Clinton Chronicles
Encyclopedia
The Clinton Chronicles: An Investigation into the Alleged Criminal Activities of Bill Clinton is a 1994 film created by Patrick Matrisciana. This video explored the deaths of Vincent Foster and an alleged cocaine-smuggling operation purportedly involving BCCI
, Dan Lasater and then Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton
. Deaths were part a conspiracy theory known as the "Clinton Body Count", which started and grew around the time of the documentary, as connections to Clinton were added with varying degrees of allegedly suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths. Some of the names in the Clinton Body Count are referenced in the documentary. The deaths of Kevin Ives and Don Henry spawned two other documentaries listed below.
organization named Creative Ministries Inc, which also spawned Jeremiah Films
, Matrisciana's production company. Some of the funding for the film came from long-time Clinton opponent Larry Nichols.. Over 300,000 copies of the film were put into circulation.
Other Jeremiah Films
productions concern apologetics
, history
, Christian inspirational, Jehovah's Witnesses
, Mormonism
, occult
, politics
, Prophecy
, Seventh-day Adventists
, social issues
and terrorism
.
VHS
copies of the film were promoted and distributed via television infomercials by Moral Majority
leader Rev. Jerry Falwell
, who also appears in the film. Falwell's infomercial for the 80-minute tape included footage of Falwell interviewing a silhouetted journalist who was afraid for his life. The journalist accused Clinton of orchestrating the deaths of several reporters and personal confidants who had gotten too close to his illegalities. However, it was subsequently revealed that the silhouetted journalist was, in fact, Patrick Matrisciana, the producer of the video and president of Citizens for Honest Government. "Obviously, I'm not an investigative reporter," Matrisciana admitted (to investigative journalist Murray Waas
), "and I doubt our lives were actually ever in any real danger. That was Jerry's idea to do that ... He thought that would be dramatic." In a 2005 interview for The Hunting of the President
Falwell admitted, "To this day I do not know the accuracy of the claims made in The Clinton Chronicles."
connecting Clinton to the deaths as an urban legend
.
In a 1994 letter to congressional leaders, William Dannemeyer listed 24 people with some connection to Clinton who had died "under other than natural circumstances" and called for hearings on the matter. His list was largely taken from a longer list compiled by Linda Thompson
.
One of the troopers who appeared in the movie, Larry Patterson, alleging he arranged sexual appoints for Clinton, was convicted of making false statements to the FBI about an unrelated incident in March 2005.
, to which Clinton was allegedly tied. The two officers filed suit against the claims. A judgment in their favor was reversed by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in an in-depth 26 page decision by a group of several judges.
The decision states that "the record does not refute... a list [of] 'suspects implicated in the Ives/Henry murders and cover-ups'" (pg. 11), that "[Campbell and Lane] failed to prove the falsity of even the most damning interpretation" of the evidence (pg. 11), that "law enforcement records... revealed that purported eyewitnesses implicated law enforcement officers in the deaths of the Ives and Henry boys, including the appellees, either by name and/or, more tenuously, by description" (pp. 11–12), that "statements and rumors corroborating... implicating them as suspects emanate, in varying degrees of detail, from multiple sources" (pg. 21), and that "given the corroboration by multiple sources, we do not see obvious reasons to doubt the accuracy of the various reports" (pg. 23).
