The Clintons and Corruption, Part II: White Water, Dirty Money and Larger Problems

Published Aug 12, 2022, 3:00 PM

From the politics of Arkansas to the heights of Presidential power, Bill and Hillary Clinton have become one of the world's most influential political power couples -- and, along the way, they've garnered a ton of allegations and accusations. In part two of this series, Ben and Matt dive into the allegations surrounding Whitewater, financial shenanigans and more.

From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Our colleague Nol is not with us for this episode, but we'll be returning very soon. They called me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Ball. Mission control deconds. Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. This is part two of a two part series that has possibly already ruffled some feathers, which is something something that we appreciate and love. We are continuing our journey into conspiracies surrounding the political dynasty known as the Clinton's here in the United States. Please do check out episode one. Also, please do check out our earlier conversation on this. Matt. I think it was twenty sixteen when we also caught some heat because we got asked by so many of our fellow listeners to look at so many conspiracies surrounding uh the presidential candidates at the time, which would have been Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Uh. And after a little bit of conversation with our our good pal Jake Hanrahan over at uh popular Front, we decided to take the benefit of retrospect and really drill down into some of these some of these theories about the Clinton family um Earlier in our our previous episode earlier this week, we looked into something called the Clinton body count, UH and we barely scratched the surface of that. By the way, there are we gave you a good intro, a good primer on this, but there are more than fifty or so folks now who are alleged to be um murdered in some way by a former US president or on the way US president and his spouse. Today, we are finally, finally, man, We're going to Whitewater, and sadly it's not the amusement park. What I know, I'm sorry, I know. I got so excited, man, the me too. The slides at Whitewater were so epic when I was a kid. All right, Well, hopefully this one's fun and exciting and there will be some cotton candy involved, hopefully hopefully, probably not, but hopefully right, hope springs eternal. Here are the facts, so Matt Earlier this week, you and Nolan I and Mission Control explored kind of the space between fact and fiction. Right. We looked at the proven history of both William Clinton and Hillary Clinton's political careers, all the way from their initial meeting at Yale in a library to their time in Arkansas, through their ascendancy from regional to national politics. When traced controversies all the way up to Bill Clinton's term as president, Hillary Clinton's career as Senator, Secretary of State, candidate for the Democratic Party, as President of the United States. I don't think it's a hot take man, to say that these are controversial figures. No, it's not a hot take at all. As political figures go. The amount of controversy they shared between the two of them is pretty astronomical, honestly. Uh, if you look at other even recent political figures, like look at look at President Obama, just as a case in point, there was controversy around him that was generated kind of often out of nothing, like some of the stories about his birth certificates, some of the I mean, if you really think about the controversy around him, like there wasn't a ton right that that you can just think about and conjure in your mind. There wasn't a ton about George W. Bush. I mean, there were there were things. There were there were issues with him, as there were with President Obama, but they weren't these like court cases. They weren't these uh, pretty intense stuff about their background and how they rose to power. Right. Um. With with Bush, it was like, oh, yeah, his dad was president and that's kind of fishy. And then you look at his background in the oil business and everything. And even with Trump, you look at him and you think about his past with television has passed, with real estate and some of the weird money and tax stuff. But it's not the same as what we see with the Clintons. Multiple sexual assault charges. Yeah, you're absolutely right there, but it's just it's i think combined. The Clintons just have so much that we have to look at Yeah, agreed, And we're going into this knowing that there's quite a bit of propaganda involved. And as we said in episode one, you know, the Clinton administration occurred during a massive, massive growth in political divisiveness, right in terms of something that into tribalism which plagues this country today. Propaganda is weird because the opponents of the Clinton administration, who were also the opponents of Hillary Clinton's terms as a senator and as Secretary of State. Uh. The these opponents did not shy away from propaganda and did not worry too too often nor too ardently about whether or not an allegation could be supported by fact. This was, you know, this was what is often called in media red meat. Right, it's something juicy, It's a headline that you can click. We call it clickbait. Now, So our question is, even after putting the propaganda aside, why is it so disturbingly easy to understand why so many people in the US and abroad might have problems with this political dynasty. To say again the quiet part out loud, it is not meritocratic for members of the same family to hold the reins of political power. And unfortunately, this is a problem that has played the United States for many, many decades across political parties. Uh. You know, one of the things that became the medic was the the idea of her emails, right, Hillary Clinton's emails, which we'll get into today. Uh. The idea of this whole whitewater thing, which I think, Matt, you and I are both sad to learn is real estate scandal allegedly and not a water park. Uh So we'll also have to ask a question common to any political force of this caliber, which is are there nonprofits actually nonprofits? Is the Clinton Foundation just that a charitable organization? Or