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Who was Vince Foster and how did he die?
Who was Vince Foster?
Vince Foster was an American attorney from Hope, Arkansas.
He served as deputy White House counsel during the first six months of the Clinton administration, between January 1993 and July 1993.
In 1971, Foster joined Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas.
He was a childhood friend of Bill Clinton and White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty.
After Clinton’s 1992 election he joined his White House staff as deputy counsel.
Foster’s tasks included vetting administration employees, preparing executive orders, analyzing the legal effect of various policies, examining international treaties, discussing the ramifications of authorizations for use of military force, and authorizing expenditures within the White House.
The White House travel office controversy, the first major ethics dispute of the Clinton administration erupted in May 1993.
Seven employees of the White House Travel Office were fired and eventually replaced by friends of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The heavy media attention forced the White House to reinstate most of the employees in other jobs and remove the Clinton associates from their travel roles.
Struggling with depression, Foster found himself the target of critical Wall Street Journal articles in June and July 1993.
What was Vince Foster’s cause of death?
Foster continued to struggle with criticism, weight loss, insomnia, and depression.
He was prescribed the anti-depressant medication trazodone over the phone by his Arkansas doctor, starting with a low initial dosage.
He was found dead in Fort Marcy Park in Virginia on July 20, 1993.
An autopsy determined that he was shot in the mouth and no other wounds were found on his body and his death was classed as a suicide.
What happened between Vince Foster and Linda Tripp?
Linda Tripp started working at the White House under the George H W Bush administration and later she worked for Bernard Nussbaum and Foster under the Clinton administration.
She was the one who served Foster his last meal, a cheeseburger and M&M’s, and was one of the last people to see Foster alive.
In an interview with the FBI after his death, Tripp recalled Foster had lunch on a couch in his office while reading a newspaper.
The report states: “He removed the onions from his hamburger, which struck Tripp as odd in retrospect.
“She couldn’t understand why he would do that if he was planning to commit suicide.
“It did not make sense to her that he might be worried about his breath if that were the case. Tripp does not know if Foster likes or dislikes onions.”
Tripp would eventually become a key figure in exposing the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in 1998 after secretly recording intern Monica Lewinsky talking about the affair with former president Bill Clinton.
Inside The Tragic Death Of Vince Foster — And The Conspiracy Theories That Followed
A former deputy White House counsel, Vince Foster died by suicide just six months into the Clinton administration on July 20, 1993. But not everyone believes he killed himself.
When Vince Foster was found dead by gunshot in July 1993, the national press was ravenous. He wasn’t just any political player, after all. He was a childhood friend of Bill Clinton. And when he shot himself in the head, he was handling early Clinton administration scandals that involved the FBI.
“Travelgate” became the administration’s first public ethics scandal when seven people in the White House Travel Office were fired for receiving illegal kickbacks from the press corps. It ballooned when the FBI got involved and rumors spread that the Clintons planned to replace Travel Office employees with their friends.
When he died, Foster was also confronting the Whitewater scandal, which accused the Clintons of real estate fraud. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr took over the investigation into all these scandals, including Foster’s death, and his report has left conspiracy theorists with plenty to work with.
Ultimately, questions have circulated around Foster’s death from the beginning — namely, whether overwhelming political pressure took a tragic toll, or, as some believe, that Vince Foster simply knew too much.
Vince Foster’s Friendship With Bill And Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster were partners at the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas.
Born Jan. 15, 1945, in Hope, Arkansas, Vincent Walker Foster Jr. made lifelong connections as a young child. His father was a successful property developer, providing Foster with a charming upper-middle-class childhood — right across the street from Bill Clinton.
“I lived with my grandparents in a modest little house across from Vince Foster’s nice, big, white brick house,” Clinton recalled, later adding that Foster “was kind to me and never lorded it over me the way so many older boys did with younger ones.”
At Hope High School, Foster headed the student council — with Clinton’s future Chief of Staff Mack McLarty serving as vice president. He graduated college with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1967 before enrollment at the University of Arkansas School of Law redirected his life forever.
Foster excelled as an Arkansas attorney in the 1970s and 1980s, as Bill Clinton became the state’s attorney general and served two terms as governor. It was Foster who hired Hillary Clinton as the first female associate at Rose Law Firm, and Bill Clinton who made him deputy White House counsel upon being elected.
David Hume Kennerly/Getty ImagesFoster had known Bill and Hillary Clinton for decades before he died.
There was trouble early on in the administration. The Whitewater scandal, about a series of real estate investments the Clintons made while Bill was governor of Arkansas, had followed the Clintons from the campaign trail in 1992 to the White House.
Foster was also in charge of getting Clinton’s presidential appointments confirmed, though he wasn’t making any headway. In May, Travelgate, which involved the firing of career civil servants, who critics argued had been replaced by Clinton associates, exploded.
As scandal led to investigation, Foster kept detailed notes in his journal to avoid sole blame for any wrongdoing. He chronicled his Travelgate-centric meetings with Hillary Clinton and her “general impatience” with him for not killing the story.
Foster wrote to a friend of his exhaustion mere weeks before he died.
“I have never worked so hard for so long in my life,” he wrote. “The legal issues are mind-boggling, and time pressures are immense. The pressure, financial sacrifice and family disruption are the price of public service at this level. As they say, ‘The wind blows hardest at the top of the mountain.’”
How Did Vince Foster Die?
Fort Marcy Park, Virginia.
In the six short months following Bill Clinton assuming office, Foster’s failures had riddled him with stress and guilt. Usually demure, he had shouted at his boss and broke down crying in front of his wife four days before he died. He mentioned resigning from his post, describing his work as “a grind.”
In July 1993, Vince Foster couldn’t sleep and barely ate. He told his sister that he was depressed, and took her advice of calling a psychiatrist despite fears that it would jeopardize his security clearance. When he was met by an answering machine, he got his Arkansas doctor to prescribe him antidepressants.
It was only a few days later, on July 20, 1993, that he was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in Fort Marcy Park, Virginia. U.S. Park Police noted that Foster was holding a pistol and his hand was covered in gunshot residue.
The FBI, Justice Department, and Independent Counsel Robert Fisk investigated Foster’s death and agreed with Park Police. While Kenneth Starr’s 1997 report did too, it included details that have troubled conspiracy theorists ever since.
The ‘Arkancide’ Conspiracy Theories
Citizens For Honest Government Co.Suspicions at Foster’s suicide swirled immediately.
There are numerous claims and details surrounding Foster’s death that some believe warrant considerable focus, despite five separate investigations concluding the opposite.
While Foster’s prints were absent from the .38-caliber revolver found in his hand, for instance, Starr’s report explained this isn’t uncommon with guns of that kind, as the coarseness of their handles doesn’t retain prints.
Some skeptics believe Foster was murdered and dumped in the park. Starr’s report explained the carpet fibers on his clothes “were consistent with the samples” of his home to combat that claim.
But Vince Foster wasn’t the first Clinton associate to die unexpectedly — nor the last. As the “Arkancide” conspiracy theory maintains, the eerie list has only grown.
Vince Foster’s grave in Hope, Arkansas.
The roster includes notable figures like Barry Seal, who trafficked cocaine into Mena, Arkansas while Clinton governed. Whitewater partner James McDougal died in solitary confinement. Most unnerving was the death of Clinton fundraiser Ed Willey.
Willey was found dead by gunshot four months after Foster in the Virginia woods. He died on the same day that his wife Kathleen Willey revealed Bill Clinton had groped her during a visit to the White House.
In the end, despite three years of investigations and alternate theories of murder, Starr ruled Foster’s death a suicide. He exonerated the Clintons of any involvement, as well as cleared them of wrongdoing in Whitewater and Travelgate.
“I guess I would be delighted to learn he was murdered because it would put a whole new angle on it,” Phil Carroll, the godfather to Foster’s children and a partner at his old law firm, told The Washington Post in 1997.
“But that is not going to happen. It was suicide and I just hope now that people will accept the conclusion and let’s get on with it.”
The Death of Vincent Foster
Evidence Of A Cover-up
INTRODUCTION
This is the story that nobody dares touch. This is the story that ended my career in Hollywood back in 1994.
Despite having reported the discovery of Dr. Haut’s signed report confirming the existence of a second wound to Vincent Foster’s neck, radio host Rush Limbaugh to this very day refers to Vincent Foster’s death as a suicide.
Even Matt Drudge, when presented with the FBI records proving that the FBI fraudulently manufactured Lisa Foster’s recognition of the gun found at Fort Marcy Park, refused to get involved, opting instead for a story accusing Sidney Blumenthal of domestic violence (for which Drudge was then sued and made famous).
It only took them twenty years to catch up with me, but it is nice to see!
So, what would had happened if Rush Limbuagh and Matt Druge, not to mention ABCNNBBCBS had had the courage to report this story back in 1994? I would have kept my film career, of course, but beyond that, we might have avoided three Presidential administrations convinced that they could do whatever they wanted to do and get away with it, whether it was murdering the White House Deputy Council, lying about Saddam’s nuclear weapons to start a war of conquest, or scamming us all with 9-11, or human-caused global warming, Obamacare, etc.
