Customer Reviews

Ron Brown's Body: How One Man's Death Saved the Clinton Presidency and Hillary's Future

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

No matter what one's political leanings are, a discerning reader will find both the factual and theoretical information presented in this book intriguing. The author writes in a style I can best describe as clear and powerful: he does not get bogged down in over-explanation of facts, and the unfolding events leading up to Secretary Brown's death read like a gripping suspense novel...except these events are well-documented NON-fiction. The author's exhaustive research and hours of interviews with the people in Ron Brown's world are thoroughly documented. As I read what had happened in the years prior to his death, I made my own connections and theories. The author, Mr. Cashill, did not preach, and did not press theories and proposed scenarios as truth. Mr. Cashill respects the reader...respects the reader's intelligence and deduction skills. I must highly recommend this book: you will not be bored, you will find it hard to put down, you will learn a lot, what you already know will be reinforced, and you will want to talk to others about it.

Ron Brown looked like he had everything but in reality towards the end of his life, he had nothing. I don't think I've read anything this sad in ages. Here was a talented, charming and highly astute man who really could've made history but instead he almost came to social and political ruin.

This book carefully explained what Brown blundered into and why it was so bad. The only criticisms I have are these: the author relies just a tad bit too much on one of Brown's companions for details (the natural urge to see oneself in the best light probably colors this person's memories) and overdoes it with the melodramatic foreshadowing. We all know what happened to Brown so there's no need to harp on what's coming in each chapter.

One sensible thing Cashill does is that he didn't get bogged down in a conspiracy theory. He offers the reader a number of scenarios to explain why the plane crashed and how Brown's body got the infamous head wound. He then allows the reader to make up his or her own mind and he withdraws.

For the most part it's a well written and surprisingly sympathetic book. The chapters on Brown's visit to a chapel before his death and the jockeying for position at his funeral are worth the its price alone.

As Don Corleone would have said, "I'm a superstitious man, and if some unlucky accident should befall someone who could harm Clinton - if he is to be shot in the head by a police officer, or be found hung dead in a jail cell... or if he should be struck by a bolt of lightning - then I'm going to blame some of the people in his administration."

If all those deaths associated with people who had the power to bring Clinton down were simply coincidence, Clinton's the luckiest president in history.

Not only was Brown's head wound perfectly round and perfectly sized for a .45-caliber bullet hole, it was beveled just like an object with blunt sides, kinda like...well...a bullet.

Then investigators want to talk to the local who was responsible for bringing in the plane for landing, but ooopsie, he's got a bullet hole in him, too. And guess what? It's a .45-caliber bullet wound said to be self-inflicted. I can't help but think how lucky Mr. Clinton was. And how conveeeenient it was for the local to use a U.S. caliber instead of a 9mm or .380.

But I have to admit this hit was cleaner than the Vince Foster hit. Now the guy who did Vince was a rank amateur. They should let the mob go back to doing these things. They were much better.

For those who believe this was all coincidence, there are a lot of good books on the Easter Bunny here.

This book is well written and well researched. This author tells the good and the bad about Ron Brown and how money corrupts. If a reader notes all the facts regarding Browns death that were buried and evidence that was trashed, it is amazing that the mainstream media did not jump all over this. Clintons reelection was the only goal and Brown was about to spill the beans.. I will leave the rest for any reader to review and make their own mind up. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone with an open mind...

This book was a page turner. Ron Brown was a product of this times. A misguided man who used race instead of his talent to get ahead. His biggest mistake was getting involved with Bill and Hillary Clinton. They used him like a cheap car. He became Bill's "bag man" collecting untold thousands of dollars from foreign governments to finance Clinton's relection campaign. And when things got tight, they discarded him. Ron Brown's story, while sad, is better read an indictment of the most corrupt Administration in the history of the United States.

In this eye-opening book, Jack Cashill painstakingly brings together seemingly unrelated events to form a stunning account of the fortuitous (for the Clintons) death of Ron Brown. Even those who think they know the dark side of the Clinton administration will learn new facts. The author's unlimited access to Nolanda Hill provides him with previously unknown aspects of Ron Brown's career and his exploitation by the Clintons. The author is not a wild-eyed conspiracist. He seems more to be a dogged researcher and an even-handed writer who simply lays it out for the reader to learn and decide for himself.

Even though you know how it ends you can't help but be fascinated. All the footnotes references help add credibility to a political thriller. In a way it is a scary book of what can happen to the moral compass of some Washington lawyers.

Nearly flawless telling of another unreported tale. When a nitwit like Cindy Sheehan can get on TV any time she wants by uttering inanities and lies, while this book gets ignored, we know a lot about the press in this country. This is some serious "truth to power" folks.....Read the tale of Clinton's creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and tell me how this wasn't a payback.

