How did I get started on this road?

I would say this mindset of 'all is not as it may seem' started when I read a book my father had titled The Secret Life of Bill Clinton by British journalist (former Washington bureau chief of The Sunday Telegraph) Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. Yes, a lot has been done with Clinton, but it's still an interesting read. The title implies it's all about his affairs and Arkansian shenanigans (say that 5 times fast!), but he wrote extensively about the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing (and cover-up)and Vince Foster's death, and never mentions Monica Lewinsky once! It does include some of his earlier ladyfriend hyjinks, but it also reported about drug smuggling in Tyson chickens and the Clinton body count. My dad told me it reads better than fiction, and he is right. As the author describes interviewing a witness in a Arkansas diner, you can feel the fear she has as she looks around and sees someone that has followed them to intimidate her into silence.

I think this is when I started realizing that powerful people could be just as evil here as in other countries. Why is that we feel that US is immune to evil people gaining power? It has happened in almost every other country in the world! I'm not saying that all politicians have dark intentions, but I do think you can only get so far without getting your hands dirty.

Here's some excerpts from an article about the author and his book:

Bnet Article:

In the Weekly Standard, a journal of conservative opinion, Newsweek reporter Michael Iskoff calls Evans-Pritchard's stories "little more than wild flights of conspiratorial fancy coupled with outrageous and wholly uncorroborated allegations" from dubious sources. But syndicated columnist and veteran newsman Robert Novak recently wrote that "Evans-Pritchard is no conspiracy-theory lunatic.... [H]e was known in Washington for accuracy, industry and courage."

Insight: Why do you think there's a reluctance among reporters to probe into some of these things you've written about concerning Oklahoma City and the death of Vincent Foster?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: I think the American press is very deferential to power -- more so than people think. The Watergate story was an aberration. It was very special circumstances, and American journalists normally are not like that....

The big problem with the Whitewater and Clinton stories is that few reporters have gone out and talked to ordinary people, many of whose stories I tell in this book.... The reporters are prisoners of their sources in Washington. They're very apt to regard official sources -- people with titles in government positions -- as being credible, and ordinary citizens as having no credibilities whatsoever. I think that is getting everything completely the wrong way around. Ordinary people have less incentive to lie, and furthermore they're less adept at spinning the media. Government officials do it the whole damn time. So I think they've got it upside down....

My thoughts exactly!!

If your are more into videos than books, here's a Clinton documentary: