Is Big Brother watching Preston Crow?
The Dartmouth computer science graduate student, who has twice appeared in the New York Times Magazine in connection with White House conspiracy theories, says he suspects that he is named in secret government files documenting anti-administration activity.
Crow has achieved a certain celebrity in the world of presidential conspiracy theorists. The World Wide Web page he created documenting theories about the mysterious 1994 death of White House aide Vincent Foster registered more than 1,000 visitors per day.
Crow -- who does not have a telephone -- told The Dartmouth in an e-mail interview that his political involvement began in the winter of 1994 when he was setting up computing service's web server. Wanting to create something of his own on-line, he summarized a New York Post article suggesting the public explanation of Foster's death was a cover-up for criminal activity. Crow said the story confirmed his own hunches.
His web page was not ignored.
Hate-mail streamed in, and eventually the press began to contact him. Initially, the page offered a variety of details on Foster's death and the investigations that followed, with much of the data cited from the Senate hearings report, Crow wrote.
He wrote that Foster's "suicide" reeked of foul play from the start. And the New York Post investigations, coupled with the Senate hearings report and Fiske's report on Foster's death, convinced Crow "some really strange stuff went on."
As interest in the page grew, he expanded it to include pages focusing on a broad range of Clinton administration affairs, he wrote.
Crow posted a copy of the infamous "body count" list, which earned his page a reference in a New York Times Magazine article. The "body count" list establishes possible connections between President Clinton's political motives and the suspicious deaths of more than 50 people.
Crow wrote other pages focused on the White House Travel Office, the Whitewater scandal and President Clinton's alleged affair with Paula Jones -- offering summaries of what was known and what had been alleged at the time.
But the page could not grow as quickly as the conspiracies surrounding the Clintons. In the fall of 1995, as new Whitewater hearings began in the Republican Congress, Crow decided to abandon the project.
But the page had made such an impression that an outside business, Grapevine News, offered to take over maintaining the page.
But financial setbacks plagued the company. In July of 1996, Grapevine News ran out of funds, and the pages disappeared, this time for good.
Three years after he first put up the web page, Crow still "can't accept the conclusion that [Foster] shot himself in Ft. Marcy Park."
"Something is being covered up. Perhaps he shot himself elsewhere, and someone needed to move the body to a less embarrassing location," he said. "Perhaps he was murdered."
Who does Crow think was the mastermind behind the cover-up? If the President did not pull the trigger, he "at the very least gave implicit approval," Crow wrote.
Crow stated that the Clinton administration is far more permissive of criminal activity than previous presidencies.
FBI and fundraising files clearly indicate the administration has a criminal history. "Many former administration officials are now convicted felons," he said.
Even if the White House is guilty of criminal activity, Crow will never again be a force in publicizing wrongdoing. Crow's days as a political figure on the internet are over. He said the Clinton scandals will gradually fade from public interest, with little fuss.
The Clinton White House will not be remembered as the presidency of scandals, Crow said. "When all is said and done, the Clinton administration will probably be remembered as the presidency of the polls."
