Topic: WorldNetDaily
As we've noted, a key component of WorldNetDaily's plans to cover Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is to relive its '90s coverage of (Bill) Clinton scandals, however false and misguided that original reporting was.
A Jan. 17 WND article by Chelsea Schilling goes on a deep dive into one of these pseudo-scandals, claiming that "Women in Clinton’s past were targeted by the IRS and reportedly found themselves on death lists":
As WND reported back in 1999, during Linda Tripp’s two-day deposition with attorneys from Judicial Watch on Filegate issues, she mentioned a “list” that was given to her mysteriously.
While she believed the list was left at her workstation in the White House counsel’s office by her former friend Monica Lewinsky, the list originated with former WND investigative reporter David Bresnahan.
Known around the Internet as “the Body Count,” the list was a collection of names of people associated with Clinton administration scandals who died mysterious and often violent deaths. Bresnahan broke the story of the list during the summer of 1997 while researching his book, “Cover Up: The Art and Science of Political Deception.”
“I started looking into all the various deaths of people that were involved in various Clinton scandals,” Bresnahan said in 1999. “I started to investigate the entire picture instead of just one focused event.”
clintonsBresnahan’s list was the same list given to Tripp, as well as the head of the FBI and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to name a few.
“It was common discussion on radio talk shows,” Bresnahan said. “Every student of the Clinton scandals would run into the list.”
The list spread on the Internet and received extensive coverage on talk radio.
Bresnahan was able to construct such a lengthy list because he investigated all of the scandals surrounding Clinton.
“Nobody out there was putting it all together,” he said. “If you look at one scandal, you’ll find one dead guy. When you investigate all Clinton scandals, you find similarities, you find common tactics, you find common actions and you find dead people.”
Schilling makes sure to ignore the fact that Bresnahan's "Clinton body count" has been utterly discredited. As Snopes points out, the goal of the list was to play word games by portraying the deaths as somehow directly implicating a Clinton in causing it -- which there is no evidence: "The longer the list, the more impressive it looks and the less likely anyone is to challenge it. By the time readers get to the bottom of the list, they'll be too weary to wonder what could possibly be relevant about the death of people such as Bill Clinton's mother's chiropractor."
As Snopes, explains, "Any unexplained death can automatically be attributed to President Clinton by inventing a connection between him and the victim." For instance, one person on the list, former White House intern Mary Mahoney, was killed during the 1997 robbery of a Starbucks where she worked, along with two co-workers.Deaths by natural causes have also been thrown onto the list. Sn opes concludes:
One final question to ask yourself before falling for any Clinton Body Count list: If the Chief Executive was having people bumped off left, right, and center, why aren't Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp on this list? At the time of Mary Mahoney's death — a death this list hints was ordered by Clinton — neither Tripp nor Lewinsky were the high-profile household names they now are; they were complete unknowns. It would be another six months before information about them would explode into the news. If the President were in the habit of having those dangerous to his presidency put in the ground, why didn't he order these deaths?
But then, Schilling's job isn't to do actual reporting (something at which she fails miserably); her job is to write what WND wants told and not to dig too deep into it. That's how she stays employed at WND.
