Document HoundUnreported to the public was the fact that the Senate Banking Committee had done more than one brief public hearing on the Foster death. In addition, members of the committee staff had conducted their own interviews of various people involved in the case and they compiled the results of their work, along with the Fiske Report and its supporting interviews, and the police documents, minus some of the redactions into two large volumes totaling 2,726 pages. From this massive, and very disorganized and often repetitious, collection of information, they drew no conclusions of their own.
Here, now was a veritable gold mine of new evidence which one could use to see how well Fiske's conclusions stood up, but as with a gold mine, a good bit of digging was required to get at the more valuable nuggets. Since his conclusions had not been very well supported by the evidence that accompanied his report, one would not have expected that they would have done much better by the initially suppressed evidence. The expectations, as it turned out, were realized, in spades. Determined excavation by some new hands revealed a whole new collection of inconsistencies and anomalies in the government "suicide" case.
As luck would have it, the release of the volumes coincided with mushrooming growth in a new medium of communication that, as a freewheeling forum, bids fair to outdo the turn-of- the-century newspapers of Paris. I refer to the Internet. Understandably already under attack by the clearly threatened conventional press as a cesspool of hate and rumormongering and as a convenient form of communication for assorted terrorists, child pornographers, and sexual deviants, the Net is also quickly proving out as a rapid alternative disseminator and sifter of news. Defenders of the conventional media argue for the need for "gatekeepers" who, upholding what they claim are the high standards of our journalistic community as they have almost eugenically evolved, weed out the chaff of rumor and misinformation. As an interactive medium, however, the Internet permits each person to be not only his own reporter but also his own gatekeeper. Newspapers and magazines only present the illusion of a democratic forum with their letters section, as anyone who has ever tried to take issue with their reporting of, say, the Kennedy assassination knows only too well, and anyone who has read this essay up to this point knows that a lot of what gets weeded out is not chaff but is the purest of freedom-nourishing grain, instead. Radio talk show hosts can and do readily cut off people imparting unapproved information, and the ownership of radio stations like the ownership of newspapers is becoming concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer corporate conglomerates.
Nowhere has the Internet as a true democratic forum been better illustrated than in the treatment the new official Foster evidence has received at the hands of two Internet contributors with the e-mail addresses of
HSprunt@aol.com and
hughie2u@aol.com. The former stands for self-employed tax attorney and accountant Hugh Sprunt of Farmers Branch, Texas, and the latter for a Washington, DC area resident who prefers to remain anonymous. Each, in spite of the latter's anonymity, has established a credibility, nay, even a moral authority on the Foster death case that surpasses that of almost anyone in the conventional media because they freely defend their Internet postings on the subject against all critics, sometimes incorporating valid criticism into their arguments, and they don't pretend, like so many of the conventional media pundits, to be experts on everything. Credibility on the Net is at a greater premium than it is with the local monopoly newspaper or the evening network news because of the mind-boggling choices that the consumer of Internet news has. He simply hasn't the time to read the works of someone he does not trust implicitly. Unfounded rumors don't get spread far because every posting comes with an e-mail name, and anyone who gets a name for irresponsible, unsupportable rumor-spreading loses his credibility and doesn't get his postings read. This is the fairly efficient manner in which everyone, most democratically, gets to be his own gatekeeper on the Internet.
Trading on their Internet credibility and with no evident partisan political or economic motivation the two, with Sprunt as principal author, employed the two volumes of Senate-published evidence almost exclusively to pick apart the Fiske Report in what eventually became an imposing 300-page volume of their own entitled the Citizens Independent Report. So that our paper does not run to a like number of pages, we shall summarize only the most important discoveries:
Fiske states blandly in his report that Foster's car keys were discovered in his pants pocket. Talk about a half truth! What he doesn't say is that the “discovery” was made at the morgue of Fairfax County hospital and that not one but two sets of keys were found at the time. Police were unable to locate them in the park, though they searched the car and Foster's pants pockets. At the point they realized they had no car keys, the initial suicide assumption should have gone out the window, because Foster would have had no way to transport himself and his car there. At the very least, an extensive search of the park using metal detectors was in order. Instead, we are told that the presumption was quickly made that the keys must have been somehow missed (!) when the pants pockets were searched (The pants pockets were searched not just for keys, mind you, but for any evidence, no matter how small, such as a folded suicide note.). Coincidentally, Officer Rolla had received a call from the White House asking where the body was being taken so William Kennedy III from the counsel's office and security chief Craig Livingstone could go identify it. Even Rolla thought that a curious request since the photo ID they had discovered and the presence of Foster's automobile left no doubt of the identity of the corpse and, when necessary, immediate family members are the ones usually required for such chores. The record does not show at whose behest the White House pair performed their strange task. At any rate, they did gain access to the body at the morgue and investigators Rolla and Braun did subsequently go there and find the missing keys, though, in their statements, they amazingly differ on whether they went there before or after they went to Foster's house in Georgetown.
