by David Wayne
Three handwriting experts independently determined that the note supposedly written by Foster was an “obvious forgery” that was apparently pieced together from samples of things that Foster had actually written.
27. No Warning Sign
Suicides have warning signs. As personal attorney to the President of the United States, Foster was certainly no stranger to stress. Yet the last day of his life was one of his least stressful. He spent the morning at his desk, paying bills and taking care of some family matters, which were child’s play in comparison to the legal concerns with which he typically dealt, such as the emerging scandals of his lifelong friend and client, President Bill Clinton.
He wrote a letter to his mother, with whom he was close—he was known as quite the “Southern gentleman”— he mentioned nothing out of the ordinary in the letter. He had been looking forward to the Washington visit of his sister, Sharon, with whom he was very close and who had just come to town with her daughter— Vince had promised to show her a great time in Washington and one of his plans was to take his niece to have lunch at the White House.
For lunch, he sat on the couch in his office, calmly opened up a newspaper, and ate a hamburger and french fries. He asked a co-worker if she wanted some of his M & Ms candy. He then left his White House office, calmly telling Executive Assistant Betsy Pond: “I’ll be back.” Linda Tripp, the Executive Assistant to whom Foster had given the candy prior to his departure, told the FBI that there “was nothing unusual about his demeanor and he did not seem distressed.” Foster’s personal Executive Assistant Deborah Gorham said that Foster had been “relaxed and normal,” and that he had left a couple of letters and a memo for her to type, which were nothing out of the ordinary. Foster then walked by guard post E-4 of the west wing of the White House; Uniformed Secret Service Officer John Skyles remembered Foster passing by— he was his usual friendly self. Skyles “distinctly recalled that Foster did not appear to be at all depressed or preoccupied as he walked by.” Skyles said “How are you doing sir?” and Foster smiled and responded “Hello- fine.” And that was the last time he was officially seen alive.
28. No Log Entry
The White House is the most secure residence in the world— video and log entries record each entry and exit. There is no Security log or White House Gate Record entry known to exist anywhere showing Vince Foster leaving the White House complex that day, under his own power, or otherwise.
29. No Surveillance Tapes
The tapes from surveillance cameras that would have shown Foster’s car leaving the parking lot are said to have disappeared— they were stored in a safe in the White House and they were apparently taken from that safe. No one from the Clinton Administration was willing to address what happened to the missing surveillance tapes which, as standard security measures, obviously once existed.
30. Violation Of Crime Scene
Police requested that Foster’s office in the White House be sealed off. Technically, his office was part of a crime scene. The White House blatantly failed to comply with that request. The President’s top lawyer (Foster’s boss) ordered the immediate removal of sensitive files from Foster’s office. Files and papers of Foster’s were removed and brought to Hilary Clinton’s Chief of Staff— and that was documented by a uniformed Secret Service Officer.
31. Vince’s Safe Was Broken Into
The White House made sure that Foster’s safe was “cleaned out” before any official investigation of his office. Even before Foster went missing, high-level White House action was trying to gain access. Only the White House Security Office, and Foster himself, had the combination to his safe. An aide told the Security Office that “Bill Kennedy (another lawyer to President Clinton) needed to get into Mr. Foster’s safe.” The Security Office checked their records and, seeing that Foster had only authorized himself to have the combination, correctly denied the request for the combination. The safe in Foster’s office was later broken into on the night of his death by a security team who knew how to get into it, and items known to be in it then disappeared. Foster’s personal secretary, Deborah Gorham, verified that documents and letters that she knew to be in that safe had vanished, as well as Foster’s file index which was a complete master list of everything contained in his files.
32. Witness Intimidation By FBI
FBI agents clearly employed intimidation tactics against witnesses. For example, Patrick Knowlton was a crucial witness because of his certainty that Foster’s car was not present in the parking lot at the time when the body was already in the park. Knowlton said the FBI falsified his official witness statement, and he brought a lawsuit against the FBI. He also states that he was targeted and harassed, that when he would leave his home he would be followed by several different men who would make a point of glaring at him in an intimidating manner. When a reporter expressed doubt about the veracity of that claim, he was invited to accompany Knowlton for a walk, witnessed the intimidation firsthand and was certain that it was clearly intentional (it was very intimidating). He was followed by teams of agents, when on foot and when driving, he was given threatening gestures, awoken in the middle of night, etc., in a vivid pattern of harassment that was witnessed and confirmed by other people. In addition to suing the FBI, Knowlton co-authored the book Failure of the Public Trust, with his attorney and an investigator. The FBI pressured this and other witnesses to change testimony that did not fit the official version of events.
33. White House Lied
The White House (using the term collectively) lied about their search of Foster’s office, saying it was only for about l0 minutes— in reality, it was for about 2 hours, and that was just during the first search of it.