Allan Favish’s Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit achieved a breakthrough recently when a Federal District Judge ordered 5 of the 10 crime scene Polaroid photographs released. One of these is no doubt the photo of the dark blued steel revolver and Foster’s hand previously leaked by the White House to Reuter’s News Service. But the other four are photos not publicly seen before.
THE EVENTS SURROUNDING THE DEATH OF VINCENT FOSTER
On July 20, 1993, six months to the day after Bill Clinton took office as President of the United States, the White House Deputy Council, Vincent Foster, told his secretary Deborah Gorham, “I’ll be right back”. He then walked out of his office, after offering his co-worker Linda Tripp, the leftover M&Ms from his lunch tray.
That was the last time Vincent Foster was seen alive.
Contrary to the White House spin, Vincent Foster’s connection to the Clinton’s was primarily via Hillary, rather than Bill. Vincent and Hillary had been partners together at the rose law firm, and allegations of an ongoing affair had persisted from the Little Rock days to the White House itself.
Vincent Foster had been struggling with the Presidential Blind trust. Normally a trivial matter, the trust had been delayed for almost 6 months and the U.S. trustee’s office was beginning to make noises about it. Foster was also the keeper of the files of the Clinton’s Arkansas dealings and had indicated in a written memo that “Whitewater is a can of worms that you should NOT open!”
But Vincent’s position at the White House did not sit well with him. Only days before, following a public speech stressing the value of personal integrity, he had confided in friends and family that he was thinking of resigning his position. Foster had even written an outline for his letter of resignation, thought by this writer to have been used as the center portion of the fake “suicide note”. Foster had scheduled a private meeting with Bill Clinton for the very next day, July 21, 1993 at which it appeared Foster intended to resign.
Vincent Foster had spent the morning making “busy work” in his office and had been in attendance at the White House announcement of Louis Freeh as the new head of the FBI earlier in the day (passing by the checkpoint manned by White House uniformed guard Styles).
This is a key point. The White House is the most secure private residence in the world, equipped with a sophisticated entry control system and video surveillance system installed by the Mitre Corporation. Yet no record exists that Vincent Foster left the White House under his own power on July 20th, 1993. No video of him exiting the building exists. No logbook entry shows he checked out of the White House.
Several hours after he was last seen inside the White House, Vincent Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park, in a Virginia suburb just outside Washington D.C.
The death was ruled a suicide (the first major Washington suicide since Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in 1949), but almost immediately rumors began to circulate that the story of a suicide was just a cover-up for something much worse.
The first witness to find the body insisted that there had been no gun near the body. The memory in Foster’s pager had been erased. Critical evidence began to vanish. Many witnesses were harassed. Others were simply ignored. There were even suggestions that the body had been moved, and a Secret Service memo surfaced which reported that Foster’s body had been found in his car! The official reports were self-contradictory.
The Looting of Foster’s office
While the U.S. Park Police (a unit not equipped for a proper homicide investigation) studied the body, Foster’s office at the White House was being looted. Secret Service agent Henry O’ Neill watched as Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, Margaret Williams, carried boxes of papers out of Vincent Foster’s office before the Park Police showed up to seal it. Amazing when you consider that the official identification of Vincent Foster’s body by Craig Livingstone did not take place until 10PM! Speaking of Craig Livingstone, another Secret Serviceman saw him remove items from Vincent Foster’s office in violation of the official seal. Witnesses also saw Bernard Nussbaum in Foster’s office as well. Three witnesses noted that Patsy Thomason, director of the White House’s Office of Administration, was desperate to find the combination to Vincent Foster’s safe. Ms. Thomason finally opened the safe, apparently with the help of a special “MIG” technical team signed into the White House in the late hours. Two envelopes reported to be in the safe by Foster’s secretary Deborah Gorham, addressed to Janet Reno and to William Kennedy III, were never seen again. When asked the next day regarding rumors of the safe opening, Mack McLarty told reporters Foster’s office did not even have a safe, a claim immediately shot down by former occupants of that office.
The next day, when the Park Police arrived for the official search of Vincent Foster’s office, they were shocked to learn that Nussbaum, Thomason and Williams had entered the office. Conflicts channeled through Janet Reno’s Department of Justice resulted in the Park Police merely sitting outside Foster’s office while Bernard Nussbaum continued his own search of Foster’s office. During this search, he opened and upended Vincent Foster’s briefcase, showing it to be empty. Three days later, it would be claimed that this same briefcase was where the torn up suicide note was discovered.
The boxes of documents removed from Foster’s office by Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, Margaret Williams, were taken to the private residence area of the White House! Eventually, only 54 pages emerged.
One set of billing records, under subpoena for two years, and thought to have originated in Foster’s office, turned up unexpectedly in the private quarters of the White House, with Hillary’s fingerprints on them!
So, who ordered the office looting?
Bill Clinton was unavailable, being on camera with Larry King. But Hillary Clinton, who had only the day before diverted her planned return to Washington D.C. to Little Rock, was on the phone from Little Rock to someone at the White House in the moments before the looting took place.
The initial reactions
Back in Little Rock, Foster’s friends weren’t buying it. Doug Buford, friend and attorney, stated, “…something was badly askew.” Foster’s brother-in-law, a former congressman, also did not accept that depression was what had been behind the “suicide”: “That’s a bunch of crap.” And Webster Hubbell, former Clinton deputy attorney general, phoned a mutual friend to say, “Don’t believe a word you hear. It was not suicide. It couldn’t have been.”
Outside experts not connected the official investigation also had their doubts.
Vincent J. Scalise, a former NYC detective, Fred Santucci, a former forensic photographer for NYC, and Richard Saferstein, former head of the New Jersey State Crime Lab formed a team and did an investigation of the VWF case for the Western Journalism Center of Fair Oaks, Calif. They arrived at several conclusions:
(1) Homicide cannot and should not be ruled out.
(2) The position of the arms and legs of the corpse were drastically inconsistent with suicide.
(3) Neither of VWF’s hand was on the handgrip when it was fired. This is also inconsistent with suicide. The investigators noted that in their 50 years of combined experience they had “never seen a weapon or gun positioned in a suicide’s hand in such an orderly fashion.”
(4) VWF’s body was probably in contact with one or more carpets prior to his death. The team was amazed that the carpet in the trunk of VF’s care had not been studied to see whether he had been carried to the park in the trunk of his own car.
(5) The force of the gun’s discharge probably knocked VF’s glasses flying; however, it is “inconceivable” that they could have traveled 13 feet through foliage to the site where they were found; ergo, the scene probably was tampered with.
(6) The lack of blood and brain tissue at the site suggests VF was carried to the scene. The peculiar tracking pattern of the blood on his right cheek also suggests that he was moved.
Despite numerous official assurances that Vincent Foster really did commit suicide, more and more Americans, over 70% at the last count, no longer believe the official story. TV specials, most notably the one put out by A&E’s “Inside Investigations” with Bill Kurtis, have failed to answer the lingering questions, indeed have engaged in deliberate fraud to try to dismiss the evidence that points to a cover-up.
One of the many false trails put out by government disinformation operatives was the claim that Vince Foster really did kill himself but did so someplace embarrassing and his body was moved to Fort Marcy Park post-mortem, explaining away the many inconsistencies in the evidence of a suicide at Fort Marcy Park itself. Contradicting that claim was the observation that, while the body was rather bloodless as found (suggesting that Foster was already dead by other means when a gun was fired into his mouth to simulate a suicide) once paramedics moved the body, blood poured from the wounds, staining Foster’s shirt.
There are several troubling aspects of the photograph of the body, which reveal it to be a staged shot. First and foremost among them the total lack of blood anywhere in the scene.
This lack of blood is the single, strongest proof that Vincent Foster did NOT put the gun into his own mouth and pulls the trigger. Had he done so, the blowback from the gunshot would have coated the gun, hand, and white sleeve of Foster’s shirt with a spray of blood and organic matter. None appears in the photo anywhere.
The FBI lab report reveals that even with the most sensitive chemical test available, no blood was found on the gun that Foster (we are told) inserted into his mouth and fired. Not only that, Foster’s fingerprints were not on the gun.
This is the crux of the suicide theory put forward by the government, that Vincent Foster, under stress, on a hot July day, put the barrel of a .38 revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger, and did not leave blood OR FINGERPRINTS on that gun.
The lack of blood.
Was Foster already dead when the headshot was fired?
One of the key pieces of information that argued against suicide was the lack of blood at the scene.
When the brain is destroyed, the heart will continue to beat on its own, for as long as it has oxygenated blood to feed it. This is why head trauma victims provide most donor hearts. The heart remains alive as long as blood is still in the body.
