Suicide of Vince Foster - Misplaced Pages

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Vince Foster

Deputy White House counsel Vince Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park off the George Washington Parkway in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., on July 20, 1993. His death was ruled a suicide by all official investigations. However, some conspiracy theorists object to this conclusion.

Official findings

Foster's death was concluded to have been a suicide by inquiries/investigations (in varying degrees of rigor) conducted by:

After a three-year investigation, Starr concluded that Foster's death was a suicide. CNN stated on February 28, 1997, "The report refutes claims by conservative political organizations that Foster was the victim of a murder plot and coverup," but "despite those findings, right-wing political groups have continued to allege that there was more to the death and that the president and first lady tried to cover it up."

Conspiracy theories

Background

Some observers have questioned the reports of suicide, including independent researchers/investigators Hugh Sprunt and David Martin. One group is Accuracy in Media (AIM). AIM quotes Assistant U.S. Attorney Miguel Rodriguez, who resigned from the investigation, as saying "I knew what the result was going to be, because I was told what the result was going to be from the get-go."

Some propose that Foster was murdered to prevent his revealing information derogatory to Clinton, about Whitewater, Travelgate, or other matters, or that Hillary Clinton was somehow involved by covering up activities together with Foster before his death. Others allege a romantic relationship between Foster and Hillary Clinton. Other critics of the Clintons have made even more lurid allegations, claiming that she had killed Foster herself or had him killed. Apart from the Travelgate allegations, no credible evidence or charges were ever brought forward in connection with any of these allegations. (The Travelgate fiasco, in which Foster was principally involved, is specifically mentioned three times in the 'suicide note' or draft resignation letter found in Foster's brief case, and thus, without doubt, had a significant bearing on his death).

The Washington Post noted David Brock was "summoned" to a meeting with Rex Armistead in Miami, Florida at an airport hotel. Armistead laid out an elaborate "Vince Foster murder scenario," Brock said – a scenario that he found implausible." Both Brock and Armistead were reporters who were funded by Richard Scaife to investigate issues ranging from drug smuggling to Foster to discredit Clinton with the Arkansas Project.

Scaife funded Christopher W. Ruddy (later founder of NewsMax), who previously was a writer for the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, to research Clinton for the Arkansas Project. Ruddy has argued that while he posits no conspiracy theory about Foster's death, he believes a cover-up took place and that Foster's body had likely been moved.

Ruddy was backed by Joseph Farah and Farah's organization the Western Journalism Center. This group supplied Ruddy with "additional expense money, funding for Freedom of Information Act requests, legal support and publicity during his book research of a conspiracy surrounding the suicide of Foster. Ruddy eventually released The Strange Death of Vincent Foster which was published by Simon & Schuster.

Nonetheless, in 1999 Farah's Western Journalism Center "placed some 50 ads reprinting Ruddy's Tribune-Review stories in the Washington Times, then repackaged the articles as a packet titled The Ruddy Investigation, which sold for $12." Shortly thereafter, the Western Journalism Center "circulated a video featuring Ruddy's claims, 'Unanswered-The Death of Vincent Foster,' that was produced by James Davidson, chairman of the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) and co-editor of the Strategic Investment newsletter." (NTU's research arm receives funds from Scaife.) Eventually, Scaife became an investor and the third-largest stockholder of Ruddy's NewsMax and both NewsMax and the WorldNetDaily continue to publish materials that show the Clintons in a negative light."

Besides the official investigations, including Kenneth Starr's report that ruled Foster's death a suicide, Dan Moldea wrote a book, with encouragement from Al Regnery of Regnery Publishing house stating that Foster's death was a suicide and he found the scenarios were first promulgated by Robert Hines who shared ideas with Reed Irvine at Accuracy in Media, and Christopher W. Ruddy, who was then at the New York Post. Hines had falsely told "them that there is no exit wound in Foster's head," but Moldea explained, "I don't think there was anything nefarious here," rather Hines "was being approached by reporters and he wanted something to say."

The main proponents of this telling of events were Christopher W. Ruddy of the New York Post, and later with the Pittsburgh Tribune Review (owned by Richard Mellon Scaife), and Joseph Farah of the Western Journalism Center.

As to what prompted this line of investigation, reporter Dan Moldea claimed in an interview for Salon.com that "Foster had some blond hair and carpet fibers on his suit jacket, and he had semen in his underwear. So, the Jerry Falwells and the right-wing crowd get a hold of this information, and…they start making movies alleging that the Clintons were involved in this murder." Falwell produced the Clinton Chronicles, which Ruddy was involved with claiming the gun was placed in Fosters hand. These videos and claims have been "widely discredited" the videos "sophisticated production" served as a reliable resource.

