* Report 103-433, Volume I & Hearings 103-889, Volumes I & II
© Copyright Notice Hugh H. Sprunt, Jr. Please Contact The Author Regarding Any The Right to Reproduce (214) 484-7136 Factual Data Not Correctly Extracted From This Work Commercially HSprunt@aol.com The Three Senate Volumes Listed Above. Is Not Granted. All other July 20, 1995 [This Is Release S-02; August 31, 1995] Rights Released. Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? -- Juvenal
Vincent W. Foster, Jr.
Davidson College, '67
January 15, 1945 - July 20, 1993
Requiescat In Pace
Alenda Lux Ubi Orta Libertas
[Let Learning Be Cherished Where Liberty Has Arisen]
The author gratefully acknowledges the superior fieldcraft, original ideas, logistical acumen, damn-near infinite patience, unflagging editorial assistance, and near-magical powers proffered by his "District of Columbia Associate" during the course of this Foster investigation. For once, no "Smoke and Mirrors" were required in order to complete one of DCA's successful missions!
An ardent believer in the public's right-to-know and in the direct accountability of individual government officials, DCA understands that, for the well-being of its citizens, the USA must not merely be a place on a map, but must espouse a set of principles that will permit all of us to live together in harmony and abundance. DCA advised the author to remove all hints of sarcasm from the analysis herein. He therefore has, in particular, no responsibility for any that the author "missed!"
Email, fax, vox, snail-mail, or in corpus, you never disappoint, and I reluctantly honor your request to remain incognito given the current political environment. I'm up for a medium-rare cheeseburger (hold the onions) and sushi with you and the delightful MT anytime! Domo arigato gozaimasu, MT!
Special personal thanks go to DCMB, ambassador extraordinary from the Land-of-Please-and-Thank-You and quintessential practitioner of rational comme il faut, for shelter, for sustenance, and for her valiant efforts to elevate the author's understanding of the finer things in life, both at Wolf Trap (what a name!) and other venues. Prima ballerina lured to beer blast! Film at eleven!
DCMB's skills behind the wheel rescued this Baker Street Irregular during the high-speed disengagement phase of a reconnaissance run to Fort Marcy Park (and environs!), not to mention the near-continuous availability of an extremely resilient and attractive pair of ears during waking hours.
DCMB, given their therapeutic effect, I should have done a few more crossword puzzles and not become quite so focused. I don't know about that gargouille assise, but I do love the omnipresent umbrella girl! Along those lines, I can think of no one else with whom I enjoy examining the dynamic tension between certain poems of Byron and Pope. Finally, DCMB, I commit to ongoing contemplation of the concept that Verbosity Virtue. I could use more help with that sometime. . .
Last to be acknowledged, but first in the author's heart, is his family: ESS, ADS, & EDS. Bemused tolerance is commendable enough, but tolerance beyond the point of bemusement is extraordinary indeed! My humble thanks for your forbearance throughout my Foster investigation. "Whom shall I send and who will go for us? Here am I, send me." Wider den Tod ist kein Krautlein gewachsen! Too bad for those like me who manage to improve, if at all, only at a glacial pace!
All "Errors, Emissions, Inconsistencies, & Curiosa in this Report are solely the author's!
"And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." -- John 8:32
The facts in this "Citizen's Independent Report" on the death of Mr. Foster have been extracted directly from the raw evidence the Senate released in January 1995 (2726 pages in three volumes). This voluminous Senate material is presented here in a much more coherent and logical fashion.
This report contains many citations to the official record, should readers wish to check the accuracy of the quotations and other facts in this report against the record. This report contains evidence from the US Park Police Case Jacket on the death of Vince Foster, from later FBI witness interviews, from testimony and depositions taken in connection with the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings, and from the huge number of documents gathered by official investigators. For a quick overview of some of the disturbing facts taken straight from the official record, see the next section of this report.
The US Park Police Report, The Fiske Report, and the 1994 Senate Report (the "Reports") selectively included data that supported the officially-sanctioned "suicide verdict" and ignored, or gave little weight to, those that did not. Therefore, many facts in this report will be "new," even to those who have followed the prior investigations via the media. The author is putting the disturbing raw data from the record before the public in an attempt to convince Congress to hold the open and unrestricted inquiry into Vince Foster's death that should have occurred in July 1993.
Examples of the selectivity of the official Reports: 1) Two witnesses at Fort Marcy Park the afternoon of Vince Foster's death described individuals whom they saw in the vicinity of Mr. Foster's Honda about a half hour before his body was officially discovered. One of these individuals was seen sitting in the Honda. The other stood by the Honda which had its hood raised. Mr. Foster was nowhere to be seen. These individuals were not considered important enough to be a factor in the conclusions reached by the official Reports. 2) One of these witnesses told the FBI that information recorded in her prior official interview did not accurately reflect what she had said, but the official Reports ignored that unpleasant circumstance.
Witness statements and other useful data were ignored by the official Reports unless they bolstered the "suicide verdict." Examples: 1) The decision to treat the death as a suicide was made before the Criminal Investigation Branch investigators had even seen the body and 2) The Park Police closed its investigation before learning whether the gun found with Mr. Foster could shoot.
There are gross contradictions in the record evidenced by the official photographs, the FBI interview of the doctor who examined the body at Fort Marcy, the official autopsy report, and the statements made by US Park Police and Fairfax County personnel. Times in the record are often contradictory and items that disturb the official consensus are given short shrift in the Reports. There is strong evidence that Foster's White House connection was known not later than 6:35 PM (at least an hour before its "official" discovery), although the White House was not notified until 8:30 PM per the Secret Service memo in the record. Are the various contradictions significant? See the next section.
Mr. Foster's body and his Honda were searched, but no car keys were found at Fort Marcy Park. This raised the possibility that someone else had driven his car to Fort Marcy Park. Mr. Foster's car keys were located in his previously-searched pants pocket hours later and miles away from the park on the key ring holding his "personal" keys. Another key ring, with his White House keys, was discovered at that time along with his personal keys. The White House key ring held a high-security type key, a plastic tab, a key for double-bitted cam locks, and two keys for standard door locks.
This report offers no "ultimate" reason for Mr. Foster's death. Instead, it describes the very sizable errors, omissions, and inconsistencies latent in the record, items that have not been part of the public debate about his death. It's time they should be. They are amazing enough all by themselves.
Very few people have had the time to examine carefully the official record and summarize the evidence found among the 2726 pages that are the official public record of investigations into the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster on July 20, 1993. The three 1994 Senate Hearings and Report Volumes cited on the title page of this report and released by the Senate in January 1995 contain a wealth of raw data that is neither well-organized nor selective. This report has extracted the most important official evidence and presents it in an organized fashion.
The author lists below some of the more striking facts and witness statements extracted directly from the official record. The citations allowing the reader to locate the evidence described in, and quotations copied from, the official record are in the body of this report along with all the supporting detail. The body of this report also contains some analysis of the facts in the record, but the list below is of factual data straight from the official record. This list gives the reader a taste of the matters discussed in detail in the body of this report.
The author believes that the items below will be a great shock to many readers because they are so damaging to the official conclusions about Mr. Foster's death contained in The US Park Police Report, The Fiske Report, and The 1994 Senate Report Volume. Facts such as the ones below have caused the very few people at least somewhat familiar with the raw data justifiably to question the processes that controlled the prior investigations of Mr. Foster's death.
The author hopes the information in this report will allow those that have, until now, heard only selected information from the official Reports (and only after that information was, in turn, culled by the media), to understand why some people believe there is more to Mr. Foster's death than meets the eye. There is certainly more to his death than meets a casual and superficial glance!
The first official to discover Foster's body, a US Park Police officer, was quite clear that he never saw the gun. His testimony on this point is repetitive and quite clear. He was a few feet from the gun for several minutes, but he says he never saw it. The Fiske Report ignores this fact.
Two civilian witnesses, interviewed about the vehicles they saw in the parking lot, describe a vehicle that could only have been Mr. Foster's Honda. They saw individuals around this car: the hood was up, one individual was standing by the Honda, and the other was sitting in it some 30 minutes before Mr. Foster's body was found. The descriptions of these individuals make it impossible that either of them was Mr. Foster. The official Reports say these two individuals have no connection with Mr. Foster or simply ignore them completely.
A civilian witness told the FBI that, for reasons unknown, information, which she had previously provided to US Park Police investigators, had not been correctly recorded in her US Park Police interview report.
Six of the seven US Park Police and Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department personnel who responded to the 911 calls told the FBI (with varying degrees of certainty and specificity) that there was at least one "extra" civilian vehicle in the parking lot when they arrived at Fort Marcy, a vehicle that the official Reports either ignore or treat as completely irrelevant.
The Report concluding Mr. Foster's death investigation by determining the death was a suicide was signed before the US Park Police had taken the time to confirm that the gun Mr. Foster is said to have used could actually fire a shot.
The US Park Police officer who found Foster's body described the presence of "volunteers" who were in the park when the body was found. He said these volunteers were working on the park trails. None of these "volunteers" was ever named, interviewed, or mentioned in the official Reports, though Mr. Foster's body was found lying on a pathway that a witness insisted to the FBI had clearly been recently disturbed.
Five civilian and government witnesses at the park that afternoon stated (with varying degrees of certainty and specificity) that there was a briefcase in the Honda. This briefcase is not mentioned in the Reports (other than to state it was not at Fort Marcy Park), even though there is allegedly great interest in the fate of Mr. Foster's White House papers on the part of the Senate Special Whitewater Committee.
The lead US Park Police Investigator at Fort Marcy stated: "It seems to me that we made that determination [that the death was a suicide] prior to going up and looking at the body." The senior EMS Sergeant at the scene reported "Obvious suicide. . . with gun" 25 minutes after he arrived at the park.
The US Park Police crime scene perimeter extended over 1,000 feet from the body in some directions. However, the lead US Park Police Investigator at Fort Marcy was not aware that the park entrance closest to the body, or an old road on the western border of the park, existed. Access to the body site from these directions was therefore not sealed off.
The lead Emergency Medical Services representative at Fort Marcy who called in the suicide report for the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department and examined the body at the scene stated that the hand holding the gun was palm down. He had no idea why he was later shown crime scene photos depicting the hand palm up.
The lead US Park Police Investigator at the body site reported that the palms were up. This conflicts with the one crime scene photo leaked to the media. That photo shows the right hand palm down with the hand holding a revolver.
The Report of the only Medical Doctor to examine the body in place at Fort Marcy is, for reasons unknown, not a part of the record. This Medical Examiner told the FBI he arrived and departed Fort Marcy an hour before the official Reports say he did.
The Fiske Report: "Those present observed a large pool [sic] of blood located on the ground where Foster's head had been." The Fiske Report: [the doctor who examined the body in place at Fort Marcy] "Observed a large exit wound in the back of the skull." However, the doctor told the FBI that the blood volume was "small" and what blood there was had "matted and clotted." The lead Investigator had this to say about the head wound he observed: "I still can't believe the hole -- it's a small hole. . . I probed his head there was no big hole there. . . I initially thought the bullet might still be in his head." The Reports ignore these statements.
The doctor who performed the autopsy stated that he took no X-rays of the body. The US Park Police report, produced because it sent four observers the autopsy, stated however, that the doctor conducting the autopsy told the US Park Police Detective in attendance that "X-rays indicated that there was no evidence of bullet fragments in the head."
The experienced Evidence Technician who took the 35-mm crime scene photos reported that none of these photos were usable because they were underexposed. The camera he used was never tested to determine why these pictures were no good.
Mr. Foster's glasses were found 19 feet downslope from his head. The Fiske Report stated that they must have "bounced" there (through heavy vegetation) due to a gunshot to the mouth.
The second US Park Police officer at the second took seven Polaroids of the body. The Polaroids he took are not among the thirteen of the body that are inventoried in the record. The record contains no explanation why they vanished.
The lead US Park Police Investigator at the body site had this to say about some of the Polaroids he took: "I know I took Polaroids of that. I am not sure how many I took, but I don't recall seeing those Polaroids again. I mean I had them at the office that night, I did reports, and I know what happened. . . I don't have those photos. I put them in a [US Park Police case] jacket. . . and I don't know what happened." The Polaroids he is speaking of are not inventoried in the record. The record contains no explanation why they vanished.
