(from 1997) Behind the Foster "Suicide"

(NOTE: reporters are wetting their collective pants over an accident while hunting. I suspect that not many of them had much interest in finding the truth about the death of Vince Foster. I've seen the affidavits from troopers Perry and Patterson. Helen Dickey (Chelsea's nanny) phone the Arkansas governor's mansion to tell them of their friend's death. Perry took the call. The call was likely before 6:30 pm (that would have been Arkansas time, so it was before 7:30pm in D.C. Clinton claims he found out at 10pm when he finished the Larry King show. Dickey claimed she found out at about 10:30. Al D'Amato refused to call the troopers, which would have shown Dickey to be a liar in her testimony. It would have broken the case wide open.)

Christopher Ruddy's investigative reporting on the death of Vincent Foster -- first with the New York Post and now with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review -- has been unmatched by those in the dominant liberal media. Ruddy is the author of Vincent Foster: The Ruddy Investigation. He was interviewed by William P. Hoar, Washington editor for THE NEW AMERICAN.

Q. The death of assistant White House counsel Vincent Foster was officially ruled a suicide. The 1994 Fiske report, in fact, reported that Foster killed himself where his body was found in Fort Marcy Park in Virginia and that "there is no evidence to the contrary." Can you shed some light on any evidence that challenges that assumption?

A. The statement by Robert Fiske that you are quoting is almost ludicrous at this point. In fact, two New York homicide investigators who looked into the case for the Western Journalism Center went to Fort Marcy Park and examined the crime scene. They said that the overwhelming evidence indicated that the body was moved to the park. Interestingly, they also pointed out that other than the fact that Foster's body was found in the park with a gun in his hand, there was no other physical, circumstantial, or forensic evidence to support the conclusion that he died in the park.

Blood is physical evidence. If you sit in a public park and take a gun, as they claim [in the Fiske report], and press it into the back of your mouth, and fire -- blowing the top, rear portion of your head off -- you should have massive amounts of blood loss, blood pools all over, blood on the gun. That wasn't apparent. The gun appeared clean, the shirt appeared clean, to early observers. The important thing is that it broke the head, but 20 feet from the scene no one saw any blood on the vegetation. There should have been a jet stream of blood on the vegetation. The medical examiner and the lead police investigator both told the FBI -- it's in their reports -- that there was no blood on the vegetation around the body.

Circumstantial evidence: No one saw Foster alive in this park. He had no history of ever visiting the park. No one even saw him driving his car out of the White House, for that matter. There is no circumstantial evidence that he killed himself at the park, as in someone hearing a gunshot. Moreover, right across the street from the park is the Saudi Arabian ambassador's house. It has heavy security, with guards always on duty against the threat of terrorism. It's hard to believe that if a gun was fired right across the street ... that no one would say they had heard the gunshot.

The forensic evidence is very compelling because it shows that Foster didn't kill himself in the park. An FBI analysis of blood stains found on Foster's face showed that his head moved as many as four times after death.

Q. Would that be contrary to what you would expect if there were a jerking of the head, once or twice, after a shot?

A. Because there was so little blood found out of the mouth or nose -- which is unusual -- the Fiske pathology team accepted that Foster died instantaneously and that his heart stopped beating almost instantly -- which is unusual to begin with (usually the heart pumps and you have a lot of blood). Having accepted that he had died instantly would mean there wouldn't be many jerks of the head. Even so, there are indications that some head movements took place well after death. There's a blood stain on Foster's right cheek, after it came into contact with his shirt shoulder (which was blood-stained). But it took awhile for that stain to soak in from the back of the head. So that took place at a later point. Another point: Foster was found on a slope -- head-up, face-up. Yet some of the blood was coming from his right nostril going to above his right ear.

A. Going against gravity. Another piece of forensic evidence was that the body was so neatly arranged. Three of the paramedics had grave reservations about the death. Two believed it was murder. The lead paramedic, George Gonzalez with 13 years on the job, said he had never seen a body so neat, so little blood. He said it looked like the body was "ready for the coffin."