Embellishing the "depression" thesis, Fiske states that it was "obvious to many" that Foster "had lost weight. Numerous press accounts from those mysterious unattributed sources, a couple of which we have already mentioned, had given the weight loss as exactly 15 pounds. Sprunt made the discovery noted earlier, however, that Foster had had a physical examination upon leaving Little Rock in December of 1992, at which time he weighed 194 pounds and that the autopsy report showed Foster's weight to be 197 pounds. Considering that he was probably clothed at the time he was weighed for his physical exam and the body would have lost weight from blood loss and from evaporation on that hot July afternoon, his actual weight gain in Washington was probably enough that his sister, Sharon, flying up from Little Rock to visit with him on what turned out to be the day of his death, would have noticed it. This would have been consistent with the unanimous testimony of Foster's White House co-workers on the record and the earliest, spontaneous, official reaction to the death which the reader will recall, that Foster had seemed perfectly normal.
Speaking of two witnesses, a man and a woman, who had driven into the Fort Marcy parking lot shortly before the arrival of the police, Fiske in his report stated that "Neither individual heard a gunshot while in the park or saw anything unusual." However, the female witness said she noticed a man, possibly bare-chested, seated in a Honda which matched the description of Foster's car. The man was not Foster, whom he did not resemble and should have already been dead by that time. I'd say that this was unusual. The male witness described a middle- aged male jogger that he had seen running through the park. The Fiske Report says that everyone known to have been at the park that night was interviewed. This jogger is only one of several people who were at the park, according to Sprunt's researches, who were not interviewed. This witness statement misrepresentation by Fiske or by his FBI interviewers is part of a consistent pattern detailed in Sprunt's report.
Another consistent pattern is the omission of pertinent evidence. Five witnesses claim to have seen a briefcase in the Honda that the FBI concluded was Foster's in the Fort Marcy parking lot. However, no briefcase is in the inventory of things taken from Foster's car. Could this be the same briefcase that turned up back in Foster's office in which the curious note was eventually found?
Not only did all the 35-mm crime scene photographs fail to come out but all of the Polaroids taken by the first police officer disappeared and many of those taken by two other officers are nowhere to be found. Vital evidence like this doesn't just vanish into thin air. What did those Polaroids show? Someone had to have been responsible for their safekeeping..and for their disappearance. Fiske told us nothing of this.
Fiske also said nothing about Foster's mysterious financial liquidity problems. He had visited the White House credit union the day before his death and they had agreed to "work with him" on his overdrafts. He was living modestly in a rented townhouse and had been able to rent out his house in Little Rock. Prior to his White House employment he had been earning almost $300,000 a year. What could have been the reason for his financial pinch? The interviewers exhibited no curiosity, or at least none that was recorded.
Also, the day before he died Foster had a closed-door one to two hour meeting with Arkansas White House insider Marsha Scott. His secretary said that both the length of the meeting and the fact of the closed door were out of character for Foster. Ms. Scott, in another recurring pattern on the record, can't remember what they talked about.
Fairfax County emergency worker, Richard Arthur, in a deposition taken by the committee staff, clearly and distinctly remembered seeing an automatic pistol instead of a revolver in Foster's hand. He was so sure, and his listeners were so puzzled, that they had him draw a picture of the pistol, which does, indeed, look like an automatic instead of a .38 colt revolver.
The times given for events on the evening of July 20, 1996, by Fiske are all out of whack, and the purpose seems to be to lend credence to the implausible claim of the White House that they weren't made aware of the death until 8:30 pm. Hospital records show that the ambulance arrived at the hospital at 8:30 pm (less five seconds), yet Fiske says the body was not put in a bag in the park until 8:45 pm. Chief Medical Examiner for Fairfax County, Dr. Donald Haut, told the FBI that he arrived at the park at 6:45 and by the time he left at 7:15 he, like the emergency workers, knew of Foster's White House connection. Fiske has him arriving at 7:40 and leaving at 8:30. Even emergency workers who left as early as 6:37 knew that the body was that of a White House official. Most tellingly, the name and phone number of Lt. Walter appear in police inspector Rolla's note pad for the evening in a chronological sequence which would have placed the entry at around 6:40 pm. Lt. Danny Walter works at the White House for the Secret Service. Rolla claims to have had no contact with the Secret Service that evening, and if he called Lt. Walter at the time it appears that he did, it means that the White House would have learned of the death almost two hours before they claim.
As we said, we have given you only a small sample of the anomalies, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies that Sprunt and his collaborator have come up with in the official version of events. He has made the report available for the cost of printing to anyone who wants it and, at his own expense, has furnished copies to well over 200 government officials and opinion molders, but, to date, no mention of his efforts has appeared in the mainstream press nor have any newspaper stories come out based upon the fruits of his labors, except in London.