There is little point refuting the ad hominem attacks. These folks have not read the book, or suffer from that common disease of the left, "one-drop" thinking. In other words, one drop of evil, sin, or error permanently removes the sufferer from all future discussion. Therefore, it is vital to never be tainted with that drop. This is why the left feels they can shut up critics by smugly calling them racists, assuming no one else will listen again to one so thoroughly discredited. This effective way of disposing of opponents goes way back; Lenin said, "Why should we bother to reply to Kautski? He would reply to us, and we would have to reply to his reply. There's no end to that. It will be quite well enough for us to announce that Kautski is a traitor to the working class, and everyone will understand everything."

Thus the desperation to avoid any taint on either Clinton, even when the evidence is spelled out in names, dates and places. Once besmirched, they would be removed from all future thought. Only pure candidates can represent the left, and so they must define their candidates as pure and fight to the death those who propose otherwise. Just as only thugs, loonies, hypocrites, religious cranks, racists, Fascists or other nitwits could possibly question or criticize those saintly members of the pantheon. (And they think I operate on a foolish faith???)

Anyway, to the topic at hand. Jack Cashill (Clintonesque full disclosure: Jack and I go way back, having grown up near each other in New Jersey and still maintaining a close and deep friendship; honest full disclosure: I've met him at a book signing and e-mailed him a couple of times) is a smart man with a fire in his belly to expose corruption and decay wherever he finds it. That makes investigating the 8 years of Clinton a full-time job. No friend of Big Business, no lackey of any label that could not be defined, Jack evaluates and exposes whatever he turns up. For as this book amply, consistently, and with extensive footnotes and as much corroboration from folks who would never be in anyone's VRWC (except Hillary's, who defines all those who question as such) demonstrates, the Clinton years would require a lot of scouring to rise to the level of cesspool. For 4 years the only apparent purpose of the Department of Commerce was to raise money for the Clinton campaigns, and Ron Brown was the designated hustler. From chaperoning business executives to Asia, strong-arming reluctant foreigners, or promulgating policies designed to pay back those contributors, the Clintons and their increasingly reluctant bagboy Ron Brown spent years hawking whatever they had to sell. And raising buckets of money doing so.

Well Ron had second thoughts, reluctantly departed on a poorly organized, hastily arranged trip, and died in a most mysterious manner. Those are facts. How he ended up on that hillside is the story Jack tells, and though all explanations are indeed merely conjecture, since those who know are either dead or not speaking, he makes a mighty convincing case. Read this to see how your welfare and safety have been sold, and how you got nothing from the sale but a degraded and cheesy President.

I'd dock a half-star for the incessant phony suspense "This is something Ron would only learn much later, when it was too late." Organ wheeze! The writing is corny in the beginning, but once Jack gets rolling, it is a freight-train of power as its sordid and miserable story unfolds. And photos. Two pictures? That's all? With so many characters, a few photos (or none) would have been nice. Minor quibbles in an otherwise gripping, serious book.

Individuals who were threats to Bill and Hillary Clinton have had a particularly high mortality rate. They crash in airplanes, they are found dead in Fort Marcy Park, they get blown away on the interstate, they die of mysterious illnesses.
Had Ron Brown not died in Croatia, he was prepared to testify against Clinton as to his "treason" on China. Coincidence?
Jack Cashill has written a book that raises several important questions about the untimely death of former Commerce Secy. Ron Brown. What was the .45 size circular hole in the top of Brown's head? Who knows for sure, because they did not do an autopsy. It is a terrible thing to thing to believe that a U.S. president could do such things. Cashill does not draw any definite conclusions, but this explosive book certainly will lead many readers to the conclusion that Ron Brown's death was no accident.

Some critics of this book committed an Ad Hominem fallacy by accusing Cashill of political and financial motivations.

A critic committed a Guilt By Association fallacy by associating the book with some supposedly dubious, unrelated theories. Another critic used the term "conspiracy theory" as a code word for that same fallacy.

A critic said the book has limited or no proof. We must pass judgment based on limited proof everyday as you can see in the courts, which have standards of "preponderance of evidence" and "beyond a reasonable doubt." Because of strong proof, Jesse Jackson called for a new investigation two years after Brown's death, as reported in the AP on 1/5/98. Since then the proof has only grown stronger, with this book as a watershed for completeness and new evidence.

A critic said "the author relies just a tad bit too much on one of Brown's companions." The book shows how Nolanda Hill demonstrated her credibility and how she came to know what she does. She makes a valuable source. ABC interviewed her on Prime Time Live. You can find the transcript easily.