The lead US Park Police Investigator at the body site searched for a suicide note, identification documents, or other items in the victim's pockets. The investigator found no car keys on the body. No car keys were found in Mr. Foster's Honda either. Why wasn't the death immediately treated as a homicide as soon as the investigators realized their suicide theory required the decedent to have driven himself to the park without using his car keys?
As soon as the investigators realized there were no car keys to be found, rather than search the Honda again or search the area where the body had been found (his glasses had, after all been found 19 feet from his head), they drove to the morgue and searched the body's pockets one more time. There, the investigators not only discovered they had missed Mr. Foster's personal key ring in the right front pants pocket (with his car keys), but also found his White House keys on a separate key ring that held a high-security type key. Did this search of the body took place before or after the body was also visited at the morgue that night by White House staffers?
The only paper in Mr. Foster's wallet at Fort Marcy that the lead investigator at the body site considered "unusual" was never explained in the official Reports. It contains groups of initials that correspond to the President, the First Lady, and to their daughter. It contains a variety of dates and numerical amounts along with several Arkansas city names. Mr. Foster was known to be involved with the formation of blind trusts for all the Clinton family. The private attorney involved talked with him the day before Mr. Foster died and tried to reach him the next day a few minutes after Mr. Foster left the White House for the last time.
The Fiske Report and the gun: "When shown the gun, Foster's sister, Sharon Bowman, identified it as appearing very similar to the one their father had kept in his bedside table, specifically recalling the pattern on the grip." However, Lisa Foster, in the words of the report of her interview said: "Not the gun she thought it must be. Silver, six gun, large barrel." The gun officially found in Mr. Foster's right hand at Fort Marcy was a dark-colored gun per the photographs of it in the record. Per Sharon Bowman's interviewer: "I asked if she remembered any other features [other than the web-like detailing on the grip mentioned in the Fiske Report quote above]. She did not." The Fiske Report statement is misleading.
A Fairfax Country Fire and Rescue Department worker observed the US Park Police "gaining access" to Mr. Foster's Honda (his White House ID was on the front seat) before 6:37 PM. The White House position is that it was not informed of Mr. Foster's death until 8:30 PM. Another Fairfax County emergency worker said it was known within his group (that left the park at 6:37 PM) that Mr. Foster was employed at the White House.
The Fiske Report refers to the lack of damage done to Mr. Foster's teeth and the soft tissues of his mouth by the barrel of the gun in support of the official suicide theory (Mr. Foster presumably must have put the gun into his mouth voluntarily since there were no signs of a struggle). However, the Fiske Report does not mention the damage that should have been done to the soft tissues and teeth from the powerful recoil of the Army Special Colt .38 Revolver (and its unusually high front sight). The recoil must have been sizable since it carried Mr. Foster's right arm away from his mouth and forced it neatly down by his side.
A US Park Police Investigator at the body site somehow knew to write the name of a US Secret Service uniformed officer and his White House Phone number (in Room 058 in the White House basement) in his investigator's notebook, apparently around 6:40 PM. However, according to official Reports, the US Park Police itself did not learn of Mr. Foster's White House connection for at least another hour, probably an hour-and-a-half. The official position (in a Secret Service memo) is that the White House did not learn about the Mr. Foster's death until 8:30 PM.
Several Fairfax Country Fire and Rescue Department personnel state that the Honda was locked when they examined its exterior (and viewed the interior through the windows) sometime before 6:35 PM. The official Reports indicate that the Honda was found unlocked well over an hour later when it was "officially" searched for the first time. No one on the investigation knew where the Honda keys were during this interval, so these keys could not have been used to unlock the car during this period of time.
The Fiske Report states that the body was bagged back by the second cannon at Fort Marcy Park at about 8:45 PM before being transported the 750 feet to the parking lot and then taken on a 15-minute trip to the Fairfax County Hospital. The ambulance log indicates the body arrived at the hospital 15 minutes before the Fiske Report says the body was put in a body bag up by the second cannon at Fort Marcy. Times given by the doctor who pronounced Mr. Foster dead at the hospital corroborate the ambulance log, not the Fiske Report. Furthermore, the Medical Examiner told the FBI he arrived at Fort Marcy an hour before the Fiske Report says he did. The Medical Examiner told the FBI that Mr. Foster's White House connection was known to those in the park while he was on the scene.
In the words of the FBI interview of the only doctor who examined the body at Fort Marcy, the doctor "believed the wound was consistent with a 'low-velocity weapon.'" The revolver, especially with the high-velocity ammunition the Fiske Report said Mr. Foster used, is not a "low velocity weapon." How does the Fiske Report reconcile the doctor's statement in the Report? The doctor's statement is not mentioned in the Report at all.
To support its conclusion that Vince Foster was under great stress, The Fiske Report states that "It was obvious to many that he had lost weight" in the months before his death. Medical reports in the record show that he actually gained weight in the six months prior to his death.
Despite the official conclusion that financial concerns had no role in Mr. Foster's death, the family checking account had been overdrawn for the two or three weeks prior to his death. The credit union had shifted from "working with" the Fosters on a "bi-weekly" to a "weekly" basis the week before he died. Mr. Foster visited the credit union the day before he died.
Are These Kinds Of Discoveries Sufficient To Cause A Reasonable Person To Question Fundamental Conclusions Of A Death Investigation Or Not?
The Author Of This Report Is Neither a Democrat Nor A Republican.
The Author Of This Report Is Not A Conservative.
The Author Of This Report Has Never Sold Any Books, Newsletters, Videotapes, Etc., That Concern The Death Of Vince Foster Or The Whitewater Matter Generally.
The Author Of This Report Does Not Consider Himself A Scurrilous Kook, Right-Wing Or Otherwise, But Will Graciously Allow His Readers To Decide That For Themselves!
The Author Reasons For Writing This Report Are Given In His Cover Letter To Chairman Alfonse D'Amato Of The Whitewater Committee.
The Author Of This Report Has Personally Borne The Entire Cost Of His Investigation Into The Death Of Vincent W. Foster, Jr.
It was not always so.
For some reason, a lot has changed in our country since the summer Vince Foster died. Today, anyone who seriously questions any aspect of the results of the official investigations into his death runs a sizable risk of being branded a "kook," or worse ("scurrilous kook?"). For many months, the "mainstream media" have, in general, scornfully heaped ridicule upon the relatively few individuals (both within and without the media) who have dared to speak up about Vince Foster's death. The author is sorely tempted to quote samples of this ridicule, but will resist doing so. Virtually everyone reading this page knows what the author means, whether she or he believes the mainstream media's scorn is deserved or not.
Expressing concern about the Foster death investigations and gaining a meaningful personal understanding why he is gone have become "politically incorrect" in the extreme. Questions that intelligent, sensitive, individuals posed in the weeks following his death are now beyond the pale, "Verboten!" as it were, in the eyes of the mainstream media. Why? There is a subtle reason for this behavior that the author will save for another day. The obvious reason is discussed below.
A sampling from a single "mainstream media" article follows below from a piece that ran in the Sunday New York Times the day before Labor Day in 1993. It looks back on Vince Foster's death less than two months after his body was found at Fort Marcy. The quotations below are from the Sunday Times Magazine's "Endpaper" piece entitled "Public Stages" written by Mr. Frank Rich. Apparently, the author of the report in your hands once was in respectable company indeed when he wondered about Vince Foster's death and decided it might not be merely a "simple suicide."
"The Washington Murder Mystery, the whodunit death of the deputy White House counsel, Vincent Foster." [Frank Rich]
"Of a thousand people, of those who might commit suicide, I would never pick Vince." [Hillary Rodham Clinton as quoted by Frank Rich]
"The most normal person who worked in the White House [with] no known history of mental illness or erratic behavior." [The Washington Post as quoted by Frank Rich]
"Widely admired as a portrait of poise. . . a man who seemed to glide through life." [The New York Times as quoted by Frank Rich]
"But if Foster's White House pressures fully explained his self-destruction, virtually every major government official should be placed under suicide watch." [Frank Rich]
The artistic collage created for his piece lends credibility to the "mysterious" interpretation Mr. Rich puts on Vince Foster's death (Mr. Rich does not appear to challenge the suicide verdict, except possibly when penning phrases such as "Washington Murder Mystery" and the "whodunit death of the deputy White House counsel, Vincent Foster," at least until one examines the collage).
The color artwork depicts dark storm clouds over the dome of the US Capitol. Much of the Capitol's dome and façade are shown as if taken from a film negative: everything that one would expect to be light is dark and everything one would expect to be dark is light. The famous Washington Cherry trees are in bloom. They frame and surmount a statue of President, "I cannot tell a lie, I chopped down the cherry tree", George Washington. Washington is positioned on his back in the collage, as if someone had laid him carefully on the ground. Intended or not, presumably readers of this piece would be forgiven if they saw parallels with Mr. Foster's death in this collage.
Mr. Rich was not taken to task for implying there might have been (was?) a cover-up regarding the Foster death. [The US Park Police report concluding that suicide was the cause of death was signed a month before the piece appeared.] Mr. Rich was not chastised in the establishment media for scurrilous insinuations that Mr. Foster's death was not a suicide, nor told that his shameful article would upset Vincent's distraught widow and young children, appearing as it did in the premier newspaper magazine in the nation.
The author will now address the more obvious reason why people asking about Vince Foster's death have been declared "Persona Non Grata" by the mainstream media. The reason is the superficial credibility of the official Reports on Vince Foster's death. The Park Police Report, the 1994 Fiske Report, the 1994 Senate Report -- they all said Foster killed himself, didn't they? However, the author of this report says: Look at the raw data in the record before you decide!
There is a constant (and reasonable-sounding) drumbeat in the mainstream media (and elsewhere) that goes something like this: "There have been four different investigations into this guy's death. The US Park Police, The Fiske Investigation (and its FBI agents), the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings, and the House Banking Committee Hearings. They all said it was suicide. Why don't you let the poor guy and his family rest in peace?"
As indicated in the body of this report, it is the nature of raw evidence uncovered by these investigations (latent in the two Senate Whitewater Hearings Volumes' 2,672 pages, all pages that the author has studied with care) that is being called to the reader's attention. What if the official investigative record contains astounding information that, while technically public, has not been publicized by those charged with doing so? The author assumes (charitably) that most individuals, and virtually all members of the media, are not familiar with the wealth of material contained in the official record detailed and detailed in this report.
Ignore the analysis in this report if that makes the basic expositive material easier to examine. In the author's opinion, the expositive material herein is tied extremely closely to the officially record via exhaustive citations throughout this report [That they were exhausting citations, the author has no doubt!]. Read the expositive material herein and then ask if those who question the death of Vince Foster or challenge the official "suicide verdict" just might have legitimate reasons for doing so.
What do you do with your answer once you've found it? Look in the mirror. Deal with it. I did.
Report Section Page # Title Page - - - - - - - - - - 0 Dedication And Acknowledgments - - - - - - - 1 Executive Summary - - - - - - - - - 2 Overview of the Record - - - - - - - - 3 Consumer Warning! - - - - - - - - - 7 Why Is It No Longer Acceptable To Seek The Facts? - - - - 8 Summary Table Of Contents - - - - - - - 10 Letter Transmitting This Report To Chairman D'Amato - - - 11 July 20, 1993: Vince Foster's Body Is Found At Fort Marcy Park, Virginia - 13 How To Obtain Government Information On The Death Of Vince Foster - 14 Introduction - - - - - - - - - - 15 Tables, Photos, Maps, And Aerial Imagery Of Fort Marcy Park & Environs - 24 Abbreviations Used In This Report - - - - - - 27 Selected Foster-Related Events Prior To Monday, July 19, 1993 - - 28 July 19, 1993: Foster's Next-To-Last Day At The White House - - - 39 July 20, 1993: Foster's Last Day At The White House - - - - 49 July 20, 1993: Fort Marcy Park - - - - - - - 55 The Autopsy And Related Matters - - - - - - - 130 The Torn Note Found In Foster's Briefcase - - - - - 134 Appendix I: Tables Of Homes Nearest Mr. Foster's Body - - 136 Appendix II: Selected Maps Of Fort Marcy Park And Environs - 138 Appendix III: ABC News Photo of Foster's Right Hand With Gun - 142 Appendix IV: 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings Locator Table - - 144 Appendix V: Table Of Civilian Vehicles Seen At Fort Marcy Park - 149 Appendix VI: Table of Fort Marcy Park Arrivals And Departures - 155 Appendix VII: Table Of Principal Persons - - - - 157 Appendix VIII: Author's Biographical Summary - - - - 163
* This third release [S-02, dated August 31, 1995] corrects some typographical and grammatical errors and adds a modest amount of supplemental material to the second printing dated July 31, 1995, as the latter did to the first printing dated July 20, 1995.