In the case of a gunshot into the mouth, the bullet has to pass through the sinus cavities. Any child who has been in a schoolyard fight knows how easy it is for the nose to start bleeding and how hard it can be to stop.
Had Foster really shot himself in the mouth, his heart would have continued to beat, pumping most of his blood out through the shattered sinus cavities and the entrance wound in his mouth, as well as out through the supposed exit wound.
But this did not happen. Witnesses at the scene reported a “trickle” of blood from the mouth and nose (one of the tracks appeared to have flowed up hill).
The front of Foster’s clothing should have been soaked with blood as the heart continued to beat. This did not happen. This indicates that Foster’s heart was already stopped when the gunshot into the mouth was fired to mask the real cause of death.
The Fiske Report.
Robert Fiske was the first Independent Council appointed to investigate the Whitewater scandal. For a variety of reasons, including his past association with BCCI (a failed bank involved with the laundering of drug money), Fiske was considered by many unsuitable to investigate the various failed S&L in the Whitewater affair (many of which also appear to have been involved with the laundering of drug money) and Fiske was eventually replaced by Kenneth Starr.
The Preliminary Report On Vincent Foster by Robert Fiske.
Note that Fiske’s report was only preliminary. His final report on Vincent Foster remains sealed. When the Wall Street Journal filed a Freedom Of Information Act request to force the release of Fiske’s final report, the court, in an unprecedented prior restraint, ordered the Wall Street Journal not to report on the case, or to even mention what the final ruling actually was.
This illegal prior restraint is one of the indicators, which reveals how terrified the government is of the facts behind the death of Vincent Foster.
THE COVER-UP UNRAVELS
No sooner had the preliminary Fiske report been issued than it met with immediate criticism, even from the U.S. House of Representatives.
Careful analysis of the report by private citizens, typified by Hugh Sprunt’s “Citizen’s Investigative Report” revealed dozens and dozens of obvious and clumsy contradictions.
Yet another outstanding series of articles was written by Dave Martin called, “America’s Dreyfus Affair”.
THE SILVER BLACK GUN
Among the most damning pieces of evidence to emerge from the official records was the deliberate and fraudulent manufacturing of the testimony of Lisa Foster in regards to the gun found with Vincent Foster’s body.
Vincent Foster was found with a .38 revolver made by Colt Arms. It was built from parts taken from two other guns, and as a result had two serial numbers. The Frame number was 355055, and according to the records of the Colt Arms Company , the gun was manufactured with a standard dark blue, almost black, finish.
In the Park Police record, the gun is described as black. The accompanying photographs in the Park police report show a black gun.
The photograph leaked by the White House to ABC-TV also shows a dark gun. Compare the reflectivity of the gun to Foster’s gold ring on his finger, just an inch away.
In all the statements by the Fort Marcy Park witnesses, in the Park Police reports, in the reports by experts at the FBI and ballistics lab, the gun is never described as anything but dark blue or (more often) black. The photographs recently obtained in Allan Favish’s FOIA lawsuit clearly show a dark surface to the gun.
No connection exists between that gun and Vincent Foster. Foster’s fingerprints were not on the gun. Neither was any of his blood . The DNA traces on the gun, while “not inconsistent” with Foster, were more likely to have originated with a black or a Hispanic than with a Caucasian. No gunpowder or bullet fragments were found in Foster’s wounds that could be matched to the gun!
Despite this, Robert Fiske inserted a comment on page 38 of his report on Foster; a statement that Lisa Foster thought the gun found with her husband was one she had brought up from Little Rock, Arkansas.
This statement came from an interview of Lisa Foster conducted by the FBI on May 9th, 1994, more than nine months after Vincent Foster’s death.
In the handwritten notes and final FD-302a report of the interview, the interviewing FBI agents describe the gun being shown to Lisa Foster as “silver colored”, not just once, but many times. The gun is never described as dark blue or black.
The FBI agents are not quoting Lisa Foster, they write down THEIR impressions of what is being said and done. In their own words, on the bottom of page 16 and the top of page 17 of the FD-302a form, “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.”
In order for Lisa Foster to believe that the gun presented to her as the Fort Marcy Park gun might be the family silver gun, the gun presented as the Fort Marcy Park gun must also be silver. Lisa Foster doesn’t have to be a gun expert to know that silver is not black.
From the official record, its clear that Lisa Foster was shown a gun she recognized as the gun she brought up from Little Rock, but its equally clear that this is not the same gun as that found with Vincent Foster. Black is not silver.
CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THE OFFICIAL RECORDS THAT PROVE THE FBI MANUFACTURED LISA FOSTER’S TESTIMONY.
Gun powder residue was found on Foster’s body, although not in his mouth. Later testing showed the residue to be unique to Winchester .22 ammunition, as reported in the amended complaint filed by attorney John Clarke on behalf of Patrick KNowlton.
Patrick Knowlton
The credibility of the suicide claim took another hit when one of the witnesses at Fort Marcy Park, Patrick Knowlton, came forward to claim that the FBI had altered his testimony. Patrick was then harassed and threatened, which prompted the filing of a lawsuit for witness tampering.
Perry/Patterson
The White House had come forward to claim that they were not notified of the discovery of Vincent Foster’s body until quite late in the evening. This was a critical item relating to when Vincent Foster’s office was officially sealed for the investigation and (as it later came out) when it was being looted of records.
But two Arkansas State Troopers put the White House’s official time of notification in doubt.
Roger Perry and Larry Patterson had both come forward to report a phone call made from the White House to the Arkansas Governor’s mansion approximately two hours earlier than the White House claimed it had learned of Foster’s death. The Clinton’s nanny, Helen Dicky, made the call.
During the Whitewater hearings, Helen placed the call much later, and to bring the issue to an end the committee members announced to all that the “former” troopers had changed their minds and would not testify to receiving the call any earlier than Helen stated.
This, of course, was yet another lie. Perry and Patterson were not “former” anything; they were still Arkansas State troopers who had wanted to testify but were kept out.
Angered and with no other venue, Perry and Patterson swore out affidavits stating the facts as they knew them.
Linda Tripp
Recently, at the end of her appearance before the Monica Lewinsky Grand Jury, Linda Tripp issued a public statement that hinted at the deceptions behind the death of Vincent Foster.
THE “SUICIDE” NOTE
AT LEAST PARTLY A FORGERY.
No single item connected to the Foster death has aroused as much controversy as the so-called “suicide” note.
This was a note, allegedly written by Vincent Foster and discovered in his briefcase some days after his death. The problem was that Bernard Nussbaum, in controlling the Park Police search of Foster’s office, had shown them that same briefcase empty just two days before. Coupled with that was the fact that the White House did not report the existence of the note for almost 36 hours after it was allegedly discovered.
Adding another odd aspect to the note was the great pains taken to conceal it from the public. Even though the text itself had been published, Jim Hamilton made a point, during Lisa Foster’s FBI interview to remind everyone that photos of the note were not to be allowed out, even in response to a Freedom of Information Act Request.
Hamilton went to far as to request, in a letter (page 1 – page 2) to Janet Reno, the return of the actual “suicide” note as soon as possible, and thanks her again for refusing to allow photographs of the note to be allowed in public.
Such secrecy surrounding a supposed suicide note aroused much curiosity, which was finally satisfied when someone on the inside leaked a photocopy of the note to the Wall Street Journal, which published it.
The availability of the note prompted James Davidson at Strategic Investment to commission three of the world’s top document examiners to examine the note.
In their report, all three experts judged the note to be a forgery!
This hardly came as a surprise. An even cursory examination reveals that at last two different hands worked on that note, suggesting that Foster’s outline for a letter of resignation (for that is what Lisa Foster thought the note had been) was modified. A botched attempt at a signature may have required the strange tearing of the note with the loss of one-piece right where the signature would go.
The note had fingerprints on it. Officially, the origin of the prints remains undetermined, but while testifying before the Whitewater committee, the FBI expert reported that one palm print was identified as belonging to Bernard Nussbaum.
THE AUTOPSY
FOSTER’S “MAGIC” BULLET HOLE.
Virtually the entire case for supposed suicide rests firmly on the autopsy done by Dr. James C. Beyer, a pathologist for Fairfax County, Virginia with strong ties to the FBI.
Dr. Bayer’s autopsy report at first reading seems unremarkable. It’s conclusion is that Vincent Foster died of a single gunshot wound entering the roof of the mouth and exiting the back of the skull.
But on closer examination, problems become apparent.
Dr. Beyer’s co-worker at the Fairfax County, Virginia, medical examiner’s office is Dr. Donald Haut. It was Dr. Haut, not Dr. Beyer, who actually examined Vincent Foster’s body while it was still at Fort Marcy Park, assisted by John Rolla. On page two of Dr. Haut’s signed report, the wound track is described as a “gunshot wound mouth to neck”.
This corroborates the eyewitness testimony of EMS Technician Richard Arthur, who described the gunshot wound in some detail, placing it under the right ear. This is consistent with the news story reported by Ambrose Evens-Pritchard, who described a photograph of that wound.
