Can Ron Brown's ghost stop Hillary?

“The Hillary-in-2016 buzz has hit overdrive,” the New York Times reported last week, and the awed Times reporter wondered what candidate, Republican or Democrat, “would dare to come up against a world heroine like Hillary.”

“World heroine”? Please. Those of us who have followed Ms. Clinton know that she is no more a heroine of the real Clinton story than Lady Macbeth was the heroine of “Macbeth.”

Like Lady Macbeth too, Hillary has her own ghosts, none more potentially troublesome than former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.

On April 3, 2016, as Hillary moves inexorably toward the Democratic nomination, she may pause to shed a fake tear on the 20th anniversary of Brown’s death on a barren Croatian hillside.

For the two most desperate years of the Clinton presidency, 1994-1996, Brown found himself at the nexus of White House machinations, 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 (April ’96) 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 and his faithful bride Hillary descended on the Commerce Department and, in the artless words of CNN, “eulogized his friend nonetheless.”

In April 1993, back before Democrats began to care about port security, first lady Hillary Clinton invited Commerce Secretary Ron Brown to a one-on-one lunch on the balcony of the White House.

The given reason was to talk politics and thank him for his help "fixing" a near scandal that involved Chief of Staff Mack McLarty. But, in fact, Hillary wanted more. She was about to test Brown, to see whether or not he would be a "good soldier."

According to Brown confidante Nolanda Butler Hill, who "debriefed" him after the balcony lunch, the Clintons had a mission for Brown. They were about to give him the unofficial title "California Czar," ostensibly to show their commitment to the rebuilding of the California economy after the Los Angeles riots a year earlier. In reality, as Brown would soon enough realize, the "czar" claptrap was cover for a deeper California assignment.

Unlikely as it now sounds, the Clintons were prepared to approve the sale of the former Long Beach Naval Station to a company wholly owned by the People's Republic of China – and this just months after Clinton had pilloried Bush Sr. for conducting "business as usual with those who murdered freedom at Tiananmen Square."

The company was called COSCO, the China Ocean Shipping Company, and it was part of the Chinese navy. Says Hill of Brown's participation in the proposed sale, "This was his first big water to carry." It would not be his last. Three years later – 10 years ago next month – Brown was dispatched to Croatia to broker a sweetheart deal between the country's neo-fascist president and a certain American company known as Enron. Brown never came back.

Despite the Enron connection, the major media have literally invested more energy in the wounding of Harry Whittington than in the dying – and possibly killing – of Ron Brown. The run-up to the 10th anniversary provides one last chance to prod them into action. From the beginning of the Clinton presidency, Brown understood that water carrying was to be his role. He hated it, and he feared it. Nor was he the only minority in such a role. To be sure, Clinton chose a Cabinet conspicuously designed to "look like America." This Cabinet included four African Americans: Ron Brown at Commerce, Hazel O'Leary at Energy, Mike Espy at Agriculture, and Jesse Brown at Veteran's Affairs. It also included two Hispanics, Henry Cisneros at HUD and Frederico Pena at Transportation. This willful sharing of power with minorities quickly became part of the Clinton myth. Ron Brown learned the hard way, however, just how illusory the myth was. He sensed the depth of that deception with the publication in 1994 of Robert Woodward's "The Agenda."

The "agenda" in question was the domestic one embodied in the contentious budget bill of 1993. Woodward tells the story with his typical insider detail about the fierce, if chaotic, struggle between the "investment hawks" and the "deficit hawks" within Clinton's Cabinet to shape the bill ... and with it the Clinton presidency. What mattered to Brown about the story – what stung and humiliated him, as he told Nolanda Hill – was he seemed to have played almost no part in the contest. Woodward's book made this clear. There is, in fact, only one reference to Brown, and it is an insignificant one. Brown's power was chimerical.

In the beginning of the book, Woodward lists Clinton's nine-member "economic team." Brown is not on it. Nor is Brown among the 31 Democrats who comprise Woodward's "cast of characters." What intrigues the observer about this cast is it looks less "like America" than it does like, say, Idaho.
Of the 31 Democrats listed – 22 of whom are part of Clinton's official team – not one is a racial minority of any kind. Of the 70 identifiable faces (including repetition) in the photo section of the book, all are white. And this is the "domestic" team. On the national security front, minorities did not even enjoy the illusion of power. There were no Condi Rices, no Colin Powells, nothing like it.

Blacks and Hispanics in the Clinton administration enjoyed little more than the trappings of power. As Brown learned, the appointment of minorities served largely to appease key voting blocs. Neither he nor the other minorities in the Cabinet were even allowed to pick their own second in command. That person was inevitably a Clinton plant in place to do the administration's real work.

Time after time, the Clintons exploited the trust of their minority appointees and used them less for information than insulation. This pattern became apparent at the time of the Monica Lewinsky affair. As the president told the story, it was Betty Currie that Monica came to see. It was Bill Richardson who offered her a job at the United Nations. It was Vernon Jordan who chose to intercede for her at Revlon. These interventions cost the three a huge amount of anxiety and some staggering legal bills.

Hillary Clinton was not above a little exploitation herself. In unrelated incidents, it was not Hillary, but her loyal aid Maggie Williams who cleared out Vince Foster's office after his death and accepted Johnny Chung's $50,000 donation in the White House. These acts led to huge legal bills for Williams as well.

