Posted on 05/05/2003 7:58:14 AM PDT by Lance Romance
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20 minutes ago
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By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said Monday it would spell out when the public has a right to information in law enforcement files, like recordings of emergency calls and pictures from crime scenes.
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The justices will consider next fall whether the government must release post-mortem pictures of former White House attorney Vincent Foster, resurrecting a 10-year-old controversy over Foster's suicide.
The high court will balance people's privacy interests, in this case involving Foster's family, against the rights of others under a public records law. The Bush administration had urged the court to review the case. At stake is "the privacy interest of millions of individuals, about whom personal and sensitive information is stored in government files," Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the court.
Foster's death, in the first year of Bill Clinton's presidency, spurred a legion of conspiracy theories that he was murdered in a White House cover-up. Foster was a kindergarten friend of Clinton and former law partner of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr headed one of the many investigations that determined Foster killed himself on July 20, 1993, at a Civil War-era park near Washington.
The justices will decide if a California attorney has a right to pictures of Foster's body. The attorney, Allan Favish, already has been given more than 100 pictures, including photos of Foster's car and the Virginia park site. He has posted some on a Web site.
Lower courts have split over the release of more explicit pictures.
An appeals court in California said that four of the pictures could be made public. A court in Washington said they could not because there was not compelling evidence of government misconduct.
One of the pictures, which shows Foster's hand holding a gun, has already been published in Time magazine. None of the photos show his face or the bullet wounds. He died of a single shot to the head from an antique revolver.
The Supreme Court had scheduled arguments in another government records case involving a weapons database this spring. Justices dismissed the case, however, when Congress passed a provision restricting the release of the information which included names of gun shops and gun owners whose weapons were used in crimes.
Olson, the Bush administration's Supreme Court lawyer, said justices should use this case to clarify when lower courts should allow the release of information under the Freedom of Information Act. The law allows reporters and others to get unclassified government records that officials would not otherwise release.
Olson said that five investigations concluded that Foster, who was depressed, killed himself. He said a sixth probe "by an unsatisfied private citizen" seemed unnecessary.
The public information law allows officials to withhold information that could cause "an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."
The attorney for the Foster family, James Hamilton, said the release of more photos would be damaging to the relatives, "invading their memory of a loved one, by subjecting them to harassment from any number of media outlets, and by leaving them vulnerable to the unwitting viewing of profoundly traumatic images."
He said that the rationale used to order the release of the photos could also be used to get information about the terrorist attacks, including voice mail messages left by people trapped in the World Trade Center.
The case is Office of Independent Counsel v. Favish, 02-954.
I agree, does this represent some strategery by GWB? Does he feel secure enough politically to successfully attack the media's favorite family?
The scary thing is that one of these not so far-fetched scenarios could happen. (Edwards could also die in a plane crash).
By the way, who did hire Craig Livingstone anyway?
Livingstone was the Pittsburgh PA bouncer who wound up as the chief of White House security, even though there was no record of who authorized his hiring. Amazing isn't it?
Coincidentally, it was Craig Livingstone who "found" the keys to Foster's car in Foster's pocket at the morgue later that night, after records show that 2 different Park Police had searched his pockets at Fort Marcy Park and found nothing.
So the coverup continues into the 21st century. (Who hired Craig Livingstone?)
a witness that stop at park said there was no car,but somebody else was standing on the parking lot.
One of the best lines, and scenes, from that movie! :>)
And that "witness" was none other than Patrick Knowlton, an upstanding citizen who suffered extreme FBI and White House harrassment for refusing to recant his testimony in the FBI reports about what he saw.
If anyone wants to pursue this further, check out Alamo Girl's documentation, or do a search on +"Starr Report" +"addendum"
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