The View from AbroadThis last observation suggests another comparison we might make to the Dreyfus Affair. At a time when public opinion, led by the press, still overwhelmingly was on the side of Captain Dreyfus' accusers, newspapers in other major countries were beginning to doubt the collective sanity of France. The prosecution and conviction for libel of Zola brought them out. "In Brussels, Saint-Petersburg, Warsaw, London, and New York, the press was unanimous the day after the verdict in deploring the French madness." From The Times of London to Le Genevois of Switzerland, eloquent denunciations of this strange new French concept of justice poured forth, "But who read those newspapers in France, and who listened to those writers?" [11]
The full passage gets us a little ahead of ourselves in the Dreyfus case, but the following quote from William Shirer is too appropriate to this section to pass up:
"Where is France? What became of the French?" Clemenceau would soon lament. Where indeed, when, as the jailed Colonel Picquart now publicly swore, a man had been convicted of treason on evidence that had been forged, and presented illegally to boot; where an Esterhazy could be whitewashed by a military court and a Zola found guilty by a civilian one; where a colonel who had confessed to faking evidence against the Jewish captain and who had killed himself rather than face the consequences could be hailed as a martyr to truth. A foreigner, confused by such a topsy-turvy world, asked a young French journalist, Paul Brulat: "Where are the honest men in this country?" And the reply was: "They are frightened." [12]
We observed earlier that, because Christopher Ruddy was between jobs at the time, no newspapers had anything critical to say about the Fiske Report upon its release. Actually, the Sunday Telegraph of London had a scorching critique, pointing out many of the pre-Sprunt weaknesses that we have detailed. Their Washington- based reporter, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, has regularly kept England's readers apprised of scandals related to the U.S. federal government that can't penetrate the American wall of press silence. The Telegraph is available for sale in Americas's major cities and also has an Internet web site, but "Who reads it?" we might ask, and are they not frightened?
America's Almost-PicquartAnyone wanting to capture the multifaceted and protracted drama of the Dreyfus Affair for stage or screen could do worse than to make his main character neither Captain Dreyfus nor Bernard Lazare nor Emile Zola, but Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart. In fact, the essential role that Picquart was to play in the Affair had already been prefigured on the stage by the title character in an 1882 play by the great Norwegian dramatist, Henrik Ibsen. The play is An Enemy of the People and the character is Dr. Thomas Stockmann. Stockmann, a medical doctor with a scientific bent, worked in a town whose economy was based on two industries, tourism derived from the region's natural mineral springs and a tannery. In an era in which the connection between microbes and disease was still not widely understood, he made the discovery that a number of mysterious deaths among the tourists had obviously (to him) resulted from pollution of the mineral springs by the tannery. The amazing power of the human mind to rationalize when objective truth and naked self-interest come into conflict furnish the wellspring, as it were, for the subsequent dramatic tension, leading up to the title label that is ultimately affixed upon the good doctor. Modern readers, or at least, moviegoers, will recognize that the role was reprised, and somewhat vulgarized by the Chief Brody character in Peter Benchley's Jaws (who, in the exciting climax, teamed up with a Captain-Ahab-like character pilfered from Herman Melville).
Lt. Col. Picquart had served as observer of the original Dreyfus trial for General Mercier's Ministry of War. He was a soldier through and through, embodying all the qualities of bravery and stubborn rectitude that can be most admirable in the breed. His superiors had consistently recognized him for his competence, his intelligence, and his devotion. He had never doubted Dreyfus' guilt, and, as a thoroughgoing Army man, he had no particular political or social affinity for the cosmopolitans and intellectuals who were beginning to take up the Dreyfus cause.
Some two years after the framing and conviction, Picquart found himself promoted to the top of the Army's Section of Statistics, as the office of counterespionage was euphemistically called. These were precisely the people who had framed Dreyfus. He quickly set about improving their legitimate operations and, as often before in his career, was recognized and appreciated for it. Then, in his new capacity, he made some unsettling discoveries. The treason for which the distantly-imprisoned Dreyfus had been convicted was continuing. A new communication to the Germans had been intercepted. Good detective work directed suspicion toward the well- connected Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. Picquart retrieved the original note (dubbed the bordereau, or "manifest" because it contained an itemized list of things) which had been attributed to Dreyfus and saw immediately that the handwriting matched precisely that of Esterhazy. Next, he requested to see the secret file which had been used to persuade the judges further of Dreyfus' guilt. He found, to his surprise, in light of his recent discovery that, even with its embellishments, the secret file added up to very little to incriminate Dreyfus. “He was certain of a judicial error. His conscience, the elevated idea of the Army he held, and reason as well--for inevitably the truth would eventually out--dictated his duty. He would never waver from it." [13] He took the matter directly to the Army's top man, General Raoul de Boisdeffre.
The general listened to him impassively, barely surprised. When the colonel referred to the secret file, de Boisdeffre seemed startled. "Why was it not burned as had been agreed?" That was the sole point on which he became moved. Picquart expected a reaction, orders, congratulations, the indignation of the chief of the General Staff upon discovering that an innocent man had been convicted. But de Boisdeffre said nothing. [14]
Returning to de Boisdeffre's office the next day hoping for decisive action, Picquart found, instead, that the question had been bucked down the chain of command, to Deputy Chief of Staff General Charles Arthur Gonse.
In a state of astonishment, since de Boisdeffre had never demanded such scrupulous respect for the hierarchy, Picquart went to see General Gonse, who was then on sick leave at Cormeilles-en-Parisis. He presented the matter during a long two-hour meeting with Gonse, who also listened without responding, with the exception of the comment, "So we must have been wrong?" Gonse gave Picquart a single recommendation. "Keep the two affairs separate." Picquart wondered how he could keep them separate. "I did not see how, in focusing on Esterhazy, we could not focus on the bordereau...and the bordereau, in a word, was the Dreyfus Affair." De Boisdeffre, however, confirmed Gonse's instructions. "Keep them separate." Plainly Picquart and his superiors did not see their duty in the same light. [15]
Picquart's devotion to duty as he saw it would lead to his being vilified by the nation's press as a paid agent of the hated Syndicate and as a disloyal Frenchman. First transferred to the colonies to get him out of the picture, and ideally killed in battle, he would eventually be court martialed and drummed out of the Army, spending more than a year in jail on trumped-up charges.
