Fact Check

Were 'Steel Barrel Graves' Uncovered on the Clinton Estate?

A satirical web site adds to the archive of distasteful fake stories about Bill and Hillary Clinton's "victims."

Published June 22, 2017

 (Shutterstock)
Image Via Shutterstock
Claim:
12 barrels containing human remains were found buried on the property of Bill and Hillary Clinton in June 2017.

On 21 June 2017, the "satirical" web site Freedom Crossroads reported that 12 barrels containing human remains had been found on property owned by Bill and Hillary Clinton in upstate New York.

After the body parts of three women were found last night in a barrel unearthed from the garden area of the Clinton Estate in upstate New York, ground penetrating radar was brought in to analyze the entire property. Within a few hours, eleven more possible sites were pinpointed and excavation began.

By dawn, 11 more identical steel 55-gallon drums were awaiting transport to Quantico with an immaculate chain of evidence. They will arrive and be opened later today.

The article, like everything published by Freedom Crossroads, is entirely fabricated. Buried at the bottom of its homepage, the web site includes a disclaimer:

We believe that there is nothing more precious than the mind of an aging conservative. Here we gather a boatload of bullhonkey, works of pure satirical fiction, to give the fist-shakers of the world a reason to hate. Reality is often in the eye of the beholder. You won’t find any of it here.

This didn't prevent the World Truth web site from republishing the story in earnest, along with the same photo of a barrel, which actually originates with a project undertaken by the Applied Geophysics Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

On the same day, similar versions of the fake story were also published by the News Feed Hunter web site (which added invented details such as the names of victims) and the Red Politics web site, which claimed three of the bodies found were those of three young women who disappeared while hitchhiking in 1974.

On its web site, Red Politics warns readers:

Sometimes the articles are satires and fake and we cannot make any warranties about the completeness, reliability and accuracy of this information.

The June 2017 "buried barrels" story is the latest distasteful chapter in a long saga of deaths and disappearances falsely attributed to or associated with the Clintons over the past few decades.

Dan Mac Guill is a former writer for Snopes.