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America's Dreyfus Affair: The Case of the Death of Vince Foster
by David Martin
America's Dreyfus Affair
The Case of the Death of Vince Foster
by David Martin (all rights reserved)
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In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With
public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.
Consequently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than
he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.
--Abraham Lincoln
But the Dreyfus Affair...is not fixed in space and time. The combat
of the individual against society, truth against deception, is specific
neither to France nor to the end of the nineteenth century.
--Jean-Denis Bredin [1]
With the study of history in America's schools and universities
being replaced with "social studies", "multiculturalism", and other
pseudo-scientific and "sensitive" approaches to the study of the
human condition, one of the time-honored features of the
traditional history course is also likely to go out the window, and it
will be a pity. That is the challenging "compare and contrast" essay
question that we never had enough time to do full justice to on final
exams. A well- crafted "c&c" allowed us to show what we did or
didn't know about at least two historical events and, at the same
time, forced us to think and to put things into perspective. Our only
regret is that our professors seemed to leave almost all such
analysis to callow students, engaging in much too little of it in their
all-too-linear lectures.
To demonstrate the strength of the "compare and contrast" method
in elucidating history, I propose herewith to apply it to the Dreyfus
Affair, which began with the arrest of Captain Alfred Dreyfus in
France on suspicion of treason in October of 1894, and the Vincent
Foster case, which began with the discovery of the deputy White
House counsel's body almost a hundred years later, on July 20,
1993. As the Dreyfus Affair disrupted France, the Foster death, and
its handling by the authorities, has shown signs that it will haunt
the U.S. government into the next century.
Perhaps too much has been made of the relationship between the
official framing of Captain Dreyfus and French anti-Semitism. By
regarding it so, we are able to distance ourselves from it, treating it
as just one more example of the irrational behavior that mindless
bigotry can engender or, alternatively, we are tempted to dismiss it
as an episode which has been kept alive in history by the same
powerful and influential people who keep reminding us of our
collective guilt for allowing the Holocaust.
In either case we would be greatly in error. It is indeed true that
Dreyfus was a relatively low-level, anonymous officer in the French
army, and mistakes and miscarriages in the imperfect world of
jurisprudence, especially military jurisprudence, happen all the
time. But the way in which the case unfolded--and unraveled--did
in fact almost tear France apart, actively polarizing virtually the
entire society in ways seldom experienced in any country except on
occasion during the prosecution of an unpopular war. It may have
started as a relatively small case, but it grew into a gigantic affair,
"one of the great commotions of history," [2] for the same reason
that the Foster case has the potential to do the same. The French
government, and virtually the entire French ruling establishment,
including the press, put its prestige on the line in defense of a
blatant injustice, an eventually provable lie.
The fact that Dreyfus was Jewish was no more than incidental to
the original suspicion. An act of treason had demonstrably taken
place. Pressure mounted quickly to find the guilty party. German
espionage success had been a major contributing factor in the
humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. The country was
already beset with a general paranoia. The stab-in-the-back
explanation for military defeat after World War I was not original
with the Germans. Now, a document divulging military secrets was
discovered en route to the traditional enemy. Dreyfus was in a
position, or at least almost so, to have been the sender, and he
seemed just the right type of quiet, unsociable, stiff, cold, generally
disliked person to be capable of the dastardly deed. That he was of
an ethnic group generally suspected of being insufficiently loyal to
Mother France was just one more factor persuading the military
accusers of Dreyfus' guilt, and some of his key accusers were
indeed openly and fiercely anti-Semitic. We can best relate to the
situation, however, by recognizing that Jews in France at the time
were among the demons du jour, along with Germans, foreigners in
general, and Freemasons, much like our current ruling
establishment has its militia members, far-right Christian
extremists, and even angry white males.
Convinced though they were of his guilt, they were not convinced
they could convict him in an open court with the evidence in hand.
But too much political capital had already been invested, partly on
the basis of strategic leaks to a sympathetic press who puffed the
story up, for an innocent verdict to be permitted. A trial was held in
secret before five military judges, and a unanimous verdict of guilty
was duly rendered upon the basis of a dossier assembled, and to a
degree, manufactured, by the prosecution. The defense was, quite
illegally, never permitted to see--in fact, was at the time unaware
of--the essential evidence against the accused. The death penalty
for political crimes having been abolished in 1848, Dreyfus was
condemned to life imprisonment on Devil's Island off the coast of
South America. Newspapers across the political spectrum all hailed
the swift guilty verdict.
Further nailing down the case, the false story that Dreyfus had
actually confessed was soon published, and reprinted, in various
organs sympathetic to the government. That, the unanimous verdict
of the military panel, the opinion of the newspapers, and the natural
tendency of the populace to accept the word of authority, was
enough to satisfy almost the entire country, at least initially.
For the next three years, the case stayed largely out of the public
eye, though a few individuals, uneasy about the closed trial and the
excessive zeal with which it had to be sold to the public, began
probing into the matter, discovering some of the weakness of the
case against Dreyfus and uncovering evidence that pointed to
another officer by the name of Major Ferdinand Walsin- Esterhazy,
a bon vivant of dubious character who was unmistakably a gentile.
Ironically, in his memoirs published in 1930, German Military
Attache Maximilian von Schwarzkoppen revealed that the
traitorous major's first overture was made on July 20, 1894, ninety-
nine years to the day before the Foster death. Other parallels to the
case are striking. One of the largest is the similarity of the national
mood. As it neared the end of the century, France was having
trouble coping with what was perceived as the decline of traditional
values. The following quote refers to the election of 1893:
Above all, one ought to note the troubling lassitude of the voters--
out of ten and a half million who were registered, fewer than seven
and a half million votes were cast. Do the abstentions indicate that
the regime was perceived as a system of impotence and corruption
by a segment of the population? [3]
And a contemporary observer, Jacques Chastenet, wrote, "The
French malaise is above all moral." [4]
Foster More Serious
At the same stage in the developments, the Foster death would
seem to be relatively more important and the official findings at
least as dubious. Foster, though little known to the public, was the
second ranking person in the White House legal office and a long-
time associate of the First Lady, Hillary Clinton. He is also often
described as a life-long close friend of Bill Clinton because he was
born and raised in Clinton's home town of Hope, Arkansas. This is
not quite accurate because Bill moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas,
when he was five years old, and they did not stay in touch.
According to the official record, Foster was last seen leaving his
office at about 1:00 pm on a Tuesday before his body was found at
around 6:00 pm by an unlikely anonymous passerby in a hidden
corner of a small, preserved Civil War relic known as Fort Marcy
Park across the Potomac River in Virginia, a place a few miles from
his Georgetown home that Foster, a newcomer to Washington, was
never known to have visited. A revolver was reportedly in his hand
(though the passerby would eventually surface with the claim that
he got a clear look at the hands, and the palms were up and nothing
was in them.).
From the beginning the newspapers and the government described
the death as an "apparent suicide" though there seemed to be little
about even the circumstances known at the time for suicide to be at
all apparent. The only thing the authorities really had was the gun
in the hand, but it's not that hard for murderers to put a gun in the
hand of their victim, and the untraceable 1913 vintage revolver,
made up of parts of two guns, found in Foster's hand bore all the
earmarks of the typical planted weapon. Furthermore, since the
recoil of a powerful weapon such as the .38 caliber on the scene
almost always causes the gun to fly out of the hand of one who
fatally shoots himself, the fact that the gun was still in the hand is,
in itself, a suspicious circumstance.
The haste of the snap judgement alone also should have been
enough to generate suspicion. Initially, there was no hint of a
motive for the "suicide". Foster was described as the White House's
"Rock of Gibraltar". Friends and colleagues in Arkansas expressed
astonishment that such a solid, stable, even-tempered and
responsible person would take such a drastic and ultimately
irresponsible action. Both President Bill Clinton and his
spokesperson, Dee Dee Myers, told us that Foster's suicide was just
one of life's mysteries for which there could never be an answer,
and Clinton, in a eulogy to Foster asked us to "remember him for
how he lived, not for how he died." In so doing he was at the same
time telling us that, yes, the death was by Foster's own hand and
that it is the sort of ignoble deed that is best not dwelt upon. Some
White House reporters privately expressed a concern over the
President's apparent readiness to accept the verdict of suicide of a
close friend and associate instead of placing the full powers of his
office behind a thorough investigation, but none of the reporters'
doubts found their way into print. That the Park Police instead of
the FBI were permitted to handle the case also raised some
eyebrows, but not in public.
In slow and awkward stages the story of the mysterious, motiveless
suicide began to change. The first attempt at changing the story
amounted to something of a false start. The little-read Washington
Times of Saturday, July 24, four days after Foster's death, carried
an inside article about depression in which Ms. Myers was quoted
as saying of Foster, "His family says with certainty that he'd never
been treated (for depression)." But on the front page was a story
based upon information from an anonymous "source close to the
Foster family" who said that Foster was, indeed, experiencing
emotional problems and had turned to other family members for
psychiatric recommendations. Among the family members
mentioned to the reporter was brother-in-law, former Arkansas
Congressman Beryl Anthony. The reporter had telephoned Anthony
and asked him about the allegation and Anthony had responded,
"That's a bunch of crap. There's not a damn thing to it," and angrily
hung up the phone. (I wrote a short letter to the Washington Times
on July 26 wondering aloud who this anonymous source might be
and what he might be up to and concluding that from all we were
being told about Foster, in the existing moral climate, he seemed a
better candidate for murder than for suicide. The letter was not
printed. It was the first of several that I have written to the
Washington Times on the Foster case. None have been printed.)
The next significant contribution to the theory that Foster was
experiencing psychological problems came four days later in the
Washington Post Wednesday, July 28, on page A8. The first
sentence bears quoting in its entirety:
"White House officials searching the office of Vincent Foster, Jr.
last week found a note indicating the 48 year- old deputy White
House counsel may have considered psychiatric help shortly before
he died July 20 in what investigators have concluded was a suicide,
federal officials said yesterday."
The full quote is important because two days later, as part of a
much longer article on the ongoing investigation, the Post said that
the note had been found by the Park Police in Foster's automobile
at Fort Marcy Park, which was eventually in the report released by
the Park Police almost a year later. (The July 30 Post article said,
however, that the list contained the names of two psychiatrists,
both of whom were named and one of whom was interviewed.
Neither had been contacted by Foster. The problem here is that
when the police report was released, three names were on the list
and the names were blacked out as though to protect their
confidentiality. The blackouts were missing in a version of the
police report released some time later, and the first name on the list,
the one not named in the Post article, looked as though it had been
written in a different hand.)
It is also interesting to observe that mention of the list of
psychiatrists does not turn up in police records until July 27,
though the police had all evidence from the car in hand the night of
the 20th.
The observation that investigators had concluded the death was a
suicide is also not correct, at least not in any official sense. That
conclusion was officially made by the Park Police on August 10.
For the eventual official story that Vincent Foster committed
suicide because of clinical depression, July 29, 1993, was a banner
news day. The Washington Post headlined its scoop this way,
"Note Supports Idea that Foster Committed Suicide". What
followed was the revelation that another note, this one written on
yellow legal paper and torn into 27 pieces, had been found in
Foster's briefcase, a briefcase which had been searched on July 22
and had "all" its contents removed by Chief White House Counsel
Bernard Nussbaum in the presence of witnesses. The discovery had
been made by attorney Stephen Neuwirth of the White House
Counsel's Office on July 26, but the investigative authorities had
not been told about it for around thirty hours, or, at least, so we
were told in the story. A seemingly critical news story line was
begun, which has continued to the present, over the possibly
"unwarranted delay" in reporting the discovery of the note, but the
actual text of the note was not released, allowing the suspense to
build for another twelve days while, in the meantime, the headline
characterization of the mystery note imprinted itself on the
consciousness of the public.
For its part, the New York Times on July 29 had a major story
which began this way:
"In contrast to White House assertions that there had been no signs
of trouble, Vincent W. Foster, Jr., the longtime friend of President
Clinton who apparently committed suicide last week, had displayed
signs of depression in the final month of his life according to
Federal officials and people close to Mr. Foster."
A "close associate" had told of Foster's depression having been so
bad that on one recent weekend he had spent the whole time in bed
with the blinds drawn. The article also contained the first mention
of the prescription of an anti-depressant by an Arkansas doctor, and
a "person close to the family" told us that he had just begun to take
it.
If the anonymous "Federal officials" and "people close to the
family" were employed by the White House, they apparently had
not yet let their official spokesperson in on everything. Here is an
excerpt from Dee Dee Myers' press briefing on the same day:
Q: You asked the family what, Dee Dee?
A: Whether he had been taking any medication. And I didn't
confirm it. And they made some point and I, you know--
__________
Q: And what can you tell us about the anti-depressant medication?
A: Nothing.
Q: Had he taken any of it?
A: I don't know.
Q: Do you know what it was?
A: No. I don't even know--The only thing I know about that is what
I read in the New York Times. I don't have it confirmed from
another source.
Jumping ahead in our chronology quite a bit, it should be noted
that neither Foster's widow Lisa nor anyone else on the record has
ever confirmed the "lost weekend" that Foster spent at home in bed
with the blinds drawn as related to the New York Times by
unattributed sources. The authenticity of the note was also later
called into very serious question, about which we will have much
more to say later, but for the moment, America's two leading
newspapers had succeeded in establishing in the public mind the
rationale for Foster's suicide. He was "depressed".
Media Similarities and Differences
Even in the early stages of the scandal the similarities in the use
made of the major media by the respective governments can be
seen. The use of anonymous sources which propagate the
government line in the Foster case is of a piece with the early leaks
whipping up animosity toward Dreyfus and the ill-founded French
reports after the trial that he had confessed. On the other hand, if
the Foster case has not, and perhaps never will, escalate into the
sort of national blow up that the Dreyfus Affair did, it will likely be
because of the differences, not the similarities, in the press. Here's
how it was then in France:
Each time the Dreyfusards brought forward new evidence which
they were certain this time must force a retrial, it was quashed,
suppressed, thrown out or matched by new fabrications by the
Army, supported by the Government, by all the bien-pensants or
right-thinking communicants of the Church, and by the screams and
thunders of four- fifths of the press. It was the press which created
the Affair and made truce impossible.
Variegated, virulent, turbulent, literary, inventive, personal,
conscienceless, and often vicious, the daily newspapers of Paris
were the liveliest and most important element in public life. The
dailies numbered between twenty-five and thirty-five at a given
time. They represented every conceivable shade of opinion....
Newspapers could be founded overnight by anyone with energy,
financial support and a set of opinions to plead. Writing talent was
hardly a special requirement, because everyone in the politico-
literary world of Paris could write--and did, instantly, speedily,
voluminously. Columns of opinion, criticism, controversy poured
out like water. [5]
When it comes to having access to news and information, we
residents of this country reputedly by, of, and for the people can
only feel extremely deprived by comparison. Whether one gets his
news from newspapers, magazines, or the television, all he
encounters is a drab uniformity, especially when it comes to
questions of serious misdeeds by the government. Particularly
perceptive people may have an inkling that something just doesn't
smell right, but they are given very little help by the increasingly
lock-step press in determining what it is that's wrong. In the case of
the Foster death, as we have seen, from the very beginning the smell
was particularly pungent, but anyone looking for reporting and
analysis to satisfy his curiosity found... nothing, absolutely
nothing. Rather than four fifths of the press being on the side of the
government, in the Foster case, initially, exactly 100 percent lined
up behind the Foster suicide verdict, even, as we have seen, before
anything like an official finding was announced. But, come to think
of it, that's how it was, initially, with the Dreyfus verdict.
Most of the nations's columnists, editorial writers, and other
opinion molders rendered their support for the government position
by simply ignoring the Foster death. The apparent intended
impression to be created was that the evidence for suicide was so
persuasive that the matter was unworthy of their comment, but they
left open the opposite interpretation of their silence, that is, that
there was no way that they could marshal the evidence to make a
persuasive case for the government. At any rate, by their silence
they tacitly gave consent to the government's words and actions.