Was there really an exit wound out the back of Foster’s head?
Prior to the body’s delivery to Beyer, nobody reported a gunshot wound out the back of the head. EMS Sergeant Gonzalas stated he did NOT see a gunshot wound out the back of the head. John Rolla did not report a gunshot wound out the back of the head. Another EMS Technician, Cory Ashford, testified is a tape recorded interview with reporter Chris Ruddy that he was certain there was NO exit wound at the back of the head while Vincent Foster was at Fort Marcy Park!
Outside of the obviously altered page one of Dr. Haut’s report, there isn’t a single official record of a gunshot wound exiting the back of Foster’s head while he’s still at Fort Marcy Park.
It is not until the body arrives at Dr. Beyer’s morgue that the neck wound seen by Arthur and Haut seems to go away and the wound out the back of the head appears.
On the wound description page in the Beyer autopsy, the box for neck wounds has been left blank.
But the wound that Beyer DOES describe is rather odd. Supposedly, the wound is the result of a soft nosed unjacketed lead bullet being fired through two dense bones, first at the base of the skull and then at the rear. There should be metal fragments all over the wound track. For a comparison, take a look at the X-ray taken of John F. Kennedy’s skull following his assassination. Metal fragments are seen throughout the interior of the skull, and this is from a full metal jacket round, the type that LIMITS fragmentation!
Yet in describing the wound track in Vincent Foster’s head, Beyer notes on page 2 of his report that no metallic fragments were recovered during the examination! There should have been lead scrapings all over the bone perforations, had a soft-nosed lead bullet really made them!
More recently, a FBI telex was uncovered which reported that the autopsy conducted by the Fairfax County Medical Examiner had found a bullet entry but NO EXIT WOUND!
The missing X-rays
Beyer himself checked and signed the boxes on his report indicating that X-rays had been taken. Dr. Beyer told Park Police Detective James G. Morrissette that the X-rays showed no bullet fragments at all. Again, with the type of ammunition in the gun found with Foster’s body, this is impossible.
Of course, the X-rays were not to be found. Beyer later claimed that they hadn’t been taken, and that his X-ray machine was broken, although the service records on that machine do not bear out this claim.
The missing crime scene photos
With the exception of a few Polaroid photos that are currently the subject of Allan Favish’s FOIA lawsuit, no photographs of the crime scene exist.
The 35mm photographs taken by the Park Police were supposedly underexposed in the laboratory (although Starr investigator Miquel Rodriguez reportedly used an outside lab to successfully recover images from the film, just prior to his conflict with Mark Touhey and subsequent resignation from the OIC).
In addition to the 35mm photos, many more of the Polaroids of the crime scene simply vanished.
It turns out that Beyer was the last person known to be in possession of the now-vanished crime scene Polaroids. Rolla was unable to attend the autopsy of Vincent Foster because the autopsy was moved up 24 hours unexpectedly. As Rolla stated in his testimony, “Normally you like to have at least one of the scene investigators at the autopsy to answer questions for the medical examiner [Dr. James C. Beyer], but he had the photographs and copies of the reports.”
Rolla testified that the photos were inside the case jacket when the jacket went to Beyer. After it had come back, the photos were gone. Note also that whereas it is normal to have investigators present for the autopsy, the last minute schedule change, moving the Foster up a day, meant that Beyer performed a significant part of the autopsy unobserved. By the time Park Police observers saw the body, Beyer had removed Foster’s entire tongue and upper palette, obliterating the “mouth to neck” gunshot wound Dr. Haut had seen.
Clearly, something is very wrong with the autopsy and the preponderance of evidence points to Beyer as author of the deception. Certainly, he was well positioned to tamper with Dr. Haut’s original report, altering the page 1 description.
Beyer’s past history isn’t the most reassuring. Indeed he seems to be the Virginia version of the infamous Dr. Fahmy Malek, the Arkansas M.E. who ignored clear evidence of homicide in the deaths of Don Henry and Kevin Ives and in one case ruled that a man who had been beheaded was dead of natural causes.
Beyer himself, in the case of Tommy Burkett, ignored a broken jaw in order to rule that Burkett had killed himself with a gun. Despite having shown the autopsy photos to Burkett’s father, Beyer later claimed (as he did with the Foster X-rays) that they had never really existed. After a second autopsy, the case was reopened as a homicide.
Likewise, in 1989 there was an autopsy on establishing the death of a man named Tim Easley. Mr. Beyer, the coroner, ruled that Easley killed himself by stabbing himself in the chest. He failed to notice a defensive wound on the man’s hand. The case was reopened, and, after an outside expert reviewed the case, Easley’s girlfriend confessed to murdering him.
In short, Dr. Beyer’s consistent performance (indeed his “specialty”) appears to be the cover-up of murder by declaration of suicide!
In the case of Vincent Foster, the question must be asked if Dr. Beyer, given his past history, changed a non-fatal neck wound seen by witnesses at Fort Marcy Park into a fatal head shot needed for the suicide cover up.
THE FOSTER AUTOPSY AND PROOF THAT X-RAYS WERE TAKEN.
DOCUMENTED PROOF OF A WOUND ON FOSTER’S NECK CONCEALED BY THE OFFICIAL AUTOPSY, AND THE FBI MEMO THAT CONFIRMS THERE WAS NO EXIT WOUND TO THE BACK OF FOSTER’S HEAD!
The Starr Report.
Long before the actual release of Kenneth Starr’s report on Vincent Foster, and despite an appearance of a sincere effort at investigation, there were indications of an impending continuance of the cover-up started by Starr’s predecessor, Robert Fiske (the BCCI lawyer).
The first indication came with Starr’s handling of investigator Miquel Rodriquez’ conflicts with fellow investigator Mark Touhey. Rodriquez had uncovered what he thought was clear evidence of a cover-up in the death of Vincent Foster; in hindsight it would be almost impossible not to.
By way of example, Rodriguez had taken the 35mm negatives taken at the Fort Marcy Park location, which had been declared unusable, and taken them to an outside image enhancement lab which succeeded in recovering images from the negatives.
Under normal circumstances, one would assume such a success at recovering data would meet with approval, but such was not to be. Rodriguez came under severe criticism and opposition from fellow investigator Mark Touhey. When Rodriguez took the conflict to Kenneth Starr, Starr backed Touhey and Rodriguez was forced to resign, his enhanced photographs of the crime scene have never been released.
Further confirmation of Starr’s intentions came when the FBI records regarding the showing of a silver gun to Lisa Foster first surfaced. Hugh Sprunt, in one of his many meetings with investigators from Kenneth Starr’s office, informed them of this discovery. Starr’s investigators, echoing the claims being put out on the internet at the time, assured Hugh Sprunt that the photo leaked by the White House to Reuter’s was quite misleading with regard to the gun’s color, and that it was reasonable to consider the gun to be of “silver color”. As can be seen by the high quality photographs of the gun released as part of Allan Favish’s Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit, the gun is quite dark, and not to be confused with a shiny silver gun.
With such an obvious pander to the official story coming from the lips of Starr’s own investigators, it therefore came as no surprise that Kenneth Starr’s report on Vincent Foster continued the claim of suicide. But unlike the Fiske Report, Starr’s Report had something new. It had an addendum.
This addendum had been submitted by the attorney for Patrick Knowlton, John Clarke, and had been added to Starr’s Report by the three-judge panel supervising his work over Starr’s strenuous objections!
The addendum so undermined the conclusions of Starr’s report that Starr had it published in a second, separate volume from his own report. Copies of the Starr report were then distributed to the media without the second volume. Most Americans to this day are not aware of the existence of the court ordered addendum to the Starr Report.
Kenneth Starr caught in a lie.
In his report on Vincent Foster, Kenneth Starr attempted to resolve some of the lingering questions regarding the claim of suicide.
One such question involved the dark blued steel gun found with Foster’s body (the gun that the FBI had fraudulently tried to link to Vincent Foster) which did not have any of his fingerprints on it.
Kenneth Starr included in his report the comment that glove box of Vincent Foster’s car contained an oven mitt. Dr. Henry Lee had concluded that Vincent Foster had carried the dark blued steel revolver to Fort Marcy Park inside the oven mitt and that this explained the lack of fingerprints.
Of course, there is a huge logic flaw in the claim. Star reports that the oven mitt was left in the car, photographed inside the glove box by the Park Police the very next day. Foster would therefore have to have carried the dark blued steel revolver with him from the car, without the protection of the oven mitt, then placed it inside his mouth and pulled the trigger.
The presence of the oven mitt in the glove box therefore does not explain the lack of fingerprints on the dark blued steel revolver found next to Foster’s body.
While there may be legitimate reasons for an oven mitt to be in the glove box there is some question as to whether the oven mitt was really in Foster’s car as represented by Kenneth Starr.
Starr states that the oven mitt was photographed by the Park Police in their impound lot the day after Foster’s body was found, July 21st, 1993. And, in the photographs from Allan Favish’s FOIA lawsuit, there are photographs showing an oven mitt quite prominently on display inside the glove box.
