviously were a tremendous benefit to Enron's operations," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking minority member of the committee, told the Times. The Reagan and Bush administrations approved not a single loan for Enron between 1985 and 1992 and provided insurance for only one Enron power project in Guatemala in 1992, he noted.

On the other hand, the Clinton administration made three loans between 1994 and 1998 to the now-defunct Dabhol power project in India. Ron Brown, Clinton's commerce secretary, bragged about the approval of the Dabhol loans during a trade mission to India in 1995, while Lay stood by his side.

The Times noted that the junket was "one of 11 Clinton trade missions provided at taxpayer expense for corporate executives from Enron and other companies." Moreover, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, which sponsored the trips, also coughed up $1 million in funding to study Enron energy projects in Russia, Eastern Europe and former Soviet states.

While Democrats go rooting around trying to find any single indication that Lay was somehow in cahoots with the Bush administration, evidence of his links to the Clinton administration is popping up all over the place.

Another Renter of the Lincoln Bedroom

Lay not only was a golfing partner of Clinton, he even slept in the Lincoln Bedroom. Other members of Enron's top executive echelon attended the White House's infamous "coffee klatches" hosted by Clinton, according to published reports.

Lay offered a seat on Enron's board of directors to Robert Rubin, Clinton's Treasury secretary, in 1999 just before he left office, according to an Associated Press report Thursday. It turns out that Rubin, being paid an astonishing $40 million a year by Enron creditor Citigroup, tried to get the Treasury Department to intervene for Enron last fall when the company's credit rating was threatened.

In May 1996, Clinton touted Lay as being a good "corporate citizen" at a White House event because of Enron's alleged enlightened personnel policies, including profit-sharing of Enron stock and generous health and pension benefits. As the Times noted, Enron employees now are suing because those benefits proved as worthless as the bankrupt company's stock.

The Times reported that according to Federal Election Commission records, during the Clinton administration Enron kicked in more than $1 million to the Democrat party, including $600,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Clinton and Vice President Al Gore got contributions of $11,000 and $13,750, respectively, for their presidential campaigns.

Enron made a $100,000 contribution to the DNC just before India gave final approval to Enron's Dabhol project in June 1996. According to the Times, Dabhol, the largest and most expensive capital project ever undertaken in India, was of dubious economic value and never went on line.
After looking at the Dabhol project, the World Bank declared said it was not economically viable and of inordinate benefit to Enron, which had a 65 percent stake in the project. Enron still owes $203 million on an Export-Import Bank loan for the project, which the bank says is covered by guarantees provided by five Indian banks.

Congressional aides told the Times it was not clear what the taxpayers' liability will be for that and other loans now that Enron is bankrupt. The Export-Import Bank said its loans were extended to overseas subsidiaries of Enron and not the bankrupt corporation. The overseas investment agency said its exposure was limited to paying any missed premiums on Enron's political risk insurance.

Top Clinton officials lobbied personally to obtain Indian state guarantees for the Dabhol project after it ran into problems in 1995. White House chief of staff Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty made it a top administration priority to keep the project from failing. The Bush administration has continued efforts to salvage the project. After leaving the White House, McLarty did work for Enron.

Hazel O'Leary, Clinton's energy secretary, led a number of missions to India, and Frank Wisner, Clinton's ambassador to India, was ordered to keep the project afloat. After Wisner left government in 1997, he joined the board of directors of a company then controlled by Enron.

You've got murder conspiracies:

Ron Brown
Vince Foster

Kindly also recall the death of UPI Little Rock Statehouse Bureau reporter Judy Danielak, shot to death in February 1979 *by a sniper* in the North Little Rock area as she drove home on Interstate 40 from work, a few weeks after forner AR Attorney General Clinton assumed the position of governor, several months after the rape of Juanita Broaddrick in the Little Rock DoubleTree Hotel.

That was a period when young journalists were much impressed by the Woodward-Burnstein tale of investigative reporters at work, and she may have believed she could break such a story and live. But Governor Clinton quickly abnnounced that the shooting was a random sniping incident, and indeed, several seemingly random incidents did follow, though in those cases, different weapons were used in each shooting, and noone was killed or seriously injured. And in the original Danielak murder, the weapon was found to be a large caliber magnum revolver, of the type used by the Arkansas Highway Patrol, and using ammunition of the same type as Arkie HiPo issue.

Since the Statute of Limitations had been exceeded in the case of the Broaddrick rape, that crime could never be prosecuted and the criminal brought to justice. But Arkansas has no Statute of Limitations for the crime of First6 Degree Murder, and offers lethal injection as the lawful means of execution of those so convicted and sentenced.

Perhaps the Clinton legacy is not yet fully written....

-archy-/-

I have some insight into the NDB approach. The old soviet approaches had no ILS, GPS, or VOR's. They were all low-tec ADF/NDB approaches. Hopefully I can explain it well enough so you all can understand. We (the US and non Soviet countries) use one NDB beacon for the ADF approaches. They have an initial approach fix, a final approach fix, and a missed approach fix. A pilot would line the needle on the compass card up with the inbound course. The initial approach fix would be the NDB beacon, and the final approach fix would be the same NDB beacon after an outbound leg and a turn around. The pilot knows he crossed it when the needle flips around the other way, always pointing to the NDB beacon. Now the final approach fix would be based off of timing with a stop watch. All this would be done with ONE or TWO ADF radio receivers on board the airplane. The plane Brown was on had only one. Now the old soviet NDB approaches used THREE NDB beacons (on the ground) and THREE ADF receiver (on the airplane) all on a separate frequency. Now to fly this approach the pilot would line up all three ADF needles on his compass card on the panel. The initial approach fix would be defined when the first needle would flip around when the plane passed the first NDB beacon. Then the final fix would flip and than the missed approach fix would flip. The Brown plane had only one ADF on board and you can not do this approach with just one ADF. The crew was told to fly the approach, which can't be done with their equipment, also as military pilots they were willing to do what ever it takes to complete the mission. The old soviet NDB approaches were low-tech, cheap, but effective. I for one do not believe he was killed by the Clintons, but it sure was good for them. I could be wrong though, I have been wrong at least once before. I hope everyone can understand my description. By the way the weather was CRAP, and remember there were others on that plane that died. So lets remember the Air Force crew that died doing there job.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.