Actually, William Safire, token conservative columnist at the New
York Times, but somewhat tainted by his former employment as
speech writer for the disgraced Richard Nixon, did write a few
early articles giving voice to his skepticism about the rush to the
suicide conclusion, but he did not persist. Similarly, the
conservative Wall Street Journal expressed some misgivings
editorially and predicted that the Clinton administration would bear
a stain that would not go away by allowing the Park Police to do
only a cursory investigation of the Foster death rather than having a
full-scale, open FBI investigation. They also picked up on the little
noted Washington Times article in which Foster's brother-in-law
refuted the allegations of the anonymous source that Foster was
seeking psychiatric help, concluding that certainly something
seemed to be amiss. But, even though ensuing revelations made the
government position ever less tenable, the Journal, like Safire,
lacked staying power on the issue and eventually fell into the habit
of referring to the "Foster suicide", which, as the routine practice
of all the other news organs, was the most powerful reifier of the
government's "suicide-from-depression" position.
Returning to the Foster case chronology, on August 10 the Park
Police and the Justice Department held a news conference at which
they announced their official finding of suicide in the case. The fact
that they were most unforthcoming with substantive answers to
questions at the lightly-covered conference and did not at the same
time release their report on their investigation was given little
attention by the press because the Justice Department, instead, used
the occasion to release the text of the by-now celebrated note.
Again, of the major national newspapers, only the Wall Street
Journal expressed any semblance of an objection to the stated
requirement that, if they wanted to see the police report, they would
have to go through the drawn out, cumbersome, and ultimately
uncertain procedure of submitting a Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) request. Their rivals devoted their attention mainly to
analyzing and commenting upon the newly-revealed contents of the
note, treating it, for lack of anything better, as a suicide note.
With the note taking center stage, it is important that we take a
critical look at its contents as well as the circumstances
surrounding its reported discovery and unveiling. As observed
before, it was hand-written on a sheet of yellow legal paper which
had been torn, actually, into 28 pieces (intentionally mutilated to
make handwriting analysis difficult?) with one piece, where initials
and date might be expected, strangely missing. The act of tearing
had produced no fingerprints on the document. The briefcase in
which it supposedly turned up, as noted earlier, had been
previously inventoried, after which it had been left "empty" on the
floor of the office. Foster had been known for his gentlemanly
nature and the grace and clarity of his writing in his legal briefs,
but here is what the nation was told he penned and then curiously
tore up and saved in his briefcase:
I made mistakes from ignorance, inexperience and overwork
I did not knowingly violate any law or standard of conduct
No one in The White House, to my knowledge, violated any law or
standard of conduct, including any action in the travel office. There
was no intent to benefit any individual or specific group
The FBI lied in their report to the AG
The press is covering up the illegal benefits they received from the
travel staff
The GOP has lied and misrepresented its knowledge and role and
covered up a prior investigation
The Ushers Office plotted to have excessive costs incurred, taking
advantage of Kaki and HRC
The public will never believe the innocence of the Clintons and
their loyal staff
The WSJ editors lie without consequence
I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in
Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport
To call this collection of random jottings sophomoric and peevish
and wholly out of character for a man of Foster's caliber is to
understate the case. From its text alone, the reassembled note
virtually screamed "fake". One could easily interpret it as a
construction whose deceptive purpose was to persuade the public
that Foster did, indeed, commit suicide, but not over anything very
serious. What personal "mistakes" could the man have been talking
about anyway, and what "lies" by his antagonists? He didn't say.
Furthermore, if his performance, and that of his cohorts, was as
blameless as he goes on to say it was, what was the problem? What
was ultimately so serious that he should feel compelled to abandon
his family, his loved ones, and his responsibilities by taking his
own life?
A detached, objective press would have to be wondering aloud if
this could really be the writing, or the thinking, or the actions of
the man Vincent Foster was known to be? Yet, with virtual
unanimity, they ignored all the textual problems and bizarre
circumstances surrounding the note's discovery and seized upon the
squalidly self-pitying last item, trumpeting it as the note's main
message. Here, obviously, was a poor, weak wretch about to slink
off to the Washington area's most out-of-the-way place and end it
all with suicide.
One reporter at the press conference did ask Chief Robert Langston
of the Park Police if the note had been authenticated. The chief
responded that a "handwriting expert" had reviewed it and told
them that it had been written by Foster, and so did the widow, Lisa
(who claimed no particular expertise in recognizing forgeries, we
might add). He did not say who the expert was nor what means of
authentication he had used, and there was no follow-up question.
The gathered scribes should have been made a bit uneasy by the
fact that no photocopies of the note were released, "at the very
strong urging of the family of Vince Foster", according to Deputy
Attorney General Philip B. Heyman. No explanation was given for
the odd family plea, and one can think of no innocent reason for it.
The truly unsatisfactory, and unsatisfying nature of this historic
news conference is well summed up with this concluding exchange
between Justice Department spokesman, Carl Stern, and Sarah
McClendon of the tiny, obscure McClendon News Service:
MR. STERN: Sarah, if you put in a Freedom of Information Act
request, we'll make sure that it's handled.
Q: (off mike)-- Freedom of Information Act--(off mike). I want to
know what--
MR. STERN: Okay, Sarah.
Q:-- (off mike)--of things we should know now. Are you going to
give it to us or are you not?
MR. STERN: Sarah, I don't think we have that available at this--at
this point.
Q: Well, why don't you?
MR. STERN: You want some special servicing? Is that it? You're
not content to wait and do it the normal way, through a Freedom of
Information Act request?
Q: No. Hell, no. I'm not--
MR. STERN: Okay.
Q: --going to wait on that.
MR. STERN: Thank you very much.
END
Thus were the reporters, and the nation, left hanging. A
commitment had been made eventually to tell all about the police
investigation when the first FOIA request was finally answered, but
not just now. The secret case against Dreyfus for treason had been
matched by the secret-for-now case against Foster for self-murder.
Defending the Government
Unwilling to share with the public the facts behind their case
against Dreyfus, the government and its defenders made their
argument principally over the motivation of the protagonists. From
this standpoint alone, they would appear to have been on firmer
ground than either their opponents at the time or those who have
used a similar defense of the government in the Foster matter. What
rationale could have possibly been strong enough for France's
generally apolitical Army to fabricate an elaborate case against one
of its own? Who could possibly let himself believe such a thing,
that the honorable men entrusted with the defense of the nation
against their immediate, and very threatening enemies, the Germans,
could be capable of such an outrage? Had not the Minister of War,
General Auguste Mercier, assured the military editor of the
influential newspaper Figaro that, from the beginning they had
"proofs that cried aloud the treason of Dreyfus" and that his "guilt
was absolutely certain"? [6]
Mercier's parliamentary aide, General Riu, put it this way, "Today
one must be either for Mercier or for Dreyfus; I am for Mercier." "If
Dreyfus is acquitted, Mercier goes," said the royalist-leaning
l'Autorite, and a military colleague demonstrated his grasp of what
was at stake by noting that, if in a retrial "Captain Dreyfus is
acquitted, it is General Mercier who becomes the traitor."
L'Autorite raised the stakes one step higher by observing that, since
Mercier was a member of the government, "If Dreyfus is not guilty
then the Government is." [7]
At least in the early stages of the Foster matter, no one making the
case for the government had the stature of the distinguished,
upright warrior , Mercier, around whom it could be personified.
Certainly, the virtually-anonymous Chief Langston of the Park
Police did not qualify, and from his indifferent performance during
his one moment on center stage it was clear that he was not bucking
for the job. Neither were the possible fabricators of evidence as
apparently free of motive or as impeccable of reputation as were
General Mercier and his staff. It was known that Foster's office had
not been immediately sealed off as requested by the Park Police
and that the police were, in fact, not even allowed into the White
House until a day's delay. When they did arrive, they were not
permitted to examine the possible evidence within Foster's office
directly. Rather, they were required simply to take down the
information that was provided them by the White House legal
office staff, or more precisely, by Chief White House Counsel
Nussbaum as he went through Foster's papers. This was the
appointee of a president already wracked with scandal barely into
the first year of his office. Foster, though a government employee,
was said to have been assigned the task of putting the financial
property of the Clintons into a blind trust (and who knows what
else?). In that capacity he would have known more about the
Clinton family finances than any man alive, and his death had
rendered him safely beyond any future subpoena.
Those people who eventually materialized to suggest skulduggery
in the Dreyfus Affair also were more vulnerable to having their
motives impugned, at least in the popular imagination, than are the
Foster case critics. Since the original Dreyfusard, the journalist
Bernard Lazare, was himself Jewish as were many others who in
due time rose to his defense, it was easy to believe that they were
just sticking up for a co-religionist regardless of the man's likely
guilt. But the insinuations went much deeper. There was already
profound suspicion in France of the growing power and influence
of the new money represented by Jewish finance capital, and anti-
Semitism had not yet had itself discredited by the excesses of
Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. Though the three thousand copies of
Lazare's pamphlet on the case were largely ignored by the
influential people to whom he had it distributed, eventually,
through sheer force of argument and the inherent and growing
strength of his case, he began to pick up allies. As he did, a
powerful counter reaction was generated.
In due time, all new evidence dug up by those favoring a new trial
for Dreyfus was laid by the Nationalists in the lap of a sinister
conspiracy called the "Syndicate". The Syndicate was not only said
to include Jewish bankers, politicians, and journalists but also such
enemies of traditional France as Freemasons, Socialists, and
foreigners in general, particularly Germans. The great majority of
the French populace found it easy to believe, and they were helped
along in that direction by the lion's share of the press, that the
entire purpose of questioning the Dreyfus verdict was to embarrass
and undermine the state, and that those who were doing it were just
the sort of people that one would normally suspect of such a thing.
One could hardly deny that Jews like Lazare were leaders of the
Dreyfus cause, and that it took money, of which Jews had a large
and growing sum, to publicize it. Had Dreyfus not been Jewish and
with a strong, well-off family behind him, had he been just an
average French captain with the same personality in the same
situation, one might seriously question whether anyone with any
real clout would have taken up his cause in the first place. The
eventual exoneration of Dreyfus, to take a novel approach, might be
seen as a sign of the first tiny glimmering of Jewish media power in
the West, but they were as yet too weak to have pulled it off
without truth, and certain key, brave adherents to truth on their
side.
Defenders of the government in the Foster case have hardly been
above attacking the motives of the skeptics, either. Unwilling as
they are to examine publicly the particulars of the matter, belittling
the critics and attacking their motives is all that is left to them. An
interesting contrast with the Dreyfus Affair here is the near reversal
of roles. To be sure, those raising questions are being accused of
wanting to bring down the government, but in this instance they are
precisely those nationalist, traditionalist, Christian conservative,
anti- internationalist types who so staunchly defended the
government in the Dreyfus Affair. The defenders of the government,
on the other hand, are the "liberals", "progressives",
"internationalists", and in another irony, they are backed up in the
media, at least in such outstanding examples as the New York
Times, the Washington Post, and the weekly magazine, the New
Yorker, by the same sort of finance capital that was said by their
opponents to be behind the Dreyfusard "Syndicate."
The Role of the Intellectuals
The Dreyfus Affair is also duly famous for the role played in
working for justice for the falsely convicted man by France's
famous intellectual class. Most notable of them all was France's
preeminent writer, Emile Zola, who, at the height of the uproar,
wrote a letter to the influential newspaper, l'Aurore, given the title
J'Accuse by editor (and future Premier) Georges Clemenceau,
which accepted the challenge of the Nationalists who said that
proclaiming Dreyfus' innocence was to imply the government's
guilt. Indeed they were guilty, said Zola eloquently, and he called
the roll of the guilty parties, detailing their crimes. The evidence
would admit no other conclusion. For his trouble he was tried and
sentenced to a year in prison for libel.
Watching the performance of America's intellectuals in the Foster
case, one could easily become disappointed and even disillusioned.
People who make their living with their wits, with their critical
faculties, seem to have abdicated all responsibility to bring them to
bear here. More even than the general public, who polls show have
a healthy skepticism about the official line on the Foster death,
they appear eager simply to believe what they are told, what it is
most comfortable to believe. But there is precedent for this greater
credulousness of the intellectuals, so there is no real reason for
disillusionment. No group of Americans swallowed more
uncritically the gigantic lies of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union
than did our leftist intellectuals, continuing to believe in the
"workers' paradise" even at the height of the Stalin purges, the show
trials, and the Great Terror. Nothing seems to paralyze their
discerning powers so much as the pronouncements of those who
demonstrate good intentions toward society's less fortunate. A
Democratic President, just like a brutal but distant communist
dictator, is simply given a great deal more slack by these people
than anyone perceived as being "conservative".
America's high-brow, general interest magazines, identifiable by the
fact that they publish a poem or two here or there, have all had
articles making small of any and all allegations of scandal related to
the Clinton White House, reserving their most scornful tone for the
suggestion that Vincent Foster might not have committed suicide.
These magazines include Harper's, The Atlantic, The New
Republic, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and the
New Yorker. Perhaps fittingly, the most intellectually snobbish and
the one which publishes the most poetry, the New Yorker, has been
the most active in espousing the government's case, weighing in
with an article on Foster's suicidal "depression" even before the
August 10, 1993, official suicide "verdict" was rendered and again
with an article in September 11, 1995, based upon an exclusive
interview with the reclusive widow, Lisa. Both articles are
emotional, impressionistic, and superficial, whose scarce supply of
hard facts does as much to undermine as to support the official
suicide verdict, at least for one who reads carefully and can look
past the loaded language. No major magazine has attempted
anything resembling its own, independent analysis of the Foster
death case.
If the government protagonists in the Foster case have lacked their
General Mercier, so too have the critics lacked their Emile Zola.
Actually, it is a commentary on the state of letters in modern
America that no one would really expect a prominent writer to
adopt a high profile challenging the government in a case such as
this. In the first place, one would be hard pressed to think of any
current literary figure with anything like the stature, the eloquence,
the moral authority of a Zola. America's literary community likes to
think that it is above such mundane matters as politics, and its
contempt for the everyday concerns of the average person is
generally reciprocated by the latter.
But one prominent literary figure did offer his opinion on the case
in a national magazine. Using the occasion of the shot-gun suicide
of drug-ridden rock performer Kurt Cobain, on April 18, 1993,
Newsweek had William Styron, most noted as the author of the
fictionalized memoirs of the leader of a 19th century Virginia slave
rebellion, The Confessions of Nat Turner, reflect for its readers on
Vince Foster's presumed depression. Styron's qualification for the
assignment was that he claimed some expertise on depression,
having suffered from it himself and having written a book on his
experience. His authority for Foster's case were the questionable
newspaper accounts already mentioned and an anonymous "close
friend" of Foster's--much like the New York and Washington Times
anonymous sources-- who noted that Foster was "clearly
depressed". He would not identify the anonymous close friend
when called on the phone and later queried by mail. One can't help
but wonder if the source was the same one who told Sidney
Blumenthal for his August 9, 1993, New Yorker article that Foster
had lost 15 pounds (a "fact" which Styron duly repeats). Later,
official records revealed that Foster had weighed 194 pounds
during a December 1992 physical exam in Little Rock and at the
autopsy his corpse weighed 197 pounds (more on this later).
In sum, Styron's performance for Newsweek was truly a sad one,
and would have been very disappointing to anyone still harboring
the notion that our "serious" writers are serious seekers after truth.
Enter Christopher Ruddy
Perhaps the weight of Mr. Styron's dubious authority was felt
necessary by mid-April of 1994 because, earlier in the year the
Foster case had produced its potential Bernard Lazare in the person
of New York Post reporter, Christopher Ruddy. Ruddy, the 29-
year-old Irish Catholic son of a New York policeman, on January
27 produced his first shower of new information as a part of what
would become a veritable flood in the months and years ahead
(Lazare, by the way, was barely 30 years old when Alfred Dreyfus'
older brother, Mathieu, induced him to take up the cause). Here,
remarkably, it would appear, was the first American reporter who
didn't rely primarily upon the government for his information on the
case. Rather, he was able to interview actual witnesses to the body
discovery scene, two of whom among the emergency workers were
willing to be quoted upon what they had seen. And their accounts
much more seriously than before called into question the official
suicide story.
What they said they saw was a body lying perfectly straight with
the arms against the body and a revolver still in the hand. One of
the workers who helped put the corpse in a body bag said he didn't
recall seeing any blood or an exit wound. The scene, in sum, was
altogether different from what these experienced emergency
workers would have expected from a man having blown out his
brains with a .38 caliber revolver. It also conflicted with the
experience of the New York homicide experts with whom Ruddy
consulted, according to his report.