But there is a problem. A photograph taken at Fort Marcy Park the night of July 20th 1993 clearly shows debris on the passenger side floor.
In the Park Police records, Detective Braun emptied the glove box of all items PRIOR to detective Smith removing and cataloguing the debris from the passenger seat floor. Records show Braun emptying the glove box prior to leaving the Park Police impound lot as 6:35 AM July 21st. Detective Smith’s paperwork has him cleaning off the passenger side floor after noon on July 21st.
Clearly, a photograph showing the glove box with items in it over a clean passenger side floor is in direct contradiction to the Park Police record of the search of Foster’s car.
The photographs of the oven mitt appear to be after-the-fact stagings at best, complete frauds at worst. When Detective Braun emptied the glove box from Vincent Foster’s car, her inventory did not record the presence of an oven mitt.
Lisa Foster
It’s easy to simply dismiss Lisa Foster as the hapless victim of a tragedy, and to (as so many supporters of the suicide theory have argued) declare her off-limits in any analysis of the events surrounding the death of her first husband.
However, there are indications that Lisa Foster has had her own suspicions regarding just how her husband died.
When John Rolla first arrived at the Foster’s D.C. home to inform Lisa Foster of the discovery of her husband’s body at Fort Marcy Park, Rolla noted an unusual event in his report.
What Rolla saw fit to comment on was the strange reaction of Lisa Foster to Rolla’s describing the gun found with her husband’s body, in which at the mention of the gun’s color Lisa simply exits the room in a highly emotional state.
In Lisa Foster’s FBI interview it was established that the only gun that was in the Foster’s Washington D.C. Residence was a chrome plated revolver. It is apparent that Lisa would have had to know that the black gun being described to her by Rolla was not her husband’s.
But rather than say anything about the discrepancy, Lisa Foster simply terminated the discussion.
Yet another indication of acquiescence if not complicity was found in Lisa Foster’s New Yorker interview, basically a spin piece in which Lisa Foster talked about the stresses of the preceding two years but said nothing to challenge the suicide theory of her husband’s death.
Now, at the time Lisa Foster did this interview, she had to know deception existed in the case. John Rolla had told her that the gun found with her husband’s body was black. Lisa knew that the black gun could not be the Foster family’s silver gun. When shown a photograph of the dark blued steel gun she did not identify it. But by the time this interview took place, she had been through the FBI interview in which a silver gun was presented to her as the gun found with her husband’s body! Lisa Foster did not comment on the magically changed gun during the interview, nor did she take the opportunity to mention the issue during her interview with the New Yorker.
It’s important not to ascribe a sinister motive to Lisa Foster’s actions. A mother who has seen her children lose one parent and is reasonably concerned that they not lose another easily explains them.
Shortly after the New Yorker interview, Lisa Foster married Judge Moody in Arkansas. Shortly after that, Moody’s son Neil was killed in a high-speed traffic accident. Witnesses reported he was being pursued at the time of the crash.
The Endless Spin
No sooner had questions surfaced regarding the circumstances of Vincent Foster’s death than a crowd of people surged forth to assure America that Vincent Foster had indeed been depressed even though he had clearly concealed it from everyone around him.
Leading the attack was CBS “60 Minutes”, which had openly admitted biasing its handling of the Gennifer Flower’s segment in 1992 to help Bill Clinton win the nomination. Quit a far cry from the media handling of Gary Hart’s infidelities!
So, when reporter Chris Ruddy started writing a series of article for the New York Post regarding the inconsistencies in the Vincent Foster case, “60 Minutes” again stepped again to Bill Clinton’s defense with a hit piece on Ruddy. The mis-reporting was so outrageous and error filled that Accuracy in Media and issued some highly critical reports, as did Congressman Dan Burton.
Next came a segment of the A&E program “Inside Investigations” with Bill Kurtis, which attempted to explain the absence of fingerprints on the gun found with Foster’s body by showing how the deep grooves of a modern automatic pistol simply do not provide the surfaces needed to capture fingerprints. That Foster’s body was not found with a modern automatic pistol with deep grooves and heavy texturing, but with a smooth metal revolver, was not mentioned.
The extreme lengths that Mike Wallace went to attack those who doubted the official suicide story resulted in the following cartoon.
Ergo, Stewert and his book are purely propaganda!
The public reaction
With the mainstream media having abandoned its self-proclaimed role of watchdog against government abuse, the public at large began to seek other, less traditional venues to display their awareness.
An unknown party traced out the words “Foster murder” at the base of the Washington Monument, using garden fertilizer! This prompted the following news story.
Vince Foster Was Murdered
– ‘Suicide’ Was Fixed
Pat Shannon took a slightly-more-than-cursory gander at the Vince Foster case and remarked, “It doesn’t take a brilliant professional investigator to define this case, but it takes many to cover it up.”
Indeed, from Day One the facts have shown that medical examiners and investigators – following a tremendous influx of intimidation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation – had molded their own “facts” to mesh with the White House spin. And once again, the American people bought it. An uncommon cadre of amateur sleuths has proven the deception. They accuse the Park Police, the FBI and the Office of Independent Counsel including both Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr of Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice, and the evidence is stunning. It all adds up to a “Failure of the Public Trust.”
“Eighty times the Office of Independent Counsel made specific points,” says Washington, D.C., attorney John Clarke, “and eighty times they lied.” His client is Patrick Knowlton, 44, who stopped at Fort Marcy Park on the western side of the Potomac River for a nature call that sultry July day in 1993, and stepped into history.
The third player in this unlikely coalition is a professional magician, who deftly bamboozles his audience with sleight-of-hand card tricks in order to portray the government’s chicanery in the case Hugh Turley.
Their facts and figures do far more than convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. They show murder and cover-up “beyond any shadow of a doubt.” The result of their extensive, indefatigable research is Failure of the Public Trust, a 510-page documentary (which sometimes reads more like a spy novel than a legal document) gleaned from the public record by Clarke in preparation for the Title 42 civil suit on behalf of his client Patrick Knowlton. Knowlton provided his eyewitness testimony, Turley did most of the writing and Clarke edited the whole thing. All participated in the research.
The Mysterious Stranger
To explain Patrick Knowlton’s stumble into history and why there is a civil suit against more than 34 known and unknown defendants, we must go back to that fateful day – the day of Vince Foster’s murder, July 20, 1993. Foster left his White House office at 1:30 p.m., saying, “I’ll be back.” He never returned. A few hours later, Patrick Knowlton, a building contractor having completed a hot day’s work, finished a cold beer with friends and headed out on a two-hour drive toward home. At 4:30, he wheeled his car into the parking area of Fort Marcy Park, a quiet haven rumored to be a rendezvous spot for homosexuals and illicit drug exchanges. Knowlton was unaware of this but knew he could secure a spot for a brief pause in a secluded shadow on the leafy hillside.
As he pulled his car into space #3, on his right in #5 was a late model automobile backed into the space. The driver appeared to be closely observing the front entrance, and Knowlton had an eerie feeling about him. As Patrick emerged from his car, the feeling was enhanced by a very menacing look from the stranger, who looked more like he was straight out of a James Bond movie. Knowlton admits the intimidating demeanor of this stranger unnerved him.
To his left was parked an unoccupied mid-1980s brown Honda sedan with Arkansas license plates. Immediately after Knowlton The Mysterious Stranger and began to stare at him, menacingly. As he started from his car toward the footpath, Patrick heard the blue-gray sedan’s door open. Apprehensive, he walked to the sign bordering the footpath entrance to the park and feigned to read its historical information while nonchalantly glancing to his right to see if the man was approaching. He saw the man leaning on the roof of the driver’s side of the sedan, watching him intently. Patrick then cautiously proceeded 75 feet down the footpath’s left fork to the first large tree. This was in the opposite direction from which Vince Foster’s body would soon be recovered. (Knowlton and Clarke shudder to think what may have happened if Patrick had randomly chosen to take the direction toward Foster’s location.)
While busily relieving himself, Knowlton heard the man close his car door, but because the foliage was so dense, he couldn’t see the parking lot and hoped the man was not pursuing him. As he walked back to the parking lot, he scanned the area with a new sense of awareness, but did not see the man. He purposefully in order to maintain space until he learned the man’s whereabouts walked directly to the driver’s side of the Honda and then around the back of it, observing and remembering several items in the back seat. He then was comforted to see that the stranger was back behind the wheel of his own car but still staring fixedly at him.
Of the five things Patrick witnessed at the park and in the car, the “rust-brown” Honda itself is the most relevant and became the root of Knowlton’s future troubles. It was not Vince Foster’s car! When Foster’s body was discovered approximately 70 minutes after Patrick left the park, the autopsy and other forensic evidence showed Foster had been dead for much longer than that.
