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Ron Brown's Body
How One Man's Death Saved the Clinton Presidency and Hillary's Future
By Jack Cashill Review by Mark Tapscott Considering
the highly disturbing implications of his explosive book's title, investigative reporter Jack Cashill's work deserves a better fate than the silent treatment it has thus far received in the establishment media.Ron Brown's Body
has reached the heights of Amazon.com's non-fiction best-seller list, outpacing such heralded tomes as Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, but other than an early July C-SPAN appearance, the major dailies and network
news outlets have ignored Cashill.Indeed, a Lexis-Nexis search for the book's title during the past two years among major newspapers produced exactly one review, a freelancer's highly favorable assessment for
The Kansas City Star. What is it about Ron Brown's Body that keeps the big media spiking it? Well, here's Cashill's basic point. Ron Brown grew up comfortably in Harlem, the child of parents who were
well established among the emerging black middle class of 1950s America. He became a lawyer, learned how to play the race card while mastering the ins and outs of special interest politics, and thereby ascended
Washington's heights as a Democratic insider. As Bill Clinton's commerce secretary, Brown made the most of contacts he had made previously as a partner at the highly influential Patton-Boggs law firm and as chairman
of the Democratic National Committee. He then became an adroit fundraiser for the 1996 Clinton re-election effort. At the center of his efforts on behalf of the Clinton campaign cash machine was a series of official
Commerce Department "trade missions." Numerous domestic and international corporate power brokers made huge campaign contributions. Some of them also got invitations to travel with Brown on one of these
missions. Additionally, Brown served as a Clinton administration point man on such initiatives as lifting U.S. trade embargoes on sales of sensitive U.S. military technology to China. But along the way Brown had
picked up an insatiable appetite for political adulation, the perquisites of power, and luxurious living that led him into some imprudent business and personal relationships. He also acquired a great deal of knowledge
about powerful people in the White House and elsewhere in the power structure of the Democratic Party. Apparently, some feared that his knowledge made Brown a dangerous man. According to Nolanda Hill, Brown's
long-time business partner and intimate confidant, Brown met with Clinton and threatened to go public with some of his most sensitive knowledge, especially concerning the administration's dealings with China and the
infamous Lippo Group of the Riady family. Brown's last trade mission was scheduled shortly after that White House meeting and included a stop in Croatia. Hill said Brown was perplexed by Clinton's insistence that the
mission be scheduled and that Brown lead it. Among the scheduled participants were executives from Enron Corporation (yes, that
Enron). But the Enron folks got on another plane at the last minute. The jet they got off - Brown's official aircraft - somehow wandered off course and crashed into a mountain, killing him and the other 34 people aboard.
That was not the end of the Brown saga by any means. Although no official autopsy was performed, there were several post-mortem medical exams of his body that included x-rays and photography. The origin of a
perfectly round hole in the top of Brown's head was noted but never explained, even though it looked very much like it had been made by a bullet. And so the questions at the heart of Cashill's book include:
- Why was no autopsy performed?
- Why were the original post-mortem x-rays of Brown's body lost?
- Why did the pathologist not test the hole for gunpowder residue or look for an exit wound?
Why did the same pathologist tell an accident investigator to look for an airplane part that could have made such a hole as it punctured Brown's head?
Why was nothing said about that or any other aspect of the hole in the official report on the crash?
Answers to those questions likely will never be found. Even so, Cashill's book puts them on the record and, in the course of doing that important work for future historians and investigators, provides readers with a
highly disturbing portrait of a bunch of the seamiest characters in the darkest background scenes of the Clinton years. It is impossible to read Ron Brown's Body
without concluding that the Thompson Committee's campaign finance investigation and the various probes that culminated in the Clinton impeachment barely scratched the surface of Clinton administration skullduggery.
The Riadys are there, along with Johnny Chung, Webster Hubbell, Charlie Trie, John Huang and the rest of the names associated with the many investigations of the Clinton years. There are also some names that, while much
less familiar, bear great scrutiny by those who wish to know the full truth: names like Gene and Nora Lum, William "Tater" Anderson, Nguyen Van Hao, Melinda Moss, the galaxy of defense executives reminiscent
of Heller's Milo Minderbinder, and many more. Cashill's book
is carefully researched, and he cautiously lays out the various scenarios that might provide answers to the many questions surrounding Brown's life and death, including those that absolve the Clintons of any responsibility or knowledge.
Not all of the critical dots can be connected, given the current state of the evidence. Sooner or later, though, somebody somewhere is going to unearth the necessary somethings to connect the rest. The only question
is whether that somebody has been born yet. Mark Tapscott is the Director of the Center for Media and Public Policy, and the Marilyn and Fred Guardabassi Fellow, at The Heritage Foundation... [Read full bio] |