Other forensic tests showed that he didn't die in the park. It takes 800 feet -- walking through dirt trails and grassy terrain -- to get from the parking lot to the spot they claimed he was found in the rear of the park. When the FBI tested his shoes and clothing, they found no soil or grass stains on either the shoes or the clothing.

A. [A]lmost every article of clothing that Foster had had carpet fibers on them -- not just one or two fibers, but the fibers of six different colors, all over his clothing, including his underwear. Now this is highly important trace physical evidence and it shows that, according to New York detective Vincent Scalice, that the body was in contact with one or more carpets before its arrival at the park. Now the police and the FBI said it didn't matter, but that's ridiculous. Why would the test even be conducted if it weren't important?

So then they said the fibers came from his office or his home. But they never even checked. So then they said it was cross-contamination. He must have walked across the carpets, and carpet fibers must have jumped onto his socks and shoes. Now they're claiming that at the autopsy all the clothing was thrown into one bag, bloodied and non-bloodied items, and the carpet fibers from the socks and shoes got on every garment of clothing.

What really nails this "explanation" is that Vince Foster's jacket and tie were found in his car and bagged separately -- they didn't go to the autopsy room -- and they had carpet fibers all over them, too, according to the FBI lab. So I don't buy this story about cross-contamination.

A. The whole idea of a cover-up is that there are issues about which somebody has lied, or not told the full truth. And when you see key evidence missing on key disputed matters, not just inconsequential ones, it should raise red flags. For instance, the exit wound: They claimed the back of his head was blown off. Yet, before that, they mentioned they didn't see the blood from his head and the brain tissue and bone tissue that should have been there. That should have been visible to anyone. No one saw it. Twenty people were on the scene.

Kory Ashford, the paramedic who put the body in the body bag, told me that he didn't see an exit wound. He cradled Foster's head in his arms, picked him up by the shoulders, but didn't see any blood. When he got back to the firehouse, he classified the death as a homicide. When he was later asked about this, he said it was because it looked like one.

Now here's the point: Where was the exit wound? The X-rays should put that to rest. In any case where you have a perforating gunshot wound to the back of the head, it's required that you have an X-ray when you can't find the bullet. They couldn't find the bullet, they claimed. And the X-rays are now missing -- even though the evidence from the autopsy report and the police report state the X-rays were taken. The medical examiner checked off that they were taken and the Park Police report quotes the medical examiner, saying Dr. Beyer had reviewed the X-rays and that no metal fragments from the bullet were in the head. Yet the Fiske Report said that the machine was "inoperable" and they never took X-rays.

Q. How about the so-called confidential witness who, according to some accounts, was pressured into changing his testimony? This would seem to tie into questions about when there was a gun in the hand, and when it appeared.

A. When the FBI agents interviewed him, he said he was badgered 25 times or more: Could the gun have been hidden by foliage? Could you possibly have missed it? Could the head have been tilted slightly, explaining some of the blood flow? So his story changed in the Fiske Report; he says he was badgered.

That's one incident. There are about a half-dozen incidents of key statements where the witnesses have said that their statements were changed or altered. Patrick Knowlton, the first witness to find Foster's car in Fort Marcy Park, says the FBI changed his statement. He said that he could identify a man who was in the park, standing next to Foster's car -- a Hispanic-looking man, who Knowlton felt was menacing. Now if the body was moved, this man could be very important. Knowlton's statement says that he could not further identify who this man was. Yet, Knowlton says that's a lie. And he had Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the London Sunday Telegraph, using a police artist, publish a drawing of this man.

Two troopers in Arkansas have stated that they knew about Foster's death before the Park Police knew about it. And they both told me how [independent counsel Kenneth] Starr's investigators tried to get them to change their story.

Q. Was there not evidence that the President himself may have been told before the time he admitted?

A. There are various layers to this case. It's not just an issue of whether it was suicide or murder. There's also the matter of whether the investigation was properly handled. Did the White House know a lot more about the death than they are claiming?

Clinton claims that he went on the Larry King show at 9 o'clock and didn't learn about the death until after 10 o'clock that night. So the Park Police found the body at 6:15 p.m. at Fort Marcy Park. He is saying it took four hours for him to be notified. Already there's problems with that. Because some of the Park Police are saying they notified the White House around 8:30, and there's a Secret Service memo saying that the White House was notified at 8:30. Still, there's no explanation why it took an hour and a half for the President to be officially notified.

