18th and Potomac
The staff prepares how to disclose President Bartlet's multiple sclerosis: CJ sets up a live interview on NBC, Sam and Oliver separately grill the First Lady, pollster Joey Lucas has no good news, and everyone wants to know if Bartlet is going to run for a second term. Bartlet and Leo deal with a military coup in Haiti (1) and the evacuation of non-essential American personnel. Charlie gets on Mrs. Landingham's case for paying sticker price for her new car, which she did on principle. Josh continues to push for more funding for the federal tobacco lawsuit but finds that some Democratic Congressmen have ideological opposition to the action. And then, the long day gets even worse with the news that Mrs. Landingham was in a car accident at 18th and Potomac (2) and has been killed (3).
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Haiti (last updated July 14, 2001) (back to top)
Haiti has had a turbulent period of coups and questionable elections since 1986, when the 29-year dictatorship of the Duvalier family ended. An international military force military rule and restored the democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in 1994, but the current government, led once again by Aristide, has questionable legitimacy.
Provisional governments led the country from 1986 to 1991, and a constitution was ratified in 1987. Haiti's first fair elections were held in December 1990, and Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest, won two-thirds of the vote. He took office on February 7, 1991, but a faction of army and economic elites led a violent coup just eight months later. Aristide left the country and began a three-year period of exile. Thousands of Haitians fled the country, causing a large-scale exodus of boat people; the US Coast Guard rescued a total of 41,342 Haitians in 1991 and 1992.
A military regime ruled Haiti from October 1991 to September 1994, ending only when an international force entered the country to oversee the end of military rule. The force was authorized by the United Nations' Resolution 940 adopted on July 31, 1994, and about 21,000 troops (6,000 of whom were from the United States) touched down on September 19, 1994. By mid-October, the military leaders had left the country and Aristide and other elected officials had returned.
Aristide resumed his term as president, and his party, the Lavalas Political Organization (OPL), did well in nationwide local and parliamentary elections in June 1995. Aristide was barred by Haiti's constitution from running for a second term, and his hand-picked successor, Rene Preval, won 88 percent of the presidential vote in December 1995 and took office in February 1996; this was the first transition between two democratically-elected presidents and it went peacefully.
However, political troubles have again arisen in Haiti and have resulted in a government whose legitimacy is in doubt.
In late 1996, Aristide left his party and created a new one, the Fanmi Lavalas. The resulting gridlock left the Preval government unable to organize local and parliamentary elections in 1998, and when the elections were finally held in May 2000, they were criticized as unfair and flawed. Opposition groups then united in what became known as the Democratic Convergence, which decided to boycott the presidential elections in November 2000.
Facing little opposition, Aristide and his FL easily won the elections and Aristide was sworn in once again as Haiti's president on February 7, 2001.
However, the international community and opposition parties continue to protest the government's handling of the May 2000 elections. United States aid is being withheld until the situation is resolved (the US has been Haiti's largest donor since 1973, and contributed $884 million to Haiti between FY 95 and FY 99), and the Organization of American States is threatening to ostracize member country Haiti as well. Internally, the Democratic Convergence has sworn in Gerald Gourgue as the president of a provisional government.
18th and Potomac (last updated February 27, 2002) (back to top)
The corner of 18th Street and Potomac Avenue is in a quiet residential neighborhood in southeastern Washington D.C. What makes it interesting is that it also marks the entrance to the Congressional Cemetery, a private cemetery that has housed the remains of many congressmen, sometimes permanently, sometimes as a temporary resting place before final interment elsewhere. The Congressional Cemetery was founded in 1807 and is owned by a nearby church. It has occasionally received funding from Congress itself.
For more information on the Congressional Cemetery, go here. Photos taken by Stephen Lee on September 29, 2001.
Inconvenient deaths (last updated June 11, 2001) (back to top)
People die at inconvenient times all the time. They die in car accidents, plane crashes, and robberies gone bad. They get sick, they commit suicide, and they end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
These things happen every day, and they do happen to someone. Most of the time, they happen to someone you do not know and you don't think anything of it. But if you looked hard enough and looked into everyone you ever knew or ever had contact with, you would probably see a lot of deaths and tragedies and you might start to focus on these incidents rather than the wider pool of all the incidents that did not happen. But even then, these incidents would still be rare when placed in context.
Selective editing without comparison or confinement to a specific number of candidates is the basis for conspiracy theorists' death lists. The most famous ones are associated with the JFK assassination and with Bill Clinton. In the world of the West Wing, there are sure to be lists starting with Mrs. Langingham and her "coincidental" death right at a time when Bartlett was about to disclose his MS: what did she know and what was she going to reveal?
First, JFK. Gerald Posner, a lawyer turned journalist, debunks the JFK death list in his groundbreaking book Case Closed (which picked apart the evidence in order to show that Lee Harvey Oswald did in fact kill JFK on his own and that the only conspiracy that took place was government agencies' desire to cover-up their own errors and their own missed opportunities in realizing Oswald was a potential threat).
Connected to the JFK assassination, supposedly 100 or 101 people who were connected and might have known something have mysteriously died. But, as Posner writes, this figure is "culled from among more than 10,000 people who were connected in any way to the Warren Commission investigation, the House Select Committee during the late 1970s, press coverage of the case, and the network of private citizens who are full-time assassination researchers. It would be surprising if 101 people out of some 10,000 had not died in unnatural ways" (emphasis added).
And of these 100 people, Posner goes on to note, most (53) died of natural causes and most (51) did not die until the 1970s, long after they could have provided information about the assassination.
Now for Clinton. A "Clinton body count" e-mail listing 48 people who supposedly died under mysterious circumstances and who are supposedly linked to Clinton's various troubles (Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky) has circulated within recent years. The lists brings together many people you have never heard about before, probably because they really did not know anything about any supposed scandal. More importantly, the list does not include Susan Macdougal (who went to prison for her refusal to testify against Bill Clinton), Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, Kenneth Starr, Paula Jones, or any of the major players involved in Clinton's impeachment and potential removal from office.
Here are a few people commonly on the Clinton list:
- Vincent Foster who committed suicide (a finding confirmed by three separate investigations: a coroner's office, the office of the special prosecutor under Robert B. Fiske, and the office of the special prosecutor under Kenneth Starr - even Starr agreed that this was just a suicide)
- Mary Mohaney, a former White House intern killed in a Starbucks robbery. But why just her and not all of the other interns that have worked in the White House?
- Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, who died with 34 other people when his plane crashed in Croatia on April 3, 1996
- Four Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agents killed during the Waco confrontation
A full analysis of a popular version is available on-line here.
Sources: Gerald Posner, Case Closed, Appendix B. The Urban Legends Reference Page, available here.
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