Hugh H. Sprunt, Jr.
Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, Chairman
The Whitewater Committee
Room SD-534, Dirksen Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510 Re: The 1995 Senate Whitewater Hearings
Dear Senator D'Amato:
It is appropriate for me to explain why I had sufficient interest in the death of Vincent W. Foster, Jr., to generate the enclosed analysis. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I spent significant time in east Arkansas when I was younger and was generally familiar with Mr. Clinton and Arkansas politics when he sought his party's 1992 Presidential nomination as a "New Democrat." Two acquaintances ran the Clinton Campaign in North Texas, where I now reside. One of these individuals, whom I particularly respect, was a Special Assistant to the President during the first seven months of the Clinton Administration.
My father and other close family members were graduated from Davidson College, Mr. Foster's Alma Mater (an uncle was a psychology major like Mr. Foster). Mr. Foster was President of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at Davidson, as was I at MIT. We are each law school graduates, both of us at mid-year. Furthermore, I strongly identify with the address Mr. Foster gave on May 8, 1993, at the University of Arkansas Law School, although I do not agree with the "spin" given the speech by the Fiske Report.
Most important, some twenty-five years ago, my grandfather, terminally ill with cancer, took his life on Christmas Day by shooting himself in the head using a Colt .38 Special revolver with a four-inch barrel, precisely the type of weapon with which Mr. Foster is said to have taken his own life at Fort Marcy. At his request, I had helped my grandfather into his dressing room where he kept his .38, was necessarily first-on-the-scene a few seconds after he fatally shot himself, and could do nothing for his massive head wound.
I thus have direct experience with suicide-by-gunshot and with the huge amount of damage a .38 Special "HV" round from such a revolver does when fired point-blank into the head. I was therefore amazed when I read the Autopsy Report on Mr. Foster (The June 30, 1994, Fiske Report at Tab 8) and subsequent official descriptions of Mr. Foster's far less dramatic head injury (also from an "HV" .38 round).
My professional précis is in Appendix VIII. I trust that you will be able to satisfy yourself that I am no "kook," right-wing, or otherwise. This report could have been completed within three or four weeks of the publication of the Senate volumes last January, but "Baker Street Irregular" that I am, I have normal day-to-day professional and family responsibilities. I am not commercially involved with any individual or group calling for further investigation of the Foster death, nor do I sell video tapes, books, or newsletters concerning the death of Mr. Foster or other Whitewater matters. I deal openly on a non-exclusive basis with the members of the media who contact me. My work to-date in connection with Mr. Foster's death is available gratis to those who request it. I hope you, and the other members of the Committee, will take what I say seriously enough to make your own evaluations of my report and act accordingly.
My analysis is based on the information contained in the 1994 Senate Report (Rept. 103-433, Vol. I) and Senate Hearings Volumes (S. Hrg. 103-889, Volumes I & II) that cover the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr. I believe you and the other members of the Committee will find this report useful in connection with the hearings that began this week and in any related subsequent congressional proceedings. Open hearings can put vital information before the public that would otherwise remain closely held (witness my reliance on the published volumes from last summer's Senate hearings). Perhaps Mr. Fiske's "Final Report" and related documents can be released in addition to the Senate Report and Hearings volumes based on the 1995 Whitewater hearings.
Committee staff tell me that the wording of the resolution governing the 1995 hearings does not explicitly authorize further inquiry into Mr. Foster's death. However, I also understand that the resolution in no way bars the Special Committee from undertaking such an inquiry should it choose to do so. You and the other members of the Committee should unquestionably re-investigate the death of Vince Foster. Why? The amazing information latent in the 1994 Senate Report and Hearings volumes and detailed in this report!
My report demonstrates that numerous and material errors, omissions, and inconsistencies are submerged in the public record of the 1994 hearings. Furthermore, the Committee is directed to investigate the fate of Mr. Foster's White House papers, and there is evidence in the record that a now-unaccounted-for briefcase was seen in Mr. Foster's Honda at Fort Marcy Park. Also, the two key rings Mr. Foster carried were not found at Fort Marcy, despite a thorough search of the body and Mr. Foster's Honda. It appears from the record that these office, personal, and Honda keys may have been retrieved from Mr. Foster's right front pants pocket by the Park Police only after the body was visited at the morgue by White House staffers.
If one needed to search Mr. Foster's office (or other spaces under his control), or move his car after he left the White House on the day he died, these keys could be quite useful. It has long been admitted that senior White House officials entered Mr. Foster's office the evening of his death, despite standard investigative prohibitions and notwithstanding assurances given the US Park Police that Mr. Foster's office would be sealed forthwith. This report also analyzes pages from a Park Police notebook and other items in the record indicating that Mr. Foster's White House connection was known to the Park Police at about 6:30 PM, some two hours before the White House officially admits having been informed of his death. If the Park Police knew at 6:30 PM, what use did the White House make of the additional two-hour window?
The enclosed report is drawn from the three Senate volumes cited above. Specifically, I have had no access to data contained only in Mr. Fiske's unreleased "Final Report," in the unreleased work-product of the US Park Police, the Fiske or the Starr Offices of Independent Counsel (including that developed by the FBI), or that of congressional investigators working on the 1994/95 hearings, or to evidence developed for (or by) the currently sitting Federal Grand Jury convened in the District by Mr. Starr.
I do not espouse any "conspiracy theory" regarding the ultimate reason for Mr. Foster's death (there are quite a few, many of them extremely bizarre, as you know). I have merely attempted to study the public record of the Foster death investigations and comment reasonably thereon. The enclosed analysis describes what I believe are numerous material errors, omissions, inconsistencies, and curiosa submerged in the public record. Voluminous citations to the record are provided to permit an efficient evaluation of the care with which the enclosed report is directly tied to the Senate volumes.
I have no particular desire to become publicly involved with any congressional hearings, but I will speak to Committee members or staff if such discussions would advance the cause of truth. I love my country, but I am not in the habit of using the American flag as a blindfold. The analysis I have made gives me little confidence in the processes that influenced the prior Foster death probes by placing limits on the investigations, including prior congressional hearings. I hope that you and the other members of the Whitewater Committee will read my analysis, put partisanship aside, and do what must be done. No "Wise Men." Certainly no "Star Chamber" in Congress (or in the Office of Independent Counsel).
Warm regards,
Hugh H. Sprunt, Jr.
HHS/hs
encl.
cc: Members of the Whitewater Committee Special Counsel Michael Chertoff
Ms. Laura Tolson, Federal Grand Jury Coordinator Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr
Deputy White House Counsel Bruce R. Lindsey Chief of Staff Margaret Williams
Chairman James Leach, House Banking Committee Mr. Miguel Rodriguez
Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich FBI Director Louis Freeh [& Others]
Per the official record, the body of Vincent W. Foster, Jr., Deputy White House Counsel to President Clinton, is first found in Fort Marcy Park, Fairfax County, Virginia, at about 5:50 PM on Tuesday, July 20, 1993, by a person who later asked that his identity be kept a secret when he came forward some eight months later, the so-called "Confidential Witness."
After discovering the body, the Confidential Witness drives his white construction van from the Fort Marcy parking lot to the Turkey Run maintenance facility, a little over two-and-a-half miles northwest of Fort Marcy off the George Washington Memorial Parkway. While remaining in his vehicle, the Confidential Witness asks two maintenance workers he sees outside at the maintenance facility to call 911 and report the body and one of the workers agrees to do so.
The younger worker calls Fairfax County 911 at 5:59:59 PM (EDT): ". . . this guy told me there was a body laying up there by the last cannon." Per the request of Fairfax County 911, the worker quickly makes a second call to the US Park Police describing what he had been told: ". . . He said you got a dead body down there at the Ft. Marcy's. . . . He said it was back up there by the cannon." Fairfax County also notifies the US Park Police: ". . . can you respond with our ambulance to Ft. Marcy Park, near the last cannon gun, there is supposed to be a body." Since Fort Marcy is a United States Park, the US Park Police has law enforcement jurisdiction at Fort Marcy Park.
The Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department responds promptly to the 911 call with two vehicles, Engine 1 and Medic 1. Engine 1 arrives in the parking lot at Fort Marcy at 6:09:58 PM, with Medic 1 arriving 18 seconds later. The First US Park Police officer, who volunteered to respond to the call, also reaches the parking lot quickly, arriving there at 6:11:50 PM.
The US Park Police officer locates the body first, reporting its discovery at 6:14:32 PM, two-minutes-and-forty-two-seconds after his arrival in the Fort Marcy parking lot, and requests by radio that Investigators from the US Park Police Criminal Investigation Branch's Anacostia Station respond to the scene because he believes the death is "suspicious" (meaning only that the officer does not believe the death is due to natural causes).
Per the official record, when found the body is lying neatly on its back, both arms at its sides, near the northern end of the western earthen berm of Fort Marcy, the head closest to the top of the earthen berm, 14 feet 3 inches west of the axle of the so-called "second cannon" at Fort Marcy. The deceased is wearing a white dress shirt with the top button undone, gray pin-striped suit pants, and dress shoes. The White House Communications Agency Motorola Bravo pager (#052943) he checked out is clipped to the right side of his waist.
The body lies some 775 feet over-the-ground northwest of the Fort Marcy parking lot where Vince Foster's 1989 taupe-gray four-door Honda Accord (with Arkansas plate, RCN 504) is seen by the US Park Police officer and by the six Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department personnel who respond to the scene. Vince Foster's tie, suit coat, wallet, and his White House ID are inside his unlocked Honda Accord in the fourth slot on the left hand side of the Fort Marcy parking lot as the emergency units enter the parking lot, having jumped the median strip from the southeast-bound George Washington Memorial Parkway to take the Fort Marcy exit off the Parkway.
Vince Foster is dead, and thereby hangs a tale that sorely needs telling.
The 1995 Senate Whitewater Hearings began two days ago on July 18, 1995. Although the matters these 1995 Senate Whitewater Hearings will ultimately cover is, of course, uncertain at this early date, the 1995 Senate Whitewater Hearings began with an examination of the fate of the papers located in Vince Foster's White House office on the day he died.
The Senate Banking Committee "Hearings Hot Line" phone number is (202) 224-0791 and plays a taped message about currently scheduled hearings, the subject matter thereof, the witnesses who will be called, and so on.
The House Banking Committee has scheduled its own 1995 Whitewater Hearings to begin sometime the week of August 7, 1995. The House Banking Committee "Hearings Hot Line" phone number is (202) 225-7588.
The 1994 Senate Hearings and Report Volumes that cover the death of Vince Foster can be obtained by contacting the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Room SD-534, United States Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510. The Senate Banking Committee phone number is (202) 224-7391.
The two Hearings Volumes and the Report Volume cited on the title page constitute the official "record" on which the report you have in your hands is based. The two Hearings Volumes total 2672 pages and the Report Volume is 54 pages long, for a total of 2726 pages.
The Senate Banking Committee Document Clerk's phone number (the Document Clerk actually ships the volumes) is (202) 224-1578 [Fax: (202) 224-5137]. The author has been dealing with the Senate Document Clerk's office since the end of the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings in August 1994 and has found the individuals in that office to be extremely helpful.
The Fiske Report (released to the public on June 30, 1994; the "Final" Fiske Report has not yet been made public) can be obtained by calling (202) 514-8688 [Fax: (202) 514-8802]. This is the phone number of the DC Office of Independent Counsel for Whitewater and Related Matters (headed since August 1994 by Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr who replaced former Independent Counsel Robert Fiske).
The text of the entire Fiske Report is contained in the Senate documents so, if small print is not a problem, the Fiske Report can be obtained by ordering the two Senate Hearings Volumes above.
