Did Bush Have J. Clifford Baxter Killed?

By: Michael Gabriel

On paper, it appears to be a suicide, cut and dried. A Harris County, Texas, medical examiner has ruled that former Enron executive J. Clifford Baxter, who allegedly killed himself, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. But is everything what it seems? There are certainly some unanswered questions in this case.

Congressional investigators had intended to interview Baxter and had the impression from his lawyer that he would cooperate, according to a congressional source, a testimony that might have had damaging implications for the Bush Administration.

Although the former Enron vice chairman was considered a "bit player" in the Enron probe, he may have been sitting on bombshell information. Police found Baxter dead in his 2002 Mercedes Benz, along with a .38 caliber revolver registered to Baxter and a suicide note, the contents of which they did not disclose.

Baxter, 43, resigned from Enron last May, reportedly unhappy with the company's business practices, including its partnership with a company called LJM. Sources say he may have taken with him sensitive documents detailing the company's ties to the Bush Administration, and specifically CEO Kenneth Lay's ties to Vice President Dick Cheney and that shadowy cabal he convened to help oil company executives reap huge profits off the Bush administration's energy policy.

The question must be asked: In light of the political damage a Baxter testimony may have wrought, did George W. Bush have Baxter killed? The circumstances of his death certainly prompts more questions than they answer.

Does the proposition above sound totally ridiculous to you? If you're a Republican't, it no doubt sounds like blasphemy. But it sure sounded good to right-wing Republican'ts when Bill Clinton was president and Vincent Foster committed suicide. didn't it?

You remember that, don't you? Foster was a White House deputy counsel, and on July 20, 1993, he killed himself, as reported, because he was depressed over what the Wall Street Journal had written about him.But it was only a matter of time until the right-wing spin machine started obsessing on the idea that Foster hadn't committed suicide, that he had in fact been killed by the Clinton Administration because he knew too much about an alleged money laundering operation.

This exercise reached obscene proportions, with special videotapes being made and circulated, and that almighty holier-than-thou king of conspiracy theories, Ken Starr, even getting in on the act. Although at least three separate investigations concluded that Foster committed suicide, that wasn't good enough for the right-wing kook machine, which in its frothing-at-the-mouth desire to discredit Bill Clinton, pursued the murder theory to the very end.

Do I think J. Clifford Baxter was killed by George Bush? Of course not. I think he was, like Vince Foster, a regular guy who got caught up in something bigger than himself, and couldn't handle the stress of it. And the end result was a suicide.

Do I think that someone out there will really try to make a case that J. Clifford Baxter was killed, and do it in order to discredit George W. Bush? Yes I do. The Republican'ts will get what they deserve. What goes around, comes around, and for the corrupt Bush Administration, it's coming around very fast.