This was news which could not be ignored, though it was by the
major news networks and the New York Times. The Washington
Times played it straight with a front page article on the Ruddy
revelations the next day along with a chronology of the main
developments in the case. The Washington Post remained silent
until the next day, January 29, 1994, which was a Saturday, and
buried the article away at the very bottom of page 2 of their Metro
or local news section. Because of its importance the story is
presented here in its entirety, complete with heading and the
commentary that I wrote on it at the time, that is, without the
benefit of the considerable hindsight that we have acquired as new
evidence has surfaced. To get the impression that the Post intended
to convey, and probably did to those who depend on it and other
mainstream sources for all their news, the reader should make a
serious effort to skip over my commentary--the part in italics--the
first time through. After having read it with the commentary, one
might consider reading it one more time a la Post reader after
having completed reading this entire paper to get a more thorough
appreciation of its conscious deceitfulness.
Doubts on Clinton Aide's Death Silenced
It is not the doubts which have been silenced. They have been
magnified. The witnesses have been temporarily muzzled, but they
did get their stories out, which is a great credit to their courage and
integrity. One should be able to say as much for the Post.
Two Fairfax County emergency workers who have questioned
whether the death of White House aide Vincent Foster Jr. was a
suicide have been asked by county officials not to discuss their
suspicions publicly, a fire department spokesman said yesterday.
The suspicions, the doubts, the questions of the witnesses are not
at issue here. What they report they saw is what is at issue.
Paramedic George Gonzalez and emergency worker Kory (sic, it's
Cory) Ashford, who were among the first people to see the body of
the deputy chief counsel at Fort Marcy Park last July, have told
county officials that the scene seemed unusually tidy for a suicide
to have taken place there.
Gonzalez and Ashford said they thought it strange that Foster, who
died from a gunshot wound to the head, had little blood on his
clothing and was still holding a .38- caliber pistol in his right hand.
Gonzalez and Ashford said that in similar cases they had seen, the
force of the gunshot had caused the person to drop the weapon, a
county source said.
In the case of Gonzalez we are fortunate to have both an expert
witness and an eyewitness together in one person. Gonzalez, the
New York Post reported, has had 13 years experience as a rescue
worker and has seen the results of numerous hand-gun suicides.
But the New York Post did not rely solely on his experience. They
also talked to numerous homicide experts in New York City who
agreed that the scene was highly unusual for a suicide.
The fact that Foster was stretched out neatly on his back also made
the emergency workers wonder about the circumstances of his
death, the county sources said.
Also with his arms straight by his side. How did he get into that
position after he had blown his brains out with the gun in the
mouth? Why was there no blood or tissue on the gun, as is common
in these cases?
Several forensic experts, however, said yesterday that the lack of
blood on Foster and the position of his body were consistent with
federal authorities' ruling that the death was a suicide, even though
such deaths often are more gruesome.
Notice the strategic "however." The New York Post also talked to
experts. This article suggests a false conflict, the amateur witness
versus the "experts." Though by great happenstance the condition
of the body may be "consistent with" the official declaration, it is
statistically a great deal more consistent with murder staged to look
like suicide, which New York officials say is a relatively common
occurrence.
"There's a lot of variability, depending on the gun and the type of
ammunition used," said Michael Baden, director of forensic science
for the New York State Police.
But we know that this was a .38 revolver, and we know the
ammunition that was used. The "variability" observation is
irrelevant. Thirty-eights of this type make a big, bloody mess.
"The bullet wound in the mouth does not necessarily cause blood to
come out of the mouth."
Blood out of the mouth is not in question here. The mouth is the
only place anyone saw blood, oozing from the corner. If he died on
the spot there should have been a big pool of blood around the
body. There was none.
Gonzalez and Ashford have consistently described the scene of
Foster's death as tidy, but only recently indicated their suspicions
that his death might not have been a suicide.
But only this week have their observations, or anything like them,
appeared in print anywhere, and they are highly significant. If
Washington Post reporters had heard of such descriptions, as they
imply, they are guilty of journalistic malpractice, or worse, for not
reporting them.
After reports of their concerns appeared in the New York Post, the
workers scheduled a news conference yesterday to respond to a
barrage of media questions.
But Sgt. Blount, a spokesman for the county's Fire and Rescue
Department, said yesterday that Fairfax officials ruled out a
"statement and question" session because of the possibility that
inquiries into Foster's death could become a part of a federal
investigation into President Clinton's ties to a failed Arkansas
savings and loan. Foster, who had been treated for depression
before his death, handled some of the Clintons' affairs in Arkansas,
including their investment in the defunct Whitewater Development
Corp.
The mention of treatment for depression is entirely gratuitous,
thrown in to reinforce the judgment of suicide. Four days after the
death, on July 24, 1993, the Washington Times quoted White
House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers as follows: "His family says
with certainty that he'd never been treated (for depression)."
Foster's immediate family, to date, has never publicly confirmed
such treatment nor has any doctor. No record was ever produced to
confirm the Post's earlier assertion that he had a prescription for an
anti-depressant filled. The Post's assertion that he took that anti-
depressant the night before he died is contradicted by what little
has been released from the autopsy report, which said that no drugs
were found in his system.*
Special Counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr., who is investigating the
Clintons' ties to Whitewater and the Madison Guaranty Savings &
Loan, has said he will examine the Foster suicide to determine
whether there are any ties to his work on Whitewater Development.
But Fiske has given no indication that he believes the official
finding of suicide should be reviewed.
He has given no indication that it should not be, either. And is it
not prejudicial and nonsensical for the Post to write that Fiske
probably won't look into "the Foster suicide" because "he has given
no indication that he believes the official finding of suicide should
be reviewed"? Should they not say "the Foster death" in this
instance?
U.S. Park Police officials said yesterday that there is "no doubt"
that Foster committed suicide.
Maj. Robert Hines, the Park Police spokesman, said no ballistic
test was performed on the antique 1913 revolver found in Foster's
hand because a bullet was never found.
But Hines said an examination performed by federal Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found that residue in the bullet
chamber during a test firing was identical to the residue in Foster's
hand, indicating that Foster had fired the gun.
Surely they must know that it indicates no such thing. Gunpowder
residue is gunpowder residue. It is not unique to a particular gun or
particular ammunition except in exceptional cases such as a black
powder muzzle loader. Even if the hand and the gun residue could
be positively linked, so what? A corpse offers little resistance to the
firing of a gun in the hand or to smudging with residue swabbed
out of a gun barrel.
The conclusion was further supported by the autopsy, which found
gun residue in Foster's palm.
If Foster fired the gun, how did residue get on his palm? Wouldn't
it be on the back of his hand, if anywhere at all?
The Park Police report on Foster was due to be released, but
sources said it is being delayed because of concerns that Fiske will
want to review it.
Until the Washington Times reported on December 20, 1993, that
among the things secretly removed from Foster's office the night he
died were files related to Whitewater Development Corporation,
the White House was effectively resisting the call for a special
prosecutor. Why has the police report, including the autopsy, been
kept secret all these months?
*A good deal of evidence related to Foster's "depression" did come
to light after January 29, 1994, but the case for it remains as weak,
if not weaker, than ever. The family doctor in Little Rock was
interviewed by members of Fiske's team and he claims to have
talked with Foster by phone and to have prescribed an anti-
depressant by calling it in to the Morgan Pharmacy in Georgetown,
which supposedly delivered it to his home the day before he died.
However, it is indeed curious that Foster was able to make
connection directly with the doctor, talking to no one else in the
office. No mention is made in the official record, which was
released in two large volumes after Senate hearings in the summer
of 1994 (more about those later), of billing records, copies of the
prescription, or, most importantly, of long-distance telephone
records of the call by Foster to Little Rock or the call from the
doctor to Georgetown. Furthermore, the level of the dosage is much
too low for the treatment of clinical depression (50 milligram
tablets of trazadone). At that level of dosage it is no more than an
anti-insomnia medicine. So whatever one is to believe about the
medication, the Post is wrong to state categorically that Foster "had
been treated for depression."
There is more reason to doubt whether any consumption of
medication ever took place. Fiske, in his report, says confidently
that, "Lisa Foster saw Foster take one tablet during that evening."
We learn from the Senate hearing documents, however, that when
lead investigator Sgt. John Rolla of the Park Police asked Lisa at
her home the night of the death if Foster had been taking any
medication, she responded "no". He also concluded in his written
report on that evening that none of the family members present
could think of any reason why Foster would have taken his own
life. Those family members included, in addition to the widow, his
daughter and both of his sisters.
The FBI lab, working for Fiske, also claims to have detected the
traces of trazadone in Foster's blood which the original toxicologist
missed, though one of his specific tests was for anti-depressants.
The probity of the FBI lab, however, in 1996 came under fire from
one of its own chemists, Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, who accused
them of misreading evidence to benefit the prosecution in a number
of cases, most notably in the prosecution of those accused of the
World Trade Center bombing in New York City. In the Foster case,
as well, the truthfulness of the FBI has been called into serious
question. In the Fiske Report the claim is made that an FBI team
visited the site where Foster's body was discovered and excavated
to a depth of 18 inches in search of bone fragments or any other
residue beneath where Foster's head had lain. Reporter Ruddy
talked to an archaeologist from the Smithsonian Institution who
was present and he says no such digging was done. I also talked
with a regular visitor to the park who is quite familiar with the site.
He was there only a few days after the date of the claimed
excavation and saw "no signs of digging."
Government Salesmen
The essential sales role of the Washington Post for the
government's conclusions could have hardly been more evident than
it was at this crucial juncture in the Foster case. The Post had gone
to great lengths to create the impression that Ruddy's revelations
really amounted to not very much. One would be hard pressed to
imagine how it would have reported on the revelations any
differently had its editors and reporters been employed directly by
the White House.
Before continuing with the chronological narrative, a couple of
other Post contributions to the government's suicide case should be
mentioned. On Sunday, August 1, 1993, twelve days after Foster's
body was discovered and nine days before the announcement of the
first official conclusion of suicide, the Post's lead reporter on the
Foster death, David Von Drehle, wrote a rare column on the
subject. The column must have been several days in gestation
because, in it, Von Drehle reverted to the original non-explanation
for the "suicide", that it was just one of those things that we can
never understand. His means of doing so was to disinter a familiar
old poem by the early 20th-century writer, Edward Arlington
Robinson, entitled Richard Cory about a rich, slender, handsome
and widely-envied fellow who seemed to have everything, yet "one
calm summer night, went home and put a bullet in his head."
Concluded Von Drehle, "Thousands of lines of newspaper type
have been spent on Vincent Foster's tragic death. I don't think any
of us put it any clearer."
We stress that the author, Robinson, offers absolutely no
explanation for the fictional Richard Cory's drastic deed, though he
does provide some verisimilitude by having his character kill
himself at home at night, not in the middle of a work day in a
hidden corner of an obscure park distant from home and work.
More even than Cory's death itself, Foster's death in Von Drehle's
exposition fits the definition of what we may call the "Richard
Cory Effect", that is, a mysterious happening for which there is no
plausible explanation. If we only think about it a little, we can see
that this would-be press investigator of Foster's death didn't get
nearly as much mileage out of the Richard Cory Effect as he might
have. He could, in due time, also have invoked it to explain a
number of other obvious anomalies in the case for Foster's suicide:
Why Foster's fingerprints weren't on the gun in his hand
Why no bullets to the gun could be found in Foster's possession
other than the spent one and the unspent one in the revolver's
cylinder
Why the Park Police would officially conclude suicide, carried
out with the gun found in Foster's hand, two days before they sent
the gun to be tested to see not just if it had been fired or if it would
produce powder smudges, but even if it was actually operative
Why no family members could positively identify the gun as
belonging to Foster
How Foster's body came to be lying so curiously straight
Why there was none of the blood and gore at the site which is
typical of such suicides
Why Foster chose such an odd place for the deed
Why Foster chose such a bad time. His sister Sharon was arriving
from Little Rock that day, with her daughter, and they were going
to have lunch in the White House the next day. In his last
conversation with the younger of his two sons he had discussed
plans to buy a boat.
Why Foster even bothered to come to work that day if he was
planning to kill himself
How Foster could eat a hefty meal shortly before taking his own
life from depression
Why the fatal bullet could not be located
Why Foster's teeth were not chipped from the recoil of a revolver
which has a high front sight
Why the police concluded suicide so readily
Why the police apparently took none of the steps to rule out
homicide typically required in such violent death cases
Why the police assigned as lead investigator someone who had
never before conducted a homicide investigation
Why President Clinton concluded suicide so readily
Why the president saw fit the day after the death, July 21, to
retain expensive criminal lawyer, David Kendall, who has the
Washington Post as another of his clients
Why there were no Foster fingerprints on the note that had been
torn into 28 pieces
How those who initially searched Foster's briefcase and
proclaimed it empty could have overlooked every one of the pieces
of paper that later came tumbling out when the briefcase was turned
on its end
Why no one at the Foster house the night he died could think of
any reason he would have committed suicide
Why Lisa Foster told the investigating officer he had not been
taking any medication
Why the family would have said with certainty that Foster was not
being treated for depression
Why the toxicologist found no drugs in his system
Why the note sounded so much more like the work of a high
school sophomore than it did like the writing of a polished litigator
Why the family would be so concerned that the general public not
see a photocopy of the note, as opposed to the text of the note
Why the police made no serious, objective effort to authenticate
the note, though they claimed they did
Why no one saw Foster in the five hours between his departure
from the White House building proper (not the enclosed, secured
White House compound) and the discovery of his body
Why there is no video record of Foster's departure from the White
House compound considering the extreme security-consciousness
of the Secret Service protectors of the facility
Why the authorities could produce no records of the required
long-distance calls for the prescription of the anti-depressant
Why the family doctor did not come forward immediately to tell
of his prescribing of the medication
Why all the sources telling reporters of Foster's "depression"
requested anonymity
Why the Washington Post said initially that the list of
psychiatrists was found in Foster's office, but later said it was
found in his wallet when, each time, it was relying upon "official"
sources
Why it took several days for the existence of the list of
psychiatrists to be made public if it had been among the items
found in Foster's car at Fort Marcy Park that night. Weren't they
expressly looking for indications of a motive for suicide?
Why the Post initially said there were two psychiatrists on the
list, which later turned into three
Why the Post reported that police were turned away from the
Foster house the night of the death and were not able to interview
the widow until nine days later, when it was revealed almost a year
later that the police were not turned away and actually spent more
than an hour interviewing family members and White House staff
members who were present
Why the Post did not report what rescue workers saw when they
discovered the body
Why no Foster schedule of appointments ever turned up
Why Foster's personal telephone log never turned up
Why the White House vigorously obstructed the death
investigation by failing to seal Foster's office, removing things from
the office, and not allowing police investigators even limited access
to the office for more than a day
Why the White House attempted to justify these actions by
invoking both lawyer-client privilege and executive privilege even
though Foster was not the Clintons' personal attorney and the U.S.
Park Police is in the executive branch of government under the
Department of Interior
Why the press did not report this extraordinary invocation even
though it was made before the entire White House press corps by
spokesperson Dee Dee Myers on July 29, 1993
The only explanation that holds good for every one of them, and a
like number of anomalies which developed, as we shall see, as the
case progressed, would seem to be reporter Von Drehle's Richard
Cory Effect, that is, once again, "a mysterious happening for which
there is no plausible explanation."
Another Post reporter stepped out of character into the columnist's
role four days later, on August 5. This time it was Walter Pincus
from the regular CIA beat who produced an article entitled
"Vincent Foster: Out of His Element". The title strongly conveys
the column's flavor, which is actually pretty much all it had. Hard
facts were noticeably absent. The article is particularly significant
because it was the first instance of anyone publicly saying that he
noticed any behavior in Foster that one might describe as, at most,
agitated. He does not go so far as to use the word "depressed".
Pincus claims to have had breakfast with Foster several times since
his arrival from Washington, having gotten to know him since both
of their wives were from Little Rock. He begins his article on the
premise that, of course, Foster took his own life:
Like others, I have been haunted by the question of why Deputy
White House Counsel Vincent Foster Jr. would drive out to Fort
Marcy Park in Virginia, walk to a lonely spot, put a gun to his head
and shoot himself.
He doesn't take long to get to his purely speculative answer to his
question, though he doesn't label it as such. We pick up with the
article's second paragraph:
Foster was not a veteran of Clinton's past political battles or his
statehouse service. If his name ever appeared in public print in
Little Rock, it was for legal cases won or honors received. In
Washington, he was clearly a man out of his element.
He arrived in January without a thick hide for the rough and tumble
that one develops by participating in a national political campaign
or even in a state legislative session.