A. Right -- his personal attorney, working on all his business matters; his deputy White House counsel; he comes from Hope, Arkansas -- they grew up together; close confidante of his wife, Hillary.

The Park Police knew Foster was an official within a half-hour after arriving on the scene. All the paramedics who left the park at 6:40 told the FBI they knew he was a White House official before they left.

That night, Clinton was preparing to go on Larry King Live, remote, from the White House library. There is a room across the hallway called the map room, and he had his make-up put on there. It turns out that one of the make-up artists for CNN overheard a conversation just before the President went on, at 8:45 p.m. approximately, at which time an unidentified male aide came in and said that they had found a note or documents in Vince Foster's office.

Q. After all, why would they have been looking in the office at that time, and talking about Foster, if not for his death?

A. Exactly. It's very powerful evidence that the President knew about the death earlier.

Why were they delaying this official investigation? One theory put forward by an investigator close to the case is that they wanted to make sure that night that the Secret Service or FBI or no one asserted themselves and locked the office before they could rummage through it. We know it took almost two days before a proper search took place.... Yet, they say they were in shock and grief.

Now, if a close friend or associate of yours or mine dies, the first thought that we would have is not to run to his office and start rummaging through his files. The first thing is to go to the side of his loved ones. But we didn't have that here. Instead, three top White House aides -- Bernie Nussbaum, the counsel to the President; Patsy Thomasson, a former Arkansas official who had worked for a drug dealer [Dan Lasater] in Arkansas close to the President; and Maggie Williams, the chief of staff for Hillary Clinton -- were in the office. There are allegations that documents were removed. We have a Secret Service officer saying that they were removed, by Miss Williams, at the very least.

The White House has claimed to have been in shock. But that shock never translated into doing the sorts of things that you normally do when you are in shock.... Most people in shock would be deferential to the police and the investigators. But not here. In fact, if you look at the actions of the White House, you will see that there were carefully taken steps to hamper and restrict the police investigation and control it.

The night of Foster's death, they were demanding that the evidence of the death scene be turned over to them. Foster's beeper had to be turned over immediately. It could have had invaluable fingerprint information on it. It's gone.

His wallet and all of his personal papers: They demanded they be turned over by the following morning. A police investigator working on the case had them locked in an evidence box; they were ready to break into the locker to get it. These are desperate people. The Park Police, incredibly, handed all of this over.

Q. Have you written to the effect that it is your belief that Vince Foster was murdered?

A. No. And I don't believe it's my job to make that conclusion. I've said the facts don't add up. The idea that he went to the park and committed suicide over some Wall Street Journal editorial, I believe, is cock-and-bull. That being said, I haven't seen any persuasive evidence that shows that he committed suicide. I think that what you're going to see, when the final report comes out from Ken Starr, is that they're going to change evidence. Evidence, just as with the witness statements, will be manipulated to fit the conclusions....

Q. What kind of marks do you give the probe headed by Senator Al D'Amato (R-NY). How, for example, did they handle the fingerprints -- or the lack thereof -- on the so-called suicide note?

A. The whole suicide note business is a scandal within a scandal. There's a lot of evidence that it's a forgery. We have three handwriting experts, including one from Oxford University....

We found out that on the first try the FBI investigators for the Fiske team couldn't authenticate the note. The Park Police had authenticated it the first time, but they used an expert who had never been certified as a handwriting expert.... To authenticate the note, the FBI violated their own standard procedures, which call for the use of many known writings. They had one note of Foster's and about 17 checks written by him, and they had this torn so-called suicide note. They couldn't match the checks.... So they went back to this one-page note provided by the Foster family attorney. But the suicide note should have raised a red flag since it was mutilated, making it more difficult to compare. There were no fingerprints on it; there should have been multiple impressions, according to experts. And it was found in a briefcase that had already been searched before.

Q. Another scandal that has hurt the Administration of late involves Craig Livingstone, the bouncer turned personnel security chief at the White House, who was involved with the improper rifling of hundreds of FBI files of Reagan and Bush Administration employees. In fact, Hillary is supposed to have had a hand in his hiring, although that is being denied. Does Livingstone have an involvement in the Foster case?

