Congressman Burton's comments on the 60 MINUTES' REPORT on the death of
VINCE FOSTER
(House of Representatives - October 26, 1995)
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May
12, 1995, the gentleman from Indiana, Mr.Burton, is recognized for 15
minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana . "Mr. Speaker, I have been watching the
television show on CBS, `60 Minutes,' for a long, long time, and I
have always respected that program because it was very informative,
and I always thought it was factual. And then, just after the last
presidential election, I think Mr. Hewlett, the producer of `60
Minutes,' said in a national interview that had he exposed all of the
information that was available to him at `60 Minutes' during the
campaign, that the then candidate for President, who was later
elected, would be walking around in the snows of New Hampshire. So it
became apparent to me that the `60 Minutes' producers and the people
who ran that show had a very strong bias, and that bias was reflected
in much of their reporting.
This became apparent to me again about 2 weeks ago on a Saturday
night, when I watched Mike Wallace start doing a 20 minute segment on
the death of Vince Foster. I have never seen so much misinformation
and so much bias in reporting as I saw during that 20 minute segment.
Let me just tell you some of the things that happened, some of the
things that `60 Minutes' ignored. Mike Wallace said that every
government body that has investigated the death of Vince Foster
reached the same conclusion, than he killed himself at Fort Marcy
Park.
He did not mention that the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, has
reopened the investigation. Mr. Starr's attorney spent this summer
questioning witnesses before a grand jury. The FBI is back in Fort
Marcy Park, or was a couple of weeks ago, more than 2 years after
Vince Foster's death, looking for the bullet that killed him. Would
the independent counsel go through all of this work were there not
unanswered questions about the case?
So I believe that Mr. Wallace was incorrect when he said that the
conclusion has been reached by every government agency. In addition,
many of us in Congress have come to different conclusions as well.
Another thing that he forgot to mention was that the police were not
the first people to encounter Foster's body. He mentioned a national
park policeman who found the body. The fact of the matter is that the
park policeman did not find the body. The body was found by a
confidential witness (CW), who was the first person on the scene.
I have a sworn statement, where I went out to his home with a court
reported and two other Congressmen, from the confidential witness. The
FBI questioned him extensively and considers him honest and credible.
`60 Minutes' never talked about him or even mentioned on that program
that there was a confidential witness that found the body. `60
Minutes' never read his statement.
The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Clinger, who is the chairman of
the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight in the House, told
`60 Minutes' that he knows more about this subject than any Member of
Congress, and, although I have high regard for Representative Clinger,
he never interviewed the confidential witness, although he had an
opportunity to do so, and he never read his sworn deposition, which
was verified.
Mike Wallace went into great detail during this interview about how
the gun was found in Foster's right hand. He said critics of the
investigation incorrectly stated that Foster was left-handed. Well,
that misses the point entirely. When the confidential witness
discovered the body, he looked very carefully. He was within 18 inches
of Mr. Foster's face. He looked very carefully and saw no gun in
either hand . He was very clear in his statement, in the sworn
statement before me and the FBI, that when he found Foster, both hands
were palm up with the thumbs pointed out away from the body. When the
police arrived on the scene, they found his right hand palm down with
the thumb pointed in, the gun on the trigger finger, and the gun was
partially obscured by his hand and his leg.
When the confidential witness found the body, the head was looking
straight up, and there were no bloodstains on his cheek. When the
police arrived, the head was still pointing up, but there was a
contact bloodstain on the cheek and the trails of blood running from
his mouth and nostrils down the side of his face.
Now, how did Foster's hand get moved and why was there no gun in it
when the man found it, and later there was a gun in it? How did
Foster's head get moved? It is obvious to me that somebody was there
and moved the body.
Now, the Park Police officer, Officer Fornshill, was not, as I said
before, the first to discover the body. It was a confidential witness.
Park Police Officer Kevin Fornshill told Mike Wallace that Foster's
body could not have been moved to the park because the vegetation
around him was not trampled.
But the fact of the matter is the confidential witness said in a sworn
statement that the vegetation below the body, from the feet all the
way down to a path that went all the way around the park, it was
trampled flat. There was a narrow path at the bottom of the berm that
winds around the perimeter of the park. `60 Minutes' would have known
this if they had read his statement, or even decided to look into it
and asked.
