Do the Clintons Really Charge Their Secret Service Agents Rent?

Tom Schreck is back to answer this month’s questions on the Clintons, the Westchester Knicks, and the terrifying Albert Fish.

The D-League

Q: With the Westchester Knicks getting ready for the regular season, could you help me understand how the NBA D-League works and who actually owns the team?

—Mike Calucci, Briarcliff Manor

A: You are not alone in struggling to understand how the D-League works. It does not follow the same framework as minor-league baseball or minor-league hockey.

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The most obvious difference from those systems is that, in the D-League, players don’t sign contracts with individual teams, but with the D-League itself. All players sign one-year contracts, of which they can be relieved if they sign on to play in the NBA. The players can come from NBA clubs, NBA training-camp allocations, tryouts, a returning-player pool, and the D-League draft, which is made up of players who were drafted by an NBA team but didn’t make the roster cuts.

D-League teams are owned in a number of ways: They can be independent from their NBA affiliate team ownership; they can be owned by their parent NBA club; or they can be co-owned in hybrid fashion. The Westchester Knicks are owned by Madison Square Garden Company, which owns the New York Knicks.

The Boogeyman (Seriously)

Q: I’ve been reading up on famous serial killers and came across the name Albert Fish, who committed some of his most heinous murders in Westchester. I read that when they attempted to electrocute him at Sing Sing, he took 3,000 volts unfazed, and they had to pull the switch several times. Is that true? And why is it that his attorney refused to read his final statement?

—Allen Fischer, New Rochelle

A: Albert Fish, who lived from 1870 to 1936, is one of the world’s—not just one of Westchester’s—most notorious killers. He was a sadist, a pedophile, and committed truly unspeakable acts upon children in the early part of the 20th century. He was also a masochist whose body was riddled with metal needles that he lodged into his body. He regularly beat himself with a homemade paddle fixed with nails. He’d climb a hill by his summer home in Irvington and yell while eating raw meat. Is it a wonder he was known as “the Boogeyman?” He tortured and murdered a girl in Westchester, and then wrote a letter to the child’s grieving mother describing how he ate the girl’s remains. That letter was his undoing—a New York City detective traced the letter to Fish and his apartment in New York City.

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Fish was the oldest man in history to be executed at Sing Sing, but he died of electrocution like everyone else did, and it didn’t take an extra current of electricity or anything else.

His attorney, James Dempsey, a former Peekskill mayor, refused to share the written statement Fish had prepared. Dempsey said, “I will never show it to anyone. It was the most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read.”

It was never released.

Clinton Cash

Q: I read a viral post on Facebook about the Clintons charging rent to the Secret Service detail assigned to their mansion in Chappaqua. Could that be true?

—Anise Blanchot, Peekskill

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A: Well, when a retiring president moves into a new residence, the Secret Service comes along with the package. In the Clintons’ case, it is the White Plains office of the Secret Service that provides security to their home. Before the Clintons moved to Westchester County, most of the Service’s work involved background checks. Today, the majority of their work is on the Clinton security detail.

In the provisions concerning this arrangement, it is stated that the ex-POTUS is entitled to charge rent to the Secret Service stationed on his property. The Secret Service agents need space, and, as you know, real estate ain’t cheap in these parts.

The Clintons, however, don’t charge rent.

Sorry, Tea Partiers. They don’t.

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