Funding for the film was Citizens for Honest Government, which Jerry Falwell paid $200,000 to in 1994 and 1995. In 1995 Citizens for Honest Government paid two Arkansas state troopers to make allegations supporting the conspiracy about Vincent Foster. These two troopers were Roger Perry and Larry Patteson who also were paid for their testimony in the Paula Jones (See: Troopergate) claims. Citizens for Honest Government also covertly paid individuals who provided information to media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the American Spectator magazine, which named them as sources."

Patrick Matrisciana, president of Citizens for Honest Government, and producer of the Clinton Chronicles video appeared in its commercials as the "silhouetted individual whom he identifies only as an 'investigative reporter'." When asked about the scene Matrisciana admitted he was not a reporter and replied "I doubt our lives were actually ever in any real danger. That was Jerry's idea to do that ... He thought that would be dramatic."

Different theories

Some conspiracy theorists allege no bullet fragments were ever found and very little blood was present at the body's final location. Thus, the theorists assert suspicions that the body had been moved from another location to the park site. Some reject the official reports and believe that while Foster was located on an incline, the trickle of blood ran contrary to gravity. No explanation was offered to explain this. The U.S. Park Police were assigned to investigate the case, but no more information was ever disclosed.

With respect to this case, conspiracy theorists are largely divided into two groups. Some suspect that Foster committed suicide in a location that was embarrassing to figures connected to the Clinton administration and that government agents dumped his body in the park to avoid any embarrassment. Others suspect that Foster died from a shot from a small-caliber pistol to the neck and his body was dumped in the park. A book by Christopher Andersen entitled Bill and Hillary: The Marriage claims that Foster and Hillary Clinton were involved in an affair, and some claim that this supposed affair has some relation to Foster's death.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated the Clintons on several other issues, including Whitewater, concluded after a three-year investigation that Foster shot himself. Miguel Rodriguez, an Assistant United States Attorney, after resigning from the Starr investigation, provided an interview regarding his participation in the investigation. He stated plainly that he resigned from the investigation after it became clear to him that suicide was the only acceptable determination despite the preponderance of evidence indicating homicide. According to Charles Carman, from the Center for Transparent Governance, it has been theorized that Foster was conflicted about forming a Presidential trust, in the face of growing scandal surrounding Bill and Hillary Clinton and their alleged role in a fraudulent Arkansas real estate deal known as the Whitewater Scandal. Urban-legend-debunking website Snopes.com cites the finding of the Starr investigation as evidence that Foster was not murdered: "If Foster had been murdered or if unanswered questions about his death remained, Starr would have been the last person to want to conclude the investigation prematurely."

FOIA request

In an extremely unusual move, in November 1994 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, in response to a request by the Wall Street Journal for the final Fiske Report (under the Freedom of Information Act), issued a prior restraint that prevented the Journal from publishing a story about its response to the request. Presumably, the court denied the request itself (as no one has ever seen the final Fiske Report), but it also sealed its own response to the WSJ (originally covered by Michael Gartner in USA Today, Dec. 6th, 1994).

The Allan J. Favish FOIA Lawsuit

The following discussion of the Allan J. Favish lawsuit makes many assertions. Proof for every assertion is in the Foster section of the website maintained by Allan J. Favish which includes legal briefs and evidence filed by Mr. Favish and the federal government in the lawsuit.

Several federal agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Park Police and two Independent Counsels, Robert Fiske and then Kenneth Starr, all using FBI agents in their respective investigations, concluded that on July 20, 1993, Vincent Foster committed suicide in Virginia's Fort Marcy Park. From 1997 to 2004, a federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by attorney Allan J. Favish forced the government to defend the credibility of those investigations and reports. The lawsuit presented the federal courts with documentary evidence that came overwhelmingly from the Government’s own files, including from the FBI and the Park Police. The documents, most of which were made public in early 1995, were ignored by the traditional media but analyzed by private citizens who shared their analysis over the Internet. Proof of all the facts stated in this discussion of the Favish lawsuit is

In 2000, by a 2-1 vote, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stated in that FOIA lawsuit that the plaintiff "in fact, tenders evidence and argument which, if believed, would justify his doubts” about those investigations.

However, in 2004, disagreeing with the Ninth Circuit, the Supreme Court stated that the plaintiff "has not produced any evidence that would warrant a belief by a reasonable person that the alleged Government impropriety might have occurred" regarding the Foster investigations and reports.

Neither the Ninth Circuit nor the Supreme Court provided any analysis of the evidence to support their respective positions.

Which court was correct?

The evidence presented to both courts by the plaintiff, uncontradicted by the federal government under both the Clinton and Bush Administrations, established the following:

•Fiske failed to tell the public and Starr failed to tell the public and the three-judge panel about an FBI memo to the Director of the FBI, written two days after the death, stating that the shot was fired into Foster’s mouth without leaving an exit wound, thereby directly contradicting Starr, Fiske and the official autopsy report which all concluded that there was an exit wound in the back of the head.

