Let's Revisit Another Clinton Scandal

Ronald Harmon Brown and the Forgotten Plane Crash

The year is 1993. The Clintons have been in the White House just a few months, and they’ve had scandal after scandal after scandal.

Enter Ron Brown

Ronald Harmon Brown was the first Black chairman of the Democrat National Committee (DNC) before he worked for Bill Clinton. Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Harlem, this move-and-shaker graduated Middlebury College and served in the United States Army, retiring at the rank of Captain in 1967. By 1970, Ron Brown had garnered a J.D. and by 1976 he was the Deputy Executive Director for Programs and Government Affairs for the National Urban League. This was a guy who aspired to being a Deep State operative rather than a high-profile politico. He stepped down from the National Urban League in 1979 to go to help Senator Ted Kennedy’s presidential bid. By 1981, Brown was working as a lobbyist, and by 1988, he was assisting Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. Ron Brown seemed to turn up wherever money met Democrat politics.

In early 1993, President Bill Clinton tapped Ron Brown to come to work in the White House as the Secretary of Commerce. Brown looked good: a Black veteran with a law degree, high-powered Democrat connections, and a passion for money. As part of his work for the Clintons, Brown had to fly all over the world to cement trade deals. He traveled to China, Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, Russia, and other far-flung places for the Commerce Department.

In another type of business, Brown might have been rewarded for his hustle and entrepreneurial spirit. Unfortunately for Brown, he got mixed up with the Clintons. Ron Brown was hardly on the job a few months when allegations emerged that he took $700,000 in bribes from a Vietnamese business executive named Nguyen Van Hao. Hao wanted the U.S. to lift its trade embargo on Vietnam, and he figured a bribe couldn’t hurt. Brown is the one who accepted the bribe, but the bribe was ostensibly paid to the Clintons.

Can you see where this is going?

In 1996, Ron Brown was caught selling seats on the flights that took him on Clinton government business to various foreign countries. Brown rightly assessed the market for what he had to sell: there were certain business people who saw value in arriving on a U.S. government plane in foreign nations eager to do business with America. But Brown didn’t keep the money, at least not all of it. He allegedly funneled it into the Clinton campaign coffers.

Even though an independent counsel was investigating him at the time, Ron Brown was still working for the Clintons when he got on a fateful plane to take him to Croatia to help cement a deal between Croatia, the United States (the Clinton machine), and Enron. It was April 4, 1996. The plane crashed into a mountain near Dubrovnik (the flight plan changed about 36 hours before Brown’s flight took off—the plane originally was not supposed to be there). The U.S. Air Force quickly explained everything: the pilot made an error, and the landing field was not designed well. Brown along with 34 other passengers were killed.

When Brown’s body was found in the wreckage, a forensic pathologist noted that he had a circular wound on the top of his head that was consistent with a bullet or possibly a blunt force injury. Brown was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, and the story was swept under the rug. Most people today have never even heard of Ron Brown.

What’s the Deal?

Brown was supposed to close a deal between the leader of Croatia, a guy named Franjo Tudjman and often described in the mainstream media as “a strong man,” and Enron. You remember Enron? The Clintons were itching to get this deal done because they needed money for their 1996 re-election bid and Kenneth Lay, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Enron, was very generous at lubricating political machinery when it suited his interests. Actually, Lay was George W. Bush’s biggest donor. Lay was a man who liked to get things done the old-fashioned way, by greasing palms and he was politically quite ecumenical.

It is alleged that during his time in the Clinton White House, a lot of Ron Brown’s business deals were actually bribes or other ploys to divert money into the Clinton’s hot little hands.

When Ron Brown died in a plane crash, some speculated the plane was shot down by terrorists since there were political tensions there at the time relative to American troops in the Muslim world. But Jack Cashill, author of Ron Brown’s Body and originally a Clinton apologist, dug into the story and concluded there was no reason to suspect terrorism. Besides, the United States would be unlikely to help cover up a terrorist attack.

The Plot Thickens

Here’s where things get dicey. Ron Brown had a son named Michael Brown who was being threatened with prison. (Michael Brown had been threatened with prison several times and eventually, long after his father’s death, served time.) But in 1996, Michael Brown had never been to prison and thought he might wind up there. To protect his son, Ron Brown made a very dangerous threat. He said he would expose the Vietnamese payoff to lift the trade embargo unless the Clintons would help him keep Michael out of prison. Ron Brown ran that scheme and he had the receipts, but it would hurt the Clintons far more than it could damage Ron Brown. In other words, Ron Brown would throw himself under the bus and hurt the Clintons if he had to.