A copy of the US Park Police Case File #93-30502, Death Investigation 7/20/93, Ft. Marcy/G.W.M.P.) can still (possibly) be obtained from the US Park Police, Anacostia Station. Captain C.W. Hume (Badge #823) signed off on the US Park Police Report on August 5, 1993, and it was released to the public in July 1994.
The address of the US Park Police Criminal Investigation Branch unit that handled the US Park Police investigation of the death of Vince Foster is United States Park Police, Anacostia Station, 1901 Anacostia Drive, SE, Washington, D.C. 20020. The phone number is (202) 690-5000.
Virtually all of the US Park Police Case File is also contained in the two Senate Hearings Volumes.
The Official Readers For Whom This Report Was Written
The primary readers for whom this report was written are the Members of the US Congress, particularly the Senators on the Special Whitewater Committee (see the transmittal letter to Chairman D'Amato). The author believes that an open and unfettered inquiry into the death of Vince Foster should be made by the Senate due to the constraints placed on prior investigations such as those undertaken by the US Park Police and the Office of Independent Counsel under Robert Fiske (constraints that the author believes must have existed, given the content of the record).
The report is written with that "official" goal in mind. Convincing the Senators on the Special Whitewater Committee (or the Representatives on the House Banking Committee) to conduct such an inquiry is going to be difficult for a variety of reasons that will not be discussed here, but, like anything else, "all you can do is give it your best shot."
This report, analyzing the 1994 Senate Report and Hearings Volumes concerning the death of Vince Foster that were released in January 1995, is by no means a short one, but it does selectively summarize and comment upon the entire 2726 pages in the official public record of the 1994 Senate Hearings in about one-sixteenth the number of pages that comprise the record.
Caveats: After reading this report, the author would suggest that readers consider carefully whether the author better belongs in the category of those who "know nothing and say all" or those who "know all and say nothing." In the author's opinion, although the evidence in this report cuts through one "layer of the onion" surrounding the death of Vince Foster, there are at least two more layers yet to be pierced, but this report, linked as tightly as it is to the official record, can take the reader only so far. More tears will be shed, whether more "layers of onion" are pierced or not. The concepts "defense-in-depth" and "modified limited hang-out" also spring to mind. Naiveté is not a concept the author espouses.
The Senate volumes released to the public include the names (and sometimes the Social Security numbers, work & home phone numbers, and work & home addresses) of many of the civilian witnesses. The author has suppressed this information in his report in order to respect their privacy, instead referring to these individual witnesses without mentioning their names or otherwise effectively identifying them (for example, "the couple in the white Nissan with MD plates," and so on).
All references in this report to "the record" are to the three Senate volumes listed on the title page. References to the "Reports" constitute a collective reference to the US Park Police Report, the Fiske Report, and the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings Report Volume. The Reports are a part of the record. Individual reports are cited by name.
Persons familiar with the record (rare though they may be!) and interested in amplification of the points raised in the Executive Summary should focus on the italicized analyses below and refer to the expositive plain text material in this report only when necessary.
The times given in the record are sometimes witness estimates and sometimes quite precise, such as those generated by computer-driven chronological logging systems. The times in the record often are internally inconsistent. The author is aware that the times encountered in these situations are sometimes mere estimates since people are involved with doing, not taking notes and looking at their watches, especially in the early, more fluid, phases of some sort of an investigation.
As with other investigative issues, the author will make points from time to time about the times events occur if the consensus in the Reports is materially different from what the author believes the consensus should be, based on a careful reading of the raw evidence in the record. If the times provided in this report seem confusing, the author hopes that the blame can be shared with the record, because it is difficult to decipher at times! The times events occur are critical to understanding the events on July 20th, so readers should be particularly careful to challenge any estimates or conclusions of the author (or the Reports!) as they see fit regarding the time events are alleged to have occurred.
Citations in this report are to page numbers of the two 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings Volumes [S. Hrg. 103-889, Volumes I & II] and of the 1994 Report Volume [Rept. 103-433, Volume I]. These three volumes constitute "the record." Relatively rare citations to page numbers in the Senate Report are identified by a leading "R". All times in the body of this report are Eastern Daylight Time and use a 24-hour clock (unless, of course, a time is part of a quotation).
Quite often in a quotation an author wants to emphasize a portion of the remark being quoted. To accomplish this, those words are sometimes in boldface type like this. A normal convention is to place within brackets [ ] the words "emphasis supplied" so that readers will know that the words being quoted were not in boldface in the original material.
In order to save himself the trouble of typing "[emphasis supplied]" dozens of times, this author is putting the reader on notice that he has entered in boldface all such words within quotation marks in this report.
Boldfaced material that is not in quotation marks is simply text written by the author that he wishes to stand out. Italicized words identify material that is primarily of an analytical, rather than expositive, nature (cites to the record are also a part of the italicized analysis where appropriate).
Sometimes, in a frenzy of attention-seeking, the author will both boldface and italicize analytical material that he thinks is particularly noteworthy. [Like many amateur report-writers who survived grammar school before the advent of word processing software and PCs, your author is somewhat font-happy. Though not apparent, restraint was exercised].
Each Comment is prefaced by a short underscored sub-heading arranged in approximate chronological order under a large boldfaced heading. Voluminous citations are provided in the Comments to the appropriate page number(s) of the record. This approach permits an efficient review of the report in conjunction with the Hearings and Report Volumes themselves and allows the reader to see how intimately the expositive material in this report is in fact linked to the record.
A certain amount of repetition is necessary in this report to tie together the various factual threads. For example a reader, interested in learning about the activity of Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department and US Park Police personnel near the body immediately after it was discovered, and another reader, curious about the precise location of the body at Fort Marcy Park, will both need to know some of the same information.
Although the author would naturally prefer that all readers study this report with the care with which he believes it was written, he expects that many users will initially just read the Executive Summary and then skim the rest of the report for individual topics that attract their eye, rather than study the entire report carefully (that assessment might be optimistic!). A certain amount of repetition across Comments, including the titles of officials, is therefore necessary in order to be fair to the former group.
The two primary agencies present at Fort Marcy Park, per the record, are represented by 1) the uniformed and plainclothes officers of the US Park Police and 2) by personnel from the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department (The FCFRD includes both firefighters and emergency medical services workers employed by Fairfax County, Virginia).
Although the fire-fighters and the emergency medical services personnel are all employees of the FCFRD, persons operating fire-fighting vehicles are sometimes identified in this report as FCFRD workers, as in "FCFRD Smith," and persons operating emergency medical service vehicles and providing emergency medical services are often identified as EMS, as in "EMS Jones," in an attempt to make the reader more aware of their roles late on the afternoon of July 20, 1993, when Mr. Foster's body was found at Fort Marcy (persons operating fire equipment also often have some EMS training).
If readers become confused about who is who, they should refer to the Table of Principal Persons in Appendix VII.
Like all tools, this report has at least one purpose. The author, of course, would like the report to be the "Swiss Army Knife" of Foster reports analyzing the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings documents.
The primary purpose of this report, drawn almost exclusively as it is from documents published by the US Senate (the major exceptions: the publicly available data in Appendix I, Homes Nearest Mr. Foster's Body and the three maps in Appendix II), is to delineate what the author believes are material errors, inconsistencies, omissions, and curiosa latent in the record waiting for all to discover (assuming everyone had the inclination and the time to study the 2726 pages).
The primary audience is intended, as stated previously, to be the members of the "Special Whitewater Committee" of the US Senate. The secondary audience is intended to be the Members of The House Banking Committee (and certain officials within the Executive Branch).
This report is also designed for the use of anyone who has been at least mildly curious about the "official facts" surrounding the death of Vince Foster. Use it to learn more about his death. Take the information herein and build on it intelligently.
Many individuals have strong feelings that the death of Vince Foster was just a "simple" suicide. Others believe it was something else and (unlike the author) also claim to know the "ultimate" reason for his death. Sadly, in many instances members of both groups have relatively little knowledge of the raw data in the record itself. Analyses aside, one function of this report is to extract (and cite) information from the record and present it in more usable form.
The final potential audience for this report are those (apparently the great majority, if one believes the mainstream media) who believe that the prior official investigations demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Foster died by his own hand at the spot where he was found in Fort Marcy Park and that anyone with the temerity even to question the official consensus is by definition totally incorrect and either 1) deranged or otherwise suffering from some sort of mental impairment or 2) a political nut case.
The author believes that no one reading this report with an open mind (even if some of the analytical material in italics below is rejected) will come away thinking that the record brooks nothing less than a substantial uncertainty that the death was a suicide committed a few feet in front of the barrel of the second cannon at Fort Marcy. The author may be foolish to think that his readers will decide the official Reports are indeed fatally flawed, but he is an optimist at heart.
The author states that he has had no access to the wealth of information that has presumably been developed by various official entities involved with the Foster death investigation and simply not yet released to the public (though the second anniversary of Mr. Foster's death has arrived).
The author expects that some, if not most, of the issues raised below could be resolved (albeit at great political cost) by public access to this as yet unreleased material. These unreleased materials are listed in the transmittal letter to Senator D'Amato.
Should any of the basic expositive material or analyses in this report appear to impugn the professional reputation or performance of any public official, it is the explicit and implicit position of the author that shortcomings, if any, can be accounted for and reconciled only by a thorough understanding of the de facto chain-of-command and the broader context of the events surrounding the death of Vince Foster.
The present record does not provide this context. This is one of its greatest failures: the unjust and incomplete treatment of the Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Department and US Park Police personnel (particularly the latter) who responded to the scene so quickly after 911 was dialed.
The author believes that the US Park Police, the Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Department, and other Fairfax County personnel who are discussed in this report were adequately trained for their duties and made an effort to perform those duties under what rapidly became extremely trying circumstances (for a variety of reasons that are not mentioned in the record).
The author believes the underlying reason that so many errors, omissions, inconsistencies, and curiosa are latent in the record can not be laid at the feet of the US Park Police, the Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Department, or other Fairfax County personnel. The author believes the reason can only be discovered by looking elsewhere. Now is the time to do so.
Although numerous issues are the subject of Comments below, they were selected by the author and no attempt has been made to raise every potential issue submerged in the record.
If the author had had access to a sophisticated relational database, an optical scanner, and a high-end workstation, he is certain that this report would be both somewhat longer and certainly more unsettling than it already is.
With very limited exceptions, no background information external to the Senate Volumes is assumed that cannot be gleaned from a so-called US "newspaper of record" (The Table of Homes Nearest Mr. Foster's Body in Appendix I contains straightforward, publicly-available, geographical and property ownership data, not in the record, that was gathered by the author, as do the maps in Appendix II).
This is a truism for the author but, sadly, a concept rejected by many of those on both sides of the debate who have chosen to comment openly upon the death of Vince Foster ("A simple suicide, the man was obviously depressed" versus "This was a suspicious death, something is not right"). All of us should remember that reasonable people make different evaluations constantly.
Everyone does not give the same factors the same weight for many reasons, but it is not therefore legitimate to infer that a particular individual is unreasonable per se. Regrettably, there is too much of this sort of thing going on in our country today.
A simple example shows how common it is for reasonable people to differ: if everyone valued a product and its sales price equally, no markets of any kind would exist. The person selling some bread for $3 values the $3 he will receive more than the bread he will give up. The person purchasing the bread values the bread he will receive more than the $3 he will have to part with. We do not make a habit of condemning bread-purchasers and bread-sellers as money-grubbing nut cases or bread-crazed fanatics (and for good reason).
A few potential Comments were omitted because the author considered them too peripheral. Some other potential Comments were deleted during the editing process because the author considered them too controversial -- that is, the author believed they were inappropriately speculative (one of those value judgments), given the nature and extent of the data in the record (another value judgment) supporting the particular hypothesis.
The reader is again cautioned that reasonable people constantly differ when it comes to making such judgment calls. All of us learn from experience, ideally with objective reality as our constant coach. As indicated above, a few of the analyses in this report may appear to be something of a "stretch," but were retained because the author believed they remained within the "reasonable range" and constituted the best explanation the author could produce, given the data in the record. The people who enjoy being branded a "kook" are few and far between, and the author is no exception!