Miquel Rodriguez, an assistant U.S. attorney from Sacramento, California, joined the staff of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in the early fall of 1994, that is, shortly after Starr set up shop. He was put in charge of the Foster death investigation. In contrast to the unsworn testimony taken by the Fiske team, Rodriguez convened a grand jury and began to make some progress taking sworn testimony. Press reports quickly began to undermine him, however. In January of 1995 the Associated Press reported that police witnesses had been angered over the tone and extensiveness of his questioning. They didn't take well to his repeated reminders of the penalty for perjury. On the very day that the grand jury hearings began Scripps-Howard reported that Starr had already concluded that Foster's death was a suicide and would soon close the case. "Informed sources" on Capitol Hill were saying the same thing.
At least superficial similarities in character between Rodriguez and Picquart could hardly be missed:
Rodriguez, who is in his mid-30s, has approximately seven years' experience as a prosecutor and had gained a reputation as a hard-nosed, diligent prosecutor, especially on civil rights cases, said an FBI agent in California familiar with his work.
"He's the perfect lawyer for a case like this," the agent said, suggesting that if any cover-up existed, Rodriguez's cross-examination skills would be well suited for ferreting out the truth.
The agent also described Rodriguez as a "guy with a conscience. He could never play Pontius Pilate." [16]
On April 6, 1995, Christopher Ruddy, and only Ruddy in the nations' media, reported that Rodriguez had resigned "because he believed the grand jury process was being thwarted by his superior," [17] according to one of Ruddy's "key sources" close to Starr's investigation.
At this point one finds it very tempting to conclude that someone who could play Pontius Pilate was exactly the sort of person who was required for the job, and Miquel Rodriguez and Kenneth Starr saw "civic virtue" in an entirely different light.
Rodriguez, though, apparently has no intention of becoming truly another Picquart nor even a Chief Brody. In today's America, people like that apparently can only be found in the movies. Had there been no Picquart, following his conscience and bravely doing his duty from the inside and then continuing to speak up for justice when he was no longer inside, regardless of the consequences for himself, there is a good chance that Dreyfus would have lived out the rest of his days in the torrid, oppressive isolation of Devil's Island, and the truth would never have come to light. Rodriguez didn't get himself thrown entirely out of the government. Instead, he went quietly back to his job in Sacramento and now refers all questions about the Foster case back to Kenneth Starr. He is getting on with his career, having had his brief brush with history. The man from the FBI apparently had him a little bit wrong.
The ForgeryGeorges Picquart was not the only government man in France, however, who did the right thing. The conscientious work of three other key people was also crucial for the eventual victory of truth and justice and the exoneration of Dreyfus. Godefrey Cavaignac, the new Minister of War, was one of the staunchest defenders of the Army and opponents of the Dreyfusards in the Chamber of Deputies. In the ongoing contest over public opinion he had scored a coup by reading in the Chamber the contents of a letter from the Italian Military Attaché, Alessandro Panizzardi to the German, Maximilian von Schwarzkoppen, the addressee of the bordereau. The name of Dreyfus actually appeared in the letter along with the passage, "I will say that I never had any relations with the Jew."
Challenged publicly on the authenticity of his evidence by Picquart, to be completely certain that he was on sound footing, Cavaignac requested that the Section of Statistics carefully check all the documents once again. Picquart, himself, had long been dismissed from the leadership of that office, and the review task fell to Captain Louis Cuignet. Examining the original torn-and-reassembled Panizzardi letter by lamplight, he noticed that the color of the rules of paper on which the heading and the signature appeared did not match the faint lined rules of the body of the letter. The letter was an obvious forgery.
Captain Cuignet took his discovery directly to General Gaudérique Roget, Cavaignac's top assistant and the lamplight experiment was repeated. Roget was convinced. They brought in Cavaignac and he, too, saw the evidence of forgery clearly. "It was to the credit of those three men, all committed to the struggle against revision (as a new trial for Dreyfus was called), to have not for a moment thought of quashing their discovery. On that occasion there was no one to repeat General Gonse's words to Colonel Picquart: ‘If you do not say anything, no one will know.'" [18]
The Affair would drag on for several more years, but the corner had been turned. News of the forgery spread quickly. What had first seemed like a victory in the battle for public opinion had been turned into a crushing, eventually decisive defeat. Confronted with the evidence, under strong interrogation, the clumsy forger, Lt. Col. Hubert Henry, tried first to deny his handiwork, then finally, haltingly owned up. Within a few days he would take his own life by cutting his throat with a razor (Though some of the Dreyfusards would suspect that the Army had killed him to prevent his spilling the beans further, and the most confirmed opponents of the Dreyfusards would blame the death on Henry's Jewish doctor, neither had very good evidence.).