Win Some, Lose Some
Knowlton’s suit was filed in October of 1996. In July of 1997, John Clarke learned that Kenneth Starr had issued his 114-page, double-spaced report, on Vince Foster’s death. Under the Independent Counsel statute, those who are named in the report can submit factual information and comments, which in the discretion of the court can be attached to that OIC report. However, Starr attempted to prevent Clarke from attaching anything because Patrick Knowlton was not specifically mentioned by name but only as “C-2,” the second civilian witness.
Clarke then went to the Court of Appeals saying that the mere cryptic mention of Knowlton as “C-2” was sufficient to satisfy the statute and that his motion of evidence of a cover-up should be attached to the Starr report. The court ultimately agreed and ordered the OIC to attach the additional 20 pages of Knowlton’s evidence for the three judge panel to review. Starr then, in a blatant move to prevent Knowlton’s evidence from being heard, personally filed a motion to reconsider a motion which was immediately and summarily denied. Clarke did not even have to respond with an argument.
The hundreds of pages of evidence in the case and Starr’s Interim Report remained secret and under seal until its release on Oct. 14, 1997. Most recently, a 511-page report submitted by Knowlton was unsealed Sept. 14, 1999. The three judge panel, however, denied Knowlton’s request that his report be attached as an addendum to the Starr Report on the Foster investigation. The just-released document is a point-by-point analysis and refutation of Starr’s 114-page report.
However, in the lower court, the trial judge granted the motion for summary judgment in favor of the multiple government defendants at the pre-discovery stage of the proceedings. That decision is now also being reviewed by the Court of Appeals but in the hands of different judges. Knowlton is prepared to take his suit all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States.
More Suspicious Happenings
Later, Leslie Rutherford, 19, reported an unusual confrontation as having happened on July 19, the day before the murder. She had been playing tennis in the afternoon and was walking home on the back road in the woods behind the park. She noticed a man in a suit and a tie standing in the woods. Peculiar enough, in a remote part of the woods and 95-degree heat, but when he saw her approaching, he turned his head in an attempt to hide his identity, and walked the other way into the brush.
After learning of the body being found in that area, Leslie called the Park Police to report what she had seen. They took her statement over the phone wherein she explained that this was in the northwest corner of the park. Clarke says that this became a very telling piece during the Fiske probe when the report was changed to read “…the southeast corner of the park. “Obviously,” he says, “someone was out there the day before checking out the scene, but nobody ever came to interview the young lady.” Nor is there any mention of this road anywhere in the 20,000 pages of the public record.
Foster and HiIIary
Arkansas State Patrolman L.D. Brown served in Governor Clinton’s security detail in the 1980s. At a weak moment during those days, he accepted the assignment of going to Mexico to murder Terry Reed (according to Reed) but had a change of heart while secretly watching Terry and Janis play with their children in the motel swimming pool. Instead, he returned to Little Rock without further attempt and later apologized to Terry. Considering the firsthand information that he harbors, some may wonder how he has survived the wake of “Arkancides” over the past two decades.
In his 1999 book, Crossfire, Brown sheds some light on a motive – if not for the actual murder, at least for Hillary Clinton’s rushing to capture/destroy evidence by sending Maggie Williams into Foster’s White House office only an hour after the body was found.
From Chapter Five we excerpt this sizzler revolving around one of the wife-swapping group’s nights out on the town, which, according to Brown, was more ordinary than exceptional, You will see – as even Brown says – that the scandals of today are a mere continuation of the ones from the 1980s: “It would be a night that would demonstrate just how the ‘understanding’ worked. It would also serve to confirm in no uncertain terms who Hillary’s ‘significant other’ was…
“By this time Vince and Hillary were looking like they were in the back seat of a ’57 Chevy at the drive-in. Hillary was kissing Vince like I’ve never seen her kiss Bill, and the same sort of thing was going on with Bill and Beth. Mike and Lisa [Foster]’s oblivion to the escalation of the amorous activity left me bewildered. No one seemed to notice me, except for Vince who would give the occasional furtive glance, sometimes accentuated by a wink…
“Hillary Rodham loved Vince Foster, let’s put that issue to rest right here. It has amazed me that the subject has been taboo in the ‘mainstream media.’ Especially after he committed suicide, a serious discussion of motive could not be undertaken until that variable had been included in any hypothesis.” But John Clarke, Patrick Knowlton and Hugh Turley are not speculating with anything. As a matter of fact, they have not even interviewed any of the players. Their report takes the Senate Banking Committee in January of 1995, and shoots it to pieces. They have already proved their case by using only the federal government’s release to the public and without hiring any private investigators.
“There are over 900 footnotes in our document,” says Clarke, “all of them relating back to the federal investigative record…our proof is unassailable.”
Some of the Twisted Evidence
While space prevents our covering each of the 80 fabricated points, let us highlight a few. The team’s research proved:
1. Vince Foster could not have fired the weapon. (What more is necessary to completely eliminate “suicide?”) The gunshot residue on his hands indicates that he was fighting off an attacker rather than firing the weapon with his thumb. Remington cartridges were found in the “official” death weapon but Ball Smokeless powder was found on his body. Remington has never used this powder in the manufacture of any of its cartridges.
2. Foster could not have driven to the park. His car keys were not in his pocket at the scene, although they were found on him at the morgue following a visit from two White House Aides – Craig Livingstone and William Kennedy.
3. There was no wound in the soft palate nor an exit wound in the back of the head, as the QIC reported. The bullet wound was actually in Foster’s neck. A Teletype report from a field agent to FBI Director Freeh on 7/21/93 said that the preliminary results showed that there was “no exit wound.”
4. In reports from witnesses on the scene, first there was no gun in Foster’s hand, then it was a semi-automatic, and finally became a World War I Army .38 revolver. Foster did not own this weapon. Clarke and his team believe the weapon is likely to be a .22-caliber pistol.
5. Polaroid photographs vanished, contrary to the Starr Report.
6. 35-mm still shots “looked good,” according to the photographer, but the Starr Report said they were “underexposed.” These photos also disappeared.
7. Autopsy began well before the scheduled time 10:00 a.m. on 7/21/93, the morning after the body was found. Dr. James Beyer removed the soft palate and the tongue during this “pre-autopsy” period, which was the actual evidence that would have shown the bullet entered the neck instead of through the mouth. Dr. Beyer was assisted by an unknown pathologist and refused to tell the police who this man was. Authorities from the scene did not attend the autopsy. There was conflicting forensic evidence of a bullet trajectory and no official time of death was ever set.
8. Park Police Sgt. Robert Edwards was alone with the body at the park for approximately 15 minutes and tampered with evidence. In addition, he was the last person to have possession of the initial photographs showing the body as it was found.
9. The eventual “changing of stories” by almost every (if not every) witness at the scene according to Mr. Starr’s still-secret FBI reports:
a. Park Police Investigator John Rolla changed his statement and recalled more blood than originally stated by him.
b. Park Police Officer Kevin Fornshill changed his deposition to say that there were “no volunteers,” after first reporting there were.
c. Firefighter Todd Hall changed his statement from hearing and seeing someone in the woods to saying it “must have been traffic” on Chain Bridge Road.
d. John Rolla again changed his deposition statement from saying he took photos of the back of Foster’s head to say he “did not” take those photographs but only intended to take them.
e. Rolla also changed his account from his testimony that he had “emptied the [Foster] pockets” to he “did not reach into the bottom of the pants pocket.”
f. Fairfax County Officer David Tipton contradicted the previous testimony by Investigator Rolla, who said Kennedy and Livingstone were in the room with the Foster body by saying that they only viewed the body through a glass window. (This is when the Foster keys suddenly appeared back on his person.)
g. Dr. James Beyer contradicted his own autopsy report that reflected X-rays were taken (and the Park Police report of his comments on the X-ray results) by saying that “the machine was not working.”
h. Paramedic Richard Arthur changed his previous account that he was “100 percent sure” he saw a semi-automatic pistol in Mr. Foster’s hand to say instead, he “must have been mistaken.”
i. Firefighter Jennifer Wacha amended her account of never seeing a gun to saying that it was consistent with the one found at the scene.
j. Dr. Donald Haut, Investigator Renee Abt, Park Police Technician Peter Simonello, and Park Police Investigator Christine Hodakievic all changed their statements to say they saw a pool of blood under Foster’s head.
FBI Involvement
Although both OIC reports were the “final analysis,” John Clarke allows that their failure may be chalked up more to ignorance (re: Fiske and Starr) than conspiracy. It is his opinion that the FBI was the real culprit here because the bulk of bogus information was compiled by its agents. Indeed, the pattern shown above of witnesses changing testimony to fit the government spin is a glaring signature of FBI footprints in the sand of an unsolved case.
“It was an FBI investigation,” says Clarke. “Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr didn’t perform the laboratory analysis or write the reports. They didn’t interview the witnesses. It was all in the hands of the FBI. The first investigation was a joint FBI and Park Police investigation. The second one under Robert Fiske was an FBI investigation. Then Kenneth Starr decided to use the FBI to conduct his investigation. It was FBI all the way straight through. And Congress has never probed the death, not withstanding what the media have led the people to think.
