Failure of the Public Trust (Coverup of Vince Foster's Death)

The Foster family appears to have accepted the official suicide conclusion. So, isn't pursuing this case thoughtless of the feelings of Mr. Foster's family? Isn't it time to let Mr. Foster rest in peace?

The Foster family has been denied the closure that any family would expect. That said, those who make this point are not authorized to speak for the Foster family. But even if this argument were made by someone authorized to make it, and even if the entire Foster family would rather believe the suicide conclusion rather than Mr. Foster's death being at the hand of another, there are other considerations. Crimes are not committed solely against the victim or his family. They are committed against society, and society has an interest in seeing to it that justice is done. That is particularly true in a case such as this – where the crime has been covered up for over six years by the highest level of government, and where the American public has been repeatedly lied to.

We employed not a single expert to prove the case because you simply don't need experts to prove this cover-up. You don't need an expert to tell you whether the crime scene had been tampered with – you need only the accounts of the witnesses. You don't need an expert to opine whether the FBI covered up that Mr. Foster didn't own the gun recovered from his hand -- or that the gunshot residue on his hands proves that he couldn't have fired it -- or that the manufacturer of the ammunition found from the recovered gun has never used the type of gunpowder found on the body. You don't need an expert to opine whether Mr. Foster drove to the park in a car he didn't own without any car keys. These are just a few examples of the proof on this site. You shouldn't believe us over the government's experts. You should simply look at the facts – drawn from the federal government's own investigative record in the case – proving cover-up in every aspect of the case.

No, but we devote very little time to that issue in the filing because, in light of the physical evidence in the case, the depression issue is irrelevant.

Under the law of conspiracy liability, all participants in the cover-up are responsible for the civil rights violation that Patrick suffered. Therefore, the question of the existence of the conspiracy, as well as its participants, are issues in the lawsuit.

There is overwhelming proof of the media's keeping the facts from public view. For example, in September of 1997, the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered Mr. Starr, over his objection, to attach evidence of five separate aspects of the cover-up to his office's report on Mr. Foster's death. Despite its obvious historical significance, the news media reported the contents of Mr. Starr's report, but not the existence or contents of its court-ordered appendix. Many people, including journalists, dismiss the existence of a cover-up in the case based on the absence of its being reported in the news. But this reasoning is based the premise that the American press would report evidence of a cover-up. A review of the facts and developments in the case proves that this premise is false.
(See http://fbicover-up.com/dreyfus/dreyfus1.htm)

Mr. Starr used the FBI to investigate this case. It was the third FBI probe into the death. By turning his office into a "microcosm of the justice department" (Mr. Starr's description), he has undermined the independent counsel law. The term "independent counsel" is short for "independent from the Justice Department counsel." Mr. Starr testified before Congress that he "loves" the Justice Department. Apparently, he is not the type of person to "pull the rug out" from under the DOJ. As far as we know, Mr. Starr did not personally participate in the cover-up. But we do know that he allowed it to continue. Many people dismiss the existence of a cover-up in the case based on Mr. Starr's having failed to expose it. But that too is reasoning based on a false premise that Mr. Starr would not fail to expose evidence of a cover-up. Again, the starting point is a review of the facts of the case.

Congress did not investigate Mr. Foster's death. The 1994 Senate Banking Committee's jurisdiction was limited to investigating whether the White House improperly influenced the "Park Service" probe into the death. You wouldn't know this from the media's coverage of the hearings – it broadcast remarks from Senator Orrin Hatch's opening statement of the one-day hearing, where the Senator announced that there was "no reliable evidence" to contradict the Fiske Report's conclusions. Senator D'Amato's 1995 Hearings had the requisite jurisdiction, but declined to probe the death. The facts of the case prove that we cannot trust Congress to expose the wrongdoing.

Someone did. Several witnesses who were at Fort Marcy Park reported that Mr. Foster's car was not in the Fort Marcy lot when Mr. Foster was already dead. Others, when showed the photographs of Mr. Foster's body at the park, reported that the crime scene had been tampered with. We don't know how many witnesses, besides Patrick Knowlton and those whose accounts appear in the public record, may have come forward. Additionally, put yourself in the position of a witness who has some information regarding the crime or its cover-up. To whom would you go? The FBI? The news media? The Congress? There is just no one to come forward to.