In the Foster case, the New York Daily News, using its leaked copy of the Park Police findings, had first disclosed on March 14, 1994, that the authentication of the torn-up note belatedly found in Foster's briefcase had been performed by Sgt. Larry Lockhart of the U.S. Capitol Police. No explanation would be given as to why he was chosen for the task, but the Senate documents would reveal that he had used only one document purportedly written by Foster for comparison purposes, which is a violation of the most basic standards of authentication because the "known" document might itself be a forgery and because several writing samples better allow the examiner to recognize patterns and tendencies and mutual consistency. It was later learned, further, that Sgt. Lockhart had no formal qualifications as a handwriting examiner. Robert Fiske sent the note, with the same known sample that Lockhart had used, along with several canceled checks bearing Foster's signature, to the FBI lab. Since the one thing that was missing from the questioned torn note was a signature, it is difficult to see what was added for comparison purposes by the checks. The Senate documents revealed a number of different writings from Foster that Fiske chose not to send to the FBI lab, and the latter made no effort to ferret out any on their own. Using only the scant evidence at hand, the FBI lab had, nevertheless, gone ahead and pronounced the note authentic, but with no accompanying explanation.
All the while a heroic effort had been made to keep any copies of the note out of the hands of the public, an effort that failed when on August 2, 1995, the Wall Street Journal under the heading "The Note that Won't Go Away," published a pirated copy on its editorial page. They said only that it had been floating around Capitol Hill. The editors of the Anglo-American newsletter, Strategic Investment, then made copies from the Wall Street Journal which they sent independently to three recognized handwriting experts along with a minimum of 12 documents each, which were attributed to Foster, for comparison. On October 25, 1995, they rented the ballroom of the historic Willard Hotel, across the street from the National Press Club, to announce their findings.
Professor Reginald Alton, thirty years a lecturer on handwriting, manuscript authentication, and forgery at Oxford University, perhaps the world's top authority on literary manuscripts, Ronald Rice of Boston, who wrote the course on handwriting examination for the American Board of Forensic Examiners, and retired police detective Vincent Scalice of New York, a certified member of that board who, like the other two has given expert handwriting testimony in numerous court cases, agreed that the note was not even a particularly good forgery. Each gave the reasons for his conclusions in considerable detail, both orally and in writing. Rice, in particular, with his blow-ups and pointer, gave the impression that he was making a courtroom presentation, at one point slipping up and addressing the audience as the "jury".
The next day, October 26, the Times had a major story about the findings of the handwriting experts, but it was the Times of London, along with the Telegraph and the Observer of that city. The New York Times and the Washington Post, the two newspapers which had given the biggest play to the discovery of the note in the first place, were now utterly silent, as were the TV and radio networks, the news magazines, and virtually every newspaper in our once free country, with the exception of the Washington Times. The Washington Times carried a small item on an inside page from the Reuters news service about the press conference and the findings, but it was strictly a one-time thing. Afterwards, they continued to write about the Foster case as though the handwriting experts had never told us that the primary piece of evidence suggesting suicide, which emanated from the White House, is a second-rate forgery, according to the best-qualified analysts and most thorough analysis so far available.
The Dreyfus Affair has been called, first and foremost, an affair of the press. The press pushed for the initial conviction and then became the battleground upon which the struggle to right the wrong was waged. No single act of the French press in the Dreyfus case, not even the publication of Zola's famous letter, however, quite compares in importance to the collective decision of the American media not to tell the American people of the independent discovery that the “ruining-people-for-sport”, torn-up but fingerprintless note "found" in Vincent Foster's briefcase was, in all likelihood, a White House- concocted forgery.
Perhaps we take our news organs too much for granted. Just as we expect the highway authorities to keep traffic flowing and the power companies to provide us with electricity, we expect those huge and powerful organizations which collect information to share with us the most important things they have learned. That they do their job properly is as important to the functioning of our republic as are the operations of those other agencies to the smooth working of the economy. Their importance to our political health was recognized by the Founding Fathers in the great legal protection they were given by the First Amendment. But what happens when they break faith with the American people, when they violate the trust with which they have been invested and do not report the news? Imagine how the political landscape would have changed had the newspapers and TV networks simply done their job and reported the news on October 25 and 26, 1995, and the days that followed (Admittedly, this would have been quite difficult considering the deep commitment they had already made to the government version of the truth.).
The Congress and the Independent Counsel, for starters, could hardly have continued to ignore the most suspicious aspects of the Foster case. Handwriting experts would have had to be called before public hearings to tell us why the note was or was not authentic. The conflict between Dr. Beyer and everyone else who saw the body would have to be resolved by exhumation of the body and a new autopsy performed under the strictest independent public scrutiny. Telephone records would have to be subpoenaed to determine if Foster really did order medication through his doctor in Arkansas and, concerning another inconsistency we have not previously discussed, whether Helen Dickey of the White House staff did really wait until after 10:00 pm on July 20, 1993, to call the Arkansas governor's mansion with news of Foster's death as she told the Congress, or before 8:00 pm as state troopers Roger Perry and Larry Patterson have said in sworn affidavits. Considering the gravity of the possible offense, it is hard to imagine that these inquiries would not have been part of an impeachment proceeding.