The author has intentionally not attempted to divine the "real" or "ultimate" reason for Vince Foster's death in this report. There are many theories out-and-about in the land, the great majority of which the author considers too bizarre for words. For this reason, the author has concentrated here on reporting and analyzing the officially true and genuine material contained in the record published by the United States Senate. The author does not rule out one or more sequels, however.
The great majority of the analyses in this report is quite straightforward and the author expects most readers will readily agree with much that is in the italicized analytical statements within the Comments below without finding them particularly controversial (although, of course, the mere discovery that many material inconsistencies and apparent errors in the record exist will come as a shocking surprise to almost everyone reading this report).
Other analyses in this report are less straightforward and doubtless will be more controversial. These analyses usually involve the author's attempt to reconcile a complex set of conflicting data in the record by putting forward one or more hypotheses that the author believes have good potential to contribute to a better understanding of the events in and near Fort Marcy Park on July 20, 1993.
Reasonable people will differ. In fact, any effort to fashion a realistic acceptance of the conflicts and ambiguities within the particular record released by the US Senate virtually ensures that different reasonable interpretations of the events described therein will exist. In this context, otherwise reasonable people would be unreasonable if they did not differ! The author endorses further investigation to reduce the substantial uncertainties he believes the current record fosters.
The first rule of any investigation is a healthy intellectual skepticism coupled with an emotional appreciation that when you probe the unknown, by definition, you do not know what you will find. There is a widespread tendency today, when probing the unknown, to decide up-front what will be discovered and then examine the evidence only for data that support one's a priori conclusion. This attitude makes for bad science, defective engineering, naive public policies, and irresponsible journalism. In the author's opinion, the Reports of the Foster death investigations are guilty of this particular sin against logic, as well as other contemporary philosophical failings.
For this reason, notwithstanding the statements in the official Reports, there is strong evidence in the record that Vince Foster's death was considered a suicide from the get-go and evidence was gathered and analyzed largely with a view toward supporting that conclusion.
Since there is no reason to believe the officials involved 1) lacked the requisite intelligence or 2) did not have the fundamental substantive knowledge critical to carry out their duties, the author believes the reason the record contains as many material errors, omissions, inconsistencies, and curiosa must lie elsewhere.
The author is the first to admit that some readers may find some of the analyses herein to be less than totally convincing. Why? Reasonable people can differ! Readers are welcomed to construct hypotheses of their own that more clearly reconcile the raw data in the record in a less-controversial or non-controversial manner whenever they balk at a particular interpretation proffered by the author. Perhaps our government can help us with this effort if it so chooses.
If a novel and substantial "breakthrough" in understanding is achieved by any reader, please let the author know what has been discovered. Obviously, the same request is made if any reader finds an error was made when the author extracted any of the contents of this report from the record!
Before getting into the body of this report, the reader should ask "What variety and volume of irregularities in a death investigation would cause me to question its conclusions?" After finishing this report, the reader should decide if such irregularities were present in the Foster death investigations conducted to date.
Those who insist the conclusions in the official Foster Reports must be correct, because of the large number of co-conspirators required by any other theory, miss the point. In the author's opinion, this report contains overwhelming evidence that major differences in witness statements exist! Those providing information to the investigation often differ in fundamental ways from the consensus officially reported to the public in the Reports.
The author questions the results of the Foster death investigations to date, not because the detailed information provided by witnesses demonstrates such a clear-cut consensus that the conclusions reached could have been achieved only via a conspiracy of silence, but precisely because the record is so extremely inconsistent that it bespeaks the fundamental rejection of a monolithic conspiracy, not the creation of one.
Putting aside the extremely significant human and, in the author's opinion, political, tragedy that the death of Vince Foster represents for a moment, please remember that the record contains the raw data of any good detective story. The body of this report first provides background information concerning events in the final weeks of Vince Foster's life. Next, the pace picks up considerably when the body is found at Fort Marcy and evidence concerning the death is described.
Some mysteries within the overall story are more easily solved than others. Examining the data with an open mind and striving to construct workable hypotheses that have real explanatory value is the essence of all detective work. The data is in this report. Readers are invited to give it "their best shot," too.
This report provides a huge amount of "worm's-eye level" evidence straight from the record, but it has been organized in a way that is much easier for the reader to cope with, while providing voluminous citations directly to the record. The author would not wish multiple readings of the undigested evidence in the Hearings Volumes upon anyone, having done that (and more) himself!
Given the length of this report, the author would be astounded if there are not a few factual errors somewhere herein (all made in good faith). The reader is cautioned against allowing a particular factual error (if found) or a given analysis that the reader believes is too much of a "stretch" ipso facto to taint either the rest of the analyses or the more routine expositive information in this report. The author assembled and wrote this report in the evenings over a 4-5 week period, staying up until one and two in the morning (running on hot showers and cold lemonade) after handling the requirements of his day job, so some errors (if not important ones) are guaranteed!
Along these lines, the author is not exactly a heck of a typist (excuse me, keyboarder), so there are going to be some typos and similar mistakes made in this report that the author and his loyal spell-checking software did not catch.
Subsequent printings of this report will strive to eliminate any remaining typos and grammatical errors and generally to improve the readability of this report. Now, if were the author a superb proofreader too, this entire Comment could have been eliminated!
This report on the death of Vince Foster unlike other non-governmental efforts, in books, newsletters, or on video tapes, is a gift, at least to its official readers, many in the media and to some unofficial readers. Some readers obtained the report for the cost of duplicating and shipping it simply because the author could not afford to duplicate and ship a copy to everyone who wanted the report.
As the reader will remember from the letter transmitting this report to Chairman D'Amato, the author has significant personal reasons why he would like to discover the truth about the death of Vince Foster. There's more to it than that, though, also per the transmittal letter. "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." Remember them? It's not baseball: one-hit-in-three-at-bats is not a decent average.
The author found the first printing of this report, dated July 20, 1995 (the second anniversary of Mr. Foster's death) to be useful in an "up-by-your-own-bootstraps" manner when he read the first print himself. For that reason, and due to the volume of material in the record, the author intends to update this report from time-to-time, in an attempt to improve the grammar and the writing style, decrease the number of spelling errors, and to add substantive material and additional references to the record that are useful in understanding the death of Mr. Foster.
On the occasions when a new print is released, the supplemental print number will appear on the Title Page and in the Summary Table of Contents. A printing history will appear in this Comment. This release is the second supplemental printing [S-02] dated August 31, 1995. The prior printing, dated July 31, 1995, was the first supplemental printing. The release dated July 20, 1995, was the original print. Who knows what the future will bring?
Appendix I -- The Table of Homes Nearest Mr. Foster's Body
The information in Appendix I was developed by the author and his incognito associate, DCA, from aerial imagery of Fort Marcy park and environs and from publicly-available Fairfax County, Virginia, property records. This table and the Maps in Appendix II are the only significant Foster-related information in this report not taken directly from the record. As explained therein, the Table of Homes provides specific examples of incorrect information and other investigative failures this author associates with the Fiske Report
Three maps of Fort Marcy Park and the surrounding area [Maps IV, V (R), and VI] are found in Appendix II. The reader should review these maps prior to reading this report. These maps should be referred to as necessary thereafter. The reader is directed to the maps by the text from time to time, but not on every occasion on which they might prove useful to the reader.
Map IV is an engineering drawing of Fort Marcy itself (Fort Marcy is part of Fort Marcy Park) lifted from the National Archives and annotated in the author's (puerile) hand. Map V (R) is a map of Fort Marcy Park and nearby homes traced by the author from an aerial photo run flown on the morning of April 7, 1993. Map VI is a portion of a Fairfax County plat map showing the outline of Fort Marcy Park with the surrounding residential lots and subdivisions annotated by the author.
No such maps (or aerial photographs) are part of the record, although Mr. Fiske informed the 1994 Senate Whitewater Committee that "Large aerial photographs of Fort Marcy Park are available for viewing at the OIC should you so desire [1345; see also 947,971]." The record does contain numerous not-to-scale extemporaneous freehand sketches of limited utility.
The author has very large-scale black and white (1:500) and color infrared aerial imagery of Fort Marcy Park and the surrounding area from tracks flown both before and after Mr. Foster's death and timed to minimize leaf cover. The aerial imagery itself is not part of this report due to cost and size constraints (the larger black and white photos are 20" by 20" and 18" by 18"), but Map V (R) in Appendix II, having been traced from aerial imagery, should serve as a passable (and cheaper!) substitute. The author has several dozen ground-level photos of points of interest at Fort Marcy Park. While useful, they are not included in this report because doing so would also increase the production cost significantly, too significantly for this author, anyway.
Appendix III contains a black and white photocopy (originally taken from the image on a color TV screen) of the picture of Mr. Foster's right hand and the revolver therein. This image is referred to several times in the body of the report in different contexts. It is the only image purported to be of the body that has ever been released to the public. The photographic image appeared on ABC News Friday, March 11, 1994.
In the original color image (which the author believes was provided to Reuters at the direction of the White House and then given to ABC News), the gun contrasts even more sharply with the hand and the background.
Appendix IV contains a Locator Table that should aid readers in finding the particular page in the Senate Hearings Volumes on which the testimony or deposition of a given witness begins, an FBI interview with a particular individual is to be found, a US Park Police internal report authored by a particular individual commences, and so on. An effort has been made to include all witnesses covered by the Hearings Volumes, whether the author believes their evidence is significant or not.
The Locator Table in Appendix IV also contains the Hearings Volume page number for what the author believes are the more significant documents found in the Hearings Volumes.
The table is sorted by the name of the individual involved or the title of the document being referenced.
If nothing else, Appendix IV should provide a great deal of assistance to those who have found the "organization" of the 1994 Hearings Volumes frustrating. The Hearings Volumes are supposed to contain raw data from the investigation and that they definitely do, but the author wonders why the information in the Hearings Volumes could not have been put in a more logical order and the duplicate documents culled before it was printed.
Appendix V contains a listing of each description of a civilian vehicle that made an appearance at the Fort Marcy Park parking lot on the afternoon of July 20, 1993 (unless a vehicle in the record managed to slip past the author).
Often a vehicle was seen by more than one witness and the descriptions they gave differed somewhat (as should be expected), so one vehicle may have multiple entries in the table. Multiple descriptions that the author believes describe one vehicle are grouped together in the table.
The vehicles that the author believes are sufficiently interesting are covered at the appropriate places in the body of the report.
Appendix VI contains data on the "comings and goings" of selected individuals on the afternoon and evening of Mr. Foster's death. It is necessarily incomplete since, somewhat surprisingly, the record is often silent about the time someone arrived at (or, more commonly, left) a location. Estimated times are given if a witness provided a time-range, or if an approximate time can be gleaned from witness accounts.
Questions marks are used when in the author's opinion, there is substantial uncertainty (one of those judgment calls again!) concerning the time someone arrived or departed one of the listed locations. In significant situations, the body of this report will discuss the particular arrival-departure issue.
Appendix VII is a Table of Principal Persons, their job titles, and a short comment referencing a significant connection each has to the body of this report. Unlike Appendix IV, numerous individuals mentioned in the Hearings Volumes are not listed (as unimportant) and there are no cross references to their location in the Hearings volumes (see Appendix IV for those).
This is the best table to refer to if the reader does not recognize the name of a person appearing in the body of the report. The author suggests this table be read before starting the body of the report. It is one of the last appendices because the author hopes readers will use scanning Appendix VII as an opportunity to page this entire report to get a feeling for it before putting it to the use(s) they choose.
Appendix VIII contains the one-page biographical summary of the author that was referenced in the cover letter to Chairman D'Amato in an effort to persuade the Senator that the author is not a kook.
That table is on the following page and lists the abbreviations used from this point forward.
Abbreviations Used In This Report Full Name * Abbreviation Full Name * Abbreviation Vincent W. Foster, Jr. VWF Fort Marcy Park FMP United States Park Police USPP Chain Bridge Road CBR Office of Legal Counsel OLC George Washington Parkway GWMP US Secret Service USSS Fairfax County, Virginia FC WH Communications Agency WHCA Little Rock LR The Confidential Witness CW Arkansas AR Department of Justice DOJ Emergency Medical Services EMS Rose Law Firm RLF FC Fire & Rescue Dept. FCFRD The White House WH FCFRD Ambulance Unit 1 A01 The President WJC # FCFRD Medic Unit 1 M01 The First Lady HRC ## FCFRD Engine Unit 1 E01 Chelsea Victoria Clinton CVC FCFRD Truck Unit 1 T01P Criminal Investigation Branch CIB Assistant US Attorney AUSA
* By custom and tradition, the abbreviation, "FBI" [like "IRS"], is well known to all Americans and therefore is not listed as one of the Abbreviations Used In The Report.