The decision also stated that Campbell and Lane failed to prove the falsity of the allegations and that "[e]ven if we assume Campbell and Lane satisfied their burden of falsity, we find their claims still fail" because "a public-figure plaintiff must do more than prove falsity to prevail in a defamation claim... [but] must also prove by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant acted with actual malice." (pg. 13)
At some point, Jon Brown, "an investigator for the Saline County Sheriff's Department from 1992 to 1994" (pg. 7) that arrived at conclusions similar to those of Matrisciana, also testified that... when he first became involved with this investigation, as an employee of the Saline County Sheriff, he found the file had been 'totally destroyed' and 'a lot of documents were missing' [,] ... [that] Ives' [mother's] collection of documents was the most comprehensive and he acquired the most pertinent documents from her[,] and that Ives and Duffey (a former deputy prosecuting attorney and director of a drug task force (pg. 6) that investigated the case and arrived at conclusions very similar to those of Matrisciana) had more thoroughly reviewed the documents." (pg. 17)
The judges agreed that the case was riddled with intrigue and allegations of corruption when it said, amongst other things: "The record indicates [Dan] Harmon... who was [originally] appointed special prosecutor on the case" (pg. 3), and who Mrs. Ives and others believed was aiding in the cover-up, "... had credibility problems because he was either implicated in the deaths himself or because he was trying to subvert [Campbell and Lane's] investigation of one of his associates for drug offenses." (pp 19–20) In regards to Dan Harmon, the judges noted that "Harmon had credibility problems in that he was being investigated for involvement in drug offenses, Sharline Wilson had placed him at the scene of the deaths, and, he had been convicted of various crimes." They also made note of the statements by Campbell and Lane that "[they believed that Harmon made rumors about them] detract attention... from his illicit drug activities." (pg. 22)
In defense of Campbell and Lane, the decision stated that "because of First Amendment considerations, the burdens we have placed on Lieutenants Campbell and Lane are great. That they 'cannot surmount these obstacles implies no condemnation of [them]' [and] should not undermine their accomplishments." (pg. 26) The judges also showed some sympathy to Matrisciana and his affiliates: "[W]e suppose that if Matrisciana's assertions were true, there would be 'inherent difficulties in verifying or refuting' [evidence], given the alleged pervasive involvement of law enforcement in his theory." (pp. 25–26)
Bank of Credit and Commerce International
The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was a major international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a Pakistani financier. The Bank was registered in Luxembourg with head offices in Karachi and London. Within a decade BCCI touched its peak...
, Dan Lasater and then Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
. Deaths were part a conspiracy theory known as the "Clinton Body Count", which started and grew around the time of the documentary, as connections to Clinton were added with varying degrees of allegedly suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths. Some of the names in the Clinton Body Count are referenced in the documentary. The deaths of Kevin Ives and Don Henry spawned two other documentaries listed below.
Backing and promotion
The film was produced by Citizens for Honest Government, a project of a Westminster, CaliforniaWestminster, California
-Government:In the state legislature Westminster is located in the 34th, Senate District, represented by Democrat Lou Correa and Republican Tom Harman respectively, and in the 67th and 68th Assembly District, represented by Republicans Jim Silva and Van Tran respectively...
organization named Creative Ministries Inc, which also spawned Jeremiah Films
Jeremiah Films
Jeremiah Films is a media production and distribution company founded by Christian conservative Patrick Matrisciana, based in Jacksonville Beach, Florida and has been managed by his son since 2009....
, Matrisciana's production company. Some of the funding for the film came from long-time Clinton opponent Larry Nichols.. Over 300,000 copies of the film were put into circulation.
Other Jeremiah Films
Jeremiah Films
Jeremiah Films is a media production and distribution company founded by Christian conservative Patrick Matrisciana, based in Jacksonville Beach, Florida and has been managed by his son since 2009....
productions concern apologetics
Apologetics
Apologetics is the discipline of defending a position through the systematic use of reason. Early Christian writers Apologetics (from Greek ἀπολογία, "speaking in defense") is the discipline of defending a position (often religious) through the systematic use of reason. Early Christian writers...
, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, Christian inspirational, Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism, convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual...
, Mormonism
Mormonism
Mormonism is the religion practiced by Mormons, and is the predominant religious tradition of the Latter Day Saint movement. This movement was founded by Joseph Smith, Jr. beginning in the 1820s as a form of Christian primitivism. During the 1830s and 1840s, Mormonism gradually distinguished itself...
, occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
, politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, Prophecy
Prophecy
Prophecy is a process in which one or more messages that have been communicated to a prophet are then communicated to others. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of conditioned events to come as well as testimonies or repeated revelations that the...