There it is. But he was, after all, the Rose Law Firm's head litigator
making $295,000 a year in low-rent Little Rock. People with thin
skins don't last very long in that rough-and- tumble business, much
less rise to the top, but Foster, we are to believe, had an
extraordinarily thin one. And how did this handicap eventually
prove to be fatal?
When the (Wall Street) Journal took aim at him in a lead editorial
titled "Who is Vince Foster?" he suddenly and surprisingly found
himself considered a questionable man of mystery in Washington, a
"crony" whose very reluctance at immediately handing out a picture
of himself to an editorial page implied he had something to hide.
His composure sometimes broke when he would discuss what he
considered wild assertions in one paper that would be denied but
then picked up blindly by others. He would have been amazed and
extremely disturbed by the rumors that have accompanied his own
suicide and found their way into print.
What, specifically, is Mr. Pincus talking about? There were no wild
assertions in the Wall Street Journal's editorial, and nobody picked
up on their charges, which were actually quite mild. And as of July
20, 1993, press treatment of the Clinton White House in general
was extremely forbearing, especially in light of the corruption we
have since discovered, much of which Foster must have known
about. And yet, Foster's "composure broke" when he spoke of it.
One would have liked a little more elaboration. Did he cry? Did he
curse? Did he rend his garments? How, exactly, did his broken
composure manifest itself? This is material testimony that virtually
cries out for cross-examination.
Pincus's theme of Foster as fragile victim of the merciless press was
picked up on by Sidney Blumenthal in his August 9 New Yorker
article:
Foster sought perspective through a number of conversations with
Walter Pincus, a reporter for the Washington Post, whose wife is
from Little Rock. "He couldn't understand why the press was the
way it was," Pincus said. "It was a sense that people would print
something that was wrong, and that other people would repeat it. I'd
say, 'You can't let the press get your goat; you have to go on. This is
how the game is played.' He'd say, 'Fine.' "
We return to the Pincus narrative for his conclusion:
Near midnight that Tuesday at the Foster home in Georgetown, I sat
in the garden with a few of his Arkansas friends for half an hour.
They had stories about his remarkable life in Little Rock. We then
all talked -- with hindsight--about how he had taken on everyone
else's problems in Washington. Each of us recalled how we had
seen the little ways the pressures on him had shown through. But
none saw any sign that he would take his own life because of them
and so--much too late--each voiced his own guilt about having
failed Vince when he most needed help.
What he is telling us is that he was at the Foster home the night of
the death talking with the White House crowd ("Arkansas friends").
In so doing, he inadvertently reveals his cozy relationship with the
people that the public expects him to report upon objectively. He
also could not have failed to know that the police had come and
spent more than an hour questioning the family. Yet his newspaper
had reported on July 30 that the police had been turned away, and
it left the country with that false impression for almost a year. And
if he and the Arkansas crowd were so perceptive in noticing "the
little ways the pressures on him had shown through," why would
the police conclude from their family interviews that night that no
one present could think of any reason why he would take his own
life? Perhaps the best question to be asked is if this man and his
newspaper have given you sufficient reason to believe that they
would tell you the truth in this matter.
The Search for a Mercier
As noted in the Washington Post spin article on the shocking
revelations by the emergency workers, an "independent counsel"
had been appointed by the Clinton Justice Department earlier in the
month to look into the scandal involving Clinton business partner
Jim McDougal, his failed savings and loan and the Whitewater
Development Corporation, jointly owned by McDougal, his wife at
the time, Susan, and the Clintons. No announcement had yet been
made as to whether the counsel's duties would involve reexamining
the Foster death.
There really was no reason for suspense. Until the ostensibly
conservative, Clinton-opposing Washington Times revealed in a
front page article on December 20, 1993, that among the items
removed from the Foster office the night he died were Whitewater
documents, the White House and its Justice Department had been
successfully resisting calls for an independent counsel. The stated
source for the new scuttlebutt was anonymous Park Police
investigators, but, in reality, there was no way for them to have
known for sure what was or wasn't removed from the office because
they were never given free access to it. On the other hand, as we
have seen, there were a host of other highly suspicious things
associated with the Foster death that these anonymous Park Police
leakers had to have known about but did not share with the Times,
or if they did, the Times chose not to print it. Even on things
missing from the office they might have been more enlightening.
We know from subsequent official documents that they inquired, as
they should have, about an appointments calendar and a personal
log of telephone calls. As we noted earlier, neither, apparently, ever
turned up. Is it not, then, safe to assume that this material evidence
of far more importance than any Whitewater documents was among
the things illegally removed from the office?
It would appear that the decision had been made in the White
House that a Mercier-like figure was needed to put his personal
stamp upon the suicide-from-depression story, and who would be
better for that than an "independent counsel"? His primary attention
would be devoted to the safer and much more difficult to
understand "Whitewater Affair." That would be the magician's hand
that would receive the main notice of the press. A connection had
to be made to the Foster death, however, so the counsel's true
principal duty could be justified. So the Whitewater leak was made
to the Washington Times, and the appointment of putative-
Republican New York lawyer, Robert B. Fiske, Jr., followed
closely in its wake.
It can't be said that Fiske was a well-known public figure with great
moral authority. It is perhaps the greatest indictment of the United
States as it approaches the 21st century that it is very difficult,
indeed, to think of anyone who might fit that description. But, at
least, the press was able to make much of the fact that Fiske was a
member of the principal opposition party to the president. Little
noted was the fact that he had also been a defense counsel for
former Democratic Secretary of Defense, Clark Clifford, in the case
involving the fraudulent takeover of First American Bank in
Washington, DC, by the Pakistan- based Bank of Commerce and
Credit International (BCCI). BCCI was the much under-publicized
largest criminal conspiracy in history involving the theft of billions
of dollars of depositors' money around the world and massive
laundering of illegal drug money, among other things. According to
the definitive book on BCCI, False Profits, by Peter Truell and
Larry Gurwin, the man most responsible for getting BCCI involved
in the United States was Jackson Stephens of the brokerage firm of
Jackson Stephens Associates of Little Rock, Arkansas. To close the
circle, according to a Wall Street Journal report in the wake of
Foster's death, Stephens was the largest single client of Little
Rock's Rose Law Firm, and the man who had been in charge of the
Stephens account before he left for his government job was none
other than the Rose firm's top attorney, Vincent W. Foster, Jr.
Shortly after Chris Ruddy's first Foster story appeared, Fiske
announced that former New York City prosecutor, Roderick C.
Lankler, would focus exclusively on the Foster case. Soon after
that, leaks helpful to the government's original case began to trickle
out of the Fiske shop. Thus began a persistent pattern which, in
effect, allowed the government to have its cake and eat it, too.
Those who wanted to hear more from witnesses or, at least, to get a
look at the evidence which the police had used to conclude suicide,
were put off by being told that nothing could be let out because it
might interfere with Fiske's ongoing investigation. On the other
hand, the press didn't stop referring routinely to Foster's "suicide",
as though the fact that the case had been reopened made no
difference. On top of that, Fiske, with his leaks could actually
reinforce the suicide verdict well in advance of officially rendering
one which he would then have to defend. Eventually, enough time
might be bought that they could start dismissing the whole matter
as "old news".
Let us illustrate the usefulness of the strategic Fiske leak. In one of
his follow-up stories in the New York Post reporter Ruddy made a
mistake and invested too much confidence in the veracity of one of
his sources within the Park Police who had originally established
his credibility by confirming what the emergency workers had said
about the tidy body discovery scene. According to the source, the
police had not even taken the most basic crime scene photographs,
and this is how Ruddy reported it. Very quickly ABC Television
News made public a single leaked photograph which showed a
hand grasping a revolver backwards with the thumb on the trigger.
The hand with its long, slender fingers looks like Foster's as does
the pin-striped pants almost under which the barrel of the gun rests.
Behind the hand is a bed of brown leaves. The photo was quickly
reproduced in Newsweek and other publications.
There was a "gotcha" quality to the ABC and Newsweek reports.
Ruddy has been shown up as an irresponsible rumormonger in
contrast to the official authorities who had been performing their
duties properly all along while under fire from partisan political
snipers. No one ever asked how reporter Jim Wooten was chosen to
get this one leaked photograph or why he was satisfied with just the
one photograph, if, indeed, that was all he was given. He also
reported that the photo contradicted the reports by Ruddy that there
was little blood in evidence. The viewer had to take the reporter's
word for it, however, because blood in any quantity was far from
obvious in what was flashed up on the screen, nor could any be
clearly seen in the Newsweek reproduction. If the doubts were to be
laid to rest, the full collection of crime scene photographs, if they
existed, was called for.
At any rate, the release of the photograph seemed to have given the
government a small victory over the pesky Ruddy, but it might have
done more harm than good to the government's case over the long
haul, as did the stories leaked out in March to the New York Daily
News and in early April to the Wall Street Journal that Fiske had
already reached the conclusion that Foster committed suicide,
though he didn't render a report until the last day in June.
In the FBI report of the interview of Foster's widow, done pursuant
to the Fiske inquiry, the following statement appears: "LISA
FOSTER believes that the gun found at Fort Marcy Park may be
the silver gun which she brought up with her other belongings
when she permanently moved to Washington." Later in the same
report we find this: "SHARON BOWMAN (one of Foster's two
sisters) told LISA FOSTER that FOSTER's father kept a gun by his
bed while he was still living, and LISA FOSTER believes that that
gun may be the same revolver she was shown by the interviewing
agents." (emphasis added) Drawing upon the implications of these
statements and similar statements by Lisa in an August 1995 issue
of the New Yorker, James Stewart, the author of Blood Sport, goes
a bit farther than the Fiske Report and strongly implies that this
silver gun was the gun that Foster used to kill himself (Fiske only
weakly implies it for the careless reader.) But there was that one
released crime-scene photo. The gun was clearly thoroughly black,
not silver.
Ruddy would also later claim that based upon his interviews with
witnesses, the body was not at the site where the police claimed it
was. This is not something he would be likely to fabricate because
what it means is that all of the Park Police witnesses who said
publicly that the body was at a different site would have to be
consciously in on a major coverup and obstruction of justice.
(Rescue workers who, on the record, describe a site consistent with
Ruddy's location would have to be somewhat complicit themselves,
too, because they have certainly not publicly attacked the Park
Police on this matter.) And what plausible motive could they have
to misidentify the site of the body? To maintain that they
nevertheless did so obviously makes Ruddy's task of selling his
story more difficult. Might he have been intentionally misinformed
by his sources so that he would end up looking bad? Well, once
again, there's the photograph of the hand with the gun. The body is
obviously resting on a bed of brown leaves. At the site where the
police tell us the body was found the ground is barren and the
leaves that fell there the previous autumn had long since been
washed to the bottom of the steeply sloping berm by late July. The
background at the Ruddy site matches the photograph exactly while
the official site looks nothing like it.
When Fiske's report was released on June 30, 1994, it was
accompanied by a number of FBI lab reports which have dates of
May and June. Mention was made of an expedition out to the park
in early April to look for skull fragments or any other organic
residue from Foster having shot himself there. The discoveries, as
we shall see, don't clearly and obviously support the conclusion of
suicide. In large measure they greatly undermine it. We also later
discover that Fiske's FBI people made none of their key interviews
until May. But the leaks of March and April tell us that Fiske had
already reached a suicide conclusion. Indeed, it seems he had,
regardless of what the evidence showed.
Fiske Weighs in and Falls Down
Fiske's report is most noteworthy for the startling contrast between
its merit, or, rather, its lack of merit and the unanimous acclaim
with which it was received by the American news media. This
striking unanimity, which included the Wall Street Journal and the
Washington Times, was possible because Christopher Ruddy had
been dismissed from his reporter's job at the New York Post and
had not yet been hired by the small, suburban Pittsburgh Tribune
Review. Fiske summarized his conclusions as follows:
On the afternoon of July 20, 1993, in Fort Marcy Park, Fairfax
County, Virginia, Vincent W. Foster, Jr. committed suicide by
firing a bullet from a .38 caliber revolver into his mouth. As
discussed below, the evidence overwhelmingly supports this
conclusion, and there is no evidence to the contrary. This
conclusion is endorsed by all participants in the investigation,
including each member of the Pathologist Panel. [8]
Those who would question Fiske's conclusions were said to be
indulging in "conspiracy theories" or "talk show fantasies"
according to the Washington Post's "news" story, and in its
editorial it declared that the report should "satisfy all but the most
cynical partisans." Thus did the Post, speaking for the American
press in general, foreclose honest debate. Anyone who might not be
satisfied with the 58 double-spaced pages of report, accompanied
by 91 pages of the resumes of the pathologists, was labeled in
advance not just a cynical partisan, but one of the most cynical
partisans. Yet, I am writing these words exactly two years and four
months after Fiske pronounced his conclusion, and the case of the
death of Vincent Foster is still open and ongoing in the federal
government's Office of the Independent Counsel. Fiske's
conclusions, as it turned out, were not all that definite and final. It's
enough to make one wonder if all those reporters who so praised
the Fiske Report had actually bothered to read it.
There were three obvious reasons why Fiske's report should not
have been immediately embraced as the final word on Foster's
death. First, he separated his investigation into two parts. The
second part was to be addressed to the actions of the White House
staff in the hours and days after the death. Did those actions
constitute obstruction of justice, and if so, for what purpose? The
report that Fiske released did not deal with that question. Second,
apart from the FBI lab reports already mentioned and the autopsy
report, Fiske gave us very little supporting documentation for his
conclusions. The Park Police report was still held back. Fiske
talked of conducting 125 interviews, but there were no transcripts
of the interviews. What is at least as bad, in contrast to the
Whitewater part of his investigation, he had not convened a grand
jury to hear the Foster witnesses and none of the testimony had
been made under oath. The absence of the threat of a perjury charge
seriously weakened the credibility of the testimony. Fiske also told
us what a number of Polaroid photographs of the crime scene
showed, but the one leaked to ABC remains the only one that the
public has been permitted to see. And, in a confessed Park Police
"blunder" that should have raised eyebrows, he admitted to the
kernel of truth in Chris Ruddy's charge about the crime scene
photographs. The 35 mm photos taken by the Park Police crime
scene photographer were said to have been spoiled from under-
exposure. In light of such a curious development, a critical reader
had to wonder if the evidence we weren't shown really did support
Fiske's conclusions.
Which brings us to the third reason for skepticism. The new
evidence that was revealed by Fiske undermined more than it
supported the verdict of suicide. In fact, the appendices to Fiske's
58-pager contained some startling new revelations which somehow
managed to escape the notice of every single reporter and every
single news agency in the United States.
The blood pattern evidence showed quite clearly that Foster's head
had been in different positions post mortem from the almost
straight, upright position in which it was found. There was a
smudge stain on the right cheek matching a stain on the right
shoulder of his shirt which the FBI lab technicians said strongly
suggested that, at some point, the cheek had rested upon the
shoulder. There were also two narrow tracks of blood, one from the
right nostril to above the right ear, in the temple area, and another
from the right corner of the mouth to just below the right ear. With
Foster's body lying head-high on a slope, blood would have had to
flow uphill to make those tracks. In fact, Fiske says the steepness
of the slope explains why no pool of blood was seen above or
beside the massive exit wound in the back of the head. All the
blood had flowed down the body in the back. Fiske's pathologists
could conclude, only, that someone must have moved the head
before the photographs were taken. From the blood evidence, alone,
it appears they would have had to move the head at least twice, but
no was identified as the tamperer with the potential crime scene.
Foster's glasses were said to have been found 13 feet below his feet
at the bottom of the hill, and, according to the FBI lab, they had
traces of gunpowder on them. Fiske said they "bounced down the
hill." But the force of the blast initially would have carried them in
the opposite direction. They would have had to change directions
and make their way over rough terrain and through heavy foliage to
get where they were found. Gravity might do the trick on a round
ball, or a liquid, but not eyeglasses, of all things.
Carpet type fibers of various colors were discovered on Foster's
jacket, tie, shirt, undershorts, pants, belt, socks, shoes, and two of
the papers on which the clothes had been placed to dry. Blond to
light brown hairs, not from Foster, were found on his undershirt,
pants, belt, socks, and shoes. Officially, no attempt was made to
match either the hairs or the fibers with known people or places,
which makes one wonder why they bothered to look for these
things in the first place. Was this one of those trails chosen not to
go down for fear of where it might lead?
