-Caveat Lector- ---- Begin Forwarded Message Internet VORTEX - volume 1, number 2 December 1998 Christopher Ruddy Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion. The Body Count: Add One More William Colby's Death Mystery By Christopher Ruddy WASHINGTON---It was March of 1996. My cell phone rang. My literary agent was on the line. "Cross Colby off the list. He's dead." "Colby is dead," I said with some shock. "Yes, I just heard on the radio he died in a car crash," my agent said. I did not know former CIA Director Bill Colby, nor did my agent. But we both knew James Dale Davidson, editor of the investment newsletter Strategic Investment. Davidson was not only an associate of Colby's, but Colby had worked for Davidson as a contributing editor for his newsletter. At the time of my agent's call, he was attempting to find a publisher for my book on the Vince Foster case. We still had no publisher, and my agent had floated the idea of William Colby writing the proposed book's foreword. This would serve several purposes. Colby, as a former CIA chief, would give the book some credibility with a publisher. Colby had been a key figure in the Watergate scandal after he refused to allow the CIA to block the FBI probe on the Watergate burglary. Colby could not be accused of being part of a right-wing conspiracy. After leaving the CIA, he argued for unilateral disarmament and became a fixture at the left-wing Institute for Policy Studies. My agent thought Colby might be open to the idea. After all, he worked for Davidson and Davidson openly claimed Foster was murdered, pointing the finger at the Clinton White House. But now the idea of a Colby foreword seemed lost. I called Davidson and asked him if he had heard the news about Colby. His voice became strained. He sounded stunned when I told him. But, of course, Colby had not died that March. He died a month later. My agent was wrong. To this day, he swears he heard something, and to this day, we laugh about the Jungian wrinkle in time. Davidson was peeved at me for the false report, as he well should have been. On April 29, 1996, the wires flashed with hot news: Former CIA Director William Colby had disappeared from his country home on the Wicomico River in Maryland. Authorities suspected he died in a canoeing accident, as his waterlogged canoe was found on the shore near his home. A week later, his body surfaced in the marsh near his home. After a perfunctory autopsy, local police authorities closed the case as an accident. Still, there were many reasons to suspect foul play. These suspicions began as soon as the initial press reports came out. As expected, the Associated Press ran the first wire story. Colby "was missing and presumed drowned" the AP reported. The wire story said he died as the result of "an apparent boating accident." Quoting a source close to Mrs. Colby, who was in Texas at the time her husband disappeared, the AP stated Colby had spoke via phone with his wife on the day he disappeared. He told her he was not feeling well, "but was going canoeing anyway." This would be an important clue pointing to an accidental death, had it been true. But someone fabricated this story out of whole cloth. A week later, Colby's wife rebutted the AP report, telling the Washington Times her husband was well, and made no mention of canoeing. This initial, false report that relieved obvious suspicion was, for me, a red flag of a cover-up. Interesting too, were the obituaries being written. All detailed Colby's fabled career in the World War II-era OSS, the James Bond-like spy who parachuted behind Nazi lines and became a stellar CIA agent. After heading up the Company's Phoenix program in Vietnam, Colby was tapped by President Nixon for the position of DCI--Director of Central Intelligence. These obituaries detailed a formidable list of Colby's associations after he left the CIA. Yet, nowhere did any media report Colby's most significant occupation at the time of his death--contributing editor for Davidson's Strategic Investment. Odd that Colby's major affiliation at the same time of his death deserved no notice. Strategic Investment is a prestigious financial newsletter with more than 100,000 readers each month. It is co-edited by James Davidson, a national figure, as well as William Lord Rees-Mogg, former editor of the Times of London. This curious omission takes on great importance when one understands one of Strategic Investment's key aspects. It has been one of the leading, real opposition publications to Bill and Hillary Clinton in the United States. Davidson and Rees-Mogg have never pulled any punches about the Clintons. Each month, the newsletter detailed the Clintons' sordid drug, mob, and murder connections. Davidson had been a friend of Bill Clinton and had frequented Little Rock. He even had donated the maximum amount allowable to Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. In 1993, Davidson had an awakening about Clinton. My reporting on Foster, investigative reports by British reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, and columns by Strategic Investment's Washington insider Jack Wheeler, had convinced Davidson that Clinton was linked to organized crime, had subverted the U.S. law enforcement agencies, and was a danger to America's institutions and financial well-being. As an editor for Davidson's newsletter, Colby never wrote about the Clintons or touched upon these matters. He did, however, lend his name to Davidson's enterprise. The newsletter's reach was multiplied by the effect of the millions of direct-mail pieces Davidson's organization sent to homes across the country seeking new subscribers. I was shocked by one such direct-mail booklet. The cover headlined the Clintons' connection with murder and drugs. I opened the first page, and the first picture I saw was William Colby's. Another headline blazed that Strategic Investment was "An Investor's CIA." Colby was prominently displayed, as was his endorsement. This was brilliant marketing on behalf of Strategic, but when I saw it, I thought Colby was swimming in dangerous waters. This turned out to be literally true when he was found floating on the Wicomico. Like the Foster death, the circumstances of Colby's passing made little sense. When