, Seventh-day Adventists
Seventh-day Adventist Church
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a Protestant Christian denomination distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the original seventh day of the Judeo-Christian week, as the Sabbath, and by its emphasis on the imminent second coming of Jesus Christ...
, social issues
Social issues
Social issues are controversial issues which relate to people's personal lives and interactions. Social issues are distinguished from economic issues...
and terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
.
VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
copies of the film were promoted and distributed via television infomercials by Moral Majority
Moral Majority
The Moral Majority was a political organization of the United States which had an agenda of evangelical Christian-oriented political lobbying...
leader Rev. Jerry Falwell
Jerry Falwell
Jerry Lamon Falwell, Sr. was an evangelical fundamentalist Southern Baptist pastor, televangelist, and a conservative commentator from the United States. He was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia...
, who also appears in the film. Falwell's infomercial for the 80-minute tape included footage of Falwell interviewing a silhouetted journalist who was afraid for his life. The journalist accused Clinton of orchestrating the deaths of several reporters and personal confidants who had gotten too close to his illegalities. However, it was subsequently revealed that the silhouetted journalist was, in fact, Patrick Matrisciana, the producer of the video and president of Citizens for Honest Government. "Obviously, I'm not an investigative reporter," Matrisciana admitted (to investigative journalist Murray Waas
Murray Waas
Murray S. Waas is an American freelance investigative journalist known most recently for his coverage of the White House planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and ensuing controversies and American political scandals such as the Plame affair...
), "and I doubt our lives were actually ever in any real danger. That was Jerry's idea to do that ... He thought that would be dramatic." In a 2005 interview for The Hunting of the President
The Hunting of the President
The Hunting of the President is a 2004 English language documentary film about Bill Clinton. Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton appear in archived footage...
Falwell admitted, "To this day I do not know the accuracy of the claims made in The Clinton Chronicles."
Controversy and criticism
The deaths listed in the film have largely been discredited and debunked as containing deliberate bias, circumstantial evidence, and coincidence. Snopes.com classifies the "Clinton Body Count" conspiracy theoryConspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...
connecting Clinton to the deaths as an urban legend
Urban legend
An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...
.
In a 1994 letter to congressional leaders, William Dannemeyer listed 24 people with some connection to Clinton who had died "under other than natural circumstances" and called for hearings on the matter. His list was largely taken from a longer list compiled by Linda Thompson
Linda Thompson (attorney)
Linda Thompson is an American attorney, filmmaker, and the founder of the American Justice Federation. In 1993, she quit her job as a lawyer in Indianapolis, Indiana to start the American Justice Federation, according to Snopes.com...
.
One of the troopers who appeared in the movie, Larry Patterson, alleging he arranged sexual appoints for Clinton, was convicted of making false statements to the FBI about an unrelated incident in March 2005.
Obstruction of Justice: The Mena Connection
Pat Matrisciana, and Creative Ministries also released a 1996 video titled Obstruction of Justice: The Mena Connection. This film claimed that, amongst others (namely Don Harmon, Richard Garrett, Jim Steed, and Danny Allen), Jay Campbell and Kirk Lane, both law enforcement officers, were connected to the murder of two teenage boys, Don Henry and Kevin Ives. Supposedly these two officers killed the teenagers when they came across a cocaine smuggling ring in Mena, ArkansasMena, Arkansas
Mena is a city in Polk County, Arkansas, United States. It is also the county seat of Polk County.It was founded by Arthur Edward Stilwell during the building of the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railroad . It was Stilwell who decided Mena would be the name of this new town along the route to...
, to which Clinton was allegedly tied. The two officers filed suit against the claims. A judgment in their favor was reversed by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in an in-depth 26 page decision by a group of several judges.