# Lest the reader think otherwise, no disrespect is meant by use of the President's initials in this report. Independent Counsel Robert Fiske referred to the President as "WJC" in connection with the President's Deposition [1815], and his doing so was "Okay" with the President. The author infers that any American would be granted this privilege by WJC if the occasion arose.
## Lest the reader think otherwise, no disrespect is meant by his use of the First Lady's initials in this report. VWF referred to the First Lady as "HRC" in the torn note found in his briefcase at the WH OLC six days after his death [353]. The author is quite certain that VWF meant no disrespect when he did so and the author intends no disrespect to HRC either.
The Fiske Report cites the words of VWF's commencement speech [192] to support its conclusion that VWF took his own life.
In a speech to the graduating University of Arkansas Law School class on May 8, 1993, VWF stated [360-363]:
Following the bar exam, your most difficult test will not be of what you know but what is your character. Some of you will fail.
The class of 1971 [VWF's class] had many distinguished members who also went on to achieve high public office. But it also had several who forfeited their license to practice law. Blinded by greed, some served time in prison.
I cannot make this point to you too strongly. There is no victory, no advantage, no fee no favor which is worth even a blemish on your reputation for intellect and integrity. . .
The conviction that you did the right thing will be the best salve and the best sleeping medicine.
Take time out for yourself. Have some fun, go fishing, every once in a while take a walk in the woods by yourself. Learn to relax, watch more sunsets. . .
If you find yourself getting burned out or unfulfilled, unappreciated, or the profits become more important than your work, then have the courage to make a change.
In the author's opinion and in light of other information in the record analyzed below, the author believes it is quite reasonable to think that these are not the words of a man contemplating suicide, but rather the words of a man who shortly thereafter summoned the courage to "make a change" of his own and resign as Deputy White House Counsel, but died before he could do so. VWF told many among his family, friends, and associates that he was considering resigning (see Comment below).
In passing, it should be noted that VWF's belief that taking "a walk in the woods by yourself" is fun would be an unlikely attitude for a man who, officially at least, took a solo "walk in the woods" some ten weeks later and fatally shot himself.
According to Webster Hubbell's FBI interview, "Hubbell said if you really want to understand Foster, to take a look at his recent speech at the University of Arkansas [1479]." Sheila Anthony told the FBI that VWF had personally prepared this speech [1581].
Per the Fiske Report, one of VWF's sisters described VWF's delivery during the speech in the following way: "Sheila Anthony [Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs] recalls that during his address Foster's voice was unnaturally strained and tense, reminiscent of their father's voice when he was distraught during the period before his death in 1991 [192]." Lisa Foster told the FBI that VWF's delivery was "very stiff" [1636].
Sheila Anthony's remarks are a powerful specific description of VWF's strained and tense delivery, are they not? She even goes so far as to link the sound of VWF's voice during the speech to the distraught tone of voice used by their father shortly before his own death.
However, that is not the way two long-time friends and associates of VWF remember the speech. Phillip Carroll of the RLF, who had known VWF for about twenty years, told the FBI, in the words of his interview report "Carroll said at a commencement ceremony at the University of Arkansas Law School, Foster gave a splendid delivery with no stress showing during the speech [1726]."
Loraine Cline of the RLF who had been VWF's secretary for six years, also attended this speech. In the words of her FBI interview, she described VWF the day of the speech "He acted excited and 'up' and he looked good [1729]."
What is going on here? How can different adults listening to a speech delivered by someone they all know extremely well have such diametrically opposing views on its delivery? What is truth and what is "Pravda?" The speech was videotaped, but the author has not had access to it. A review of this tape ought to indicate who is right and who is wrong re the nature of VWF's delivery.
According to the Fiske Report [196], VWF told his sister Sheila Anthony, that he hesitated to see a psychiatrist in connection with the problem she told the FBI was depressing him because he feared it would "jeopardize his White House Security clearance." This statement is also contained in Sheila Anthony's FBI interview [1576].
In light of the difficulties that many on the WH staff experienced when applying for and obtaining the legally-required high-level security clearances in early 1993, one might ask whether VWF was concerned that his temporary clearance (or his application for clearance) might be threatened or whether he was worried that his pre-existing "permanent" clearance would be jeopardized. If the latter, one might ask how his permanent clearance was obtained so quickly or if he had obtained a top secret security clearance that pre-dated his service to the Clinton Administration.
VWF was not described in the record as a person who had required a top-secret clearance prior to joining the Clinton Administration. For example, the only military service the record reveals was a short stint of some sort in the late 1960s when VWF served in the New Jersey National Guard [1571]. [No other association between VWF and the state of New Jersey is in the record.]
The Wednesday or Thursday before his death on Tuesday, July 20, 1993, VWF called James Lyons, a trusted advisor, at Lyons' law firm in Denver and requested that he hold himself ready to travel to DC on short notice in order to meet with VWF [1682]. VWF called Lyons again the Sunday night before his death and confirmed that Lyons would be flying to DC to meet with VWF on Wednesday, July 21, 1993 [172,1682].
It is not clear from the record when the date of the July 21st meeting was originally decided upon [see also 195]. Perhaps the date was set in a phone call not documented in the record.
You contact a trusted friend to make sure he is available to fly across the country to see you on short notice, you re-contact that friend, set a date for a meeting, confirm the date three days in advance, and then commit suicide the day before the meeting? Such behavior would be unusual to say the least unless, conceivably, a snap decision to commit suicide was made after the meeting date was confirmed.
Did VWF make a snap decision to take his own life between late Sunday night and the Tuesday afternoon he died? As analyzed below, in the author's opinion, the record does not support the conclusion that VWF ever made a decision to commit suicide, and certainly does not support the conclusion that VWF made the decision to kill himself between Sunday night and Tuesday afternoon.
The conclusion that VWF made the decision to commit suicide between Sunday night and Tuesday afternoon might make some sense if there had been some evidence that VWF was in the depths of depression or manifested substantial out-of-the-ordinary behavior during the 36 hours before he was found dead at FMP.
However, the record, if anything, gives the opposite impression: while VWF may well have been troubled about some matter or other one to several weeks before his death, his mood had materially improved during at least the four days prior to his death.
If his mood only seemed better because he had finally made the extremely difficult decision to take his own life, why did VWF still call Lyons in Denver (not the other way 'round) and set up an appointment for the day after VWF knew he would be dead? Everything in the record about VWF's values as described in this report makes it clear that he would not play such a gratuitous and evil trick on a trusted friend, especially a deception that would in all likelihood impose a severe psychological burden on that friend after he learned of the suicide.
The possibility that VWF killed himself because of records he knew would be found once a search warrant issued for the LR offices of Judge Hale was a concern of those investigating VWF's death.
Fletcher Jackson, AUSA for the Eastern District of Arkansas, reported to the FBI that VWF could have learned of the search of David Hale's office in the following manner (quoted from Jackson's FBI interview on May 16, 1994):
The only other avenue through which Vince Foster could possibly have known about the search was that the morning of the search [apparently not later than the morning of July 20, the day VWF died -- VWF obviously could not have found out about the search after his own death!] sometime between 9:00 and 9:30 AM agents went to Hale's office in Little Rock and Hale was not there but he was at a location six or seven miles away where he was fulfilling magistrate responsibilities. He found out that a search was being conducted of his office and he made a phone call that morning. Jackson advised that he does not know who that phone call was made to but that whoever it was may have been a possible conduit of Foster finding out about the search if indeed he did [177].
It is of course possible that the person who called Hale may have called VWF directly, that Hale called VWF directly, or that there was more than one intermediary That is, the assumption (of Fletcher's) in the FBI interview that another party would be necessarily interposed between VWF and the information about the search is not necessarily a valid one.
Was a search made of calls to the White House (whether or not placed through the switchboard) that morning to determine what individuals called the White House from AR and whether any calls (from AR or not) were to private lines to which VWF had access in the WH? Phone records could also be checked to determine whether any non-AR-source calls to such private lines received a call from AR shortly before the call to the private WH line was made.
This research would not be as laborious as it sounds. An impossible task? No. Why not?
It is possible to determine the particular telephone instrument at the WH used in connection with a particular call. How does one know this?
According to the Fiske Report, WH telephone records were used to determine that the telephone located at VWF's desk was used to make two calls to a psychiatrist on Friday July 16th [197]: "At 12:41 p.m. and again at 1:24 p.m., Foster called the psychiatrist from the telephone in his office [sic], and charged the calls to his home phone."
What a phone system! It is a wonder everyone in the WH was not paranoid about using the phones! Mr. Fiske did not find it too difficult to search diligently for two telephonic attempts by VWF to reach a psychiatrist, so the additional telephonic record-checking proposed here should not be too difficult for others to accomplish.
It should be noted in passing that VWF must have certainly been a punctilious public servant indeed to have charged what apparently were toll-free calls to his home phone number. . . One might also wonder whether this was a counter-intuitive step for a person who the record states was concerned to prevent any contacts with psychiatrists from being discovered by WH security [see above under the Comment, "VWF's Security Clearance"].
Indeed, it is almost as if VWF were acting to preserve a record that he did call a psychiatrist from his WH office during the work day. . . Why might VWF wish to do this?
The list of psychiatrists (apparently provided VWF at his request by his sister, Sheila Anthony, Assistant US Attorney General for Legislative Affairs) was found in VWF's wallet in his Honda at the FMP parking lot [197, 211], or possibly the list was not inside his wallet, merely inside the Honda itself [481,1603], waiting to be found.
Strangely enough, there was no effort made (at least by the USPP) to determine what email messages VWF sent or received in the several weeks before his death, nor any attempt to obtain records relating to calls to and from VWF's home phones [850-851] or family cell-phones, if any. If these records were eventually obtained, the information therein has not been made public.
VWF was carrying a WHCA Motorola Bravo pager clipped to the right side of his waist when found at FMP [438].
The quote from the May 16, 1994, FBI interview with AUSA Jackson (long after the interviewee would have known the date of VWF's death) commented upon above is particularly important in light of FBI testimony [77] that the warrant was "issued" on July 20th, but [the search itself was?] not "effected" until July 21st [see also 194].
In short, there is an apparent conflict in the official record [194 vs. 177]: Did the search in question actually take place the morning of the 20th or the morning of the 21st? The possibility that VWF learned of the issuance of the warrant prior to the scheduled search should also be pursued to a firmer conclusion in light of the Jackson FBI interview [177] (of which the FBI agent testifying before the committee might have been unaware).
A letter to the Senate Whitewater Committee from an FBI agent [374-375] on August 3, 1994, states that the FBI "found no evidence" that VWF had any information about the search or the issuance of the search warrant, includes a reference, inter alia, to the interview the AUSA Jackson quoted above that describes the existence of a first link in the chain to VWF.
Given the rapid and aggressive recovery of the pager by the WH (see the Comment on the pager below), is it impossible that the pager contained evidence that VWF was contacted regarding either the issuance of the Hale search warrant or (if the search was conducted while VWF was still alive, as implied by AUSA Fletcher) the start of the search itself?
Alternatively, persons as yet unknown may have thought it possible that VWF had been contacted regarding the warrant or the search itself [or some other matter as yet unknown] and arranged the rapid release of the pager from the USPP to ensure its contents, if any, would be protected from disclosure in any case. Could VWF's WHCA pager be paged only by the WH, or could anyone with his pager number page him? Better safe than sorry?
VWF was the WH liaison for the execution of the legally required blind trust(s) for the Clinton Family (for HRC, for WJC, and possibly separate trust(s) for CVC) [179,1822] that were drafted by Brantley Buck of the RLF. [See the Comment below concerning the "unusual" "CHB" sheet found in VWF's wallet at FMP.]