police entered his country home, they found both his radio and computer left on. "Investigators found dinner dishes on a table and clam shells in the kitchen sink." Friends say this was unusual for Colby, a meticulous man. The canoe was found conveniently waterlogged near the waterfront part of his home. Considering the swift current of the Wicomico, that made sense only if he died very close to the shoreline near his property. Yet authorities using scuba divers and sophisticated radar couldn't find his body there. And a canoe is an extremely seaworthy boat. How did it become lodged and waterlogged on the riverbank? Had Colby been stricken by a heart attack and fallen off, as has been speculated, the canoe should have completely capsized or safely righted itself, not become waterlogged and moved by the current to the Colby waterfront. Then there were other telling problems. Colby was found with no lifejacket. He always wore one when on the water. The scrupulous search for him should have turned up the floating life jacket or the buoyant paddle. Neither was found. An autopsy by a Maryland coroner found that Colby had died of drowning. The autopsy also claimed that drowning was precipitated--get this--by a heart attack or stroke. Take your pick. But the coroner found no evidence of either! Police homicide investigators always treat drowning deaths with great suspicion. Trained killers know that someone killed by drowning is "buried" in deep water, a target of predatory sea life. After days there, the body is mutilated by sea life to such a degree that any signs of a struggle are difficult to identify. In the days after Colby's demise, I was disturbed by the many parallels to the Foster death: the circumstances that just didn't add up, the outrageously phony initial press reports, the quick official rush to judgment by investigative agencies, the questionable autopsy. My feathers were ruffled more when I received a call from Peter Birkett, an investigative reporter from Britain's Daily Express. Peter had been rushed over to the United States, he said, because the paper's intelligence sources in M15 had claimed Colby was assassinated by U.S. government operatives. Peter's job was to ferret out the facts. The Express is a credible paper, and Peter seemed genuinely interested in the truth. He had heard about my Vince Foster reporting and was told by contacts in Britain that I could offer him some insight. I told him my concerns, notably the unreported Colby connection to Davidson's newsletter. Peter began his own investigation and gave me progress reports as things unfolded. He spoke to the local police, some of whom, he claimed, didn't buy the boating story accident. For one thing, one of the investigators told Peter that Colby's body was found fully clothed. His socks were on, but his shoes were missing. Colby always wore shoes when canoeing, particularly on a blustery April day. Peter told me that the cop asked incredulously: "How did his shoes come off? In the middle of a heart attack or stroke, he began untying his shoes after his canoe capsized?" Peter left for England with few answers and more doubts. In the weeks after the death, I bumped into a former, very high intelligence official who served in the Reagan administration. He was quite agitated about Colby's death. He believed that the Clinton White House must have gone ballistic when they saw Colby's endorsement of Davidson's newsletter. This former official had little doubt the hit was ordered at the highest levels. He drew for me a diagram of the main players at Strategic Investment organization and explained that Colby was at risk because he "gave the whole thing credibility." I have no idea whether Colby was murdered. His unusual death, added to the many others with some Whitewater connection, was not something that could be ignored. The Body Count As the impeachment deliberations continue here in Washington, and the press continues to downplay their significance, undercurrents of the real danger posed by the Clintons are well known. Inside the Beltway, even the most ardent impeachment supporters--such as Bob Barr or Dan Burton--won't utter the "M" word. M for murder. Bob Barr, appearing on a recent edition of Geraldo, suggested that Linda Tripp had every reason to tape herself because she had legitimate "fears." But even the intrepid Bob Barr wouldn't explain clearly to the American public what those fears were. Of course, NewsMax.com laid it out in black and white. Linda was afraid of being murdered. She was afraid of Monica being murdered. Tripp said so, under oath, before the Starr grand jury. So here the key government witness to ignite the whole Lewinsky matter testifies that she knows top government officials perjured themselves about the circumstances of Vince Foster's 1993 death. And the press ignores the story. Linda is not without credibility, as she was right there as a secretary in the Counsel's Office when Foster died. Tripp also testified about murder in the first degree of Jerry Luther Parks, the former security chief at the Clinton-Gore 1992 campaign headquarters. Tripp said she knew of a flurry of unusual activities at the White House after Foster's death. Trying desperately to explain to a bewildered, pro-Clinton grand jury why she began tape recording her young friend, Monica Lewinsky, Linda told of a Clinton "body count"--a list of many people associated with Bill Clinton who had died under mysterious circumstances, such as suicide plane crashes, mysterious illnesses, "suicides," and even outright murder. Linda said the list she saw had 40 names on it, including Foster's and Parks'. This dramatic testimony by Tripp got no mention in the major press. The establishment press has made any talk of murder in relation to the Clintons absolutely taboo. Bob Barr won't mention it. Dan Burton, who dared to raise questions about Foster's death by gunshot in 1995, was quickly skewered by the press, and is on the permanent target list of the White House. The only discussion of the murder issue was raised by Hillary Clinton herself, when, in the aftermath of the Lewinsky matter, she told NBC's Matt Lauer that the people behind the vast right-wing conspiracy had even accused her and her husband of murder. According