On the public relations front, had news of the forgery been properly reported, James Stewart could hardly have written his book, Blood Sport, the title of which is taken from that press-ballyhooed last line of the questionable note. Stewart pushes the suicide-from-depression argument by leaning heavily on the text of the note, as though we didn't know that the current best evidence available tells us that the note was written, with malice aforethought, by a party or parties other than Vincent Foster. Had the press done the most basic job we have every right to expect of them and not betrayed us instead, Stewart's book would have been a laughingstock, which he is no doubt astute enough to know. We can say the same thing for recent books by former FBI agent Gary Aldrich (less the astuteness acknowledgment), who also parrots the suicide-from-depression line using the note in his shoddy, semi-literate little work, Unlimited Access, as does conservative-defector David Brock in The Seduction of Hillary Clinton.
In fact, because news of the forgery finding was essentially not reported, things have been permitted to proceed exactly as though it did not happen. No one uttered a word about it in the presidential campaign. The nation's editorial writers, columnists, and TV pundits have been utterly silent on the matter. That they chose to ignore the findings rather than to take the alternative tack of questioning the validity of the experts' findings, in the final analysis, is but one more of the many factors which force the objective observer to conclude that this crucial note must be bogus.
Actually, at the risk of gilding the lily, there is one last pertinent factor that we feel we must share with the reader. On August 25, 1993, high-priced white collar crime legal specialist, James Hamilton of the Washington law firm of Swidler and Berlin who has been presented to the public as the "Foster family lawyer" but seems to have been picked for the job by the White House's Bernard Nussbaum, wrote the following letter which was delivered by hand to Janet Reno:
Re: Vince Foster Note
Dear Madam Attorney General:
As counsel for the family of Vince Foster and in particular Mrs. Lisa Foster, I am writing to renew the family's strongly-felt request that the original torn pieces of Vince's note be returned to her.
In the family's view, this was a very personal note. While it dealt with business matters, Vince obviously did not intend that the note be given or shown to anyone at work. As you know, he tore up the note, depositing the pieces at the bottom of an old briefcase he owned. He thus did not intend that the note be maintained as a part of White House files.
The family, of course, understood the need for the Park Police and the FBI to obtain and analyze the note. Now, however, the investigations into Vince's death are concluded and family members see no good reason why the note should not be returned to Mrs. Foster.
Vince did not leave any written communication to the family. The note is all there is that expresses his feelings during the last few days of his life. While his death always will remain inexplicable to the family, having the note in their possession will provide them great comfort. Please do not underestimate the depth of Mrs. Foster's feelings about this matter.
The family appreciates the manner in which the Department and you handled the note during the investigations and particularly thank you for your decision not to release a photograph of the actual note. That clearly was the correct decision for all concerned. So also would returning the note to the family be the correct decision. This would recognize the human and family concerns involved, and would in no way interfere with the investigation of Vince's death, which are over (sic).
Mrs. Foster and the rest of Vince's family very much appreciate your personal attention to this renewed request.
Sincerely,
James Hamilton
cc: Mrs. Lisa Foster
To her credit, Ms. Reno apparently ignored the original and the renewed request, and independent authentication of the suspect note eventually became possible.
A few more biographical notes on Mr. Hamilton are also in order. He served on the House Watergate Committee with Bernard Nussbaum and Hillary Clinton. He was a member of the White House transition team and participated in the selection of the Attorney General and Supreme Court nominees. He was author of a memo to the President counseling “stonewalling” over Whitewater and in a recently-released White House memo, he is referred to as a White House "surrogate" handling the Foster death case, and, indeed, on CBS's 60 Minutes, he defended the suicide ruling. In 1996, he was appointed to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Mr. James Hamilton, Esq. is clearly a great deal more than the Foster family attorney.
The Cloudy Crystal BallAlmost five years would elapse between the conviction and banishment of Captain Alfred Dreyfus for treason and his release, on a pardon, from prison. It would take another seven years for him to clear his name completely and be reinstated into the Army.
On August 10, 1998, five years will have elapsed from the time of the initial official "suicide" ruling in the Foster case. As in the Dreyfus Affair, the drama has unfolded very slowly, but it has, up to now, in spite of the numerous parallels, unfolded quite differently, so we can expect its future course also to be different. Dreyfus received his pardon because the mood of the country had changed and, most importantly, the leadership had changed. The fact that the most recent, Republican- controlled Congress looked into the Foster matter even less than did their Democratic predecessors amply demonstrates that a change of government, even of the presidency, as long as the new president is either a Democrat or a Republican, will not be what makes the difference.
In contrast to the French government of a century ago, whose scandals came serially, the Clinton administration is mired, all at the same time, in almost too many scandals and apparent coverups to keep count of. It is possible that one of them could wound the administration or bring down the president and, in a sort of domino effect, weaken the forces of coverup sufficiently to permit a full and honest final reckoning. But one can't help thinking that at least some, if not most, of the scandals are little more than manufactured distractions which will work less like dominoes than like backfires, intentionally set to prevent the truly dangerous wildfire from sweeping over the house.
In spite of all that has transpired over the past three and a quarter years, the lack of real progress in the Foster case is what stands out. Originally, we were waiting for a determination by the Park Police. That lasted only fifteen days, but then we were told to wait for their report. Even before it came out, that wait was replaced by the wait for the Fiske Report. Now we have been told to wait for the upright, but partisan Republican, Kenneth Starr to render his verdict, and the wait has now gone on for two and a quarter years. With any kind of pressure from the press, the wait, itself, would be a major issue, but there has been none. In fact, over the entire unsatisfactory state of affairs, the press has voiced, when it has bothered to voice anything, virtually nothing but satisfaction.