was it? And is it a backdoor for undo political influence? You know what I think, Matt, Let's just uh, let's maybe pause for a word from our sponsor and then and then dive in. Is our sponsor Whitewater? I hope not. Here's where it gets crazy, all right, Matt Whitewater. This is something we didn't get to in episode one. So we talked a little bit about this in our episode where we did both conspiracies or allegations against the Trump campaign and conspiracy or allegations against the Clinton campaign, which was Hillary Clinton at the time. But this those episodes, by the way, came out like a week before the election. I think they did. Oh we're great at timing. We're real Christmas in July, folks. But but this white Water thing, Um, I think the news about it has been around for much of our lives, you, you and me and probably a lot of our listeners because it dates back to it came to public attention in the nineteen nineties, but the substance of the events is actually it's it's older than a lot of us listening today. I do recall watching news about the White Water scandal with my parents at their house when I was a kid. I have no idea what it was like. I didn't understand any of it. I just knew the phrase white white water and I saw Bill Clinton's face on the television, um, and I didn't realize it went back to the nineteen seventies. Uh, well before I was ever conceived to even be a thing, or even a potential thing. So this is this is kind of weird. It's a little complicated, but let's get into it. As you said, Ben, it has to do with real estate, with purchasing land and then hoping to develop that land and just make bookoo bucks on whatever whatever sits upon that land. At some point we know about it because of investigations that were we're done by a certain independent council that was a rock star at the time, someone named Kenneth Star. And uh, it's really interesting because there was so much candle. There's so much press about this on the news constantly, but in the end, nobody really got in trouble. At least the Clintons didn't get in double there are other people who were involved in the scandal who did very much get in trouble. Yeah. Yeah, this is gonna have a lot of shades of House of Cards for for people, right that, I think. I think that's it's fair to say that House of Cards the very well done political drama. It's a bit of a soap opera. I think it's fair to say that it takes a lot of cues from the public perception of Bill and Hillary Clinton. It's interesting, but it kind of combines the two of them into the two characters in different ways. So it's a need amalgam where it's not fully Bill and Hillary as the power couple and House of Cards, but they are kind of a mesh of one another. Yeah, just so, And of course that's because it is a work of fiction, House of Cards, and and we can do we can do a maybe a Kevin Space episode later, but it would feel a little unclean. Anyway. I love I love the way you've introduced uh our buddy Kenny Starr. He is alive. He is an American lawyer. He was a US Circuit judge for several years Solicitor General of the United States. He was a guy who was on a mission during this period of time, and his mission, which she accepted, was to buy hook or by crook, bring down the Clinton administration. That's an a political statement. Those are just the facts. It's not a conspiracy. It's pretty clear that this guy and his puppeteers were doing anything possible to find find some way to bring down Bill Clinton, which is surprising because, as we'll find, the Clinton administration actually did a lot of stuff that Ken Stars masters probably wanted. As you said, the Clintons were never formally charged with a crime in the case of Whitewater. Several of their associates didn't do as well. Here's what happened. The Clinton family partnered with another family, the McDougall's, James and Susan McDougall, and their scheme was I'm using the British connotation of scheme. It wasn't really conspiracy. It was like their plan. Uh, they wanted to buy two hundred and thirty acres of land, and on this land they wanted to build a bunch of vacation spots. They essentially wanted to sell second homes to folks that is their demographic, right, folks who can afford a second home, and retirees possibly. And this is strange because at this time, this story really starts when Bill Clinton is already governor of Arkansas. He's the governor of an entire state he's elected in and at this time his spouse, Hillary Clinton, is an associate at a law firm, and they're looking for ways to make extra cash. That's totally true. And imagine, folks, everybody listening today, unless you are one of fifty people, you are not governor of a state. So wherever you are at in your life, you have to ask yourself, would I be looking for a side gig if I was the governor of the state in which I live. Now, that's baffling to me, but it happens all the time. Most governors have, you know, multiple business interest oh for sure. So in this business interest back in seventy eight, when Bill Clinton was Governor Clinton of Arkansas, we were working with the McDougal's and looking at that two or thirty acres in a place called or near Flipping Arkansas, like in that hilarious Flipping Arkansas we're gonna buy some land out and flipping Arkansas, and we're gonna put vacation homes on it and make all kinds of money. If you're looking at a map of Arkansas with little rock kind of in the center of it, right there, that's where the Clintons were hanging, you know, running running. The place uh flipping is north almost due north, a little bit to the west, and it is right at the top there before you get into Missouri, and uh, I mean it is. I'm I'm imagining it here in Georgia. And this is just for anybody in Georgia's listening, because this is how I'm picturing in my mind. We're in Atlanta to which isn't the center of Georgia's kind of north central Georgia. And if you go north from us in the same direction, the same way, you would hit the Blue Ridge Mountains, which is a very popular vacation place or a place to own a cabin as a second home or something like that. So I imagining it kind of like that, but probably a little more nice than the cabin's I've stayed at in Blue Ridge. Yeah, the concept is sound