Then another strange thing happened. In the early spring of 1996, Ron Brown suddenly got religion. This in itself was a miracle—a former lobbyist and Clinton bag man started going to church, a place he had never been before? He told his friend Nolanda Hill that he was afraid someone was trying to kill him. Meanwhile, the boys from Enron are still going to Croatia to make a deal to build a power plant, but they arrived safe and sound, because they took their own plane.

Brown’s plane veered off course by about two miles before crashing. In typical Clinton style, the U.S. government declared this an accident before any investigation was conducted and treated the crash as the scene of an accident. (They did the same with Vince Foster, where a suicide was announced before the investigation was conducted.)

The Dubrovnik Airport had a safety guy who was in charge of the airport’s navigation and air traffic control. I can’t find his actual title, but he was in charge of making sure planes got safely in and out of the airport (which was located near the side of a mountain). The U.S. Air Force—investigating the crash after first deciding it was accident—set up an appointment with him. (The Clinton mantra seemed to be “conclusion first, investigation after.”) Two days before his scheduled interview with the Air Force, he was found shot dead. This was just three days after Brown was killed.

While pathologists had a chance to examine Brown’s body, they all observed the injury to Brown’s skull and thought it was a bullet. The White House was disinterested; they said there would be no need for an autopsy or any kind of testing. For instance, they could have looked for the exit wound or taken X-rays to find out where the bullet might be. Well, actually, they did take X-rays, lots of them. They just got “lost.”

Instead, they ruled that Brown had blunt force injuries to his head, consistent with a plane crash. (I guess this assumes that when a plane crashes, a person might get shot in the head.) Ron Brown’s death certificate lists blunt force trauma (not gunshot) to the head as the cause of death. None of the other passengers in the same crash had a similar cause of death recorded.

The Strong Man

Remember Strongman Franjo Tudjman of Croatia? That’s his picture above from around 1960.

While Ron Brown and his team were heading to Croatia to meet up with the Enron team, Tudjman had other things on his mind. He was battling cancer, but he could not get the treatment he needed in his native country, and he was afraid to travel abroad, say to France, Germany, or the United Kingdom. They had the medical care and anticancer treatments he desperately needed, but Tudjman was afraid he’d be arrested upon arrival as a war criminal. He had good reason to assume that.

Funny, but Tudjman did eventually get top-flight medical care for his cancer—he got it at Walter Reed Army Hospital in the United States, which did not arrest him as a war criminal. Meanwhile, an investigation of the airport controller guy who turned up dead before the Air Force could interview him determined that the airport guy completed suicide.

I do know the name of the guy who ruled the death a suicide: it was Miroslva Tudjman, son of the Strong Man.

What Happened?

One scenario—and this is alleged—is that Tjudman teamed up with the Clintons to get rid of Brown by sabotaging his flight and making it look like a plane crash. After the plane goes down, a crew goes to the site and shoots Brown in the head for good measure, in case by some chance he might have survived. Then they tie up their loose ends with the airport navigation guy.

The question is why would anyone do this? Brown had previously been a serviceable member of the Clinton crime family. The problem may have been Michael Brown, who was trying to avoid prison. Ron Brown sought help from the Clinton White House to protect him from this fate. It’s not clear how discussions went, but it is possible that Ron Brown wanted to leverage the dirt he had on the Clintons (particularly with regard to money laundering Vietnam) to get freedom for his son. This may have played a role in the Clinton’s desire to get rid of a potential turncoat in their organization. After all, if Brown would try to blackmail them over less than a million bucks, he could not be trusted to do the real heavy lifting the Clintons may have wanted or expected.

Ironically, Michael Brown pled guilty to a misdemeanor for an illegal campaign donation to Ted Kennedy in 1997; he did not get a prison sentence. However, in 2014, Michael Brown did go to prison for 39 months for accepting a $55,000 bribe from undercover FBI agents who pretended to be businessmen looking for lucrative government contracts. It seems the apple does not fall far from the tree. Note that Michael Brown’s stint in prison occurred long after his father was killed in a plane crash and the Clintons were out of the White House.

Michael Brown earned a law degree but never passed the bar. Today, he serves as an at-large member of the Council of the District of Columbia and once ran for D.C. mayor but dropped out. He was polling poorly but he said he dropped out because the other candidate was more experienced and would do a better job as mayor. Whatever.