A. There's a lot on Livingstone. Livingstone was thought to be, by some FBI agents in the Fiske investigation, the "smoking gun." He was one of the first people notified of the death [of Foster], as head of White House personnel security. He was sent to the morgue to identify the body; he was the point man for handling the Foster case after his death.

Q. One point about the morgue that I've found interesting, and I believe you touched upon it in your book, is that there were no keys found on Foster's body despite multiple searches. Then, was it not true, that after the visit by Livingstone and William Kennedy [White House associate counsel] that keys were found on the body?

A. Right. Again, here [the implication is that] the body was moved, since if you drive to the park, there will be car keys on the person in the car. They didn't find any keys. They searched the pockets meticulously, not just for keys, but also for a suicide note. Nothing came of it. So the police say they let the body leave the park, then as an afterthought they went back to the morgue. It's not clear when Living stone and Kennedy got there. It seems they got there before the Park Police arrived, based on what one of the nurses has stated at the hospital. But when the police went into the morgue to re-search the pockets, they find not one set but two sets of keys, each with multiple keys.

Q. We're talking about the violent death of the highest ranking government official since John Kennedy. Do you think we'll get to the bottom of this or has it been buried well enough that it won't be resurrected?

A. We've already gotten to the bottom of about 70 percent of it, with all of the disclosures that have come out. Whether we'll get to the bottom of it all, I don't know. But my job is not to say whether we will or not, but rather to report the facts and get that information to the American people. It's the American people's job to demand that the investigation be complete.... The public has a right to know.

Conspiracy never gains traction.

It's a distraction, much like Ed Klein's book about Hillary, which was probably commissioned by Hillary herself.

That's pretty funny. You criticize a conspiracy and then create your own conspiracy that Hillary commissioned Klein's book. Good going.

I've talked to Perry and Patterson in person. I made several calls to D'Amato's office to tell him that Helen Dickey was lying and he needed to call the troopers. Okay, let's not call it conspiracy. Let's call it obstruction of justice. I believe Perry --- Dickey made the call to tell him about Foster's death. How the president could be told 2 1/2 hours later is just amazing. The truth has still not been revealed.

I believe it is as Dickey first reported to Perry. Foster shot himself in the White House parking lot. His body was taken to the park so that his office would not be sealed as a crime scene. That allowed the raids on his office and removal of documents.

I think the official line was that Vince was depressed and killed himself, then drove his own dead body to a park so it would not be found in the White House.
But, we overlook the part that would interest the press, that the VP did not shoot him, he supposedly killed himself, therefore no press was interested.

The death of Vince Foster and the resulting FUBAR investigations, will forever be a blight on this nation's honor. Jerry Parks and Vince Foster's deaths are linked. Too bad the investigations into their deaths weren't run by ten year olds. We'd have gotten a more professional review.

BS. Foster's office was ransacked before his body was cold. Bernie Nussbaum even accessed the safe. At the very least, Foster offed himself IN the WH, and was moved. NOW the MSM wants to talk about WH coverups???? The entire Clinton term was one giant coverup of malfeasance in office. That is FACT, not some conspiracy theory.

The "investigation" into Vince Foster's death was a travesty. Unfortunately, Foster is nearly a decade-old story, and the public just doesn't give a rip.

Oh, the whole thing is a tissue of lies, then. All righty, - all those people were just lying.

Now that's a stretch. To get them all to lie, to make it look as though Foster didn't actually off himself in the park?

You're forgetting that the end always justifies the means for RATS. Their noble goals always overcome any nastiness encountered in the process of achieving them. </sarcasm>

It never ceases to amaze me how much the Clinton's seem to skate on things like this (past and present). Just the mere appearance of impropriety should be enough to get traction yet the MSM consistently plays lap dog to these oxygen thieves.

What is it going to take for something to stick? Unfortunately, "Teflon" seems to be a fitting way to describe the despicable duo and their horde of thugs. Once, just once, I'd love to see them finally get caught with their hand in the cookie jar in such a way as to defy spin. Apparently that's too much to hope for if history has anything to say about it.

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