Most of the 200 yards-plus route that Foster would have had to
walk from the parking lot to the body site is either dirt or grass. Yet
there was no dirt nor were there grass stains on his shoes. The site
where they said the body was found is barren ground, but there was
no dirt on his clothes, either. There were flecks of mica, which
Fiske makes much of, but casual inspection when a direct sun is
shining reveals that all of the vegetation in the park, including the
dried leaves, is covered with tiny, sparkling bits of mica.
The Fiske Report has a number of other weaknesses, most of
which, as could be expected in such a brief effort, could be
categorized as sins of omission. For instance, the work of the Park
Police was not reviewed. Most fundamentally, we were not told
why the Park Police so readily concluded suicide nor what steps, if
any, they might have taken to rule out homicide. We have to read
between the lines to figure out that the police did very little. The
police had clearly made no effort to check Foster's clothing for
things like carpet fibers. They had not discovered any bone, scalp,
or other human tissue on the ground beneath Foster's head or an
FBI expedition would not have been sent out looking for it nine
months later. They reported nothing about any check on Foster's car
for fingerprints or the area around his body for footprints. We are
told that the FBI lab found one fingerprint on the revolver found in
Foster's hand, but it wasn't his. The impression left is that the Park
Police did not check the gun for prints and the FBI made no effort
to determine who was responsible for the print that was found. We
are not even told if the police made any systematic effort to
determine what Foster's scheduled plans were for the remainder of
the day. In fact, what Fiske has to say about the work of the Park
Police is so brief that we might as well repeat it here.
In the weeks following Foster's death, the Park Police conducted a
number of interviews with family members, White House staff, and
others; reviewed documents obtained from the White House and
from Foster's personal belongings; and took other investigative
steps including fingerprint analyses and an unsuccessful search in
Fort Marcy Park for the bullet fired from the gun. The Park Police
concluded that Foster's death was a suicide from a self-inflicted
gunshot wound to the mouth. [9]
Those who were expecting that Fiske's work would represent
something of a critique of what the Park Police did had to have
been disappointed.
One other glaring inconsistency bears mentioning. It is one that
could hardly have been overlooked by any conscientious reporter,
but no one in the press said a thing about it. Fiske, in a footnote,
tells us that the autopsy doctor took no X-rays because his X-ray
machine was broken. This is unfortunate for anyone wanting to
resolve conflicts because Dr. James Beyer's autopsy diagram
showing a 1" by 1.25" exit wound differs from what emergency
worker Cory Ashford had to say. He said there was no exit wound
at all, or at least there was none that he saw. When we turn to the
last page of the autopsy report, the gunshot wound chart, we see
that Dr. Beyer has checked that he did take X-rays.
After Fiske
With the Fiske Report providing cover, a collection of documents
totaling some 100 pages was quietly released shortly afterward by
the Park Police. It did not include all of the paperwork
accompanying the original police inquiry, and numerous parts of
the documents were inexplicably "redacted" or blacked out, but in
the absence of anything better, this would have to serve as the long-
awaited "Police Report." At any rate, not just the new anomalies it
revealed, but news of the release itself, was blacked out by the
American press.
Of the new anomalies, two stand out. We learn for the first time,
from the very sketchy, one-page report of primary investigator, Sgt.
John Rolla, that the police were not turned away from the Foster
home the night of his death and that he and Sgt. Cheryl Braun were
able to interview not just the widow Lisa but also Foster's daughter
and both of his sisters, and some White House staff members. We
also get to see Rolla's conclusion that no one present could think of
any reason why Foster would have taken his own life. Second, we
get to read the report of Detective James G. Morrissette who was
one of four Park Policemen to attend Dr. James Beyer's autopsy of
Foster. In his report Morrissette notes that Dr. Beyer said that the
X-rays showed no bullet fragments in the head, which comes pretty
close to confirming completely that Dr. Beyer did indeed take X-
rays, as he had checked on the Gunshot Wound Chart, though they
are now missing and said by Fiske never to have been taken.
Considering all the things that were redacted, one can't help
wondering how these latest tantalizing tidbits got out but, as we
have noted, they didn't get out very far, the press having ignored
completely the release of the police documents.
A Senate Endorsement
On July 29, 1994, a month after the release of the Fiske Report, the
United States Senate showed that it, too, could enjoy the
indulgence of having its cake and eating it, too. It would like to
show that it was taking heed of the public concern over the smell of
cover-up surrounding the Foster death, but an actual, full-scale
Senate investigation could only cause problems. If it were to
produce a report that concluded that there was, indeed, a cover-up,
it would have fostered a major national crisis. Covering up a
murder is serious business. On the other hand, if it were to
conclude that it was, indeed, suicide, the Senate would have to lay
out its evidence in writing, and we have already seen a little of how
Fiske's partial effort could be so easily picked apart. What was
done was to let the Senate Banking and Urban Affairs Committee
hold a half day of show-and-tell featuring some of the players in
the Park Police/Fiske investigations (Remember, Foster's death had
been tied to the Whitewater Development Corporation which was,
in turn, connected to Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan. Hence,
the Banking Committee had jurisdiction.) The opening statements
of the chairman and the members would make it clear that they
were not there to question whether or not Foster committed suicide.
As a group they had no quibble with Fiske's firm conclusions.
What they were there for, in fact, was to lend their authority to the
official suicide line, but in the unlikely event it were to blow up in
their face, they could always say truthfully that they never really
investigated it.
Though the committee made it quite clear that they were not doing
their own investigation of Foster's death, that has not stopped
media defenders of the government line from referring to the
numerous "investigations" that have all come to the conclusion of
suicide. In reality, to date, there has not been even one death
investigation worthy of the name. As we have seen, just as the
Senate did nothing to second guess Fiske, Fiske did very little to
second guess the Park Police. He never told us what the Park
Police did to rule out murder. His strongest evidence of suicide
came from the findings of the original autopsy doctor which
conflicted with what other witnesses saw. He could have resolved
the conflict by exhuming the body and having another autopsy
performed, but he did not. In short, Fiske invested the utmost
confidence in the efforts of the Park Police, but what he tells us of
those efforts comes to a scant six and one half lines of type, and
when the FBI lab came up with new avenues of inquiry for him, he
failed to go down them.
So, the "Senate investigation" actually rests upon the "Fiske
investigation" which, in turn, rests upon the "Park Police
investigation." So, what might we say of the Park Police
investigation? The daily press briefing of White House
spokesperson, Dee Dee Myers for July 22, 1993, is very revealing
in that regard. Recall that this is less than two full days after the
discovery of the body:
Q: Can you tell us if a search has been conducted in Vince's office
and if anything was found...?
A: ...the Park Service Police were in this morning. They've
interviewed a number of staff members about Vince's last day, and
will be sort of, I think, finishing up with their look at it today here
in terms of Vince's office. They're simply trying to confirm their
preliminary notion that it was, in fact, a suicide.
--------
Q: Has a note been found to the best of your knowledge?
A: To the best of my knowledge no note has been found. That's sort
of what they're looking for just to confirm their observation that
this was, in fact, a suicide.
Q: Is the President getting any routine briefing on this from them?
One would think that he would be, you know, wanting to monitor
this very closely in terms of whether there was anything here that
happened that could have in any way contributed.
A: Well, just to be clear, what they're really looking for is just
anything that would confirm that it was a suicide, such as a note. I
think the President is certainly being kept abreast of what's
happening, although there hasn't been a lot of movement today. The
Park Service has talked to a number of people, but simply to
determine his schedule on Tuesday.
--------
Q: What specifically did the Park Police do besides interviewing
people who talked to Vince on Tuesday?
A: That's all they had done as of half an hour ago.
Q: Did they check through his office at all?
A: As of a little while ago, I don't believe that they had, but I think
they expected to go in and look for signs of a note or some other
evidence that he might have taken his own life.
Q: How does the President's attorney-client relationship protected
(sic) when they do that phase of the investigation?
A: Again, the Park Police are simply trying to establish that this
was, in fact, a suicide. It is a fairly limited investigation.
Q: I mean, do they go through computer files or does someone else-
-
A: I think they may go through --they may take a look to see if
there's a note, something that is specifically a suicide note. I don't
think they have any intentions of evaluating the contents of the
other documents.
-----
Q: So, what you're essentially saying is that the only thing being
looked into is whether or not there was like a suicide note,
something that would confirm this. Not whether or not there was
some other reason unknown by anybody at the White House now
that might be evident in papers or computers or any other--
A: Yes. At this point the Park Service is just looking into--again to
establish--to confirm what they believe was a suicide.
-----
Q: Is there any inquiry beyond the Park Police to try to determine
why he died, as opposed to just whether it was a suicide or not?
A: No, not at this time. And I'm not sure any investigation could
ever determine why. These things are mysteries.
Q: Dee Dee, you mentioned that he had lunch alone and just had a
sandwich at his desk. Is there any way of checking the phone log
during that period of time when he was alone to see who might
have called him and perhaps might have called him away?
A: At this point, I don't know that there's any move afoot to do that.
Again, the Park Service Police's role in this is the cause of death.
Q: Did he have an assistant, a secretary anywhere?
A: Yes.
Q: Who?
A: I'm not sure what her name is.
Q: Could you get it?
A: Sure.
-----
Q: Considering Mr. Foster's position and his status, isn't it
reasonable to assume that law enforcement agencies are at least
going to make some attempt to determine a motive here? For
example, if you don't do that, you'll leave open wild possibilities,
such as that he may have been being blackmailed or anything like
that--just to rule those things out? Don't you think it's reasonable
that a law enforcement agency will attempt to establish a motive?
A: My only point is that at this point, the Park Service Police is the
only agency that's investigating, and that the objective of their
search is simply to determine that it was a suicide. There's no other
federal agencies that are investigating at this point, but--
Q: But that means there will be no attempt--are you saying that the
Park Service was making no attempt--
A: I don't think that's within their purview. I mean, this is--
Q: They're clearly the investigating agency, aren't they?
A: I don't think that they haven't been here (sic), but they would
again contact the Justice Department if they wanted to come here
for some reason. I don't believe that they are involved.
Q: Let's assume that the Park Service Police determine to its
satisfaction that, in fact, this was, as everyone thinks, a suicide.
From the White House perspective, does this simply end there in
terms of further examining what the circumstances might have been,
or whether this was related to work or whatever? Does that--
A: I think it's been our position that it's impossible to know what--
-----
Q: But it does leave that question open, and all I can say to you is,
this is a question that is going to be asked, and is going to be asked
again and again. And from what you are saying, I take it, no one is
trying to answer it.
A: All I've said and what I'll say again is, at this point, there are no
other investigations.
Q: How about his phone logs?
A: At this point, there are no other investigations.
Q: Have his phone calls been checked?
A: At this point there are no other investigations.
Q: But that would be included in the Park Service's look at the
office, et cetera, wouldn't it?
A: I don't know what the details of their investigation are. They
don't necessarily have to tell us what--
-----
Q: But is there any desire to learn? I guess that's the bottom line
here.
A: At this point, all I can tell you is there are no other--the Park
Service is doing its thing. There are no other investigations.
Q: Nobody has any questions that this might have been foul play?
A: I don't think there's any evidence to suggest foul play.
Obviously, the Park Service is going to finish up its investigation to
determine exactly that. I think they will give a final--their final
cause of death when they finish this investigation. I don't think
there's any evidence--at this point there's no evidence to suggest
anything other than suicide.
Q: You're convinced there was a reason, aren't you? A reason you
don't know?
A: Oh, of course. There's always a reason I would think.
Q: There is a tendency, though, for the various agencies which
could take an interest in this not to want to upset anybody at the
White House. And they may in fact stay out--if they are in any way
encouraged. So all I'm asking in a mild way is wouldn't it be worth
the effort to have someone with a practiced eye to go over phone
logs, correspondence and recent contacts, looking for anything that
might have contributed?
A: All I can is what I've already said. I don't know where this is
going to go.
Q: Has the family asked that this kind of investigation not be
undertaken?
A: No, no.
Q: Dee Dee, it seemed from yours and other peoples comments
yesterday in terms of this is a mystery, it's ultimately unknowable
that you've already decided that further investigations are not
necessary?
A: No, I think yesterday's comments were dedicated to the larger
spiritual questions: people ask you, do you know why, and I think
everybody--there's nobody in the White House that pretends to
know why or would presume to know why.
Q: What I'm asking is--
A: You're asking the same question that's been asked 20 times. I
don't have any more to say about it.
And she didn't. This was the end of questions related to Foster's
death that day, though the press briefing went on for many more
minutes.
What is clear from this briefing, taking Ms. Myers at her word, is
that no death investigation worthy of the name ever took place and
responsibility for that fact rests clearly, not with the Park Police,
but with the White House. The only purpose the police were
expected to serve was to lend their authority to the "suicide"
conclusion that had already been reached by some mystical means.
Ms. Myers' performance, with her repeated insistence that no actual
death investigation was taking place, looks as though it had been
scripted by the office legal staff. They knew that in the case of a
suspected assassination of a ranking member of the White House
staff such as Foster, the law (18 U.S.C. Section 1751) required that
the FBI be the principal investigator. Director William Sessions
had been fired for what seemed like trivial reasons on the day
before the death, and President Clinton had appointed his man, the
as-yet-unconfirmed Louis Freeh, on the day of the death to replace
him, so the FBI was not permitted to do the investigation. To admit
that the Park Police were doing the death investigation in its place
would be to admit to clear violation of federal law. Furthermore, if
the Park Police was conducting a real death investigation, what the
White House was doing, keeping the police away from Foster's
office for more than a day and continuing to deny them free access
to his office and the potential evidence it contained, was
obstruction of justice on its face, a felony which long predates 18
U.S.C. 1751. The White House was in a box. No real investigation
could be permitted, or admitted to, for legal reasons, but only a real
investigation could clear the administration of suspicion.
Even a generally credulous White House press corps couldn't seem
to believe its own ears at what it was being told. Even they knew
that light might be shed on the "unknowable mystery" of Foster's
death by his phone log and appointments calendar, and, in a White
House attorneys' document dated May 15, 1996 prepared pursuant
to Congressional testimony we have the following statement with
respect to the observations of White House lawyer Stephen
Neuwirth on July 22, 1993: "He recalls a request that they (the Park
Police) review what was on VF computer and that they asked for
phone logs and calendars." [10] Later, copies of phone messages
are shown in the Senate documents, but there is no record of
Foster's personal phone log and desk calendar ever having turned
up.
The record will also show that the newspapers of the next day, and
the days following, failed to convey to their readers the brusque
and dismissive nature of Ms. Myers' responses. Either the reporters
present did not faithfully report what they were being told, or their
editors, who usually act as though the world revolves around the
White House, did not deem their reports newsworthy.
It is also truly remarkable that with all efforts mobilized only
toward finding a suicide note on the 22nd, the famous torn-up note
was somehow missed. We now have available an FBI report which
describes how, in the presence of representatives from the FBI, the
Justice Department, the Park Police, and the White House, Bernard
Nussbaum systematically took out all the contents of Foster's
briefcase and after stacking the contents in three piles on Foster's
desk, declared the briefcase empty. He then placed the empty
briefcase on the floor against the back wall (Notice that Ms. Myers
was not quite accurate when she characterized the Foster office
search as an all-Park-Police affair.).
Finally, we see quite clearly from Ms. Myers' responses that as of
July 22nd, the suicide-from-obvious-depression theory had not yet
been formulated.
Returning to the brief Senate hearing/Fiske-Report endorsement,
we did learn for the first time some of the remarkable things that
went on at the Foster house on the fateful night of his death. We
learned from Detective Cheryl Braun that Assistant Attorney
General Webster Hubbell physically and forcefully intervened as
she tried to question Foster's sister, Sheila Anthony, who happened
to be Hubbell's Justice Department subordinate. And we learned
from Braun's partner, lead investigator Sgt. John Rolla, that
President Bill Clinton himself arrived at the house about an hour
after the police did and, by his presence, essentially shut down
their inquiries for the night.
The next day the Washington Post treated these revelations as
basically old news although it was exactly one year to the day after
the Post had reported that the police were "turned away" from the
Foster home that night, and it had not corrected the story since.
