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.
In my personal opinion, Patrick Knowlton is a rock solid honest American citizen. I believe every word he told me about what he witnessed at Ft Marcy Park, and the intimidation he has been subjected to by the "organs of state security" (Solzhenitzin speak).
Check out this web page: CAUGHT: A FALLING STARR by Alan Favish
That is a fact. Re:Craig Livingstone---Webster Hubbell has stated that He was recommended by Hillary who was good friends with his Mom.Now the question should be who in the White House(Proper), said "...This guys O.K., we'll use him for security..." (???)Talk about another fall guy. That should be the question. No one can prove who hired him.(I bet you were joking by asking the question actually,weren't you?)When you bring your own people into the White House,w/out background checks and drug tests that never got taken, how can the question ever truly be answered?
Actually she was very clear about which gun the agents were asking her about. If you look at her 302, you will see that the gun the FBI agents brought for her to identify was a nickled one. It wasn't just a case of her being confused.
1. How did Foster manage to drive himself to the park without his car keys?
2. The so-called official investigation said that there were no fingerprints on the gun because it was a hot day and oh well, they just must have melted off. So my question is, if you buy that one, then how do you explain why one so called "unidentified" print remained under the grip? Why didn't that one melt off too? Hmmm?
However, I am now certain that all 10 Polaroids are at issue before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court granted the petition for a writ of certiorari in case no. 02-954. This is the government's petition. However, by granting this petition, the Court will review all of the issues necessary to decide whether the OIC has the right to withhold any of the ten Polaroids that are the subject of the dispute. This is because Supreme Court Rule 14 (1) (a) states, in part: "The statement of any question presented is deemed to comprise every subsidiary question fairly included therein. Only the questions set out in the petition, or fairly included therein, will be considered by the Court." The government's statement of the question presented in its petition is: "Whether the Office of Independent Counsel properly withheld, under Exemption 7(C), photographs relating to the death of former Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster." This statement is broad enough to cover all of the issues that I raised in my petition as well as the issues raised in the other two petitions.
Regards,
Allan J. Favish
http://www.allanfavish.com
the most "profoundly traumatic image" (to the gummit) might be the photograph of VWF's jaw showing the small calibre gunshot entry wound the mortician claims was there.
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