“In the 1994 Senate Banking Committee hearings, they were precluded by their limited jurisdiction from even probing into the death,” Clake continues. “The only thing they could look into was whether or not there was improper conduct by the White House during the course of the first investigation. That was it as far as Foster was concerned.”
But little did Patrick Knowlton know that his episode in Fort Marcy Park was only the beginning for him. Some 18 months after the fact, British reporter Ambrose Evans Pritchard interviewed Knowlton and informed him that Special Agent Larry Monroe had falsified Knowlton’s story by misreporting to the OIC that he had identified the brown car he saw at the scene as a “1988 to 1990” year model. This fabrication would have coincided with Foster’s 1989 (silver-gray) Honda, except that they could not coerce this witness into agreeing to the lie.
This poses the question: Was the Arkansas Honda temporarily “planted” in the parking lot long enough to be seen and then moved in order to further the false scenario that Foster had driven himself there with a preconceived plan of suicide?
It was only when Knowlton was subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury in 1995, where it was known that he would refute the fiction of Foster’s car, that the government harassment began. First, he began to notice that whenever he left his apartment, several plainclothes strangers would approach him from all sides. Some were well-dressed in suits, others were in casual attire. As both he arid his lady friend witnessed on numerous occasions (she called it “extremely unnerving”), agents would approach from the front, staring intently but never speaking. Then, after getting the couple’s attention, one “raised his wrist to his mouth and spoke into his coat sleeve.”
On another occasion, one stranger confronted Patrick and reached into a shoulder bag, as if going for a gun. Reporter Christopher Ruddy also witnessed this type of intimidation when he once went for a walk with Knowlton.
From the report: During the course of the two days beginning the day FBI Agent Bransford served the secret grand jury subpoena, Patrick suffered the cumulative effect of intimidation by at least 25 men. They acted in a rapid and coordinated fashion, obviously working in tandem, employing the same modus operandi of continuously staring and following. Of the first 25 men, 23 appeared within five minutes of his predecessor, 13 approached before his predecessor had departed… Experts tell us that the technique is known to federal intelligence and investigative agencies, and that its objectives were two fold: 1) to intimidate and warn Patrick in connection with his grand jury testimony, and, failing that, 2) to destabilize him and discredit his testimony before the grand jury. As suggested by the experts, Clarke and Knowlton agreed later that all this activity was performed by some government agency in order to make Knowlton appear to be delusional and paranoid whenever he might complain of these events.
The Peugeot Incident
More than a year prior to the emotional harassment, Knowlton had his property intentionally destroyed by a government operative. One evening Patrick and his lady friend were entertaining an out-of-town couple who wanted to see the Vietnam Memorial. Patrick took them for a ride there in his antique, refurbished 1975 Peugeot – his “pride and joy” and virtually his only asset. En route, they noticed a car with three men trailing dangerously close behind them.
When Patrick arrived at the area of the Memorial and pulled forward of a parallel-parking place in preparation to back in, the car behind swiped the space before he could take it. Patrick pulled forward and took another just a few spaces up. Angry upon emerging, he aired his displeasure to the driver, who only responded with an obscene gesture. The group of four walked across the street to the Vietnam Memorial site.
When they were out of sight, the driver of the other car got out with a tire tool, walked forward and began to bash out the taillights of the Peugeot. Then he walked to the front and worked over the headlights, grill work and radiator – to a he total tune of $3,700 in damage. Fortuitously, a limo driver was parked nearby, witnessed the whole episode, took down the Illinois license plate number, and gave it to the Park Police and Patrick upon his return. Following his report that night, the Park Police said after a week that they were “unable to locate” the car or the owner.
It is important to note that the street incident took place more than a year before the aforementioned intimidation attempts but, by a strange coincidence, the night before Knowlton was scheduled to appear for his second interview with FBI Special Agent Monroe. In the suit, Plaintiff avers that this “was to cause Plaintiff to be in a deteriorated emotional state while being interviewed by Monroe. The conspirators sought to make Plaintiff more vulnerable to being manipulated by Monroe’s haranguing to obtain from Plaintiff the sought-after admission that the Arkansas Honda [which] Plaintiff saw in the park could have been Mr. Foster’s 1989 year model Honda.” A year later, when Knowlton was preparing his suit, a private detective discovered in only one day that the car was registered to Scott Jeffrey Bickett, an individual employed by the Department of Defense and holding “Active SCI” (Sensitive Compartmented Information) security clearance – a top U.S. government clearance. “Upon information and belief (the suit says), Bickett has been briefed at FBI Headquarters, has served at the direction of FBI personnel, and was so serving when he committed the acts cited above.” Bickett later confessed to the Park Police, but the Office of the U.S. Attorney refused to prosecute him.
The Grand Jury
Patrick Knowlton’s treatment by the prosecutors during his grand jury testimony could be graded as “very poor.” They kept referring to his “alleged” harassment and spent very little time on the facts of the case. However, they spent much more time asking about his contacts with Capitol Hill and reporters, insinuating a number of times that he was a homosexual and was in Fort Marcy Park that day for reason of a liaison with another. Once they even asked if the Prosecutors stranger in the park had pointed a gun at him, passed him a note or “touched your insinuated during genitals.” Patrick was outraged and asked for a recess.
Based upon the demeanor of the prosecutors, the questioning and the fact that one of the prosecutors sat behind him, Patrick believes that the OIC was in no way seeking the truth but rather trying to rattle and discredit him before the grand jury.
The Knowlton civil suit is very important. The facts of harassment are telling. It begs that a mystery by solved. Why did several unknown persons commit multiple crimes in order to obstruct the investigation into the death of Vincent Foster? And why are these people allowed to remain “unknown”?
No less than 84 personalized letters to members of Congress – those committee members having jurisdiction over the matter – were hand-delivered in July of 1996, informing them of the obstruction of justice in this case. There has been no response. A previous letter had been delivered to all 535 members of both houses and produced but seven responses. All were vague and came to no fruition.
The answers to these and other questions boil down to the basics: The #1 priority of all bureaucrats, elected and appointed, is to remain in their positions. Pass the buck. Stonewall. Live for the next check and survive until retirement. Protect those who can protect you and chop off the heads of those who won’t. And if the kitchen gets too hot, douse the flames of public indignation with as few repercussions as possible.
Witness the recent cases at Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City and the phony impeachment proceedings. The murder of Vince Foster is just one more to be added to that long and ever-expanding list.
—
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.” H.L. Mencken
Did Vince Foster Shoot Himself ‘Three Times in the Back of the Head’ to Avoid Testifying Against Hillary Clinton?
An old conspiracy theory about the 1993 suicide of Clinton associate Vincent Foster, whose death was investigated by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, was dredged up again in September 2018.
Claim
Clinton associate Vince Foster shot himself three times in the back of the head to avoid testifying against Hillary Clinton.
Rating
False
Origin
No matter how many times conspiracy theories are disproved, they never die.
Witness the return of a decades-old canard holding that Vince Foster, a longtime friend and associate of Bill and Hillary Clinton, did not commit suicide in 1993 (contrary to the findings of multiple investigations), but instead was murdered by the Clintons “because he knew too much.”
Since the mid-1990s, Foster’s name has held a place of prominence on the viral list of “Clinton Body Bags,” a constantly growing roster of Clinton contacts who supposedly died under “mysterious circumstances.” Like the theory that Foster didn’t really kill himself, the rest of the “Body Bags” list has been discredited time and time again.
The Vince Foster theory persists because it has a partisan fan base. While campaigning for the presidency, Donald Trump lent it credence during a 2016 interview in which he called the circumstances of Foster’s death “very fishy,” the Washington Post reported:
“He had intimate knowledge of what was going on,” Trump said, speaking of Foster’s relationship with the Clintons at the time. “He knew everything that was going on, and then all of a sudden he committed suicide.”
He added, “I don’t bring [Foster’s death] up because I don’t know enough to really discuss it. I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s fair.”
The rumor cropped up in September 2018 in the form of a meme shared by two hyperpartisan Facebook pages, Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children and Cold Dead Hands:
The timing was curious. “On this date in 1993,” the meme says, “Vince Foster went to Fort Marcy Park and shot himself 3 times in the back of the head to avoid testifying against Hillary Clinton.” But Foster committed suicide in July of that year, not September. After some searching, we found that the meme had been previously posted on 20 July 2018, when that part of the claim, at least, would have been accurate.
The decision to re-share it in September 2018 (assuming there was any thought behind it at all) may have had to do with the fact that the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had just run into a roadblock in the form of an accusation of sexual assault by a woman who said Kavanaugh groped her at a party in the 1980s. The most likely explanation for bringing up Foster would seem to be that it was meant to divert attention from a Trump-related scandal to a Clinton-related scandal, but there’s a complication: Kavanaugh led the investigation of Vince Foster’s death by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in the mid-1990s, an investigation that confirmed (ironically, in this context) Foster’s death was indeed a suicide.