President Clinton stated that he did not learn of Foster’s death immediately because at 9:00 pm he began filming a Larry King interview. The interview went so well that they continued past the scheduled conclusion. He reportedly only learned of Foster’s death when an aide later interrupted him during a commercial break.
However— at 8:30 p.m. that evening, President Clinton was having his makeup professionally done for that 9:00 p.m. Larry King interview. The makeup artist who was present there testified that the President was chatting with his aide, Mack McLarty, when another aide to the President entered the room and told President Clinton:
“They found a note in Foster’s office.”
The sworn statement of the makeup artist was conspicuously absent from the Fiske Report.
The sworn testimony of three police officers (under penalty of perjury) attests to the fact that the White House knew of Foster’s death by 6:15 p.m. (the White House officially claimed that it did not learn of the death until 8:30 p.m., which simply does not concur with how events unfolded). The phone logs would have ordinarily documented the phone call which took place from White House aide Helen Dickey to the Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas at 6:15 (informing the Governor that Foster was dead), but the phone log— like Foster’s files, file index and appointment book— apparently vanished (the White House denied a Freedom of Information request for the phone log for that evening, without explanation). The corresponding phone logs for the recipient of the same phone call, the office of the Governor of Arkansas, also coincidentally vanished. But the White House’s claim that “no call to the Governor’s mansion was made ... on July 20, 1993” is simply untrue. Helen Dickey also testified under oath that the phone call took place.
White House aide David Watkins learned of Foster’s death when he was paged by the White House military communications office on the day of Foster’s death, at slightly after 7:00 pm. Watkins testified to the U.S. Senate in 1995 that at 10:30 p.m. he contacted the White House’s Patsy Thomasson and asked her to search Foster’s White House office: “I asked her to look for a note ... I also knew that the Park Police had been in touch with the Secret Service for some five hours prior to making that request ... “: That testimony places the informing of the Secret Service prior to the official time of the b
ody’s discovery in the park. It’s simple common sense that the White House would be notified immediately when a top White House official is found dead.
34. Contradictory Toxicology Reports
The original and official toxicology report on Vince Foster was conducted by Dr. Hyunh. It states very clearly that no Trazodone (an antidepressant) or derivatives of Valium were found in Foster’s blood. Yet the FBI’s report to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Whitewater stated that both Trazodone and Valium-derivatives were found in Foster’s blood; information that supported the very weak claims of the Fiske Investigation that Foster had been depressed.
35. Obvious Obfuscations; Cover-Up
•The White House blatantly ignored police instruction to seal off Foster’s White House office. U.S. Secret Service agents confirmed that files were being removed from Foster’s office and taken to Hilary Clinton’s Chief of Staff;
•The White House denied that Foster even had a safe, making the preposterous statement that “I don’t think there was a safe, as I understand it. To the best of my knowledge, there was not.” (Mack McLarty, White House Chief of Staff). Apparently, having learned (after they had cracked Vince’s safe!) that it had several drawer compartments, they re-classified the safe as a “file cabinet.” Also note that the “official search” of Vince’s office did not take place until Thursday, two days after he had gone missing, and after his office had been thoroughly sanitized;
•Foster’s missing car keys (his body, his clothing, his car, and the crime scene were thoroughly checked for them, and they were not found) mysteriously appeared right after two top White House aides had urgently rushed to the morgue for the stated purpose of identifying Foster’s body (which had already been identified— he even had his White House ID with him). And hey, guess what, folks? — it turns out they were right in Vince’s pockets all along. Two large and bulky key rings that everybody at the crime scene somehow missed— gee, what a miracle! Investigators sarcastically refer to it as The Magic Keys Incident;
•Despite the fact that the supposed murder weapon found in Foster’s hand was a vintage 80-year old weapon, the Government never even tested it during the time of the initial investigation to verify that it could actually even fire;
•The FBI never even tested the blonde hairs, carpet fiber, and wine stain evidence that were found on the victim’s body;
•Not only did crucial evidence disappear from Foster’s safe, but the video surveillance tapes that would have shown who removed them from Foster’s safe, lo and behold, have also conveniently vanished;
•Important crime scene photographs “disappeared”;
•Important x-rays of Foster also disappeared;
•Medical records contradict the official claim that Foster had experienced recent weight loss as a result of stress;
•Witnesses have sued the FBI about outright lies they have made, as well as attempting to badger witnesses into changing their stories and attempting to discredit witnesses whose testimony was not in line with the official version of events, rather than actually investigating the leads that their testimony provided. In the case of Patrick Knowlton, they even harassed a witness who was simply attempting to help;
