WASHINGTON
On April 3, 1996, 35 people died in the crash of a U.S. Air Force plane in Croatia. Among them was Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, whom then-President Bill Clinton claimed as a close and dear friend.
There are many indications that could suggest Ron Brown was killed before or during the crash to protect not only the Clinton presidency but also Hillary Clinton's future.
In the same week 10 years later, Bill Clinton was betraying another old friend -- Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair -- with another man called Brown. Bill was assuring an elite audience of Socialists at London's Guildhall that Gordon Brown could provide "wondrous vision, leadership and dynamism" when he ceased being Chancellor of the Exchequer to take Blair's job. The audience was in raptures.
This time there was no blood or gore. While Brown the Second boomed on about "globalization being a force for justice," Bill spoke softly, told stories and played his favorite role -- the preacher turned salesman selling himself. Blair was not mentioned.
Let's start at the beginning, a decade ago.
After the crash in Croatia, the bodies were brought to America and examined by a team from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. There was no autopsy performed on Ron Brown, the first black to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee, as permission was not granted. The chief of the photographic unit, Chief Petty Officer Kathleen Janoski, saw there were no lethal injuries to Brown's body -- other than what appeared to be a bullet hole in his head.
She showed the wound to two colleagues, both colonels, who agreed with her. A search was made of the crash site and nothing was found that could have caused such a wound. She took photographs and also took photographs of the military X-rays, which showed what appeared to be bullet particles.
Almost immediately there was a military-ordered blackout; later there was an inquiry. But the X-rays had been lost; only Janoski's photographs remained. Her career and that of her colleagues was said to have ended. Today, Chief Janoski is a member of the Pentagon's Committee on Women Veterans.
What had Ron Brown done?
In 1994, Gen. Shen Roujun of China's People's Liberation Army led a successful penetration-and-collection operation directed against the U.S. space programs. Deals that Shen was alleged to have cut with Loral, Hughes Aircraft and Motorola saved the Chinese billions of dollars in research and development and turned their army into a deadly force equipped to wage thermonuclear war.
President Clinton -- against the advice of the Pentagon but with the full support of newly appointed National Security Adviser Sandy Berger -- plotted against the Pentagon naysayers and signed waivers for all three companies.
In the weeks before his death, Ron Brown is said to have, after years of indifference to the Almighty, commenced going to church. However, temporal power intervened and he became the subject of an investigation. Ron Brown hoped that Clinton would shut down the questioning.
The meeting between two rogues took place in the White House family quarters and Ron Brown failed in his mission. Bill Clinton claimed that he no longer was in a position to halt the investigation and would do nothing to help. Brown, in his imagination, heard the cell door slamming.
Yet, only weeks earlier, Brown had been Clinton's bag man in a trip to New York where he collected about $1.2 million from Loral for the Democratic Party to use as "soft money." Nothing was put in writing but the payment of so much money -- the largest sum ever from one donor -- was related to a waiver that Clinton would sign to allow Loral's trade with China to continue to prosper and our national security to face failure.
America's security was traded for Clinton's re-election campaign.
Following the Clinton meeting and the money delivery, a close friend of Ron Brown told a Justice Department presentencing conference that he only had one option -- to report the president's possible treasonous dealings with China.
Soon thereafter Ron Brown died in an air crash. He was given a hero's burial in Arlington National Cemetery and is, today, largely forgotten.
Bill Clinton ceased to be president and his wife, who ignored being cheated on for several decades, became a U.S. senator for New York. There are many signs that she is seeking the presidency. But Bill is still job hunting even as he shares fundraising activities with George Herbert Walker Bush.
The world's political, religious and academic leaders flock to Bill. There are no queries about his pardons-for-profit or the deal that allowed him to avoid being prosecuted for them; his serial philandering is no longer mentioned; neither is his abandonment of our national security; nor his moral character.
Slick Willie is on a mission. He has to spread world peace, make the world a safer place for immigrants and criminals and push his very own campaign -- most appropriate for a globally acknowledged sexpert -- to eradicate AIDS.
Dateline D.C. is written by a Washington-based British journalist and political observer.