The confidential witness told the FBI that he saw a half-empty wine
cooler body near Foster's body. The Park Police did not find it. What
happened to the wine cooler bottle and were there any fingerprints on
it? As the confidential witness was leaving the park, he looked inside
the white Nissan parked in the lot and saw a half-full package of wine
cooler bottles, very similar to the one beside the body, a briefcase,
and a suit jacket that looked similar to Foster's suit pants. This was
not Foster's car. Foster's car was a gray Honda and it was parked
further away, and C.W., the confidential witness, did not walk near
it.
Mike Wallace made a big issue out of the amount of blood around the
body. He interviewed the medical examiner, who said there was
sufficient blood underneath the head and shoulders to conclude that he
died at that spot.
This misses the key point. There would have been blood underneath
Foster's head, whether he shot himself at the spot or was moved there.
The key point is there was no blood spattered on anything behind where
Foster was sitting. Anytime someone shoots himself through the mouth,
there would be blood splattered all over above him, and there was
nothing above him that had any blood on it whatsoever. The vegetation
on the path behind Foster was clean.
The first emergency medical services person who arrived at the park,
George Gonzalez, commented that it was very unusual for a suicide
victim's body to be laid out so neatly, with the feet together and the
hands neatly at his side. He told this to the staff of the Committee
on Government Operations, and he said: `I find it odd to have the body
laid out like it was. I wouldn't expect the hand or body in the
position found, the hands perfectly at the side.' `60 Minutes,'
incidentally, did not interview Mr. Gonzalez.
Mike Wallace noted that it was not unusual for Foster's clothes to
have carpet fibers on them. Foster's attorney said that Mrs. Foster
had just had new carpeting installed in their home. Well, if that is
the case, why did the FBI not take carpet samples and match them with
the fibers on his clothes? They did not do that.
There were blond hairs on Mr. Foster's body and all over his clothes.
Why did the FBI not compare these hairs to the hair of the people
Foster knew and was close to?
Here are some other keys points that `60 Minutes' left out in their
biased reporting.
First, the Park Police investigation was incomplete and
unprofessional. The photos of the crime scene were underexposed and
did not turn out. The only photos were of very poor quality, and they
were made with instamatic cameras.
No search was conducted for any skull fragments. When you blow the top
of your head out with a .38 caliber bullet, there are skull fragments
and bone fragments all about where the head was. There was none of
this, no blood and no brain particles.
No search was conducted for skull fragments, as I said. Only a very
cursory search was conducted for the bullet. White House Counsel
Bernie Nussbaum refused to allow Park Police officers or the FBI to
search Foster's office. In fact, the night of Foster's death, Bernie
Nussbaum, the chief counsel of the President, and two other high level
White House aides, Patsy Thomason, who was the chief personnel
officer, and Mrs. Williams, Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, searched
Foster's office and removed files having to do with Whitewater. This
was after the Park Police asked that the office be sealed, and it was
not sealed for at least 12 hours while they went through and rifled
through those papers. Justice Department officials accused Nussbaum of
violating an agreement they had reached regarding the search of
Foster's office.
Second, the coroner that conducted the autopsy on Foster has made
glaring errors in the past. This was not revealed by the `60 Minutes'
show. Dr. James Beyer was the coroner who reviewed and did the autopsy
on Vince Foster.
Let me tell you about Mr. Beyer. In 1989 there was an autopsy on
establishing the death of a man named Tim Easley. Mr. Beyer, the
coroner, ruled that Easley killed himself by stabbing himself in the
chest. He failed to notice a defensive wound on the man's hand. The
case was reopened, and, after an outside expert reviewed the case,
Easley's girlfriend confessed to murdering him, after he had been
judged a suicide by the coroner. That is one mistake.
In 1991, regarding a Mr. Tommy Burkett, Mr. Beyer did an autopsy on
him and ruled that Burkett had killed himself with a gunshot wound to
the mouth very similar to Vince Foster's. He said it was a suicide.
Mr. Burkett's family had the body exhumed and reexamined by an outside
expert. The second coroner reported that Dr. Beyer had failed to
notice a disfigured and bloody ear, indicating a struggle, and a
broken jaw, indicating he had been hit in the face and his jaw was
broken during a struggle. The FBI is now investigating this case. It
obviously was a murder or homicide, and not a suicide.