right. So this guy James McDougall goes to the Clinton family, goes to the governor of Arkansas and says, hey, you guys want to get into the vacation home business. And they have this like series of double dates, you know, James and Susan and Bill and Hillary, and they lay out this plan. So what they want to do is make a nice getaway destination for folks who enjoy the outdoors. And they say, Okay, we're gonna sell these homes and people can go fishing on them, right or they can go hiking. You know, it's a place to take take your grandkids over the summer or that kind of stuff. But they messed up. It's not a conspiracy. They messed up in just the basic hygiene of the idea. The land itself was not super good. It wasn't readily accessible in a lot of ways. It was still recovering from previous flooding, and that accessibility piece is something that would not have changed regardless of flooding. You would need you would need to lay an interstate a little bit closer, or you would need to have other things that pull people in that this development could ort a sort of satellite off of the Blue Ridge mountains here in Georgia that works because of its um location relative to an interstate and state roads. Well, yeah, I think it's the state roads are the most importantly, just like you, even if the interstate isn't that close, you can easily get on non dirt roads, you know, paved roads to the place that you need to be. It's it's not that far out of the way. There's infrastructure there, Infrastructure there it is. That's that's the billion dollar word, right. Um. You can have very opulent places, like there's a place a lot of people don't talk about nationally here in Georgia called Sea Island. Sea Island is very posh. I have to go there sometimes. It's candidly not my favorite place. People are pretty ny. Why do you have to go? The uh? There's a lot of inequality. So the the the issue with I'm not answered not taking questions, Matt, okay, the uh. The the issue is they didn't pick a good starting position, you know, just like a game of Civilization or does position matter in uh Katan we're talking tabletop games, Yeah, it does, right, you get to choose choose where you're starting point is I think, or you roll for it. I can't remember. I haven't played in years. Okay, all right, well, we know position is key. They chose a poor position. Uh. They were also and this is not really on the McDougall's or the Clintons, they were also at the mercy of a larger financial climate. Interest rates were on the rise, which means that even if they had a primo position, you know, even if they had a little corner piece of the brownie pan of vacation homes, a lot of people couldn't afford to buy a second hold. They were trying to hold on to the one they had. The Clintons, as a result, lost an estimated forty six thousand dollars on this. And this is again through what justa eight two many years later, the investigation starts occurring. Federal regulators are looking at not Whitewater, but another real estate investment. Oh yeah, this one is It's a project called Castle Grand You you undoubtedly heard about this too, if you're paying attention at the time. This was backed specifically by James of the McDougal's in their Power couple, and this investigation it led to James McDougal having to resign from the company that he started the company called Madison Guarantee. Was I believe this was the savings and loan that he was working that he started and was working for. It was he started that one right for right after the whole Whitewater thing kicked off. And I think it was maybe even to get Whitewater to happen, and the bank ended up collapsing. It was pretty terrible, pretty terrible for James at least. Uh, and it only went downhill from there for him. Yeah. Yeah, A little bit about McDougal. Uh, he passed away in n Uh. He was hand in hand with the world of Arkansas finance and Arkansas politics. Ultimately, this guy gets convicted on eighteen separate counts of fraud and conspiracy charges. Uh. These were all due to loans made by his company, Madison in the late nineteen eighties. And check this out, folks, because this company was federally ensured. The sixty eight million dollars that his company owed legally was paid by you if you live in the United States. It was paid with tax payer money. That's what federally in short means. Uh. So so funny enough, our boy Kenny asked for a reduced sentence for James McDougal because McDougal was assisting with the Whitewater investigation, and questions surrounding the Clinton's involvement with Whitewater only grew during President Clinton's first term in office. The investigation about this primarily was concerned with whether they conspired or whether they did anything illegal. The prosecutor who was appointed for this was guy named Robert B. Fisk, and there were concerns that Bill Clinton himself was pressuring people, was pressing them into financially assisting the Whitewater deal, even though the land was bad, even though it was known by now that people were not able to afford a second home. Clinton reputedly or allegedly push this guy named David Hale, the president of another business investment firm, into making a loan, and then other allegations come out, and it looks like the money is dirty. It looks like the campaign that Bill Clinton had to become governor of Arkansas was using laundered cash through Madison Guarantee, via its owner McDougal or its creator. It was a three thousand dollar loan that this guy, David Hales being pressured by allegedly by Clinton and by the McDougal's and outside forces to make to give this loan to the McDougal's and the Clintons through UM through the Madison company that McDougal owned, right, So it's like somebody spent pressure on this bank to give this other bank three thousand dollars and then that money would go up to Whitewater and that investment would then channel money back to the original investors, then that money back to the original bank that made the loan. But it's just weird because it seems as though the money, as you said, Ben, was just kind of making a little traveling, a little trail so that that money could actually be used somewhere else, because it's sure as heck didn't seem like it got used on the old Whitewater