For reasons unknown, it had apparently been previously decided that HRC would execute the required blind trust documents when she was in LR (she arrived there about 2026 [EDT] on July 20th [2104], according to publicly available records), but that the equivalent documents for WJC's signature would be signed by him at the WH (even though he stopped over in LR himself during the weekend of July 17th-18th).
Given Buck described VWF's duties in connection with the blind trust(s) as being merely "ministerial" [177,1735], one might wonder that he called VWF regarding the trust arrangements on the 19th, again at 1217 EDT on the 20th, and also tried to reach VWF at about 1300 EDT on the 20th (apparently just missing VWF who had left his office at the WH, never to return, at that time or possibly a couple of minutes later).
Perhaps one can be forgiven for believing Mr. Buck was doing a lot of telephoning in connection with the merely ministerial function VWF was performing in connection with the blind trusts.
William Kennedy of the WH OLC indicated in his FBI interview that VWF had had a habit for years of "doing personal things for [the Clintons] and assisting them as needed such as with tax returns [1613]."
One matter that might have concerned VWF involves the ethical duty of an attorney professionally associated with the creation and funding of blind trusts to ensure that all the assets required are properly marshaled and placed in trust. Might VWF have had some concerns along these lines? The record does not pursue this question.
It is the author's opinion, VWF reached a decision, a week or two before he died, if not more, not to commit suicide, but to begin what VWF felt would ultimately be a successful disengagement process from the Administration. In one way or another, the author believes that VWF was finding the "heat too hot to take," so he "got out of the kitchen" (or tried to, anyway).
In the author's opinion (considering the analysis below) that neither the Travel Office Matter, the Wall Street Journal Editorials cited in the Fiske Report [189], or the other concerns cited therein were the decisive factor(s) in VWF's desire to resign his position, let alone his alleged decision to kill himself.
There seems to be some official confusion on this point. According to page 10 of the Fiske Report [186] "During the particularly busy period of late June and July, however, Foster was virtually uninvolved." This, despite the following statement [186]:
Foster's position at the White House generally demanded that he work from between 7:30-8:30 in the morning until 9:30 or later at night, either six or seven days a week. He took no vacations or weekends off until the weekend immediately prior to his death [His trip to AR to give the commencement speech on May 8th apparently did not count as a vacation]. The demands of the Counsel's office were severe, and Bernard Nussbaum heavily relied upon Foster to assist him in accomplishing a wide range of tasks.
One might wonder whether VWF was, during the period from late June until the "weekend immediately prior to his death," 1) "virtually uninvolved" in the work of the WH OLC or 2) working 80+ hours a week.
Until there is a confirmed sighting of a "married bachelor," it seems safe to assume that 1) and 2) cannot both be true in the 4-5 weeks prior to July 20!
Why was VWF uninvolved? Was he assigned no work to do by his superiors? Did he refuse to undertake duties given to him by White House Counsel Nussbaum? Nussbaum was not asked, and did not comment upon, these questions in the record. If VWF was refusing to perform his assigned duties, what were those duties?
Deborah Gorham, VWF's Executive Assistant, told the FBI VWF sometimes had "lulls" in his work of a couple of hours [1446]. Such short lulls can be expected from time-to-time even if one were working 80+ hour weeks. However, beginning the week of the 12th [195], VWF spent much of the day writing a lot of personal "thank-you" letters. Gorham further noted that VWF had a "major and uncharacteristic lull" in his work on Monday, the 19th (see under that heading below).
The Fiske Report paints a picture of a man under heavy stress, so much so that he was apparently forgetting to eat properly. According to the Fiske Report "Although no one noticed a loss of appetite [why not?], it was obvious to many that he had lost weight [186]."
Sounds pretty incontrovertible, doesn't it? There is a problem with this statement, however. According to VWF's doctor [1674-1677] (in his FBI interview, during which he is clearly consulting VWF's medical records), VWF weighed 194 pounds on December 31, 1992. VWF's weight at the autopsy [364] is given as 197 pounds. Thus, relying only on medical records, VWF actually had a net weight gain (3 pounds) during the months in 1993 when the Fiske Report states that he was under heavy stress and his weight loss was "obvious to many." Who are these "many" and why did they think VWF's weight loss was "obvious?"
Dr. Watkins gives VWF's weight in August 1990 as 204 pounds, so VWF lost weight during the 30 months or so prior to working for the Administration at the WH (10 pounds) and gained weight, net, during the last 6-1/2 months of his life while working for the administration (3 pounds). Why does the Fiske Report have it backwards? Why did "many" people have it backwards?
The weight data provided by Dr. Watkins (194 pounds on December 31, 1992) was available to Fiske on May 16, 1994, some six weeks before the Fiske Report was released with the above quotation [186]. The autopsy results (weight 197 pounds) had been available to Fiske for roughly 11 months before the Fiske Report was released. Why did the Fiske Report say what it did about an obvious [but nonexistent] weight loss?
A bit of lagniappe: The Fiske Report also refers to the "large pool of blood" on the ground under VWF at Fort Marcy Park from the "large exit wound [211]." However much blood VWF lost before the autopsy, it is clear that the official position is that a substantial amount of blood was involved. [More will be said about the blood loss and the large exit wound later.]
If it is assumed that VWF lost about a quart of blood (twice what a blood donor provides in one sitting) and, given whole blood weighs roughly the same as water, then the 197 pound autopsy weight, corrected upward for the lost blood, would mean an actual weight of 199 pounds. Two quarts of blood lost would mean a date-of-death weight of 201 pounds, and so on.
Furthermore, VWF probably did not strip down fully for Dr. Watkins' nurse to weigh him on December 31, 1992. However, the author assumes that the weight of a body in an autopsy report is just that, the body's weight. It would be technically unsound to include the weight of an arbitrary amount of clothing with the body's weight in an autopsy report. It thus seems eminently reasonable to assume that the 194 pound weight, corrected downward to a fully-stripped weight, would be 193 or 192 pounds. Bottom line: it seems reasonable to conclude that, net, VWF gained around six pounds during the period the Fiske Report says his weight loss "was obvious to many."
The author concedes that it is possible that VWF gained a little weight over a brief period, say while staying with the his sister and brother-in-law, the Beryl Anthonys, for a couple of months prior to moving into his Georgetown rental [1579]. After all, he was without his family in a new city until after his youngest son's senior year of high school ended in AR, was probably eating out more than usual, and doubtless consuming too much "junk food" during the day (cheeseburgers, after all, were VWF's favorite food [1448]). Even so, the author believes that 5-6 pounds up or down is not a weight loss "obvious to many" for someone weighing around 200 pounds.
Why did the Fiske Report claim that VWF had obviously lost weight during this period? Whether to make an issue of VWF's weight change was a "judgment call" made by the authors of the Fiske Report. Given the Fiske Report introduces weight loss as another evidence of stress (just as it did Assistant Attorney General Sheila Anthony's impressions of VWF's delivery at the commencement speech on May 8th, blatantly contradicted by the impressions of others who also heard the speech), it was somewhat "scary" to this report writer when he discovered that the data in the government investigators' own witness interviews explicitly contradict the findings of the Fiske Report.
Sheila Foster Anthony also supported the Fiske statement about VWF's weight loss. Per her FBI interview: "Foster began to lose weight during the last six weeks prior to his death and weighed much less than he had weighed in January 1993." Per Dr. Watkins, VWF weighed 194 pounds on December 31, 1992, and the autopsy report indicated VWF weighed (not adjusting for the weight of blood lost) 197 on the day he died, so Ms. Anthony's assertion seems a bit dicey. VWF weighed "much less?" Did Mr. Fiske transmogrify Ms. Anthony, turning her into the "many?"
Whatever these projects were, "Lisa Foster said that Foster received no joy from his work during that time [186]." Deborah Gorham, VWF's Executive Assistant, told the FBI she did not remember what VWF was working on during the last few weeks he was alive [1447], even though she typed all his correspondence and memos from Dictaphone tapes that he gave her. It is known that VWF completed the filing of three years of delinquent Whitewater Development Corporation income tax returns and also did some work in connection with the Clintons' blind trust(s) shortly before he died [63; also see the Comment, "The Blind Trusts" above].
VWF was said to be concerned that Congress would hold hearings into the Travel Office Matter and that he would be called to testify about his role therein [189]. According to the Fiske Report, the Travel Office Matter was one of the primary reasons VWF was over-stressed and depressed.
Per White House Counsel Nussbaum, VWF urged him to hire outside counsel [private attorneys] to represent the WH OLC attorneys involved in the Travel Office decisions (principally VWF and Bill Kennedy), even though James Lyons, the Denver attorney whose firm issued a report confirming the Clintons' Whitewater losses at $68,900 (a figure subsequently discredited), had read the WH report on the Travel Office on VWF's behalf and did not see a conflict of interest for VWF between his actions in the Travel Office matter and his objectivity in advising the Clintons [188].
One might wonder why VWF would be concerned in the summer of 1993, when the Democratic Party controlled both Houses of Congress, that hearings on the Travel Office matter would come to pass and that he would be required to testify before a somehow hostile committee controlled by fellow-Democrats. Surely his brother-in-law, Beryl Anthony, a former member of Congress, would have advised VWF that Congressional Hearings into the Travel Office matter were highly unlikely, given the Democratic Party's control of Congress (whatever the experts' predictions were at the time, hearings have yet to be held on the Travel Office Matter). Apparently, Mr. Anthony did not do so [195], although he was never questioned in the record regarding his opinion of the likelihood of Travel Office hearings.
The Fiske Report describes as "coincidence" that VWF and his wife, Lisa, spent the weekend on the eastern shore of Maryland at the same time the Webster Hubbells were in the same area staying with the Michael Cardozas, also friends of the Fosters [197]. Although the Fiske Report does not establish exactly how the connection was made [Hubbell apparently knew exactly where the Fosters were staying], the three couples linked up and spent Saturday evening and Sunday together [198].
Mr. Cardoza had been Deputy White House Counsel in the Carter Administration [1480], coincidentally the same position VWF held at the time of his death. He also had spent four months at the DOJ during the early days of the Clinton Administration [1481], involved with some of the same matters that concerned VWF, such as the failed Zöe Baird nomination.
Coincidentally, Hubbell apparently knew precisely where the Fosters were staying since he (not the Fosters' ostensible hosts, the Cardozas) called the Fosters up and invited them over to the Cardozas' home where Hubbell and his spouse were staying near Easton, Maryland, on Saturday the 17th [1481]. Felicitously, it happened that the Fosters were only fifteen minutes away. Hubbell and VWF ended up spending Saturday and Sunday at the Cardozas.
This was officially advertised by the Fiske Report to be the first big weekend in many months for VWF to "get away from it all." Did he?
Strangely, the Cardozas were not interviewed by the USPP, the Fiske OIC, or the Senate Whitewater Committee regarding anything they might contribute to an understanding of VWF's mental state the weekend before he died, notwithstanding the great interest in the outcome of the weekend later expressed by VWF's close Administration associates (if there were such interviews with the Cardozas, they were redacted from the official record for reasons unknown).
The record does not say if other political persons of note were at the Cardozas' that weekend beyond these three men, nor was anyone ever asked if there were other personages in attendance from the WH or if there were senior civil servants from the Executive Branch about.
In response to numerous inquiries, VWF told his associates that the trip to the eastern shore of Maryland the weekend of July 17th and 18th, had gone well [199].
On the evening of Monday, July 19th [see an additional Comment below], WJC called VWF at home [200,1829]. One reason for the call: WJC wanted to ask VWF how the weekend in Maryland with Hubbell and Cardoza had transpired too. WJC had also heard that VWF was "down" about the Travel Officer Matter. WJC made an appointment to see VWF (not the other way 'round) for Wednesday, July 21st. The subject: unspecified "organizational changes" being contemplated at the WH [1830].
The record is clear that VWF was considering resigning his position as Deputy White House Counsel.
VWF told his wife, Lisa [1647], his sister Sheila Anthony, and his co-worker William H. Kennedy (an Associate White House Counsel) that he was thinking of resigning [188,195,1614,1647]. His predicament, whatever it was, was so serious that his sister Sheila Anthony told the FBI she had hoped that VWF would resign as Deputy White House Counsel [1578].