Hillary Clinton had her own plans for Ron Brown, and those included China. While alive, Brown knew more about the Chinese than he wanted to. After their attempted seizure of the Long Beach Naval Station, says Hill, "He never stopped being afraid." And Long Beach was just one thing out of many that he knew he shouldn't have known.

In time, U.S. intelligence sources would learn of Chinese plans to use the naval station as a base for espionage – no surprise there – and Congress would kill the deal. But Congress intervened only after Brown had died. Like the other minorities in the Cabinet, Brown was not just exploitable. He was expendable.

Bill Clinton appointed Ron Brown Commerce Secretary, partly as a reward for Ron Brown's success as a campaign fund raiser. From day one, allegations surrounded the exact means and methods by which this success was attained. Investigations into Ron Brown's activities (his son would later plead guilty to money laundering) were nearing the point of indictments, and Ron Brown had publicly stated that he would not go to jail alone, when the airplane carrying Ron Brown and about 30 other people crashed in Bosnia.

It is worth noting that Ron Brown was just one of four Clinton campaign fund raisers to die under questionable circumstances. The others were C. Victor Raiser II, Hershel Friday, and Ed Willey, a total of three plane crashes and one "Fosterization". Following Brown's demise, his personal attorney as well as a co-worker at the Department of Commerce, Barbara Wise also died under questionable circumstances.

Did Reagan era appointee, Wise, discover what was behind the illegal contact between Bill Clinton, Ron Brown, and operatives of the Chinese government, John Huang and Wang Jun? John Huang, long time friend of Bill Clinton, Democratic Party bagman and agent of the Chinese, was hired by Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and privy to classified documents. Ron Brown died tragically in an airplane crash. When John Huang left the Commerce Department to be bagman/fundraiser for the DNC, he was retained on contract to the Commerce Department, by Charles Meissner, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for International Economic Policy. Under this arrangement with Meissner, John Huang kept his security clearance and remained in phone contact with agents of the Chinese government. Charles Meissner has since died tragically in a plane crash. Barbara Alice Wise was suspected of leaking Commerce documents exposing the Chinese espionage. On November 29, 1996 Barbara Wise was found dead and bruised from head to waist in a locked Commerce Department office. According to a news report on WRC TV, he body was found partially nude. On that same morning President Clinton inexplicably left Camp David where he was vacationing for the weekend and flew to the White House on Marine One, the presidential helicopter. Questioned by reporters regarding this sudden visit on the same morning that Barbara Wise's mottled body was discovered, Mike McCurry, on behalf of the President, told an obvious and, as yet, unchallenged lie:

John Belmont, ABC News: President Clinton took time out from his holiday weekend at Camp David to stop by the Oval Office this morning to pick up some poetry.

Jerry King, ABC Reporter from the White House: "Says Mike McCurry (Presidential Press Secretary)," 'The program for the President's January inauguration has to be completed by Monday. Mr. Clinton did not have some of the books he wanted to research for example to find poetry to be read at the event. So, he flew in the official helicopter, Marine One, back to the White House to pick up the books.' [Reporter] Could the research not have been delivered cheaper? McCurry says, "Well, sure."

There have been numerous news reports that President Clinton tinkered with his inauguration speech well into January of 1997. As for the poem that the President had to have that day--its as forgotten as poor Barbara Alice Wise. Why did the White House lie about the President's unusual behavior that day?

How seriously incriminating are the documents at the Commerce Department? Here is James F. Hoobler, Bill Clinton's Inspector General of the U.S. Small Business Administration writing a letter in the November 21, 1996 Wall Street Journal, a scant eight days before Barbara Wise's death. "In respo Pour Nov. 5 editorial (CIA Takes Commerce Files): Let me make it perfectly clear that no files have been taken by the CIA or any other agency. All files remain in my custody. In addition, I took custody of the safe and its contents at the request of the SBA's Office of General Counsel, not in response to a subpoena....As for the classified documents, Executive Order 12958, Section 4.2, prohibits disclosure without the authorization of the agency that originally classified the document.

Examine these news stories filed by Reuters, Associated Pressed and UPI respectively. (citings follow)

12:01 p.m. Friday November 29, 1996 Reuters: Body found in deceased's office, where the International Trade Administration has offices. Cause of death not yet determined. Police say the city's medical examiner would perform an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of her death. Case being investigated by Homicide branch.

5:21 PM Friday, November 29, 1996 [AP] "The name of the 48-year-old woman was being withheld pending notification of relatives. District of Columbia police spokesman, J. C. Stamps said that an autopsy was being performed." Clinton reviewing inaugural plans by Helen Thomas UPI 29-NOV-1996 14:29

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- President Clinton briefly interrupted his Thanksgiving holiday weekend at Camp David Friday with a quick trip to the White House to gather data he wants to study in planning his second inauguration and then returned to the mountaintop retreat.
The president, still suffering from a raspy voice, and ordered by his doctor to rest his vocal chords, carried a briefcase as he strolled to the waiting helicopter to return to Camp David. He wore a leather jacket and was followed by an aide carrying a huge box of inaugural papers.

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