Robert Fiske had held no news conference when he released his
report, and he was not, upon this occasion, summoned before the
Senate to defend it, nor was Roderick Lankler, the man responsible
for the Foster- death phase of his investigation. Instead we were
treated to two FBI agents who worked with Fiske, one of the four
consulting pathologists who contributed three and one half pages
of derivative and speculative analysis in Fiske's report to go along
with their 91 pages of resumes, and Dr. James Beyer, the autopsy
doctor. All were questioned most gently, even deferentially, by the
assembled Senators. One could not help wishing for the presence
of someone who would assume the mantle of a tough, cross-
examining counsel who would defend the dead and defenseless
Vincent Foster against the charge of self- murder. The closest
anyone came was freshman Republican Senator Lauch Faircloth of
North Carolina in his questioning of Dr. Beyer, who was testifying
under oath:
Q: Dr. Beyer, your autopsy report indicates you took X- rays of Mr.
Foster.
A: I had anticipated taking them and I so stated on one of my
reports.
Q: Your autopsy report says you took X-rays of Mr. Foster. Did
you?
A: No sir.
Q: Why did you say you did if you didn't?
A: As I indicated, I had made out that report prior to actually
performing the autopsy. We'd been having difficulty with our
equipment. We'd been having difficulty getting readable X-rays.
Therefore one was not taken. (emphasis added)
----omitted exchange over rationale for writing in advance that X-
rays would be taken when the machine was known to be
malfunctioning----
Q: Is it your standard procedure to make out an autopsy report
before you do the autopsy?
A: I don't complete the autopsy report. I complete papers that I'm
going to use.
Q: The papers are the autopsy report, aren't they?
A: To me the autopsy report is the first and second page which
include my findings.
Q: But you make this out before you do the autopsy?
A: This particular form I did, yes. (emphasis added)
"That report," "papers," and "this particular form" all refer,
ostensibly, to a very useful, pre-printed, one-page form called a
"Gunshot Wound Chart." The form that Dr. Beyer would apparently
want us to believe he filled out in advance is reproduced as it
appeared in the Fiske Report at the end of this paper. You will
notice that it includes such things as the direction of the bullet
through the body, the size of the wounds, the location of the
wounds, and the location of any powder burns. Dr. Beyer has even
noted that there were powder burns on Foster's soft palate which is
located in the back of the mouth.
It's a close call as to which is worse, to falsely claim that you did
not take X-rays or to employ the guesswork necessary to fill out
such a form prior to actually conducting an autopsy. Senator
Faircloth was absolutely right: With this page, no less than with the
others, the completed papers are the autopsy.
Relevant to his performance in this case is the fact that the elderly
former military doctor's competence, if not his probity, has come
under great question for two separate cases involving the deaths of
21-year-old men in Fairfax County, Virginia. In the first, that of
Timothy Easley of Centreville in 1989, Beyer in his autopsy
neglected to note the obvious defense wound in the victim's right
hand, and the police concluded that Easley had stabbed himself to
death in the heart. Easley's family continued to pursue the case and
eventually his girlfriend was charged with his murder, confessed,
and was convicted.
The second death, that of Tommy Burkett of Chantilly Highlands in
1991, has political corruption overtones that rival those of the
Foster death. His parents discovered after his death that Tommy
had been induced--if not entrapped--to work as a paid informant for
the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. He had been
previously beaten up and further threatened by a fellow student at
Marymount University, the same student who was mysteriously in
possession of Tommy's wallet after his death. Neighbors saw other
people driving Tommy's car around the time of his death, and some
heard several gunshots in the Burkett home. The parents have also
confirmed that Tommy made two 911 telephone pleas for assistance
shortly before he died. The police, as in the Foster case, concluded
suicide before even viewing the body. They never bothered to
remove the bullet from the wall behind Tommy's head nor did they
test the blood found on walls in the house outside the bedroom in
which Tommy was found. Here, too, Dr. Beyer concluded that
Tommy, like Foster, died of a gunshot wound to the mouth and
through the head.
When the parents had the body exhumed for a second autopsy, they
discovered that Tommy had a broken jaw, a mangled ear, and
numerous contusions, all indicating that he had been beaten to
death. None of these injuries were mentioned in Dr. Beyer's
autopsy report. Might he have completed the written part before
actually examining the body?
After Tommy's case, which has never once been mentioned in the
Washington Post although he lived in suburban Washington, was
featured on NBC's "Unsolved Mysteries" in November of 1994 the
FBI began its own investigation. Their representative told the
parents repeatedly that they were not attempting to determine cause
of death but only whether or not Tommy's civil rights had been
violated. However, early this year they announced that they had
prepared a 1,800-page report which concludes that the Fairfax
County Police were right from the beginning and it was a simple
case of suicide. They did not speculate publicly about a motive. In
fact, they didn't do anything publicly. The public--which includes
the parents and the press-- has not been permitted to see their
voluminous report.
One may only speculate that if this report were to be forced out into
the open, Dr. Beyer's credibility could well be destroyed once and
for all. As long as all the local media, with the exception of the
limited-circulation Chantilly Times, however, continues to black
the story out-- taking their cue from the Washington Post-- and the
Congress remains inert, the report will never be made public. In the
meantime the parents continue to plead with the Congress for
public hearings and have founded an organization called Parents
against Corruption and Coverup. They publish a periodic
newsletter about their son's and similar cases, and they have begun
collecting commemorative sewn squares from close relatives of
dozens of other questionable "suicide" or "accident" cases around
the country for a "coverup quilt", which they plan to display in our
nation's capital.
General Mercier Number Two
If Robert Fiske was wary about defending his report or about
proceeding with the White House phase of his Foster investigation,
he needn't have worried because shortly after the Senate hearings a
three-judge panel had ushered him back into the private sector.
Earlier in the year the expired law providing for ostensibly truly
independent prosecutors, that is, for those not appointed by the
Attorney General, had been renewed by the Congress. The
expectation was that the three judges upon whom the law vests the
appointment power would simply give Fiske the new label and let
him continue his work. For whatever reason, it was not to be.
Kenneth Starr, the Solicitor General in the administration of
George Bush, was chosen for the new Independent Counsel's job,
which superseded that of Mr. Fiske.
If his real purpose was to keep the lid on the Foster case, Starr was
even better suited than Fiske. A cry rose up from the Democrats
akin to Br'er Rabbit's protestation against being thrown into the
briar patch. One of the three federal judges was said to be
especially close to arch- conservative, Republican Senator Jesse
Helms of North Carolina, and Starr himself, having served in such a
high- level political position, was characterized as simply too
partisan, though many newspapers not noted for their Republican
leanings spoke of his fine reputation and his integrity. Starr, unlike
Fiske, did not shrink from public appearances and on such
occasions was not reticent about flaunting his devotion to his
Christian faith and using such pious expressions as "civic virtue."
Like France's General Mercier, he was also known as a man of high
ambition, which was attested to by his having risen to prominence
at a relatively early age. His economic ambition, as well as his
energy, seemed to match his political ambition, because, upon
leaving public service, he quickly garnered a number of large
corporate clients which he continued to represent while serving as
the new Independent Counsel. In due time his ambition and his
reputation for integrity, and whether they could coexist, would be
put to the test.
Initial indications he would pass the test were not good, but before
we explore that question we turn our attention to new developments
which would enormously complicate the task of anyone bent upon
making the suicide story stick.
Document Hound
Unreported to the public was the fact that the Senate Banking
Committee had done more than one brief public hearing on the
Foster death. In addition, members of the committee staff had
conducted their own interviews of various people involved in the
case and they compiled the results of their work, along with the
Fiske Report and its supporting interviews, and the police
documents, minus some of the redactions into two large volumes
totaling 2,726 pages. From this massive, and very disorganized and
often repetitious, collection of information, they drew no
conclusions of their own.
Here, now was a veritable gold mine of new evidence which one
could use to see how well Fiske's conclusions stood up, but as with
a gold mine, a good bit of digging was required to get at the more
valuable nuggets. Since his conclusions had not been very well
supported by the evidence that accompanied his report, one would
not have expected that they would have done much better by the
initially suppressed evidence. The expectations, as it turned out,
were realized, in spades. Determined excavation by some new
hands revealed a whole new collection of inconsistencies and
anomalies in the government "suicide" case.
As luck would have it, the release of the volumes coincided with
mushrooming growth in a new medium of communication that, as a
freewheeling forum, bids fair to outdo the turn-of- the-century
newspapers of Paris. I refer to the Internet. Understandably already
under attack by the clearly threatened conventional press as a
cesspool of hate and rumormongering and as a convenient form of
communication for assorted terrorists, child pornographers, and
sexual deviants, the Net is also quickly proving out as a rapid
alternative disseminator and sifter of news. Defenders of the
conventional media argue for the need for "gatekeepers" who,
upholding what they claim are the high standards of our journalistic
community as they have almost eugenically evolved, weed out the
chaff of rumor and misinformation. As an interactive medium,
however, the Internet permits each person to be not only his own
reporter but also his own gatekeeper. Newspapers and magazines
only present the illusion of a democratic forum with their letters
section, as anyone who has ever tried to take issue with their
reporting of, say, the Kennedy assassination knows only too well,
and anyone who has read this essay up to this point knows that a
lot of what gets weeded out is not chaff but is the purest of
freedom-nourishing grain, instead. Radio talk show hosts can and
do readily cut off people imparting unapproved information, and
the ownership of radio stations like the ownership of newspapers is
becoming concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer corporate
conglomerates.
Nowhere has the Internet as a true democratic forum been better
illustrated than in the treatment the new official Foster evidence
has received at the hands of two Internet contributors with the e-
mail addresses of [email protected] and [email protected]. The
former stands for self-employed tax attorney and accountant Hugh
Sprunt of Farmers Branch, Texas, and the latter for a Washington,
DC area resident who prefers to remain anonymous. Each, in spite
of the latter's anonymity, has established a credibility, nay, even a
moral authority on the Foster death case that surpasses that of
almost anyone in the conventional media because they freely
defend their Internet postings on the subject against all critics,
sometimes incorporating valid criticism into their arguments, and
they don't pretend, like so many of the conventional media pundits,
to be experts on everything. Credibility on the Net is at a greater
premium than it is with the local monopoly newspaper or the
evening network news because of the mind-boggling choices that
the consumer of Internet news has. He simply hasn't the time to
read the works of someone he does not trust implicitly. Unfounded
rumors don't get spread far because every posting comes with an e-
mail name, and anyone who gets a name for irresponsible,
unsupportable rumor-spreading loses his credibility and doesn't get
his postings read. This is the fairly efficient manner in which
everyone, most democratically, gets to be his own gatekeeper on the
Internet.
Trading on their Internet credibility and with no evident partisan
political or economic motivation the two, with Sprunt as principal
author, employed the two volumes of Senate-published evidence
almost exclusively to pick apart the Fiske Report in what
eventually became an imposing 300-page volume of their own
entitled the Citizens Independent Report. So that our paper does
not run to a like number of pages, we shall summarize only the
most important discoveries:
Fiske states blandly in his report that Foster's car keys were
discovered in his pants pocket. Talk about a half truth! What he
doesn't say is that the "discovery" was made at the morgue of
Fairfax County hospital and that not one but two sets of keys were
found at the time. Police were unable to locate them in the park,
though they searched the car and Foster's pants pockets. At the
point they realized they had no car keys, the initial suicide
assumption should have gone out the window, because Foster
would have had no way to transport himself and his car there. At
the very least, an extensive search of the park using metal detectors
was in order. Instead, we are told that the presumption was quickly
made that the keys must have been somehow missed (!) when the
pants pockets were searched (The pants pockets were searched not
just for keys, mind you, but for any evidence, no matter how small,
such as a folded suicide note.). Coincidentally, Officer Rolla had
received a call from the White House asking where the body was
being taken so William Kennedy III from the counsel's office and
security chief Craig Livingstone could go identify it. Even Rolla
thought that a curious request since the photo ID they had
discovered and the presence of Foster's automobile left no doubt of
the identity of the corpse and, when necessary, immediate family
members are the ones usually required for such chores. The record
does not show at whose behest the White House pair performed
their strange task. At any rate, they did gain access to the body at
the morgue and investigators Rolla and Braun did subsequently go
there and find the missing keys, though, in their statements, they
amazingly differ on whether they went there before or after they
went to Foster's house in Georgetown.
Embellishing the "depression" thesis, Fiske states that it was
"obvious to many" that Foster "had lost weight. Numerous press
accounts from those mysterious unattributed sources, a couple of
which we have already mentioned, had given the weight loss as
exactly 15 pounds. Sprunt made the discovery noted earlier,
however, that Foster had had a physical examination upon leaving
Little Rock in December of 1992, at which time he weighed 194
pounds and that the autopsy report showed Foster's weight to be
197 pounds. Considering that he was probably clothed at the time
he was weighed for his physical exam and the body would have lost
weight from blood loss and from evaporation on that hot July
afternoon, his actual weight gain in Washington was probably
enough that his sister, Sharon, flying up from Little Rock to visit
with him on what turned out to be the day of his death, would have
noticed it. This would have been consistent with the unanimous
testimony of Foster's White House co-workers on the record and
the earliest, spontaneous, official reaction to the death which the
reader will recall, that Foster had seemed perfectly normal.
Speaking of two witnesses, a man and a woman, who had driven
into the Fort Marcy parking lot shortly before the arrival of the
police, Fiske in his report stated that "Neither individual heard a
gunshot while in the park or saw anything unusual." However, the
female witness said she noticed a man, possibly bare-chested,
seated in a Honda which matched the description of Foster's car.
The man was not Foster, whom he did not resemble and should
have already been dead by that time. I'd say that this was unusual.
The male witness described a middle- aged male jogger that he had
seen running through the park. The Fiske Report says that everyone
known to have been at the park that night was interviewed. This
jogger is only one of several people who were at the park,
according to Sprunt's researches, who were not interviewed. This
witness statement misrepresentation by Fiske or by his FBI
interviewers is part of a consistent pattern detailed in Sprunt's
report.
Another consistent pattern is the omission of pertinent evidence.
Five witnesses claim to have seen a briefcase in the Honda that the
FBI concluded was Foster's in the Fort Marcy parking lot.
However, no briefcase is in the inventory of things taken from
Foster's car. Could this be the same briefcase that turned up back in
Foster's office in which the curious note was eventually found?
Not only did all the 35-mm crime scene photographs fail to come
out but all of the Polaroids taken by the first police officer
disappeared and many of those taken by two other officers are
nowhere to be found. Vital evidence like this doesn't just vanish
into thin air. What did those Polaroids show? Someone had to have
been responsible for their safekeeping..and for their disappearance.
Fiske told us nothing of this.
Fiske also said nothing about Foster's mysterious financial
liquidity problems. He had visited the White House credit union
the day before his death and they had agreed to "work with him" on
his overdrafts. He was living modestly in a rented townhouse and
had been able to rent out his house in Little Rock. Prior to his
White House employment he had been earning almost $300,000 a
year. What could have been the reason for his financial pinch? The
interviewers exhibited no curiosity, or at least none that was
recorded.
Also, the day before he died Foster had a closed-door one to two
hour meeting with Arkansas White House insider Marsha Scott.
His secretary said that both the length of the meeting and the fact of
the closed door were out of character for Foster. Ms. Scott, in
another recurring pattern on the record, can't remember what they
talked about.
Fairfax County emergency worker, Richard Arthur, in a
deposition taken by the committee staff, clearly and distinctly
remembered seeing an automatic pistol instead of a revolver in
Foster's hand. He was so sure, and his listeners were so puzzled,
that they had him draw a picture of the pistol, which does, indeed,
look like an automatic instead of a .38 colt revolver.
The times given for events on the evening of July 20, 1996, by
Fiske are all out of whack, and the purpose seems to be to lend
credence to the implausible claim of the White House that they
weren't made aware of the death until 8:30 pm. Hospital records
show that the ambulance arrived at the hospital at 8:30 pm (less
five seconds), yet Fiske says the body was not put in a bag in the
park until 8:45 pm. Chief Medical Examiner for Fairfax County,
Dr. Donald Haut, told the FBI that he arrived at the park at 6:45
and by the time he left at 7:15 he, like the emergency workers,
knew of Foster's White House connection. Fiske has him arriving at
7:40 and leaving at 8:30. Even emergency workers who left as early
as 6:37 knew that the body was that of a White House official.
Most tellingly, the name and phone number of Lt. Walter appear in
police inspector Rolla's note pad for the evening in a chronological
sequence which would have placed the entry at around 6:40 pm. Lt.
Danny Walter works at the White House for the Secret Service.