Clinton, Arkansas area. And again that's you know, that's the thing that bugs me about this, Matt, because someone should have known that those two thirty acres were not prime positioning. Well I think they did. I think they didn't know. Look, this is this is me I and I You can look at the official records and what happened and who got punished for what, But in my mind, this was a shady way to just get cash, cold heart cash to a political let's say asset, a political asset for a group of people that wanted to have that power, with the understanding it would come in later. It was just a different type of investment, right, That's what it feels like to me the same. I'm with you on that because it's weird because the idea of buying this land and developing this land in this way, if it were created in good faith, it feels amateurish. It feels like people didn't do their due diligence or did not care to do so. Anyhow. I like that you're bringing up the consequences of this. Um. I know we're in the weeds here, but it's important. It's important to know the facts. So this guy Fisk issues a subpoena to President Clinton and Hillary Clinton as they're both involved related to the problems with Madison Guarantee, which is again run by James McDougall. This happens kind of often when powerful people are asked for their paperwork or their receipts. The documents were missing, no one can find them, and then later they were found. Were they the same documents or are they sanitized that somebody hug it up a little unclear, but all in all, there would be three separate inquiries into this shell game of money, which I think it's accurate to call it that each of these were targeted again with political motivations toward Bill and Hillary Clinton, and each of those in that respect was unsuccessful. They failed. They did not find enough evidence to charge the Clintons with crimes. However, as you already pointed out, a lot of other people did go down. They did get convicted, like James McDougal, etcetera, etcetera, and his wife Susan. They both got They both got convicted, and James McDougall spent the rest of his life until he died in prison. Yes, and this dude wrote a book in jail. He did. He did tell us about the book. Oh man, Okay. He wrote a book called Arkansas Mischief. He it with a guy named Curtis Wilkie who's a journalist. And uh my goodness, this thing has allegations, is gossip allegations, Okay. Uh we we talked about the shell game of money. In the book, James McDougall states that they were indeed just getting cash cash money that had been laundered to Bill Clinton specifically every month, and it was a very calculated move, and well he writes about it. We'll give you the specifics here in a moment. But every month, James McDougall and his associates would take twenty one dollar bills, according to James, and hand it to Bill Clinton, So two thousand dollars every month, and they just give it to him cash. You could use it, You could use it for anything. Think about that. Uh, imagine getting two thousand dollars extra every month just as a you get to use this money. And then imagine that that's an eighteen eighties money. So with just a little bit of cocktail napkin math, we can say two thousand dollars in is equivalent to seven thousand, one hundred and nine dollars and one cent today. So if you're getting mailbox money, essentially right passive income in the magnitude of seven thousand dollars, I have to ask a little bit of a moral question, a moral quandary. What would you do if you just started getting an envelope with seven thousand dollars It just showed up, just showed up in your mailbox just was dropped at your door. No return address. Let's let's make it even mysterious, no return address. Someone for some reason is just sending you seven grand a month. How many questions would you ask? Zero? Wow, this is great. Then I would put it all away for like nine months, and then I would buy one of those swimming pools that's like it looks like a hot tub, but you can just swim in it like a current, one of those Scrooge jacuzzi, that's what I call those. Yeah, yeah, Scrooge cozy. Uh so, but but okay, So James Dugle in his book, he talks about this, and we found some of this from a CNN article from We just want to give you some of these details because it is intense to hear it from the person that was allegedly doing it. So McDougall says that in the nineteen eighties, he and this other person that worked with him at the Savings Eon Loan where he was where he was working at the time. Uh, this person named Henry Hamlin, they quote, developed a system to pass money to Clinton, who was again remember this, the governor of the state that they lived in. Um, here's the quote continued, A contractor agreed to pad that like add money to my monthly construction bill by two thousand dollars. The contractor put the figure on his invoice as a cost for something like gravel colvert work. After I paid the full amount of that invoice, so everything including that extra two thousand dollars. The contractor reimbursed me that extra two thousand dollars and I turned the money over to Henry to give to Clinton. So literally, a a business invoice that is above board, that you know, gets looked at by and everybody, and it looks fine because you're just paying extra for gravel or something. But that two thousand just comes right off the top and gets to be cash and go wherever you want it to go. Oh yeah, you'll love to see it, you know, you'll love to see it. Especially Oh man, I've said it before, Matt, but I can't get away with a late fee at the library. You know, I've tried. I said, like, I'm sorry, I'm late with this book. I really enjoyed it and I am using it for research or whatever. And I still get I still get taken to task so well. But the question is why would they do that been right. That was that was a question why I obscure the origin of the of the cash well ben uh. In this article and in this book that James McDougall again wrote from jail after he got convicted of this stuff, he says, he just talks about the motivations. And he says one time, this one guy, Henry Hamilton's that he was working with and you know, had this whole thing going with. Uh. McDougall says, hamblin. At one point after you know they're