Supreme Court Revives Clintons' Vince Foster Scandal

NewsMax.com ^ | Monday, May 5, 2003 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

[Jean S]

Are Bill and Hillary Clinton sweating now that the Supreme Court today revived the controversy over Vince Foster's death?

Urged by the Bush administration, the court said it would decide in autumn whether the government must release post-mortem pictures of the Clinton White House attorney's "suicide."

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.

Olson insisted that five investigations had showed Foster killed himself and that a sixth inquiry "by an unsatisfied private citizen" seemed unnecessary. But for the whole story, see Christopher Ruddy's "The Strange Death of Vincent Foster."

Accuracy in Media, a public interest group that maintained Foster's suicide note was a forgery, filed a request with Park Police seeking autopsy photographs and photos of Foster's body at Fort Marcy Park in McLean, Va.

The government refused, and a federal appeals court in Washington agreed. The court claimed the pictures were exempted from the mandatory disclosure provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.

AIM said it wanted the photos to uncover "government foul play," but unless the group had compelling evidence there was not enough reason to justify an invasion of privacy, the appeals court said.

Attorney Allan J. Favish, who represented AIM, then filed his own FOIA request with the independent counsel's office to obtain the photos. When the office refused, Favish filed suit in federal court in Los Angeles.

Though a federal judge again said that there was no evidence justifying the invasion of privacy, a divided appeals court panel reversed and said evidence was not necessary.

When the case was sent back to trial court, the judge, under the appeals court's guidance, ordered the release of five of the 10 photographs of Foster's body, including one that had been published in Time magazine.

The government, joined by members of Foster's family, appealed. This time, an appeals court panel ordered the release of nine of the 10 photos. When the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, with headquarters in San Francisco, refused to hear the case, the government asked the Supreme Court for review.

[Marysecretary]

Yes, they're our "homeland terrorists."

[Robert A Cook PE]

What's the source of this (new!) information?

And, is anybody else covering it?

- I'd never heard of THIS part of the scandal before!

[Marysecretary]

Huh????????

[Robert A Cook PE]

What's teh realtionship (in a time line) between the Clinton's covering up their finances from Arkansas and the deliberate change of the White House international telephone service to an "outside" (non-government calls are NO LONGER recorded!) system?

I understand that immediately before the new system was installed (in mid '93 ? a couple of months after they took over), the largest number of overseas calls was to:

(1) China. Which makes sense - theat's where their money came from.

(2) Indonesia... where the Lippo (Chinese) money was being laundered.

(3) Switzerland ... where the illegal money was being deposited.

As i recall, more calls were being made to these nations that all others combined: All of the White House business with NATO, Middle East, Africa, and Asia/Japan/Korea was LESS tahn to these three countries combined.

[Ann Archy]

Wow! I never knew all that...thanks....it makes perfect sense. They probably made him sign BEFORE they killed him.

[Ann Archy]

You said......At times, I think the only difference between the two partys is the spelling.

You can't be serious.

[sit-rep]

Thanks... ...but don't read me too close for too long. You'll grow tired quite quick. Just chaulk me up now as the FR loser in grammar. We'll all be better off!

SR

[GrandMoM]

....sorry, I found it when I did a google search and did not copy the url. Went back tonight to see if I could find it, but couldn't. I did find something equally interesting. It is quite long so I will just post the url.

http://courttv-web1.courttv.com/archive/legaldocs/government/whitewater/report/white4.html

[Marysecretary]

I'll try but I'm a secretary, ya know. (smile) I'm always correcting the professors' spelling, so you are in good company.