Rolla claims to have had no contact with the Secret Service that
evening, and if he called Lt. Walter at the time it appears that he
did, it means that the White House would have learned of the death
almost two hours before they claim.
As we said, we have given you only a small sample of the
anomalies, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies that Sprunt and his
collaborator have come up with in the official version of events. He
has made the report available for the cost of printing to anyone who
wants it and, at his own expense, has furnished copies to well over
200 government officials and opinion molders, but, to date, no
mention of his efforts has appeared in the mainstream press nor
have any newspaper stories come out based upon the fruits of his
labors, except in London.
The View from Abroad
This last observation suggests another comparison we might make
to the Dreyfus Affair. At a time when public opinion, led by the
press, still overwhelmingly was on the side of Captain Dreyfus'
accusers, newspapers in other major countries were beginning to
doubt the collective sanity of France. The prosecution and
conviction for libel of Zola brought them out. "In Brussels, Saint-
Petersburg, Warsaw, London, and New York, the press was
unanimous the day after the verdict in deploring the French
madness." From The Times of London to Le Genevois of
Switzerland, eloquent denunciations of this strange new French
concept of justice poured forth, "But who read those newspapers in
France, and who listened to those writers?" [11]
The full passage gets us a little ahead of ourselves in the Dreyfus
case, but the following quote from William Shirer is too
appropriate to this section to pass up:
"Where is France? What became of the French?" Clemenceau
would soon lament. Where indeed, when, as the jailed Colonel
Picquart now publicly swore, a man had been convicted of treason
on evidence that had been forged, and presented illegally to boot;
where an Esterhazy could be whitewashed by a military court and a
Zola found guilty by a civilian one; where a colonel who had
confessed to faking evidence against the Jewish captain and who
had killed himself rather than face the consequences could be
hailed as a martyr to truth. A foreigner, confused by such a topsy-
turvy world, asked a young French journalist, Paul Brulat: "Where
are the honest men in this country?" And the reply was: "They are
frightened." [12]
We observed earlier that, because Christopher Ruddy was between
jobs at the time, no newspapers had anything critical to say about
the Fiske Report upon its release. Actually, the Sunday Telegraph
of London had a scorching critique, pointing out many of the pre-
Sprunt weaknesses that we have detailed. Their Washington- based
reporter, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, has regularly kept England's
readers apprised of scandals related to the U.S. federal government
that can't penetrate the American wall of press silence. The
Telegraph is available for sale in Americas's major cities and also
has an Internet web site, but "Who reads it?" we might ask, and are
they not frightened?
America's Almost-Picquart
Anyone wanting to capture the multifaceted and protracted drama
of the Dreyfus Affair for stage or screen could do worse than to
make his main character neither Captain Dreyfus nor Bernard
Lazare nor Emile Zola, but Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart.
In fact, the essential role that Picquart was to play in the Affair had
already been prefigured on the stage by the title character in an
1882 play by the great Norwegian dramatist, Henrik Ibsen. The play
is An Enemy of the People and the character is Dr. Thomas
Stockmann. Stockmann, a medical doctor with a scientific bent,
worked in a town whose economy was based on two industries,
tourism derived from the region's natural mineral springs and a
tannery. In an era in which the connection between microbes and
disease was still not widely understood, he made the discovery that
a number of mysterious deaths among the tourists had obviously (to
him) resulted from pollution of the mineral springs by the tannery.
The amazing power of the human mind to rationalize when
objective truth and naked self-interest come into conflict furnish
the wellspring, as it were, for the subsequent dramatic tension,
leading up to the title label that is ultimately affixed upon the good
doctor. Modern readers, or at least, moviegoers, will recognize that
the role was reprised, and somewhat vulgarized by the Chief Brody
character in Peter Benchley's Jaws (who, in the exciting climax,
teamed up with a Captain-Ahab-like character pilfered from
Herman Melville).
Lt. Col. Picquart had served as observer of the original Dreyfus
trial for General Mercier's Ministry of War. He was a soldier
through and through, embodying all the qualities of bravery and
stubborn rectitude that can be most admirable in the breed. His
superiors had consistently recognized him for his competence, his
intelligence, and his devotion. He had never doubted Dreyfus' guilt,
and, as a thoroughgoing Army man, he had no particular political or
social affinity for the cosmopolitans and intellectuals who were
beginning to take up the Dreyfus cause.
Some two years after the framing and conviction, Picquart found
himself promoted to the top of the Army's Section of Statistics, as
the office of counterespionage was euphemistically called. These
were precisely the people who had framed Dreyfus. He quickly set
about improving their legitimate operations and, as often before in
his career, was recognized and appreciated for it. Then, in his new
capacity, he made some unsettling discoveries. The treason for
which the distantly-imprisoned Dreyfus had been convicted was
continuing. A new communication to the Germans had been
intercepted. Good detective work directed suspicion toward the
well- connected Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. Picquart
retrieved the original note (dubbed the bordereau, or "manifest"
because it contained an itemized list of things) which had been
attributed to Dreyfus and saw immediately that the handwriting
matched precisely that of Esterhazy. Next, he requested to see the
secret file which had been used to persuade the judges further of
Dreyfus' guilt. He found, to his surprise, in light of his recent
discovery that, even with its embellishments, the secret file added
up to very little to incriminate Dreyfus. "He was certain of a
judicial error. His conscience, the elevated idea of the Army he
held, and reason as well--for inevitably the truth would eventually
out--dictated his duty. He would never waver from it." [13] He took
the matter directly to the Army's top man, General Raoul de
Boisdeffre.
The general listened to him impassively, barely surprised. When the
colonel referred to the secret file, de Boisdeffre seemed startled.
"Why was it not burned as had been agreed?" That was the sole
point on which he became moved. Picquart expected a reaction,
orders, congratulations, the indignation of the chief of the General
Staff upon discovering that an innocent man had been convicted.
But de Boisdeffre said nothing. [14]
Returning to de Boisdeffre's office the next day hoping for decisive
action, Picquart found, instead, that the question had been bucked
down the chain of command, to Deputy Chief of Staff General
Charles Arthur Gonse.
In a state of astonishment, since de Boisdeffre had never demanded
such scrupulous respect for the hierarchy, Picquart went to see
General Gonse, who was then on sick leave at Cormeilles-en-
Parisis. He presented the matter during a long two-hour meeting
with Gonse, who also listened without responding, with the
exception of the comment, "So we must have been wrong?" Gonse
gave Picquart a single recommendation. "Keep the two affairs
separate." Picquart wondered how he could keep them separate. "I
did not see how, in focusing on Esterhazy, we could not focus on
the bordereau...and the bordereau, in a word, was the Dreyfus
Affair." De Boisdeffre, however, confirmed Gonse's instructions.
"Keep them separate." Plainly Picquart and his superiors did not
see their duty in the same light. [15]
Picquart's devotion to duty as he saw it would lead to his being
vilified by the nation's press as a paid agent of the hated Syndicate
and as a disloyal Frenchman. First transferred to the colonies to get
him out of the picture, and ideally killed in battle, he would
eventually be court martialed and drummed out of the Army,
spending more than a year in jail on trumped-up charges.
Miquel Rodriguez, an assistant U.S. attorney from Sacramento,
California, joined the staff of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr
in the early fall of 1994, that is, shortly after Starr set up shop. He
was put in charge of the Foster death investigation. In contrast to
the unsworn testimony taken by the Fiske team, Rodriguez
convened a grand jury and began to make some progress taking
sworn testimony. Press reports quickly began to undermine him,
however. In January of 1995 the Associated Press reported that
police witnesses had been angered over the tone and extensiveness
of his questioning. They didn't take well to his repeated reminders
of the penalty for perjury. On the very day that the grand jury
hearings began Scripps-Howard reported that Starr had already
concluded that Foster's death was a suicide and would soon close
the case. "Informed sources" on Capitol Hill were saying the same
thing.
At least superficial similarities in character between Rodriguez and
Picquart could hardly be missed:
Rodriguez, who is in his mid-30s, has approximately seven years'
experience as a prosecutor and had gained a reputation as a hard-
nosed, diligent prosecutor, especially on civil rights cases, said an
FBI agent in California familiar with his work.
"He's the perfect lawyer for a case like this," the agent said,
suggesting that if any cover-up existed, Rodriguez's cross-
examination skills would be well suited for ferreting out the truth.
The agent also described Rodriguez as a "guy with a conscience. He
could never play Pontius Pilate." [16]
On April 6, 1995, Christopher Ruddy, and only Ruddy in the
nations's media, reported that Rodriguez had resigned "because he
believed the grand jury process was being thwarted by his
superior," [17] according to one of Ruddy's "key sources" close to
Starr's investigation.
At this point one finds it very tempting to conclude that someone
who could play Pontius Pilate was exactly the sort of person who
was required for the job, and Miquel Rodriguez and Kenneth Starr
saw "civic virtue" in an entirely different light.
Rodriguez, though, apparently has no intention of becoming truly
another Picquart nor even a Chief Brody. In today's America,
people like that apparently can only be found in the movies. Had
there been no Picquart, following his conscience and bravely doing
his duty from the inside and then continuing to speak up for justice
when he was no longer inside, regardless of the consequences for
himself, there is a good chance that Dreyfus would have lived out
the rest of his days in the torrid, oppressive isolation of Devil's
Island, and the truth would never have come to light. Rodriguez
didn't get himself thrown entirely out of the government. Instead, he
went quietly back to his job in Sacramento and now refers all
questions about the Foster case back to Kenneth Starr. He is getting
on with his career, having had his brief brush with history. The man
from the FBI apparently had him a little bit wrong.
The Forgery
Georges Picquart was not the only government man in France,
however, who did the right thing. The conscientious work of three
other key people was also crucial for the eventual victory of truth
and justice and the exoneration of Dreyfus. Godefrey Cavaignac,
the new Minister of War, was one of the staunchest defenders of
the Army and opponents of the Dreyfusards in the Chamber of
Deputies. In the ongoing contest over public opinion he had scored
a coup by reading in the Chamber the contents of a letter from the
Italian Military Attach, Alessandro Panizzardi to the German,
Maximilian von Schwarzkoppen, the addressee of the bordereau.
The name of Dreyfus actually appeared in the letter along with the
passage, "I will say that I never had any relations with the Jew."
Challenged publicly on the authenticity of his evidence by
Picquart, to be completely certain that he was on sound footing,
Cavaignac requested that the Section of Statistics carefully check
all the documents once again. Picquart, himself, had long been
dismissed from the leadership of that office, and the review task fell
to Captain Louis Cuignet. Examining the original torn-and-
reassembled Panizzardi letter by lamplight, he noticed that the
color of the rules of paper on which the heading and the signature
appeared did not match the faint lined rules of the body of the
letter. The letter was an obvious forgery.
Captain Cuignet took his discovery directly to General Gaudrique
Roget, Cavaignac's top assistant and the lamplight experiment was
repeated. Roget was convinced. They brought in Cavaignac and he,
too, saw the evidence of forgery clearly. "It was to the credit of
those three men, all committed to the struggle against revision (as a
new trial for Dreyfus was called), to have not for a moment thought
of quashing their discovery. On that occasion there was no one to
repeat General Gonse's words to Colonel Picquart: `If you do not
say anything, no one will know.'" [18]
The Affair would drag on for several more years, but the corner had
been turned. News of the forgery spread quickly. What had first
seemed like a victory in the battle for public opinion had been
turned into a crushing, eventually decisive defeat. Confronted with
the evidence, under strong interrogation, the clumsy forger, Lt. Col.
Hubert Henry, tried first to deny his handiwork, then finally,
haltingly owned up. Within a few days he would take his own life
by cutting his throat with a razor (Though some of the Dreyfusards
would suspect that the Army had killed him to prevent his spilling
the beans further, and the most confirmed opponents of the
Dreyfusards would blame the death on Henry's Jewish doctor,
neither had very good evidence.).
In the Foster case, the New York Daily News, using its leaked copy
of the Park Police findings, had first disclosed on March 14, 1994,
that the authentication of the torn-up note belatedly found in
Foster's briefcase had been performed by Sgt. Larry Lockhart of the
U.S. Capitol Police. No explanation would be given as to why he
was chosen for the task, but the Senate documents would reveal
that he had used only one document purportedly written by Foster
for comparison purposes, which is a violation of the most basic
standards of authentication because the "known" document might
itself be a forgery and because several writing samples better allow
the examiner to recognize patterns and tendencies and mutual
consistency. It was later learned, further, that Sgt. Lockhart had no
formal qualifications as a handwriting examiner. Robert Fiske sent
the note, with the same known sample that Lockhart had used,
along with several canceled checks bearing Foster's signature, to
the FBI lab. Since the one thing that was missing from the
questioned torn note was a signature, it is difficult to see what was
added for comparison purposes by the checks. The Senate
documents revealed a number of different writings from Foster that
Fiske chose not to send to the FBI lab, and the latter made no effort
to ferret out any on their own. Using only the scant evidence at
hand, the FBI lab had, nevertheless, gone ahead and pronounced
the note authentic, but with no accompanying explanation.
All the while a heroic effort had been made to keep any copies of
the note out of the hands of the public, an effort that failed when
on August 2, 1995, the Wall Street Journal under the heading "The
Note that Won't Go Away," published a pirated copy on its
editorial page. They said only that it had been floating around
Capitol Hill. The editors of the Anglo-American newsletter,
Strategic Investment, then made copies from the Wall Street
Journal which they sent independently to three recognized
handwriting experts along with a minimum of 12 documents each,
which were attributed to Foster, for comparison. On October 25,
1995, they rented the ballroom of the historic Willard Hotel, across
the street from the National Press Club, to announce their findings.
Professor Reginald Alton, thirty years a lecturer on handwriting,
manuscript authentication, and forgery at Oxford University,
perhaps the world's top authority on literary manuscripts, Ronald
Rice of Boston, who wrote the course on handwriting examination
for the American Board of Forensic Examiners, and retired police
detective Vincent Scalice of New York, a certified member of that
board who, like the other two has given expert handwriting
testimony in numerous court cases, agreed that the note was not
even a particularly good forgery. Each gave the reasons for his
conclusions in considerable detail, both orally and in writing. Rice,
in particular, with his blow-ups and pointer, gave the impression
that he was making a courtroom presentation, at one point slipping
up and addressing the audience as the "jury".
The next day, October 26, the Times had a major story about the
findings of the handwriting experts, but it was the Times of
London, along with the Telegraph and the Observer of that city.
The New York Times and the Washington Post, the two
newspapers which had given the biggest play to the discovery of the
note in the first place, were now utterly silent, as were the TV and
radio networks, the news magazines, and virtually every newspaper
in our once free country, with the exception of the Washington
Times. The Washington Times carried a small item on an inside
page from the Reuters news service about the press conference and
the findings, but it was strictly a one-time thing. Afterwards, they
continued to write about the Foster case as though the handwriting
experts had never told us that the primary piece of evidence
suggesting suicide, which emanated from the White House, is a
second-rate forgery, according to the best-qualified analysts and
most thorough analysis so far available.
The Dreyfus Affair has been called, first and foremost, an affair of
the press. The press pushed for the initial conviction and then
became the battleground upon which the struggle to right the wrong
was waged. No single act of the French press in the Dreyfus case,
not even the publication of Zola's famous letter, however, quite
compares in importance to the collective decision of the American
media not to tell the American people of the independent discovery
that the "ruining-people-for-sport", torn-up but fingerprintless note
"found" in Vincent Foster's briefcase was, in all likelihood, a White
House- concocted forgery.
Perhaps we take our news organs too much for granted. Just as we
expect the highway authorities to keep traffic flowing and the
power companies to provide us with electricity, we expect those
huge and powerful organizations which collect information to share
with us the most important things they have learned. That they do
their job properly is as important to the functioning of our republic
as are the operations of those other agencies to the smooth working
of the economy. Their importance to our political health was
recognized by the Founding Fathers in the great legal protection
they were given by the First Amendment. But what happens when
they break faith with the American people, when they violate the
trust with which they have been invested and do not report the
news? Imagine how the political landscape would have changed had
the newspapers and TV networks simply done their job and
reported the news on October 25 and 26, 1995, and the days that
followed (Admittedly, this would have been quite difficult
considering the deep commitment they had already made to the
government version of the truth.).