•Investigators badgered the Arkansas State Troopers who testified under oath (subjecting them to criminal perjury charges if they lied), to try to get them to change their testimony about the phone call from the White House to the Governor of Arkansas which occurred prior to the time the White House stated it was aware of Foster’s death;
•FBI Director William Sessions was fired by President Clinton on the day before Foster’s mysterious death. Sessions later remarked that the result of that was that any serious investigation into Foster’s death had been “compromised from the beginning”;
•Lead Prosecutor Rodriguez concluded that the official claims regarding the time that the White House and Secret Service were made aware of Foster’s death are simply not plausible;
•The White House was clearly “calling the shots” in the quick rush to a “suicide” determination and in limiting the scope of the investigation. President Clinton immediately went public with the pre-emptive determination that the death was a mystery that would not be solved: “No one can know why things like this happen”;
•High-level White House aides had incredibly convenient and recurring “memory lapses” during their testimony regarding what had taken place in matters related to Foster’s death. For example, Susan Thomases was a close aide to First Lady Hillary Clinton. Although Ms. Thomases was logged in at the White House for six hours on the day that Foster’s documents were being moved and was in phone communication with Ms. Clinton, she could not satisfactorily explain what had taken place during those six hours and invoked her “poor memory” 178 times during four days of Senate testimony”;
•Meanwhile, back in Arkansas— the Rose Law Firm was busily shredding all the Vince Foster files it could find before they could be officially requested by investigators. The “Independent” Counsel (Fiske) assured the press that he would investigate the matter, but apparently he never got around to that;
Source material for the above chart was derived primarily from the following:
“Independent Report in Re: The Death of Vincent Foster, Jr.”, Vincent J. Scalice Associates, April 27, 1995, Western Journalism Center.
“Forensic Experts Doubt Foster Suicide Finding”, Christoper Ruddy, January 18, 1995, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
“The Mysterious Death of Vincent Foster”, in Grave Secrets: A Leading Forensic Expert Reveals the Startling Truth About O.J. Simpson, David Koresh, Vincent Foster, and Other Sensational Cases, Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D. with Mark Curriden and Benjamin Wecht, 1998.
The Strange Death of Vincent Foster, Christopher Ruddy, 1997
Citizen’s Independent Report, Hugh H. Sprunt; 1995
The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 1997
The Murder of Vince Foster, Michael Kellett, 1995
“White House Lying on Foster’s Death”, John Crudele, February 7, 1996, New York Post
“New Evidence Exposes Vince Foster Murder: Victim Not Shot With .38 Caliber Revolver”, Wesley Phelan, The Washington Weekly, October 26, 1998.http://www.bigeye. com/vfoster.htm
“101 Peculiarities Surrounding the Death of Vincent Foster”, Richard L. Franklin, http://prorev.com/foster.htm
‘The Death of Vincent Foster”, Michael Rivero, WhatReallyHappened.com, http://whatreallyhappened.com/ RANCHO/POLITICS/FOSTER_COVERUP/foster.php
Let’s now go back to the beginning: On the last day of his life, Vincent Foster spent a less than typically stressful morning in his White House office, dealing with a variety of matters that were not of crucial importance.
It also seems prudent to examine a few of the things that were going on in his mind at this particular time. He had been very disturbed by the Justice Department’s handling of the Waco disaster and what seemed like the completely unnecessary loss of life there due, quite simply, to a failure of patience and negotiation. Foster’s wife recalled that Vince had been “horrified” by the FBI’s assault on the Waco compound that resulted in seventy-five civilian deaths, twenty-five of whom were children.
As observed earlier, Vince Foster clearly considered himself a man of high integrity with a strong moral compass to guide him, which was well-evidenced in his choice of words for the Commencement Address he gave at the University of Arkansas just prior to his death. When that mental composition was combined with the fact that he was also old friends, close confidant, and personal attorney to both the President of the United States and First Lady—sharing all their secrets; it’s easy to imagine a situation in which that morality and integrity are compromised and pushed beyond the limits of endurance. That’s quite possibly what was going on during Vince’s last days.
Contrary to the “official version,” Foster’s actions in those final days were not at all typical a person suffering severe d
epression and contemplating suicide. They were typical of a man who was wrestling a moral lion and attempting to do what he considered right, in the face of immense opposition.
Another point of note is that strange things were brewing at this particular time, and not only was Vincent Foster right in the thick of things, but he also seemed to be the one who was up to something. This was right after several smaller scandals had struck the Clinton Administration, for example, issues of impropriety in the White House travel office, which garnered much attention in the media. But bigger things were now afoot. What was soon to become a huge national scandal involving all the Clinton cronies from Arkansas, high among them the senior partners of the Rose Law Firm which was the Clinton’s power base in Arkansas. Therefore, Foster’s action in regard to this newly brewing tempest are particularly noteworthy.