doing this whole exchange thing that Henry's got the two thousand dollars, he gives a quote from Henry who says, you know Caesar had his brutus, Charles the first had Cromwell. Clinton could profit from these examples if he crosses us. Wait, who are these guys? Who are these guys? Are we talking organized crime here? Crosses us? Are they just trying to build their own political power somehow within Arkansas? What is going on? There's so much more to the story. Um and McDougall wrote that this guy, Henry Hamilton's, was very adamant about this position and about how important these payments were. Uh, I'm gonna give you another quote. McDougall says that Hamilton's quote insisted that under the table payments would solidify our connections in state government, and he said that uh Clinton appointed his recommended candidates to state jobs, including state Security commissioner. So that's pretty that's pretty intense, Like they're solidifying their ability to just go to Clinton at some point and say, hey, you know, there's this person who would be really great for this other position, and I really think here's your two that you should appoint this person. I mean, that's that's true in terms of like what is described in the book and what what we're telling you today. Folks. You can call it uh propaganda or whatever, but I I would be careful to avoid that kind of assumption because the records appear to be there. And again, this guy is writing from jail, right. He is not one of those folks who gets a pardon, by the way, at the at the end of the administration. And that, as you pointed out earlier to off Air, Henry Hamilton's is beyond the realm of questions. Now, oh yeah, because Hamilton's was passed away when that article was written in CNN. Shoot, there's one more thing. In that book that I want to get to ben but I think we need to take a quick break. Should we do that and then come right back. We'll hit one more piece of that book and then move on to ben Ghazi. And we've returned and we are going to stay. In that CNN article that where you've mentioned I should just cite it. Uh, you can find it right now. The title is James McDougal's Last word is a tell all book. And find that this comes from Associated Press CNN. It does so, yes, Associated Press, good job, and Reuters and whatever, all the all the agencies out there that are just collecting news and sending it. Everyone hits all the good ones, all the same. Um. So, we talked about this three thousand dollar loan that was at the heart, at least originally at the heart of the White Water scandal. It's three dollars a lot of money. And there was a person that we mentioned earlier, David Hale, who was pressured allegedly to make that loan even though he knew this was a bad idea. Well, in James McDougal's prison book that he wrote, he states that he at least alleges Let's say that there was pressure applied on David Hale directly by Bill Clinton, again the Arkansas governor, because Bill Clinton Karnean McDougall may or may not probably according to him, was having an affair with Susan McDougall, his spouse. Um. Okay, so let's just jump into this. In the book. According to this ap CNN article, McDougall said that one of Susan McDougall's brothers, a guy named Jim Henley, witnessed this specific meeting. And now this is hearsay, right, and even in the book, this is hearsay. Um. Jim Henley witnessed a meeting in which Clinton allegedly urged Hale to make this loan. Uh. They call it a fraudulent loan, which just means I guess it shouldn't have been made. McDougall said, Clinton appeared unexpectedly at the end of some meeting, this meeting that was witnessed. Uh right, he just pops in, Yeah. Yeah. The Arkansas governors was like, oh, hey, boys, here Susan's alone. Yeah. Yeah, allegedly says that, yeah, did you do you discuss Susan's alan, Tell tell me about it. Um. And the big question was like, well, why is the governor here, Why is he asking specifically about this weird loan for Susan McDougall, Why did he care about it? And James McDougal, at least, according to the book, concluded again that Clinton and Susan had resumed This is a this is the word that's used in the article, resumed an affair, which which we don't have the full context here, but that means that it was likely something that happened before and now is happening again, or at least there was some pressure on Bill Clinton to make this loan happen. So then he was applying pressure to David Hale. And here's the best partage, right, that's the best part about it. David Hale was appointed by the governor Bill Clinton. David Haile is appointed a judge by the governor Bill Clinton. And then so the guy who makes who makes your career, or at least the point of it, comes up and says, what's going on with that? What's going on with that? Loan? Runs basically jeez, so okay, so old to say, there are books out there, there are a lot of things we have to be again, very cognizant and clear minded about the motivation of a lot of these sources, because there's always going to be uh, propaganda smear pieces whenever you're talking about anybody in the world of politics. But from Matt, from what we're saying here, again just being objective, what we're saying here, Uh, we can conclude the following whether or not the Clintons were involved with or aware of financial shenanigans in the case of Whitewater. That's never been proven, but it doesn't look good. It's like to the point where you would have to be kind of incompetent not to be aware of what was happening. So the narrative of oh, let's get people vacation homes in flipping Arkansas, it feels it feels like it's skipping a lot of steps, you know. I have to say one last thing about James McDougald, just from the writing that I saw, Uh, there's something I don't know if it's virtuous about him. I don't know if any of this is true, but a lot of the writing I saw about him says that he was attempting until his dying day to get his wife acquitted of everything, to to get a pardon for his wife, even though at least according to his writings in his book, he knew that she was having an affair, or at least believe that she's aunty fair. I don't know, It's just seems like he was. He knew his ship has sailed, but he wanted to save the others if he could