The decision states that "the record does not refute... a list [of] 'suspects implicated in the Ives/Henry murders and cover-ups'" (pg. 11), that "[Campbell and Lane] failed to prove the falsity of even the most damning interpretation" of the evidence (pg. 11), that "law enforcement records... revealed that purported eyewitnesses implicated law enforcement officers in the deaths of the Ives and Henry boys, including the appellees, either by name and/or, more tenuously, by description" (pp. 11–12), that "statements and rumors corroborating... implicating them as suspects emanate, in varying degrees of detail, from multiple sources" (pg. 21), and that "given the corroboration by multiple sources, we do not see obvious reasons to doubt the accuracy of the various reports" (pg. 23).
The decision also stated that Campbell and Lane failed to prove the falsity of the allegations and that "[e]ven if we assume Campbell and Lane satisfied their burden of falsity, we find their claims still fail" because "a public-figure plaintiff must do more than prove falsity to prevail in a defamation claim... [but] must also prove by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant acted with actual malice." (pg. 13)
At some point, Jon Brown, "an investigator for the Saline County Sheriff's Department from 1992 to 1994" (pg. 7) that arrived at conclusions similar to those of Matrisciana, also testified that... when he first became involved with this investigation, as an employee of the Saline County Sheriff, he found the file had been 'totally destroyed' and 'a lot of documents were missing' [,] ... [that] Ives' [mother's] collection of documents was the most comprehensive and he acquired the most pertinent documents from her[,] and that Ives and Duffey (a former deputy prosecuting attorney and director of a drug task force (pg. 6) that investigated the case and arrived at conclusions very similar to those of Matrisciana) had more thoroughly reviewed the documents." (pg. 17)
The judges agreed that the case was riddled with intrigue and allegations of corruption when it said, amongst other things: "The record indicates [Dan] Harmon... who was [originally] appointed special prosecutor on the case" (pg. 3), and who Mrs. Ives and others believed was aiding in the cover-up, "... had credibility problems because he was either implicated in the deaths himself or because he was trying to subvert [Campbell and Lane's] investigation of one of his associates for drug offenses." (pp 19–20) In regards to Dan Harmon, the judges noted that "Harmon had credibility problems in that he was being investigated for involvement in drug offenses, Sharline Wilson had placed him at the scene of the deaths, and, he had been convicted of various crimes." They also made note of the statements by Campbell and Lane that "[they believed that Harmon made rumors about them] detract attention... from his illicit drug activities." (pg. 22)
In defense of Campbell and Lane, the decision stated that "because of First Amendment considerations, the burdens we have placed on Lieutenants Campbell and Lane are great. That they 'cannot surmount these obstacles implies no condemnation of [them]' [and] should not undermine their accomplishments." (pg. 26) The judges also showed some sympathy to Matrisciana and his affiliates: "[W]e suppose that if Matrisciana's assertions were true, there would be 'inherent difficulties in verifying or refuting' [evidence], given the alleged pervasive involvement of law enforcement in his theory." (pp. 25–26)
See also
- The Arkansas ProjectArkansas ProjectThe Arkansas Project was a series of investigations that were initiated with the intent of damaging and ending the presidency of Bill Clinton...
- Jerry FalwellJerry FalwellJerry Lamon Falwell, Sr. was an evangelical fundamentalist Southern Baptist pastor, televangelist, and a conservative commentator from the United States. He was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia...
- Troopergate
- "Vast right-wing conspiracyVast Right-Wing Conspiracy"Vast right-wing conspiracy" was a conspiracy theory advanced by then United States First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1998 in defense of her husband, President Bill Clinton, and his administration during the Lewinsky scandal, characterizing the Lewinsky charges as the latest in a long,...
" - Vince FosterVince FosterVincent Walker Foster, Jr. was a Deputy White House Counsel during the first few months of President Bill Clinton's administration, and also a law partner and friend of Hillary Rodham Clinton...
- Whitewater controversyWhitewater controversyThe Whitewater controversy was an American politics controversy that began with the real estate investments of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their associates, Jim and Susan McDougal in the Whitewater Development Corporation, a failed business venture in the 1970s and 1980s.A New York...
External links
- Jeremiah Films
- The Clinton Chronicles DVD DVD produced by Pat Matrisciana
- Clinton Body Count