The Congress and the Independent Counsel, for starters, could
hardly have continued to ignore the most suspicious aspects of the
Foster case. Handwriting experts would have had to be called
before public hearings to tell us why the note was or was not
authentic. The conflict between Dr. Beyer and everyone else who
saw the body would have to be resolved by exhumation of the body
and a new autopsy performed under the strictest independent public
scrutiny. Telephone records would have to be subpoenaed to
determine if Foster really did order medication through his doctor
in Arkansas and, concerning another inconsistency we have not
previously discussed, whether Helen Dickey of the White House
staff did really wait until after 10:00 pm on July 20, 1993, to call
the Arkansas governor's mansion with news of Foster's death as she
told the Congress, or before 8:00 pm as state troopers Roger Perry
and Larry Patterson have said in sworn affidavits. Considering the
gravity of the possible offense, it is hard to imagine that these
inquiries would not have been part of an impeachment proceeding.
On the public relations front, had news of the forgery been properly
reported, James Stewart could hardly have written his book, Blood
Sport, the title of which is taken from that press-ballyhooed last
line of the questionable note. Stewart pushes the suicide-from-
depression argument by leaning heavily on the text of the note, as
though we didn't know that the current best evidence available tells
us that the note was written, with malice aforethought, by a party or
parties other than Vincent Foster. Had the press done the most
basic job we have every right to expect of them and not betrayed us
instead, Stewart's book would have been a laughingstock, which he
is no doubt astute enough to know. We can say the same thing for
recent books by former FBI agent Gary Aldrich (less the astuteness
acknowledgment), who also parrots the suicide-from-depression
line using the note in his shoddy, semi-literate little work,
Unlimited Access, as does conservative-defector David Brock in
The Seduction of Hillary Clinton.
In fact, because news of the forgery finding was essentially not
reported, things have been permitted to proceed exactly as though it
did not happen. No one uttered a word about it in the presidential
campaign. The nation's editorial writers, columnists, and TV
pundits have been utterly silent on the matter. That they chose to
ignore the findings rather than to take the alternative tack of
questioning the validity of the experts' findings, in the final
analysis, is but one more of the many factors which force the
objective observer to conclude that this crucial note must be bogus.
Actually, at the risk of gilding the lily, there is one last pertinent
factor that we feel we must share with the reader. On August 25,
1993, high-priced white collar crime legal specialist, James
Hamilton of the Washington law firm of Swidler and Berlin who
has been presented to the public as the "Foster family lawyer" but
seems to have been picked for the job by the White House's
Bernard Nussbaum, wrote the following letter which was delivered
by hand to Janet Reno:
Re: Vince Foster Note
Dear Madam Attorney General:
As counsel for the family of Vince Foster and in particular Mrs.
Lisa Foster, I am writing to renew the family's strongly-felt request
that the original torn pieces of Vince's note be returned to her.
In the family's view, this was a very personal note. While it dealt
with business matters, Vince obviously did not intend that the note
be given or shown to anyone at work. As you know, he tore up the
note, depositing the pieces at the bottom of an old briefcase he
owned. He thus did not intend that the note be maintained as a part
of White House files.
The family, of course, understood the need for the Park Police and
the FBI to obtain and analyze the note. Now, however, the
investigations into Vince's death are concluded and family members
see no good reason why the note should not be returned to Mrs.
Foster.
Vince did not leave any written communication to the family. The
note is all there is that expresses his feelings during the last few
days of his life. While his death always will remain inexplicable to
the family, having the note in their possession will provide them
great comfort. Please do not underestimate the depth of Mrs.
Foster's feelings about this matter.
The family appreciates the manner in which the Department and
you handled the note during the investigations and particularly
thank you for your decision not to release a photograph of the
actual note. That clearly was the correct decision for all concerned.
So also would returning the note to the family be the correct
decision. This would recognize the human and family concerns
involved, and would in no way interfere with the investigation of
Vince's death, which are over (sic).
Mrs. Foster and the rest of Vince's family very much appreciate
your personal attention to this renewed request.
Sincerely,
James Hamilton
cc: Mrs. Lisa Foster
To her credit, Ms. Reno apparently ignored the original and the
renewed request, and independent authentication of the suspect
note eventually became possible.
A few more biographical notes on Mr. Hamilton are also in order.
He served on the House Watergate Committee with Bernard
Nussbaum and Hillary Clinton. He was a member of the White
House transition team and participated in the selection of the
Attorney General and Supreme Court nominees. He was author of a
memo to the President counseling "stonewalling" over Whitewater
and in a recently-released White House memo, he is referred to as a
White House "surrogate" handling the Foster death case, and,
indeed, on CBS's 60 Minutes, he defended the suicide ruling. In
1996, he was appointed to the President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board. Mr. James Hamilton, Esq. is clearly a great deal
more than the Foster family attorney.
The Cloudy Crystal Ball
Almost five years would elapse between the conviction and
banishment of Captain Alfred Dreyfus for treason and his release,
on a pardon, from prison. It would take another seven years for him
to clear his name completely and be reinstated into the Army.
On August 10, 1998, five years will have elapsed from the time of
the initial official "suicide" ruling in the Foster case. As in the
Dreyfus Affair, the drama has unfolded very slowly, but it has, up
to now, in spite of the numerous parallels, unfolded quite
differently, so we can expect its future course also to be different.
Dreyfus received his pardon because the mood of the country had
changed and, most importantly, the leadership had changed. The
fact that the most recent, Republican- controlled Congress looked
into the Foster matter even less than did their Democratic
predecessors amply demonstrates that a change of government, even
of the presidency, as long as the new president is either a Democrat
or a Republican, will not be what makes the difference.
In contrast to the French government of a century ago, whose
scandals came serially, the Clinton administration is mired, all at
the same time, in almost too many scandals and apparent coverups
to keep count of. It is possible that one of them could wound the
administration or bring down the president and, in a sort of domino
effect, weaken the forces of coverup sufficiently to permit a full and
honest final reckoning. But one can't help thinking that at least
some, if not most, of the scandals are little more than manufactured
distractions which will work less like dominoes than like backfires,
intentionally set to prevent the truly dangerous wildfire from
sweeping over the house.
In spite of all that has transpired over the past three and a quarter
years, the lack of real progress in the Foster case is what stands out.
Originally, we were waiting for a determination by the Park Police.
That lasted only fifteen days, but then we were told to wait for their
report. Even before it came out, that wait was replaced by the wait
for the Fiske Report. Now we have been told to wait for the
upright, but partisan Republican, Kenneth Starr to render his
verdict, and the wait has now gone on for two and a quarter years.
With any kind of pressure from the press, the wait, itself, would be
a major issue, but there has been none. In fact, over the entire
unsatisfactory state of affairs, the press has voiced, when it has
bothered to voice anything, virtually nothing but satisfaction.
Sometimes one wonders what wouldn't satisfy them, as long as it
came from official government sources. The Clinton administration
seems to be testing their limits. On Friday, November 1, 1996, the
Navy, in grudging response to a Freedom of Information Act
request, released a report on another high level violent death that
was quickly ruled a suicide, that of Chief of Naval Operations
Admiral Jeremy Boorda on May 16. Among other numerous things,
the names of all the people interviewed, the text of two notes found
with his body, and the entire autopsy report were "redacted" or
blacked out. Not one murmur of complaint was heard from anyone,
either in the press or the Congress. The Washington Times in its
article on the release didn't even bother to mention the redactions
while concluding that the report contained "no surprises." How
would they know?
Back on the Foster case, all eyes, when they can remain open, are
on Kenneth Starr. As often as his name is invoked by establishment
figures when the Foster case is brought up, it is abundantly clear
that he is expected to lay the matter to rest by ruling, in his role of
conservative Republican who would certainly nail Clinton if he
could, that it was, indeed, a suicide. Events keep popping up which
make that increasingly difficult, such as the witness, Patrick
Knowlton, who has testified that the FBI agents, who were working
for Fiske at the time but have been retained by Starr, significantly
changed his testimony about, among a number of things, the color
and features of the car he saw in the Fort Marcy parking lot and his
ability to recognize a menacing-looking man who eyed him as he
sought a location to relieve himself. After his story was revealed by
Evans-Pritchard, he claims to have been harassed and followed by
more than twenty men on the streets of Washington. On November
12, Knowlton and his lawyer held a Washington press conference
announcing his suit against the FBI for obstruction of justice and
witness tampering. Only the Washington Times had a small,
somewhat skeptical article about it the next day. The other news
organs, including the TV networks which had cameras there,
continuing the familiar pattern, blacked it out.
In spite of the difficulties, we can be sure that one of these days,
probably under the cover of a major news distraction that he,
himself, might create, Starr will duly render his suicide ruling.
Newsweek reported in a December 2, 1996 article on Starr and his
investigation, in fact, that the Foster death case is one of the things
he has already been able to lay to rest, concluding, based upon the
forensic evidence, that Fiske was right and it was, indeed, a simple
suicide. (It is of some interest that Michael Isikoff was the co-
author of that Newsweek article. He is also the reporter who, while
working for the Washington Post, first erroneously (?)reported the
discovery of the list of psychiatrists in Foster's office and co-
authored the July 30, 1993, article which erroneously stated that
the police had been turned away from the Foster house when they
went to make the death notification and interview family members.
More recently, he declined to write about the harassment of the
witness, Patrick Knowlton, telling Knowlton's lawyer in person
that, though he believed Knowlton, neither he nor any other
mainstream journalist would write about it because it "raises more
questions than it answers.") After Starr makes it all official, future
historians will, doubtless, be able to write of him what Barbara
Tuchman wrote of General Auguste Mercier: "All the strength,
except truth, was on his side." [19]
It wasn't enough for Mercier. Will it be enough for Starr?
Notes
1. Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair, The Case of Alfred Dreyfus (New
York: George Braziller, Inc., 1986), p. 542.
2. Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower, a Portrait of the World
before the War, 1890-1914, (New York: The McMillan Company,
1962), p. 196.
3. Bredin, op. cit., p.39.
4. Ibid., p. 40.
5. Tuchman, op. cit., pp. 204-205.
6. Ibid., p. 204.
7. Ibid., all quotes in the paragraph.
8. Robert B. Fiske, Jr., "Report of the Independent Counsel, in re
Vincent W. Foster, Jr." (Washington, D.C. June 30, 1994), p. 6.
9. Ibid., p. 40.
10. Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, Investigation
of the White House Travel Office Firings and Related Matters
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, Sept. 26, 1996), p.
681.
11. Bredin, op. cit., p. 272.
12. William L. Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic, an
Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1969), p. 63.
13. Bredin, op. cit., p. 162.
14. Ibid., p. 163.
15. Ibid.
16. Christopher Ruddy, The Pittsburgh Tribune Review, April 6,
1995. Reprinted in Ruddy's compilation, Vincent Foster: The
Ruddy Investigation (Fair Oaks, CA: The Western Journalism
Center, 1995), p. 87.
17. Ibid.
18. Bredin, op. cit., p. 324.
19. Tuchman, op.cit., p. 204.
Useful Sources of Hard-to-Get Information
1. Vincent Foster: The Ruddy Investigation, can be obtained by
calling 1-800-711-1968.
2. Hugh Sprunt's Citizen's Independent Report is available for the
price of printing and mailing at (301) 937-6500, which is the
number for the Bel Jean Print/Copy Shop in College Park, MD.
3. For information on the Tommy Burkett case, write Parents
Against Corruption and Coverup, 13456 Muirkirk Lane, Herndon,
VA 20171 or e-mail to [email protected]. They also have a web
site at http://www.clark.net/pub/tburkett/pacc/PACC.html. Tel.
(703) 435-3112.
4. Not mentioned in the paper is the fact that the conservative
media-watchdog organization Accuracy in Media, has, since about
the time Ruddy arrived upon the scene, been consistently critical of
the government and the press in the Foster case. The organization's
chairman, Reed Irvine, is particularly well-informed and persuasive.
One might look up his and several other letters to the editor that
rather miraculously appeared in the Wall Street Journal on April
11, 1995, to get a sample of his valuable work. You can also write
for information directly to Accuracy in Media, 4455 Connecticut
Avenue, N.W., #330, Washington, DC 20008. Tel. (202) 364-4401.
Request in particular Irvine's recent "Farce and Fraud in Foster
Findings". He also did an excellent contemporaneous analysis of
the Fiske Report among his numerous works.
5. The web site for the Sunday Telegraph of London is
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
6. Patrick Knowlton has prepared a witness-tampering report
available from his lawyer, John H. Clarke at 720 7th Street, N.W.,
Suite 304, Washington, DC 20001. Tel.(202) 332-3030.
7. Christopher Ruddy's articles appear regularly in a newsletter of
the Western Journalism Center entitled Dispatches, P.O. Box 2450,
Fair Oaks, CA 95628-2450 Tel. 1-800-WJC-5595.
8. Talk show host Brian Wilson has an informative book putting
the Foster case in the larger context of Clinton scandals entitled
The Little Black Book on Whitewater. 1-800-862-1731. He has a
web page at http://www.myrmidon.w1.com
9. Videos on the Foster case and other scandals related to the
Clinton administration can be obtained from Citizens for Honest
Government, 611 Pennsylvania Ave. S.E., Suite 1996, Washington,
D.C. 20003. Tel. 1-800-251-8089.
10. Strategic Investment, the sponsor of the handwriting experts,
has also prepared a video on the Foster case. Write 108 N. Alfred
Street, Suite 200, Alexandria, VA 22314. Tel. (703) 836-8250.
11. My book, The New Moral Order, the Poems and Essays of
David Martin has my letters to Washington Post reporter, David
Von Drehle, and to writer, William Styron, about their writings on
the Foster case, referred to in the current monograph. It also
contains poetic commentary, at length, on the Foster case,
POW/MIA abandonment and coverup, the Burkett case, the
national abortion holocaust, corruption of the press,
misinformation on the Oklahoma City bombing, wrongheadedness
in pedagogy, the Ken nedy assassination, and the national security
state, among other things. It is available for $14.95 (which includes
a $3.00 shipping and handling fee) from DCD Publishers, P.O.
Box 222381, Chantilly, VA 20153.
12. The New Moral Order can also be obtained from The Free
American, a monthly magazine. It's at US Highway 380, Box 2943,
Bingham, New Mexico 87832. Tel. (505) 423-5250; Fax (505)
423-5258. E-mail [email protected]. The Free American also
sells Unlimited Access, the book by former FBI agent, Gary
Aldrich, which is referred to unfavorably in my paper and The
Murder of Vince Foster by Michael Kellett, as well as a number of
other books and videos generally not available through
conventional sources.
13. The United Broadcasting Network (formerly the For the People
Network) also sells a similar collection of books and videos,
including Christopher Ruddy's work. They have an easy to
remember toll-free number, 1-800-888-9999.
14. America West Catalog, P.O. Box 3300, Bozeman, Montana
59772. Tel. 1-800-729-4131 gives prompt mail-order service for it's
books on various "conspiracies". Ask for free catalog.
15. Prevailing Winds Research, P.O. Box 23511, Santa Barbara,
CA 93121. Tel. (805) 899-3433 has an extraordinary collection of
books, videos, tapes, and articles on various alleged conspiracies.
Their perspective is as much from the political left as Accuracy in
Media is from the right. In fact, they sell a monograph that roundly
attacks AIM. I increasingly find the tiresome right versus left
dichotomy to be a hindrance to perceiving the more serious
dichotomy between right and wrong, freedom and tyranny.
16. The monthly newspaper, The Jubilee, also sells political books
and videos. They are at P.O. Box 310, Midpines, CA 95345. Tel.
(209) 742-NEWS. They have had some of the best reporting on the
apparent coverup in the Oklahoma City bombing case.
17. The magazine, The New American, has an on line bookstore at
http://www.jbs.org. Their address is simply The New American,
Appleton, WI 54913-8040. Tel. (414)749-3783. They have also
reported well on Oklahoma City.
Mention in this listing does not constitute an endorsement of
everything the organization stands for nor does it bespeak a belief
in everything contained in the materials sold (with the exception of
The New Moral Order, of course.). There is some doubt, in fact,
that some of the organizations or publications are what they purport
to be, that is, genuine independent critics of governmental and
journalistic corruption. One should beware "false fronts". A
responsible citizen can only read as broadly as possible and make
up his own mind. One who confines himself to the "respectable
mainstream" is not doing so. Anyone absorbing the lessons of this
essay should realize that the American informational mainstream of
the late 20th century is exceedingly narrow, and it is anything but
respectable.
David Martin
November 27, 1996
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