release his wife. Love is a weird thing, man, It's a very strange thing. Also, he had a lot of time to think about it, because that's what prison gives you. So at this point, there are a couple of other things we haven't gotten to do. We want to touch Benghazi, the emails. I think we do need to talk about the Clinton Foundation. So ben Ghazi is something you can look at specifically. It's way more of a political scandal. There are deaths involved, there's tragedy involved in that scandal. I would just say ben it has it has a lot to do with the reaction of Secretary of State then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President Obama and uh the State Department, and how it just how quickly it reacted to a crisis, and how much early warning was given to people who are going to be affected by tensions that were rising. September eleventh, two thousand and twelve, Yes, three U S nationals and the ambassador at the time, Chris Stevens, they are murdered during the seizure of a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, which is located in Libya. Members of Congress at the time said that then Secretary of State Clinton was misleading people about the reality on the ground. And then there were there were rumors allegations that then President Barack Obama and s os Clinton were watching this stuff happened or we're getting reports of it in very close to real time and just not doing anything about it. And these accusations came largely from their political party opponents. Uh the charges as you can see, um Amber Phillips right, you found this one does a great job laying these out in an article for the Washington Post, from which is you know, has the benefit of retrospect the the five ideas there are. The five chief accusations are that this eight Department did not protect US diplomats in Libya. It's a little bit that it sounds bad, but it's even worse when we remember that the State Department has a long, longstanding policy and practice of only protecting certain sorts of assets or employees. There are a lot of people left out in the cold, especially when you remember that Momar Gaddafi was killed in the previous year two thousand eleven, so before these attacks, so that the French could maintain hegemony over the currency. That's the reason Libya fell. And it should have been a known thing that this area was dangerous, right, and there's potential for some kind of attack, you know, in any State Department property. Uh So it just feels I think that accusation of the State Department failed to protect its diplomats there. It's just it's added of that because it was a time of high tension, right right. Next two accusations are of incompetence, essentially that the c i A missed signals in advance, that the Defense Department d D didn't respond in time. Uh And then there's the idea that the presidential administration, the Obama administration, stymied the investigation put up stone walls. Also the concept that a Clinton aid Cheryl Mills, I believe former chief of staff for Clinton, had influenced the State Department's review and investigation. There's an eleven hour long hearing on this, the Democratic side is saying that it's it's a hit piece that the you know, their implication is that the Republican side only real he wants to get the Democrats in trouble, right. And this is a little bit supported by the way by a comment from the Majority House majority leader at the time, Representative Kevin McCarthy, who says, this panel's work is hurting the Clinton poll numbers in that presidential race. But that investigation for a lot of for a lot of people, a lot of a lot of just like common observers in the US, that lost steam. People became much more concerned with the thing that was mimetic and easy, you could say, but her emails, and real quick with the email thing. So the FBI and the d o J Department of Justice looked into whether or not Hillary Clinton's private email server was moving secret information right during her time as the Secretary of State or or hiding or hiding from other official sources exactly whether whether it was getting a little too casual. Ultimately, long story short, the State Department says, look, they didn't follow the rules for safeguarding information basic opsack hygiene, you know, uh, and that Clinton as secretary state she had not asked for approval or given a heads up to use this private server, and they said this person would not have been given permission if she had asked for it. So for anyone, I feel like the best way to explain this one Matt is through comparison. So for anyone with an office job, this might sound familiar. A lot of people, including us, have played fast and loose with this kind of hygiene when it comes to personal stuff on work email or work email, work conversations on personal things, you know, like, um, the way you've been playing fast and listen without not anymore? Uh uh? You know you and you and are are are different. KNOWL and I have kind of off the books group chat that we use, and a while back I had asked us to move to a more secure platform, which makes me sound like a nut, But you know you have these kind of conversations. Your mileage may vary depending on your occupation. If you run your own business, then you might treat your work email address as a personal account. But if you like our pal guarev shout out to you man if if you work an info sensitive industries, tech, proprietary, engineering, finance, etcetera, or you know, not the top levels of the world's most dangerous government. Ever, there are protocols in place to make sure that official communication stays with you know, you at work server, work email address instead of you know, big case of da fan right at Gmail or whatever. Well, especially if you're you know, the head diplomat essentially slash uh tradecraft cough cough. You're that you're like the top of the State department, right, so you're like you run serious things for the government. I can I can imagine why it would be advantageous to be able to control what information is public domain and what is not. Yeah, absolutely, even if it's even if it's classified or top secret, right, if it's on one of these government meant servers, it is part of the public record. Is just who has access to it