Kavanaugh has been condemned, on the one hand, for reopening an investigation that had already been concluded by a previous independent counsel, Robert Fiske, and “tormenting” Foster’s family (in the words of liberal pundit Paul Begala) on the basis of rumors that the Clintons were somehow involved in his death. But Kavanaugh’s involvement has also given rise to a strange new addendum to the conspiracy theory in far-right circles, namely that in exonerating the Clintons he helped cover up wrongdoing on their part.
Right-wing pundit Andrew Napolitano gave voice to this accusation during a Fox News Channel appearance:
You remember Vince Foster who killed himself in the White House? How did his body get from the White House to Fort Marcy Park? Who was the prosecutor in charge of figuring out how his body got there? Who was the prosecutor that exonerated Hillary and the thugs that moved his body? A young Brett Kavanaugh.
Whatever the motivation behind its re-sharing, the meme got almost everything wrong. What’s true is that Foster killed himself in 1993 (although it was in July, not September), and that he did so in Fort Marcy Park in Virginia (not, contrary to Napolitano’s claim, in the White House).
But the sarcastic claim that he “shot himself three times in the back of the head” (implying that it wasn’t really a suicide) is a fabrication. Every investigation to date has found that he shot himself once, in the mouth, with his own handgun. The implication that his death was connected to an expectation of his giving testimony against the Clintons is equally false. Foster, who was a White House deputy counsel at the time, was distraught over accusations of malfeasance involving the White House Travel Office, and he had sought treatment for depression prior to his suicide. Foster consistently maintained that the Travel Office scandal was baseless.
As the Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler wrote:
Yes, there is a fringe minority of people who will believe in just about every conspiracy theory. There are hacks who believe that Foster died in the White House and that his body was moved. There was even a member of Congress who fired bullets into a cantaloupe (or was it a watermelon?) in an effort to prove that Foster was killed.
But there were also five official investigations into Foster’s death, conducted by professional investigators, forensic experts, psychologists, doctors and independent prosecutors with unlimited resources.
Yes, the bullet was never found. (Foster died in a wooded park.) Yes, the Clinton White House was sometimes slow to release information or took steps that at times raised suspicions, such as removing from Foster’s office files concerning an Arkansas real estate deal. But that was all examined, dissected, discussed, investigated two decades ago — and found to be not material. The fifth probe lasted three years — and still found nothing.
Resources
the-sun.com, “Who was Vince Foster and how did he die?” BY Aliki Kraterou; allthatsinteresting.com, “Inside The Tragic Death Of Vince Foster — And The Conspiracy Theories That Followed.” By Marco Margaritoff; whatreallyhappened.com, “The Death of Vincent Foster.” By Michael Rivero; rense.com, “Vince Foster Was Murdered- ‘Suicide’ Was Fixed.” By Pat Shannan; snopes.com, “Did Vince Foster Shoot Himself ‘Three Times in the Back of the Head’ to Avoid Testifying Against Hillary Clinton? An old conspiracy theory about the 1993 suicide of Clinton associate Vincent Foster, whose death was investigated by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, was dredged up again in September 2018.” By David Emery; heavy.com, “Brett Kavanaugh & Vince Foster: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know.” By Jessica McBride;
Addendum
Brett Kavanaugh, the federal judge who is the president’s nominee for Anthony Kennedy’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, played a key role in the Vince Foster investigation.
The death of Hillary and Bill Clinton’s White House lawyer has spawned legions of conspiracy theories. Kavanaugh, who served in the George W. Bush administration and who helped Ken Starr write the Starr Report into Bill Clinton, was in the middle of some of the 1990s’ most dramatic controversies involving the Clintons. Among them: The death of Vince Foster, which was ruled a suicide.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Kavanaugh Was in Charge of an Investigation Into Vince Foster’s Death
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, his wife Ashley Estes Kavanaugh (off frame) and their two daughters stand by US President Donald Trump after he announced his nomination in the East Room of the White House on July 9, 2018 in Washington, DC.
Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin once called Brett Kavanaugh the “Zelig or Forrest Gump of Republican politics…whether it’s Elian Gonzalez or the Starr Report, you are there.” Add Vince Foster’s death to that list.
According to The Washington Post, Kavanaugh “was tasked in 1994 with investigating the death of Clinton’s deputy counsel, Vincent Foster.”
#HillarysBannedWords Vince Foster pic.twitter.com/Hgh5gOZ3W4
— Daniel Snyder (@danmsnyder) March 27, 2015
Kavanaugh earned this role because he worked in the office of Ken Starr. “Kavanaugh and the rest of Starr’s investigators concluded that it was indeed a suicide,” Vox reported of Foster’s death.
The New York Times concurred, reporting, “Working for Mr. Starr, Judge Kavanaugh concluded that Mr. Foster had in fact killed himself.”
2. Kavanaugh’s Paper Trail Includes Documents on Vincent Foster’s Death
Maggie Williams (L), Chief of Staff for US First Lady Hillary Clinton, and New York lawyer and Clinton family friend Susan Thomases(R) testify before the Senate Whitewater Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC 02 November. The committee questioned the two about phone calls dealing with restricting access to documents in the office of White House Counsel Vincent Foster after his death.
One issue with Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination is the extensive nature of his paper trail. In addition to working on the Foster case, he helped Starr with the investigation and impeachment of Bill Clinton, even helping author the Starr Report. Furthermore, he served in the administration of former President George W. Bush before Bush named Kavanaugh to the federal bench.
All that has given critics and supporters a lot of paper to dig through. Among those papers are some documents on Vince Foster’s death, according to Politico. The site reports that Kavanaugh compiled about 20,000 documents during his tenure with Starr, although they deal with many topics.
Here is the government manifest listing the documents in the archives.
Here are some of the Vince Foster documents that Politico pulled out of the Kavanaugh records:
- Graphic notes from the police sergeant who responded to the scene. The documents contain such notations as “no note/no keys/no wallet.”
- Bills and telephone records from Foster’s stay at a hotel shortly before his death. He made a large number of calls.
- Grand jury testimony by White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum relating to a call from Clinton adviser Susan Thomases after Foster died.
3. Kavanaugh Argued That Foster’s Lawyer Should Turn Over His Notes
Arkansas: U.S. President Bill Clinton (R) and U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno (C) talk 23 July 1993 before entering St. Andrews Catholic Cathedral to attend services for deputy White House counsel Vince Foster.
The only case that Kavanaugh argued before the U.S. Supreme Court dealt with Vince Foster’s death and attorney-client privilege questions. Kavanaugh had joined Starr’s office after graduating from Yale Law School.
According to Vox, Kavanaugh wanted to force Foster’s lawyer to hand over his notes “on their conversation shortly before Foster’s death.” However, the Supreme Court disagreed in a 6-3 decision, saying the release was prevented by attorney-client privilege.
Kavanaugh argued that the attorney-client privilege Foster enjoyed ended with his death, according to The New York Times.
4. Conspiracy Theorists Have Trashed Brett Kavanaugh for His Role in the Vince Foster Death Investigation
FBI finger print expert Louis Hupp testifies about prints found on papers belonging to Vincent Foster during Senate Whitewater hearings on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, 02 August. Hupp testified that he was unable to identify various prints (shown on television monitor) found on pieces of a torn up note belonging to Foster.
Conspiracy theory websites have sprouted up to trash Brett Kavanaugh for supposedly “covering up” Vince Foster’s “murder,” although the death was ruled a suicide.
Roger Stone, who once worked as an adviser to President Donald Trump (and has a long and controversial career in Republican politics), is among those making the claims via Alex Jones’ infamous Infowars site.
President Trump himself once declared Foster’s death “very fishy,” saying, Foster “knew everything that was going on, and then all of a sudden he committed suicide,” according to Vox.
5. Vince Foster Had Long Ties to the Clintons Going Back to Their Years in Little Rock
GettyHillary and Bill Clinton.
Who was Vince Foster? He was a close friend of the Clintons who had followed them to Washington from Little Rock, where he worked as an attorney and, according to Vox, “lived across the street from Bill Clinton when they were very young, and who was later responsible for hiring Hillary Clinton at the Rose Law Firm.”
A 1994 article in the Washington Post on Foster’s death being declared a suicide described his depression in the final days, “As depression consumed him, Vince Foster found it hard to eat, to sleep. He could not concentrate at work. His sense of humor dried up. His heart pounded and his stomach boiled.”
First, Special counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr. ruled Foster’s death in Fort Marcy Park a suicide. According to The Post, that investigation involved “four lawyers, five physicians, seven FBI agents, approximately 125 witnesses; also DNA tests, microscopes and lasers.” The article reports that Foster’s depression and anxiety had escalated in Washington D.C. due to the turmoil in and outside of the Clinton White House. He committed suicide by shooting himself with a revolver, according to The Post.
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