Sometimes one wonders what wouldn't satisfy them, as long as it came from official government sources. The Clinton administration seems to be testing their limits. On Friday, November 1, 1996, the Navy, in grudging response to a Freedom of Information Act request, released a report on another high level violent death that was quickly ruled a suicide, that of Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jeremy Boorda on May 16. Among other numerous things, the names of all the people interviewed, the text of two notes found with his body, and the entire autopsy report were "redacted" or blacked out. Not one murmur of complaint was heard from anyone, either in the press or the Congress. The Washington Times in its article on the release didn't even bother to mention the redactions while concluding that the report contained “no surprises.” How would they know?
Back on the Foster case, all eyes, when they can remain open, are on Kenneth Starr. As often as his name is invoked by establishment figures when the Foster case is brought up, it is abundantly clear that he is expected to lay the matter to rest by ruling, in his role of conservative Republican who would certainly nail Clinton if he could, that it was, indeed, a suicide. Events keep popping up which make that increasingly difficult, such as the witness, Patrick Knowlton, who has testified that the FBI agents, who were working for Fiske at the time but have been retained by Starr, significantly changed his testimony about, among a number of things, the color and features of the car he saw in the Fort Marcy parking lot and his ability to recognize a menacing-looking man who eyed him as he sought a location to relieve himself. After his story was revealed by Evans-Pritchard, he claims to have been harassed and followed by more than twenty men on the streets of Washington. On November 12, Knowlton and his lawyer held a Washington press conference announcing his suit against the FBI for obstruction of justice and witness tampering. Only the Washington Times had a small, somewhat skeptical article about it the next day. The other news organs, including the TV networks which had cameras there, continuing the familiar pattern, blacked it out.
In spite of the difficulties, we can be sure that one of these days, probably under the cover of a major news distraction that he, himself, might create, Starr will duly render his suicide ruling. Newsweek reported in a December 2, 1996 article on Starr and his investigation, in fact, that the Foster death case is one of the things he has already been able to lay to rest, concluding, based upon the forensic evidence, that Fiske was right and it was, indeed, a simple suicide. (It is of some interest that Michael Isikoff was the co-author of that Newsweek article. He is also the reporter who, while working for the Washington Post, first erroneously (?)reported the discovery of the list of psychiatrists in Foster's office and co-authored the July 30, 1993, article which erroneously stated that the police had been turned away from the Foster house when they went to make the death notification and interview family members. More recently, he declined to write about the harassment of the witness, Patrick Knowlton, telling Knowlton's lawyer in person that, though he believed Knowlton, neither he nor any other mainstream journalist would write about it because it "raises more questions than it answers.") After Starr makes it all official, future historians will, doubtless, be able to write of him what Barbara Tuchman wrote of General Auguste Mercier: "All the strength, except truth, was on his side." [19]
It wasn't enough for Mercier. Will it be enough for Starr?
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Notes:1. Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair, The Case of Alfred Dreyfus (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1986), p. 542.
2. Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower, a Portrait of the World before the War, 1890-1914, (New York: The McMillan Company, 1962), p. 196.
3. Bredin, op. cit., p.39.
4. Ibid., p. 40.
5. Tuchman, op. cit., pp. 204-205.
6. Ibid., p. 204.
7. Ibid., all quotes in the paragraph.
8. Robert B. Fiske, Jr., "Report of the Independent Counsel, in re Vincent W. Foster, Jr." (Washington, D.C. June 30, 1994), p. 6.
9. Ibid., p. 40.
10. Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, Investigation of the White House Travel Office Firings and Related Matters (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, Sept. 26, 1996), p. 681.
11. Bredin, op. cit., p. 272.
12. William L. Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic, an Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969), p. 63.
13. Bredin, op. cit., p. 162.
14. Ibid., p. 163.
15. Ibid.
16. Christopher Ruddy, The Pittsburgh Tribune Review, April 6, 1995. Reprinted in Ruddy's compilation, Vincent Foster: The Ruddy Investigation (Fair Oaks, CA: The Western Journalism Center, 1995), p. 87.
17. Ibid.
18. Bredin, op. cit., p. 324.
19. Tuchman, op.cit., p. 204.
Useful Sources of Hard-to-Get Information
[Note added March 14, 1999:
Part 1 of "America's Dreyfus Affair" was put on line by J. Orlin Grabbe, with my permission, before I myself was on line. The Internet, I have found, opens up the opportunity for acquiring knowledge almost unimaginably. Upon discovering the Internet I quickly realized how meager the following list is. I also realized, through new knowledge that I acquired, that my disclaimer at the end is not strong enough. Much of my newly-acquired knowledge is reflected in Parts 2 and 5 of Dreyfus, particularly about what I call the "fake right." No one should believe any one source implicitly. One must read as broadly as possible to get at the truth, and one should trust only ones own interpretation of the facts gathered. --DC Dave]
1. Vincent Foster: The Ruddy Investigation, can be obtained by calling 1-800-711-1968.
2. Hugh Sprunt's Citizen's Independent Report is available for the price of printing and mailing at (301) 937-6500, which is the number for the Bel Jean Print/Copy Shop in College Park, MD.