or not? Right? Right? And also there's it's it's like something it's like guacamole. Congress should be able to have it upon request, right, the American public, the halls of power should have it on request. So so, uh, this all happens way before you know. The stuff that's going on now is we record with a clear cover up in terms of deleting communications from January six. Right, so we've got just a little bit of time left. We need to talk about something called the Clinton Foundation. And again we are being objective for anybody in for anybody in the audience today who feels like the Clinton administration or a bunch of a slut villains. Uh, you should know, you should be well aware by the way that the rest of the world recognizes the subjective fact the Clintons in practice and policy are not leftist. They are center right and in the political spectrum, that's just true. And you know, a lot of a lot of political opponents have made a killing, not quite a Clinton body count killing, but they've made a killing by pretending that is not the case. So let's look again at the money, which is a political by the way, everybody's just trying to make money, right, Shout out to Pelosi over in Taiwan and shout out in video as well. Sot to get them chimps. So, the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation is an international charitable organization that was founded back in originally to create the Presidential Library. That's a cool that's a cool, uh, you know, knock on effect of being president of the United States, Whether or not. You survive your term even if you don't like reading. You get a library at the end. That's kind of cool and it's like it is, and then the books and the speaking tours. But you know, you have to survive your term to do those, uh if you know, no matter what happens, to get the library. So this is weird because it's not a personally endowed private charitable foundation. Those usually serve as pass throughs for donations to other groups that do on the ground work right like the like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds other initiatives. That's a big part of what they do. The Clinton Foundation, in contrast, is an operating foundation, which means that it takes the money and then it does its own charitable activities. This is controversial because it's an organization that brings in billions of dollars in donations from around the world. It's operated by a former US president and another very high powered, very influential politician who served as Secretary of State during any other presidential administration. This creates whether you're whether you're a fan or a foe. Just objectively, this creates subconflicts of interest. You know, it's it's also it's so funny the way money moves at the top right in the official channel. So the presidential campaign of both candidates signed stuff that was ostensibly removing them from money, right, both Trump and Clinton. So so Clinton signs this, uh, this document that says, I am not going to participate in anything that could have a quote direct and predictable effect on the Clinton Foundation unless I get like a permission note just like going on a field trip when you're a kid, unless I get a permission to a written waiver from the overall administration. Critics of Clinton hated this. They said, this foundation opens the door for donors two have undo backdoor influence on the actions of Clinton should she become the ander in chief. Well, it it sounds like the white Water right, it sounds like what we what James McDougall wrote in his book about getting that extra money under the table to the Clintons because you could use that foundation. I'm not saying they did use that foundation to get undo access right or to get you know, money, just that's what we mean by access. Right, here's some money, now have a meeting with me. Um, That's what we really Yeah. And also it's weird too, because bribery is a huge part of politics in this country. It's just you call it lobbying, right, check out Oh Gosh in case you're seeing the YouTube part, check out our chapter on lobbying in the forthcoming books. Stuff they don't want you to know, and get ready to be depressed. So you're right, this is an opportunity. It's not the same thing as saying this did actually occur. Also, we want to shout out a book from twenty fifteen by Peter Schweizer called Clinton Cash. This book attempts to lay out an argument that this back door influence paddling did occur. There were several back and forth on this in three different FBI Field offices said we need to launch a probe into possibilities of conflict of interest between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department because there had there's been some Yeah, they were like, there's been some free just to be honest with you, like folks. And so this book made waves. The Justice Department conducted its own review of the allegations made in in that work, and the Justice Department came back and told the FBI there were no grounds for a formal investigation. Still, there are continuing questions about the objectivity of the Justice Department throughout administrations. Right, So what we're laying out is there are genuine problems. Right. It's not for nothing that people have this criticism, but we would like to close on some genuine problems. So we've talked about the conspiracies. We've talked about the strange like bubble of perspective that happens when when people are taught, uh you know, to to treat politics like sports, which very much should not be treated as uh So, the question, the question is why do these allegations have such staying power? Huge part of it previous campaign cycle, the Trump campaign leaned in very, very hard to various rumors without fact checking, many of them just too discredit as much as they could their political opponents. Things that had faded from the national discourse got some brand new, high octane gas in the age of social media. You've got a spouse that was running for president, so any again that they're inextricably linked, Bill and Hillary, right, so anytime one of them makes a move, all of this baggage moves that way, and then the other one moves and the baggage just shifts towards that person. So it's just a constant, constantly