A Walk Down Memory Lane: Enron

Enron went bankrupt in 2001 but before that, they ran a lobbying juggernaut in Washington to gain any favorable contracts, deals, or benefits possible. Enron was an energy corporation and wanted the energy markets deregulated. To this end they set up a lobbying organization that would have made Machiavelli proud.

Hardcore lobbying is not illegal in America, but it can raise some eyebrows. Enron was knee-deep in cash in the 1990s and they realized they could convert cash into laws, rules, and regulations (or the absence thereof) if they used the money strategically. Enron and its employees were the largest donors to George W. Bush’s campaign. But Enron was remarkably bipartisan; they also donated to Bill Clinton. They donated to Democrats or Republicans or anybody who could help them get their way. And it created the lobbying closed loop—Enron threw money at the right people who changed or made policies that helped Enron make more money, some of which they threw back at the right people.

Enron was extremely savvy as a lobbying entity. They looked at a range of issues, many of which were of such minimal interest to the public that nobody cared to report on or even notice what Enron was up to. For instance, Enron threw money at the privatization of utilities on military posts. They lobbied to reform product liability laws and took up other boring causes. They targeted specific political figures, even minor players, and carefully doled out specific campaign contributions so that they could advance their multiple agendas. They also set up think tanks and organizations who could publish white papers supporting their views. And Enron was always cagey. Rarely were they the lead agent in these ploys, but just one among the many companies who joined forces to support some boring cause or repeal some boring law. They called these teams coalitions, and Enron was very, very busy. Altogether, Enron was part of at least 29 coalitions of special interests. The Center for Public Integrity found that as a company, Enron enjoyed almost unprecedented access to the corridors of power.

One thing Enron wanted was the ability to do more business overseas. That is why Enron was going to meet Ron Brown in Dubrovnik so they could chat with the Strong Man about opening a power plant there. On July 15, 1996, Enron issued a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that Enron was going to build a power plan in Croatia. This deal was later revised in 2000, when Croatia said the terms were not favorable to Croatia. Croatia is a small nation with a history of government corruption and a high ratio of debt to the gross national product. In other words, they were exactly the kind of country the Clintons were hoping to do business with.

A timeline shows that Enron gave $100,000 to the DNC to help re-elect Clinton and six days later, Enron was flying to Croatia on a commerce department mission. Enron was ready to ink a $100M contract to build a powerplant in Croatia. And somebody may have tipped off Enron to take their own plane rather than hitch a ride with Ron Brown in the government plane.

This was not the first time Ron Brown had traveled with Enron’s CEO Kenneth Lay. Lay was friendly with lots of Clinton insiders (but he was also tight with folks in the Bush administration). Most notably, Ron Brown and Kenneth Lay had been together in India, after which Enron got $400M from the Clinton government to build a power plant near Bombay. The financials get more complicated that this article allows but let’s just say a lot of countries threw a lot more money at Enron. It is possible some of this loot managed to find its way to the Clintons, but I have no proof. But evidence suggests that the Clintons were eager to facilitate as many of Enron’s deals as possible.

It must be emphasized that Enron was bipartisan in its shenanigans. It donated to Bush, but also to Clinton (although The Washington Examiner says while Bush got more dollars than Clinton, Clinton did more favors for Enron than Bush ever did). But Enron shows us that corruption is its own system; Enron was willing to support whoever was willing to help them. Political party was irrelevant.

In 2001, Kenneth Lay presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy in American history. He died in 2006 at the age of 64 on a luxury vacation in Aspen, Colorado, while awaiting sentencing on numerous charges related to the Enron collapse. He had been convicted of at least 10 counts of securities fraud, wire fraud, and similar financial crimes plus he was also guilty of bank fraud. He was looking at the possibility of 45 years in prison. The charges against Lay were vacated by the judge, which is something a judge can do if the criminal dies prior to exhausting all of his possible avenues of appeal. In other words, Kenneth Lay was not a convicted felon when he died.

What about Ron Brown?

Ron Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave.

He allegedly tried to blackmail the Clintons, and he turned up dead. The shocking thing is not the potential and murderous link to the Clintons (an allegation), it’s that someone may have been willing to kill a planeload of people (and the air traffic controller boss) to get one guy. I must repeat that these are allegations.

But don’t worry, I have more. There is no statute of limitations on murder.