Boeing, the Clintons and the Dead Whistleblower

Surprise Or Déjà Vu?

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton introduced Boeing Russia/C.I.S. President Sergey Kravchenko at the Boeing Design Center in Moscow (State Dept. photo by Valeriy Yevseyev, 2009).

A whistleblower was slated to testify but is found dead. There are no witnesses. Quickly it is labeled a suicide.

Such was the news yesterday about former Boeing employee John Barnett.

Does it sound at all familiar?

And what about the billions of dollars that Hillary Clinton helped secure for Boeing and Boeing's six- and seven-figure sponsorships for the Clinton Global Initiative and Bill Clinton's speeches?

Vince Foster (1945–1993)

A sketch of Vince Foster (public domain)

In 1993 Vince Foster was deputy White House counsel for Bill Clinton. According to the Fordham University Law Review, he was also “a material witness in a federal criminal investigation,” i.e. the Whitewater probe into the Clintons’ real estate dealings. The day was almost certainly coming when he would have to testify.

Before that could happen, Foster was found dead in a D.C. park. Five investigations concluded that Foster had shot himself in the head.

Nearly two years later, an F.B.I. special agent sent a four-page “discrepancy list” to future-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who at that time was an attorney in Special Counsel Ken Starr’s office. Among other things, the F.B.I. noted the following:

• “No one heard a gunshot.”

• “No matching ammo” was found “at the decedent’s residence.”

• “The gun exemplifies a ‘drop gun.’”

• Foster “never previously spoke of suicide.”

• There was a “Lack of blood at the death scene.”

• “No bullet” was ever recovered.

• “No flashburns[sic]” were noted inside Foster’s mouth.

• Foster’s body was “neatly laid out, ‘as if it was in a coffin.’”

• Foster’s head “was moved” after his death.

• “No blood” was found “on the suicide weapon.”

• “No soil” was found on Foster’s shoes.

• Blood appeared to have “flowed uphill.”

• The U.S. Park Police’s crime scene photographs “did not develop.”

The Clinton White House eventually claimed to have found the pieces of a suicide note in Foster’s briefcase. The feds said it was Foster’s handwriting. Three independent analysts said it was a mediocre forgery.

Ron Brown (1941–1996)

Ron Brown (White House photo)

Three years after Foster, Ronald Brown died in a government plane crash. He had chaired the Democratic National Committee (D.N.C.) during Clinton’s first presidential race. Then Clinton appointed him commerce secretary.

At the time of the crash, Brown was the target of a federal criminal investigation and was soon to be deposed about the Commerce Department’s illegal withholding of documents potentially adverse to the Clintons. He and his department had been accused of selling spots on official trade delegations to Clinton’s top donors. PBS’s Frontline noted: “the percentage of Democratic givers accompanying him on major trade missions to the Middle East, Russia, India, South Africa and Latin America ranged between 56 and 67 percent.”

Jim McDougal (1940–1998)

Facing 81 years in federal prison, Jim McDougal cut a deal to testify against Clinton. Under the agreement he was sentenced to 36 months.

On March 7, 1998, McDougal, who had a documented heart condition, was placed in solitary confinement without his medications. Within hours he complained of dizziness. At least three prison medical personnel were notified but none went to see him. A nurse declined to rush him his heart medicine.

The next day McDougal requested his medication. Federal prison staffers gave him his Prozac but not his heart pills. Two hours later he died from a heart attack.

He would not be the only potential Clinton witness to die in federal prison.

Jeffrey Epstein (1953–2019)

Jeffrey Epstein (public domain)

Rich and powerful men the world over slept uneasily when the feds indicted Jeffrey Epstein. The pedophile financier had hosted many A-list parties in his homes, where underage girls were likely outnumbered by surveillance cameras.

Newsweek noted that Bill Clinton took "several trips" on Epstein’s infamous airplane, the “Lolita Express.” The logs from one such flight listed a soft-core pornography actress under “massages.”

Upon Epstein’s arrest, the feds held him at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (M.C.C.) in Manhattan. One day guards removed Epstein’s cellmate. Epstein was found dead shortly thereafter.

The two security cameras in his cell were not recording at the time. The guards who were supposed to check on him falsified their logs.

The feds concluded Epstein had hanged himself. Like Foster’s suicide note, an independent expert publicly disagreed with that finding.

The Clintons and Boeing

“Among recent secretaries of state,” noted The Seattle Times in 2016, “Hillary Clinton was perhaps the most aggressive booster for big American companies overseas, particularly for Boeing.”

The Seattle Times described the Clintons’ relationship with Boeing as “symbiotic,” noting:

During the periods when Secretary Clinton was pushing governments to sign deals with Boeing, the aerospace company provided financial support to help her achieve a major foreign-policy goal. Boeing also donated more than $1 million to the Clinton family’s global foundation set up by her husband, former President Clinton, and sponsored speeches that paid him six-figure sums.

Boeing seems to have gotten its money’s worth. Again, according to The Seattle Times:

Only weeks into Clinton’s four-year tenure as secretary of state, State Department and Boeing leaders talked about how to open up new business in Russia. Within months, she visited Moscow and made what she described as a “shameless pitch” to a Russian airline to buy Boeing passenger jets.

“I hope that on a future visit I’ll see a lot of new [Boeing] planes when I land in Moscow,” Clinton said.

It worked. Months later, in 2010, Boeing got the deal—selling 50 jets valued at $3.7 billion.

The latest death

John Barnett, 62, was found in his truck Saturday, dead from an apparent gunshot to the head. His lawyers had alerted authorities earlier that day when he failed to appear to continue his deposition in a years-long suit he brought against Boeing.

Multiple outlets, including Reuters, are labeling Barnett’s death an “apparent suicide.”

But Barnett’s lawyers told CNN:

John was in the midst of a deposition in his whistleblower retaliation case, which finally was nearing the end. He was in very good spirits and really looking forward to putting this phase of his life behind him and moving on. We didn’t see any indication he would take his own life. No one can believe it.

The same could not be said of his former employer. The day Barnett died, the Justice Department announced a criminal investigation of Boeing over its recent catastrophes and close calls. The trial of Barnett’s lawsuit, scheduled for June, could hardly have been slated for a worse time for Boeing and its boosters.

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