The first special counsel, Robert Fiske, appointed a board of forensic
experts to review the Vince Foster case. They concurred in Fiske's
opinion that Foster killed himself at Fort Marcy Park. However, they
were not appointed until a year after Foster died, and the only way
that they could come to the conclusions they did was to read the
coroner's report and use that as a guide to come to their conclusions.
So they never saw the body, and they verified he was killed at the
park. But the fact of the matter is, they could not possibly have
known that, because they only used the coroner's report to come to the
conclusions they did.
So, in conclusion, last summer, when the Senate Committee on Banking
and Financial Services held a hearing on Foster's death, the FBI
testified there was absolutely no doubt that Foster killed himself,
and that he killed himself at Fort Marcy Park.
Now, let us review the problems and glaring inconsistencies with this
investigation.
First, the eyewitness who found the body testified that he is sure
there was no gun in Foster's hand and the hands were in a different
position than when the police arrived. That was not mentioned on `60
Minutes.'
Second, the confidential witness said there were no bloodstains on the
face when he found the body. There were bloodstains on the cheek when
the police arrived, indicating it had been moved. When they moved his
body, his head went over to the side and blood drained out on the
face.
Third, the confidential witness testified he saw a wine cooler bottle
close to Foster's body in the park, and a package of similar wine
cooler bottles in a car in the parking lot that did not belong to
Foster. Where did they come from? Where did that bottle go?
Fourth, despite extensive searchers of the park, the FBI has been
unable to find the bullet that killed Vince Foster, and they are still
looking for it. Evidently the independent counsel sent them back out
there 2 or 3 weeks ago to look for it again.
Fifth, no skull fragments were ever found at the site where Foster's
body was found, even though there definitely would have been skull
fragments from that kind of a wound.
Sixth, there were no fingerprints on the gun. Get this: The gun was in
his hand, and there were no fingerprints on the gun. The FBI said they
probably, get this, `melted off in the heat.' And yet when they took
the gun apart, they found fingerprints there from the time the gun was
made at the factory.
Seventh, there were no fingerprints on the suicide note (please see
this link for evidence note was forged.) found in Foster's briefcase
in his White House office. It was torn up into 28 pieces, and the
first few times the briefcase was searched, they could not find the
note at all, even though they turned it upside down, and there were no
fingerprints on it.
Eighth, the coroner who conducted the autopsy of Foster's body has
made glaring errors of high profile cases in the past. In one case, a
body had to be exhumed and reexamined in order to change the ruling
from suicide to murder.
Ninth, security guards working at the Saudi Arabian Ambassador's
residence across the street from the park, within 100 yards, 300 feet,
with guards outside all day and night, heard no gunshot.
Tenth, Foster's shoes were completely clean, with no grass or dirt
stains, even though he was supposed to have walked 700 yards through
the park to the second cannon.
No. 11, the FBI never made any attempt to identify the carpet fibers
or the blond hair on Foster's clothing.
No. 12, the police photos at the death scene did not turn out, leaving
a serious lack of documentation of the death scene.
With all of the glaring problems, can you imagine the FBI telling the
Senate Banking Committee there could be no doubt about where and how
Foster died? With all of these glaring problems, can you imagine what
Johnny Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, and O.J. Simpson's other lawyers would
have done in a case like this?
Independent Counsel Starr is still investigating this death. `60
Minutes' should not jump to conclusions until Mr. Starr has completed
his investigation, and Members of Congress should not jump to
conclusions until Mr. Starr completes his investigation as well.
So I just would like to say to my friends at `60 Minutes,' Mr.
Wallace, Mr. Hewlitt, and everybody else, before you make the kind of
determination that you did and do the kind of reporting that you did 2
weeks ago, please talk to all the people involved, especially
eyewitnesses. The man who found the body, who gave a sworn statement
under oath to me and to two other Congressmen, was never contacted,
never interviewed, and nobody has seen that report, even Mr. Clinger,
who is the chairman of the Committee on Government Reform and
Oversight here in the House.
So I just say that I think it was a bad piece of reporting, and I
would urge them to be more thorough in the future.