shifting bag of badgers that they've got attached to their belts. Yes, they've got a lot of badgers in that bag. And this there's this other thing that people need to talk about more. It doesn't matter right now who you voted for or who you agree or disagree with objectively. One of the most damaging things that occurred to every American in this age of ubiquitous communication. It occurred under the Clinton minutes station. The Telecommunications Act of nine is very pro big business, very like free market policy. It opened the door to monopolization of media. Think about it this way. In three about nine of I have, every piece of media you could see was controlled by a mix of fifty different companies. It's already kind of small right today, about of mass media in the US is controlled by six companies. Went from fifty to six, and that's due to that Telecommunications Act. And also, yes, yes he did perjura himself in regard to the Lewinsky scandal and the lake. That depends on what your definition is, right right you and no pointed this out part one. He was eventually acquitted, but the Senate was split fifty fifty as to whether or not he had obstructed justice. And the one of the things that I think is very important to end on whenever we talk about this, right, we're not trying to assassinate characters here, We're just giving you the facts. The Clinton administration played a big role in massively accelerating incarceration in the United States and the United States it has a devil in the doorway when it comes to the prison system, and ultimately there are going to be there already are intergenerational consequences, but ultimately, uh that society, the US is going to have to reckon with the consequences of of this action. It is not normal, It is not a good thing, nor is it sustainable for are so very many people to be imprisoned. And the Clinton administration played a direct role in what is happening now. So go ahead and just right now, while you've got time, search for quote truth in sentencing. If if you go ahead and do that, you will find some terrifying things, some realities that at least Bill Clinton had a lot to do with in a crime bill that was passed, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Just look that up. There's gonna be an episode on that coming soon, or or hey, forget about it. Everybody, pay no attention to the crime behind the curtain. Look, he's your president. He plays saxophone. How cool? Yeah, don't don't listen to private pilot Larry Vasovski, who flew a plane for Jeffrey Epstein. Don't listen to him testifying the Bill Clinton was on the plane and Trump and a bunch of other people in Prince Andrew it's cool. Don't worry about any or if you're on the left, don't ask these questions. Right. Uh No, it's only good guys and bad guys. Look. Essentially, what we found is that the more alarmist claims against the Clintons are easily debunked, but the Clinton political dynasty doesn't walk away looking like unassailable paragons of virtue. Spoiler, no one at that level is an unassailable paragon of virtue. A lot of the attacks and allegations against them are propaganda made by political opponents, but there are compelling cases, just in this in this introduction, we've done that indicate evidence of backroom dealings and let's say, creative ways of juggling money. The scariest part of all of this, fellow conspiracy realist, that's how the game is played in the United did States and many other countries. At some point you have to ask, do all politicians have a closet full of stuff they don't want you to know. We've got one skeleton in our closet. It's a literal skeleton. Her name is Scully. Uh, we got nothing on these folks. Honorable mention. Christopher Hitchens, you know him. He wrote this delightfully spiteful and obsessively documented work that was meant to cause problems called No One Left a Lie To And this is, uh, this is a pretty solid read. The guy. The guy's a pen that spits fire. He during his life was very, very angry all the time at a lot of things. And when he applied that cantankerous perspective to the Clinton administration, he makes he makes a solid case that that administration actually, despite you know, their public messaging to the political left, they did a lot of what the political right wanted. There shouldn't be this many people in prison. And it's you know, it's not as simple as blue v. Red. You know, it's not as simple as good versus bad, and that's an important thing to remember. But the most important thing to remember is that we can't wait to hear from you, Matt. This We we went long made this a two partter. It's almost a three parter. What do you think I think people will find us on Facebook? Hopefully hopefully. I can't even remember in the series do we even talk about Paula Jones and Arkansas? And yeah, by the way, so you know, Noel is. Just to be clear, folks, Noel is. Noel is working on a real estate deal with us. Uh stuff. They don't want you to know. We're we're looking at about two thirty acres of uh of prime prime Florida's swamp land. It worked for Disney. It's in freaking Florida. Uh. Not quite as nice as flipping Arkansas, but it's pretty good freaking Florida. Uh. We can't wait. You know, we did the math on climate change. We think it's gonna work out for us. Oh jeez, all right, well any landing you can walk away from. Uh yeah, the folks, we we will have nol returning soon. Matt and I will be coming back with an episode we know you love. What is the truth about truth? Serum, no spoilers, It's gonna be a wild ride. Find us on the internet. In the meantime, we want to hear from you. And if you don't sip the social meads, why not give us a call with you know, with your hand, your ears, your mouthparts. Oh yes, you can call us one eight three three s T D W y t K. When you give a call, please give yourself a cool name. Let us know if we can use your name and message on one of our listener mail episodes. You've got three minutes say whatever you'd like. But if you've got more to say then can fit in there. Why not instead send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff They Don't Want You To Know

From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. 
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