Look at the bigger picture. Proof of foul play and cover-up in this case is proof that our constitutional system of checks and balances failed in this case – the executive branch failed, the legislative branch failed, and the news media failed. Proof of cover-up is proof that we cannot rely on our separate democratic institutions to protect us from government corruption, as our Founding Fathers envisioned. Perhaps most importantly, proof of cover-up is proof that we cannot rely on the news media to keep government honest. The American public can demand better, but not without the proof of what it is we have been getting. The court filing on this site provides that proof. We can't rely on the very democratic institutions that have failed us to tell us of their failures. Public knowledge of this state of affairs would give us the ammunition we need to improve the health of our democracy. We cannot fix what we don't know is broken. So, the existence of the cover-up in this case being widely known is important to us all. It's essential that the American people learn the truth. That's why we're asking for your help in getting the truth out to the American people – to improve the quality of our government and news media.

It's been ten years and still no answers.

Maybe some day we'll find out what this was all about:

Court muzzles paper, keeps Whitewater quiet USA Today - 12/6/1994 Point of view by Michael Gartner CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- If you have any outrage left -- if you haven't used it all up on Jesse Helms or Hillary Clinton or Newt Gingrich or whomever you're mad at this week -- direct it at David Sentelle, John Butzner, and Peter P. Fay. They are doing far more damage to you and to your country than are the front-page, household names you're used to grousing about. Sentelle is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, and Butzner and Fay are senior appelate judges. They have issued a ruling in a case involving The Wall Street Journal, and they have told the Journal -- and the rest of the press -- that it can't even print what the ruling is. Let me go over that one more time for you: A court has ruled in an important case and told the press it can't tell you and me what it ruled. It's outrageous. It's bizarre. It's unconstitutional. But it has happened. In America. Here are the facts: In January, Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Robert Fiske to investigate the Whitewater matter. He looked into the death of Vincent Foster, the removal of documents from his office, and that whole mess -- alleged mess, at least -- involving the Clintons, Whitewater Development Corp. and Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan. In August, after a change in the law about how investigations were to be handled, a special arm of the Circuit Court of Appeals took jurisdiction from the attorney general and replaced Fiske with Kenneth W. Starr. Fiske then turned in -- apparently -- his final report, filing it with the Circuit Court. In October, The Wall Street Journal heard that Fiske had indeed filed his report and that it had been sealed by the court. The Journal then went to court and asked for a copy of the report -- if such a report exists. Nothing happened. Fiske and Starr filed responses with the court but didn't tell the Journal. A Journal lawyer then called the office of each man and asked for a copy of his response. Each "refused to comment on that topic, and would not even disclose whether they had filed a response," a court document states. In November, the court ruled on the Journal's request for a copy of the Fiske report. Presumably, the court said the Journal couldn't have it. But -- and here the outrage quadruples -- the court sealed its own response. And it told the Journal it could not print a story saying what that response was. This is known, in the language of the law, as a "prior restraint." "Prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights," the Supreme Court noted in 1976. The "damage can be particularly great when the prior restraint falls upon the communication of news and commentary on current events," it added. Not even the Pentagon Papers -- that explosive history of the war in Vietnam with reams of classified information -- were deemed too sensitive for our eyes. The Nixon administration tried to stop us from reading them -- it sought a prior restraint -- but the Supreme Court said no. In appealing to the Supreme Court to overturn this prior restraint, lawyers for the Wall Street Journal wrote: "It is inconceivable that there can be any legitimate, much less extraordinary, reason for shielding the public from knowledge that" -- and there the sentence ends. For the appeal is a public document, and therefore it cannot say what's under seal. It implies that the Journal lawyers know what's in the sealed document, but if they do they aren't talking. The Appeals Court "did not even attempt to explain or justify the prohibition against publication before entering it," the brief states. I called the Appeals Court and asked the clerk why the decision had been sealed. "I can't answer it. I can't even discuss it," he said. "There is no public record of it, so I can't speak about it." Perhaps I could speak to one of the judges, I said. "The court speaks through me," he replied. The Wall Street Journal appealed to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and Monday he apparently sidestepped the issue. So this is the situation: Robert Fiske, the Whitewater investigator, presumably has written and filed a final report. The Wall Street Journal has asked to see a copy. The court apparently has said "no." And the court has told The Wall Street Journal that it can't even tell that to anyone. Why?

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