3. For information on the Tommy Burkett case, write Parents Against Corruption and Coverup, 13456 Muirkirk Lane, Herndon, VA 20171 or e-mail to
tburkett@clark.net. They also have a web site at
http://www.clark.net/pub/tburkett/pacc/PACC.html. Tel. (703) 435-3112.
4. Not mentioned in the paper is the fact that the conservative media-watchdog organization Accuracy in Media, has, since about the time Ruddy arrived upon the scene, been consistently critical of the government and the press in the Foster case. The organization's chairman, Reed Irvine, is particularly well-informed and persuasive. One might look up his and several other letters to the editor that rather miraculously appeared in the Wall Street Journal on April 11, 1995, to get a sample of his valuable work. You can also write for information directly to Accuracy in Media, 4455 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., #330, Washington, DC 20008. Tel. (202) 364-4401. Request in particular Irvine's recent “Farce and Fraud in Foster Findings”. He also did an excellent contemporaneous analysis of the Fiske Report among his numerous works.
5. The web site for the Sunday Telegraph of London is
http://www.telegraph.co.uk6. Patrick Knowlton has prepared a witness-tampering report available from his lawyer, John H. Clarke at 720 7th Street, N.W., Suite 304, Washington, DC 20001. Tel.(202) 332-3030.
7. Christopher Ruddy's articles appear regularly in a newsletter of the Western Journalism Center entitled Dispatches, P.O. Box 2450, Fair Oaks, CA 95628-2450 Tel. 1-800-WJC-5595.
8. Talk show host Brian Wilson has an informative book putting the Foster case in the larger context of Clinton scandals entitled The Little Black Book on Whitewater. 1-800-862-1731. He has a web page at
http://www.myrmidon.w1.com9. Videos on the Foster case and other scandals related to the Clinton administration can be obtained from Citizens for Honest Government, 611 Pennsylvania Ave. S.E., Suite 1996, Washington, D.C. 20003. Tel. 1-800-251-8089.
10. Strategic Investment, the sponsor of the handwriting experts, has also prepared a video on the Foster case. Write 108 N. Alfred Street, Suite 200, Alexandria, VA 22314. Tel. (703) 836-8250.
11. My book, The New Moral Order, the Poems and Essays of David Martin has my letters to Washington Post reporter, David Von Drehle, and to writer, William Styron, about their writings on the Foster case, referred to in the current monograph. It also contains poetic commentary, at length, on the Foster case, POW/MIA abandonment and coverup, the Burkett case, the national abortion holocaust, corruption of the press, misinformation on the Oklahoma City bombing, wrongheadedness in pedagogy, the Kennedy assassination, and the national security state, among other things. It is available for $14.95 (which includes a $3.00 shipping and handling fee) from DCD Publishers, P.O. Box 222381, Chantilly, VA 20153.
12. The New Moral Order can also be obtained from The Free American, a monthly magazine. It's at US Highway 380, Box 2943, Bingham, New Mexico 87832. Tel. (505) 423-5250; Fax (505) 423-5258. E-mail
freeamerican@etsc.net. The Free American also sells Unlimited Access, the book by former FBI agent, Gary Aldrich, which is referred to unfavorably in my paper and The Murder of Vince Foster by Michael Kellett, as well as a number of other books and videos generally not available through conventional sources.
13. The United Broadcasting Network (formerly the For the People Network) also sells a similar collection of books and videos, including Christopher Ruddy's work. They have an easy to remember toll-free number, 1-800-888-9999.
14. America West Catalog, P.O. Box 3300, Bozeman, Montana 59772. Tel. 1-800-729-4131 gives prompt mail-order service for it's books on various “conspiracies”. Ask for free catalog.
15. Prevailing Winds Research, P.O. Box 23511, Santa Barbara, CA 93121. Tel. (805) 899-3433 has an extraordinary collection of books, videos, tapes, and articles on various alleged conspiracies. Their perspective is as much from the political left as Accuracy in Media is from the right. In fact, they sell a monograph that roundly attacks AIM. I increasingly find the tiresome right versus left dichotomy to be a hindrance to perceiving the more serious dichotomy between right and wrong, freedom and tyranny.
16. The monthly newspaper, The Jubilee, also sells political books and videos. They are at P.O. Box 310, Midpines, CA 95345. Tel. (209) 742-NEWS. They have had some of the best reporting on the apparent coverup in the Oklahoma City bombing case.
17. The magazine, The New American, has an on line bookstore at
http://www.jbs.org. Their address is simply The New American, Appleton, WI 54913-8040. Tel. (414)749-3783. They have also reported well on Oklahoma City.
Mention in this listing does not constitute an endorsement of everything the organization stands for nor does it bespeak a belief in everything contained in the materials sold (with the exception of The New Moral Order, of course.). There is some doubt, in fact, that some of the organizations or publications are what they purport to be, that is, genuine independent critics of governmental and journalistic corruption. One should beware “false fronts”. A responsible citizen can only read as broadly as possible and make up his own mind. One who confines himself to the “respectable mainstream” is not doing so. Anyone absorbing the lessons of this essay should realize that the American informational mainstream of the late 20th century is exceedingly narrow, and it is anything but respectable.
David Martin
November 27, 1996