According to the Fiske Report, Deborah Gorham, VWF's Executive Assistant, VWF ". . . did little work during the week of July 12, and instead concentrated on 'cleaning up' matters that he had not been able to get to for some time, such as dictating thank-you and congratulatory notes [195]."
White House Counsel Nussbaum was never asked in the record what work VWF was supposed to have been doing during this time period. Was there no work to be done (apparently so, since VWF did little work from July 12th onward)? Or was VWF refusing to do his assigned work? Why? What work was that?
The piddling described by Ms. Gorham is at least as likely to be done by someone who has made a decision to quit his job as it is to be the action of someone planning to commit suicide, especially in light of VWF's statements to those he loved that he was thinking of resigning his position (after all, people quit their jobs far more often than they commit suicide over them). Did VWF submit his resignation sometime in the first half of July or sound out any Administration officials about leaving the Administration? Was he waiting for some sign from the Administration when he died?
Why take the time to write thank-you and congratulatory notes to friends before you commit suicide, but fail to prepare your family in any way for your death? In the author's lay opinion, a person might easily do neither or do both, but people who do the first also take care of the second.
One would think that VWF, the former Senior Litigator of the RLF, partner since 1973, and in the prime of his professional life, drawing almost $300,000 a year from the top AR law firm prior to joining the Administration, ought to be made of stronger stuff than the VWF depicted by the Fiske Report (something of a shrinking violet, however intelligent, stung to the point of suicide by newspaper editorials, the threat of Congressional Hearings that never occurred, and a Travel Office-related reprimand that he never received; a high-powered trial attorney somehow unaccustomed to working long-hours in a high-stress environment).
Although the Fiske Report characterizes much of the text of the torn note (see the Comment below) found in VWF's briefcase [192,353] as the opening argument for his defense in anticipated Congressional Hearings on the Travel Office matter, the note could at least as easily be interpreted as a list of bullet points for the first draft of his letter of resignation (or something else entirely).
VWF was nothing if not an orderly man who first thought through a problem and then acted accordingly. More than one friend used the word "meticulous" to describe VWF in the record. That is one reason why the lack of any preparations for (or warnings to) his family prior to his suicide seems particularly unusual. "Spontaneous" is not a word anyone in the record associated with VWF, though he clearly did care deeply for his wife, Lisa, and the children.
In the author's opinion, if VWF had decided to consult with a psychiatrist (see the two phone calls above that were cited by the Fiske Report), he would have had at least a session or two before deciding whether therapy was right for him. By all accounts, he was a man who parsed difficult problems carefully and, having decided to act (make the calls to the psychiatrist), would not have changed his mind on a whim or otherwise failed to follow through.
Although its importance should not be overstated, VWF's blood pressure when taken at the WH on Friday, July 16, 1993, was 132/84 [196]. Not bad at all for a man of 48 supposedly working 80+ hours a week in a high-stress environment and, as it came out in official statements made by his close friends in the Administration (commencing en masse a week or two after the fact), obviously in the throes of a profound depression. The blood pressure reading in itself is not an indication that VWF was over-stressed; if it means anything at all, it is some evidence supporting the opposite conclusion.
July 19, 1993: VWF's Last Full Day at the White House
Straightening And Cleaning Plus An Unusually Long Meeting With An Old Friend
VWF continued what this author believes was his goal of disengagement from the Administration, begun not later than July 12th [195], on Monday, July 19th [198].
Although Deborah Gorham, VWF's Executive Assistant, described Monday as a day of "straightening and cleaning [1446]," VWF apparently spent much of this time with his door closed, including time spent in a long closed-door visit with Marsha Scott [1447], Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Correspondence, a meeting that Linda Tripp, one of the Executive Assistants to Bernard Nussbaum, remembered as being "out of the ordinary" and 1-2 hours in length [1535].
According to Tripp's FBI interview, "two things" occurred that were out of the ordinary on July 19th [1535]: "Marsha Scott, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Correspondence, came to see Foster for a closed-door session that lasted over an hour, possibly as long as two hours. This was highly unusual, both her coming to see him and anyone taking up that much time with Foster." Tripp noted that Scott was part of the "core" Arkansas group who went to dinner together every Tuesday night.
Nancy Hernreich, Deputy Assistant to the President for Appointments and Scheduling, confirmed that VWF was part of the "core" Arkansas group that often had dinner with each other on Tuesday nights [1765]. Bruce Lindsey also confirmed that VWF was a member of this group [1800].
VWF died on a Tuesday afternoon. It is not known whether some of the Arkansas "core" group had gotten together for their usual Tuesday evening activities before the time the record states that the WH was informed of VWF's death at 2030 [see the USSS memo at 2551].
Marsha Scott described her relationship with VWF to the FBI as a "personal friendship [1689]." She had known him since 1967. Marsha Scott's FBI interview states "She does not remember what topics they talked about [1690]." However, she later told the FBI that she had stopped by to ask him how the weekend on the eastern shore of Maryland had gone [1748].
Many people were intensely interested how the weekend in Maryland with Hubbell and Cardoza had gone. In the author's opinion, it is almost as if the weekend had an agenda other than merely permitting a weary and care-ridden VWF some rest and much-needed recreation. If so, this agenda appears to have been well-known to many within the core AR group (including WJC, see the material below on WJC's called to VWF on Monday night), and they wanted to know what the weekend's outcome had been.
Was VWF's "disengagement" from the Administration on the weekend's agenda? Was VWF about to become a free agent? Was a quid pro quo negotiated or did VWF merely believe one had?
Marsha Scott's statement to the FBI does not seem quite complete. You have an unusual closed-door solo meeting with a personal friend whom you have known for 25 years. This meeting lasts one to two hours. The next day, your friend happens to commit suicide, and you don't remember what topics were discussed?
The author has mentioned that some of his hypotheses in this report might be seen as something of a "stretch" by a reasonable person. The author hopes the same reasonable person would find some of the statements in Ms. Scott's FBI interview a "stretch" if identically strict standards were imposed. She came to see him, after all. Ms. Scott was not having a casual social conversation with the FBI. The FBI agent (assigned to the Fiske OIC) was interviewing her as part of a formal inquiry into the death of VWF.
This is as good a time as any to mention the author's understanding of the difference between "giving a false statement" and "perjury." The author believes the penalties for perjury are much more severe than those for merely "giving a false statement." As the author understands it, only those whose depositions were taken or who provided testimony before the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings were under oath.
The author has no training whatsoever in psychology or psychiatry, but believes Ms. Scott's is a surprising memory lapse under the circumstances! Reminiscences about VWF's final days around the WH must have had quite a few gaps in them if no one remembered any more than Marsha Scott told the FBI she recalled about her last conversation with VWF.
WJC himself encouraged top staffers in the WH family to "talk to each other" about VWF, but not to take that talk "outside of our family [1916]."
Lisa Foster was apparently at least as "in the dark" as anyone about his alleged mental condition, perhaps more so, given the official pronouncements about VWF's "depression" that surfaced in tight formation a week or two after his death.
Scott told the FBI that most of her conversations with Lisa Foster since July 20, 1993, had concerned the reason VWF had killed himself and what could have triggered it [1749]. What transpired during the one-to-two-hour VWF-Scott meeting? Ms. Scott was not particularly forthcoming or specific in her first FBI interview on this subject. This author believes the non-productive first interview was the reason Ms. Scott had a second interview with the FBI.
Webster Hubbell stopped by VWF's office for a visit on Monday, the 19th [199,1477], but does not remember the business matter, if any, that was discussed.
The business matter may have been inconsequential at the time, but it seems to the author that a person would likely long remember the topics of the last conversation he had with a friend of many years who killed himself the next day.
Hubbell's FBI interview describes the once-a-week "Arkansas Nights" frequently attended by VWF. Bruce Lindsey, Marsha Scott, and the Anthonys were among the other typical attendees [1478]. According to what Linda Tripp, one of Nussbaum's Executive Assistants, said in her FBI interview, "Nobody outside the Arkansas 'group' would be considered a confidante [of VWF's] [1532]."
VWF called his sister Sheila Anthony to tell her the weekend had gone well and that he was contemplating getting away more often [199,1578]. Why the gratuitous lie to his sister? Unless he made a snap decision to kill himself later than Monday, he knew he would be dead the next day.
Presumably, the WH phone records vouch for the existence of all calls that the record indicates were made to or by VWF from telephone instruments at the WH. Per the Fiske Report, the system certainly had that capability [197].
VWF told Webster Hubbell that the weekend in Maryland at the Cardozas had gone well, too [199].
It's not clear why Hubbell had to ask. After all, he had been present too. Did Hubbell instead want to find out about anything that transpired between the time he last saw VWF on Sunday at the Cardozas and the time Hubbell dropped by to see VWF on Monday? Could VWF have had some information for Hubbell instead?
VWF had spoken to his wife, Lisa, about going away the following weekend as well, but no definite plans had been made as of the time of his death [199]. Why another gratuitous lie, this time to his wife? A man discusses his plans for the following weekend with his wife and friends the day before he commits suicide? It is certainly possible. But is it likely? Does the hypothesis jibe with the rest of the information in the record?
According to the Fiske Report, on Monday the 19th (the day before he died), VWF mailed some oil leases to his mother and included a cover letter of instructions for her [199]. Somewhat surprising to the author, in light of his decision to kill himself the next day, he included no personal message for her of any kind nor any hint that he was depressed or was contemplating suicide.
The Fiske Report's source for its statement is the FBI interview with Gorham [1446-1447] conducted on April 19th and 26th 1994.
The author has a concern about Gorham's statement. The FBI had interviewed Linda Tripp one week earlier on April 12th. In that interview, Tripp had given the FBI a detailed description of what she had learned from Gorham "soon after the death."
In the words of Tripp's FBI interview:
Gorham told Tripp that the morning of his death, much earlier than his leaving [the WH that day for the last time at about 1300] Foster placed three pieces of correspondence in the outgoing mail. The pieces were definitely personal, Foster having addressed them by hand and used stamps instead of officially franked envelopes. This was sufficiently unusual that Gorham noted it, and told Tripp who two of the items were addressed to. Tripp was unable to recall one of the items, but said the other was to Foster's mother [1534-1535].
Tripp also told the FBI that she had urged Gorham to report the mailing of these letters [the morning of his death] to the USPP.
It is not clear from the record what day the letter to VWF's mother was mailed. Was it Monday, the 19th or Tuesday the 20th? Does it matter?
The author believes it is quite possible that VWF's mother (or Sheila Anthony) retained the cover letter and envelope sent to VWF's mother, if only for sentimental reasons A postmark of the 19th would clearly vindicate Gorham's statement that the letter was mailed on Monday. A postmark of the 20th would be some evidence that VWF mailed the letter to his mother on Tuesday, the 20th (not conclusive, of course, although the record indicates that the letter in question was picked up relatively early in the day by an internal WH courier [1447]). However, a postmark of July 21st (or later) would be strong evidence, given the same-day courier pick-up and morning "mailing," that Tripp (interviewed by the FBI before Gorham) is correct: the letter was mailed to VWF's mother on Tuesday morning.
Again, is the exact mailing date of interest? It has long seemed improbable to the author that a man, especially a southern-style "True Gentleman" [1731], who sent his mother a letter 30 hours or so before he shoots himself to death did not also take a moment to include some expression of personal feelings for her, certainly not along the lines of "I'll be dead by the time you get this," possibly not even a veiled reference to his troubles, but at least some sort of modestly intensive and out-of-the-ordinary identifiable expression of personal sentiment.
VWF's letter did not contain any noticeable expression of feelings toward his mother at all. According to Sheila Foster Anthony (who was with VWF's mother when she opened the envelope) [in the words of Anthony's FBI interview]:
The letter from Foster concerned oil leases which had been passed on to Foster's mother from her late husband's estate. . . . In attempting to recall what was in the envelope, Anthony now believes that there was an extremely brief cover letter which had been typewritten [apparently not by Gorham -- VWF apparently typed it at home, though, of course, for some reason he did not mail it from home], and which contained one or two sentences asking Foster's mother to sign the enclosed form and return it to the oil company [1580].
If Tripp's account is correct, VWF mailed a letter to his mother roughly six hours before he killed himself. That letter contained no particular personal sentiments of any sort, nor apparently any other information of interest to the investigators.
Whatever VWF's relationship with his mother might have b