•Fiske failed to tell the public and Starr failed to tell the public and the three-judge panel that the medical report by Dr. Donald Haut, the only doctor to examine Foster at the park, reported a neck wound that officially did not exist. Moreover, certified copies of his report are not the same and appear to have been improperly altered by obliteration of a word rather than drawing a line through the word so it can still be read, as is standard practice for medical records.

•Starr failed to tell the public and the three-judge panel that the Park Police and the only medical doctor at the death scene, Dr. Haut, reported that they did not see any blood spatter on the vegetation that would have appeared behind Foster’s head immediately after he allegedly shot himself while sitting up on the ground.

•Starr failed to tell the public and the three-judge panel that the first person officially to see Foster’s deceased body and who testified that he did not see any gun in Foster’s hand, also testified that the “gun in hand” photo that was leaked to the media in 1994 did not depict what he saw.

•The official death gun appears black. Foster’s widow Lisa failed to identify the official death gun from a photograph nine days after the death, in part, because the gun was not silver, the color of a gun the Fosters owned. According to the FBI, Lisa was shown the official death gun in May 1994 and the FBI stated that she “believes that the gun found at Fort Marcy Park may be the silver gun which she brought up with her” from Arkansas. Despite the obvious invalidity of an identification of a black gun as being silver, and without stating the gun colors and other relevant background facts, Fiske reported that Lisa “stated that the gun looked similar to one that” Foster owned.

•Starr failed to tell the public and the three-judge panel why Fiske did this. Starr failed to tell the public and the three-judge panel that one of Lisa’s reasons for not identifying the gun in the photo shown to her nine days after the death was because it was not silver. Also absent from Starr’s report is that the FBI expressly stated that Lisa believed the gun shown to her in May 1994 was silver as it was being shown to her.

•Starr failed to tell the public and the three-judge panel why Fiske’s deputy, Roderick Lankler and Lisa’s attorney, James Hamilton (who represented her in my case) and at least two FBI agents, apparently failed to note at the May 1994 interview that in their presence, Lisa described a black gun as being silver.

•Starr failed to tell the public and the three-judge panel why Lisa reportedly identified a black gun as silver, as it was being shown to her, in May 1994.

•Fiske failed to tell the public and Starr failed to tell the public and the three-judge panel that Foster’s nephew, who was the surviving family member most familiar with the family’s guns, could not identify the black official death gun, largely because of its color.

•Fiske failed to tell the public and Starr failed to tell the public and the three-judge panel that then United States Park Police Chief Robert Langston made a false statement to the public when he stated at a press conference in August 1993 that the Foster family had identified the official death gun as one of Foster’s guns.

•Starr falsely implied that the Park Police observed the entire autopsy but Fiske failed to tell the public and Starr failed to tell the public and the three-judge panel that before the Park Police arrived, Foster’s tongue and soft palate were removed by the autopsy doctor who violated policy by beginning the autopsy before arrival of the police. (The tongue and soft palate were significant because there is controversy over whether there was an entrance wound in Foster’s neck that would have resulted in a bullet path through the tongue and soft palate.)

•Starr failed to tell the public and the three-judge panel that three of the four witnesses who according to the Government, saw Foster’s car in the parking lot between 4:30 p.m. and just before 6:00 p.m., after he was dead, reported seeing a car that was brown and did not report seeing a car that was the color of Foster’s car, gray. Although Starr accurately reported that the fourth of these witnesses reported seeing a brown car, Starr concluded that Foster’s gray car was in the parking lot without explaining why all four of these witnesses reported seeing the same color car, brown, and did not report seeing a gray car.

•Starr relied on Dr. Henry Lee’s conclusion that Foster’s clothes revealed no evidence that Foster’s body had been dragged, without telling the public and the three-judge panel that this conclusion was worthless because the Park Police stated that they dragged Foster’s body when it began to slide down the hill during an examination.

•Starr implied that the reason for the lack of readable x-rays of Foster is that the x-ray machine was not functioning properly. However, Starr failed to tell the public and the three-judge panel that the records show that the first service call for the x-ray machine was made more than three months after Foster’s death. Also, if the machine was not functioning properly on July 20, 1993, Starr failed to explain why another machine was not used to take x-rays of Foster, a very high Government official, or why there are no records showing a service call for the machine at that time.

To date, nobody in the media has asked any of the relevant former Clinton Administration officials or Bush Administration officials or Hillary Clinton to specifically address either the Ninth Circuit's conclusion or the Supreme Court's conclusion regarding the uncontradicted evidence that was presented in the Favish FOIA lawsuit.