to press reports, Hillary's strategy was dreamed up by none other than Sid Blumenthal, a key advisor to both Bill and Hillary. Sid has been obsessed by this idea of murder. In the 1970s he edited a book entitled "Government by Gunplay." Ironically, Blumenthal's book argued that the U.S. government had regularly and systematically used murder to advance its agenda, killing the likes of JFK, Dr. King, the Black Panthers, and others. It would be interesting to know if Blumenthal believes the left, once in power, has a right to knock off right-wing opponents. The idea that right-wingers murder their left-wing opponents has had currency with the left for some time. During Watergate, Katherine Graham's Washington Post invested its resources in investigating the 1972 assassination attempt on presidential candidate George Wallace. As detailed in Woodward and Bernstein's "All the President's Men," the Post editors were suspicious because Nixon had too much to gain by eliminating Wallace from the presidential race. Today, the press, heavily dominated by the left and Clinton allies, scoffs at any notion of murder linked to governmental authorities. Yet discussion of the high number of deaths associated with Bill Clinton has received wide interest from the public. Via the internet, various e-mails circulate constantly about the Clinton "body count." Within the highest levels of our government, the fear of murder is talked about openly, but in closed circles. For instance, a California Republican congressman who took a keen interest in the Foster case in 1996 and had pressed for a review of the Park Police handling of the case, abruptly dropped the matter. He told an associate of mine that he consulted with four other members of his committee. All agreed Foster was murdered and that they were scared to death to proceed. Others use the lame excuse that "the country just can't handle the truth." For instance, Free Congress Foundation Chairman Paul Weyrich wrote in his newsletter that Republican Sen. Don Nickles explained to him why the Senate would not probe Foster's death. "If Foster didn't die the way Fiske said he did, then it is likely the president is somehow involved, and if he is, the democratic process simply can't survive such a disclosure," Weyrich quoted Nickles as saying. Similarly, Accuracy in Media chief Reed Irvine was skeptical at first about the notion that Vince Foster might have been murdered. When Irvine asked a top aide to Sen. Jesse Helms why this matter was not being looked into, the aide told him bluntly that since the Clinton White House was capable of resorting to murder, people were afraid to mount a challenge. Another case in point: Earlier this year, I gave a speech about my reporting on the Clinton scandals. I won't disclose where. But I will reveal that the wife of one of the federal judges that sits on the three-judge panel that oversees Starr's independent counsel probe showed up. The judge's wife asked me a pointed question about the credibility of one of the witnesses in the Foster case, and seemed disturbed by the whole matter. After my talk, a prominent businessman said he was close to the judge's family and said the judge had told his family that some "82 people have been murdered since Clinton became president." Perhaps the most important disclosure of this year was made by Donald Smaltz, the independent counsel investigating former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy and possible payoffs made to Espy by Clinton backer Don Tyson. Appearing on PBS' Frontline with Peter Boyer, Smaltz detailed how the Janet Reno Justice Department blocked his inquiry at every turn. When Smaltz discovered significant evidence that Tyson had made cash bribes to Bill Clinton when Clinton served as governor of Arkansas, he wanted to investigate. Smaltz admitted on PBS that his wife "has always been concerned my life was in physical danger." Smaltz shrugged off such suggestions of danger, he recounted, until he had a "High Noon" confrontation with Reno and the six highest officials in the Justice Department. Reno and gang told Smaltz that he wouldn't be allowed to investigate the evidence of wrongdoing. After this meeting Smaltz told his wife, "You know, Lo, for the first time since I've been back here, I'm afraid." Smaltz quickly added that he was also afraid for the country. Smaltz is right. Rather than preserving "democracy," as Nickles suggested to Weyrich, the whole country has been put at risk by the failure of the nation's legal institutions and the major press to confront the Clintons' takeover of the nation's law enforcement agencies. Their politicization of the administration of justice is demonstrated by the failure of the government to conduct adequate death investigations. Instead, when one questions the deaths of Vince Foster, Ron Brown, and Jerry Parks, asking why the most basic death investigations have yet to be conducted, the establishment media brands the skeptic a "conspiracy theorist" or "Clinton hater." Other establishmentarians exclaim, "How dare you accuse the Clintons of murder." Obviously, many elites inside of Washington's Beltway believe that Foster's death was anything but a suicide. And the Clinton body count is taken quite seriously in many circles. The high number of unusual deaths is a prism by which to understand what has happened to America during the past six years. Contrary to Sen. Nickles' claims, America won't collapse if we were to learn the truth about Foster, Brown, and the others. The truth would be ugly, but America would be stronger. The danger is that the cancer is not exposed and eliminated. This is the real danger for America. If a group of people became legally unaccountable, as we have seen with the Clinton administration, then the nation risks a dictatorship. This could take many forms, the least likely a bunch of brownshirts marching down the street. The Mexican model is more likely, where leaders are "tapped" by the ruling elite and the baton passes from one to another under the guise of "democracy." I recall Huey Long was once asked if he thought America would ever become fascist. He responded, "Of course it will, but we'll call it anti-fascism." 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