Vince: We Hardly Knew Ye
Part 6
Being a recap of the death, and various ongoing investigations into same, of White House aide Vincent Foster, jr.
(With apologies to his family, who prefer to "let sleeping Fosters lie.")
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
With the U.S. about to invade Bosnia in order to promote peace ("War is peace"); with things getting a little hot in Washington (and not just the weather) for that big, lovable clown from Arkansas; with investigations heating up; with the "special people" beginning to panic -- how convenient for the comfortable classes that the situation in Bosnia should heat up just about now.
So that the commissar class doesn't get too comfortable, I thought I'd offer a bit of a history lesson on the death, as well as the on-and-off investigations into same, of Vincent Foster, jr.
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
VINCE FOSTER UPDATE
[Originally posted ca. March 11, 1994, as a "Conspiracy For The Day" special edition.]
"The face was white and pale, and only a thin trickle of blood oozed from one corner of his mouth," Gonzalez told the Post. "Usually a suicide by gunshot is a mess." Ashford said he did not even see an exit wound, although initial reports said that Foster had placed the .38 caliber revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
"There should be pools of blood," a New York City police detective told the Post: "Look at the gun -- if it was the instrument of death, there would be blood on it. A .38 makes a powerful explosion. There's a backwash of blood and tissue."
The Post commented that the absence of blood "raised the possibility Foster may have been killed elsewhere and that his body was dumped in the park."
The location of the gun in Foster's hand, far from confirming that his death was a suicide, was highly unusual. In most suicides using a handgun, the weapon is propelled several feet away, either by recoil from the force of the firing or through reflex action of the victim. A forensic pathologist told the Post: "If the individual is gripping the gun, that would lead to thinking that possibly someone put the gun in his hand." [CfD -- also, Foster was left-handed. The gun was found in his right hand.]
Whatever the cause of Foster's death, the most startling fact reported by the Post was that the gun found in his hand was never subjected to a ballistics test to confirm that it was the weapon which killed him. The gun has also never been positively identified as Foster's by any member of his family.
The Wall Street Journal has published a series of increasingly strident editorials on the Foster case over the past several months. An editorial January 14 described Foster as the "Banquo's ghost" of the Clinton administration, suggesting that his death was not a suicide, and all but declaring the president of the United States to be a murderer. {1}.
It is becoming more and more likely that former Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster Jr., who was found dead in a suburban Virginia park near Washington last July 20, was the victim of a homicide.
In what is shaping up as one of the most incredibly bungled investigations -- possibly even a cover-up involving the highest levels of the administration of President Bill Clinton -- evidence has been uncovered indicating that Foster, a friend since boyhood of Clinton and a former law partner of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, was not a victim of an "apparent self- inflicted" bullet wound of the head.
According to the New York Post, experts have revealed that the absence of four key conditions concerning Foster's body have essentially ruled out the likelihood of suicide in the case.
If a gun were placed inside of the mouth and fired, as the Park Police officially reported, experts told the Post there would likely be:
*** Thick residues of gunpowder around and/or inside of the wound;
*** Traces of powder residue on the victim's tongue;
*** Damaged or broken teeth;
*** Blood found on the barrel of the revolver;
However, according to the experts, none of the four conditions were present when Foster's body was reached in the park by police and paramedics.
The absence of blood at the scene is also significant.
Paramedics and Park Police have indicated that there was no blood found on the ground beneath Foster's head. In fact, the paramedics reported that they did not even see an exit wound on his head.
Since a bullet was not found by Park Police, according to their official report, many questions arise as to why there was no exit wound, if the paramedics were correct in what they witnessed at the scene.
This would indicate that the bullet remains inside the head cavity and was not retrieved at the time of the autopsy. The key question then becomes: why?
Since, according to experts, the old Colt revolver was likely not the gun that killed Foster, due to lack of residue and other findings, why has this been concealed by Park Police and other federal officials? {2}.
[Excerpts from The 700 Club, March 10, 1994. Note: The following excerpt is only part of a more extensive report that the 700 Club did on the Foster "suicide" on this date.]
[...]
PAT ROBERTSON: Gary Lane is with us, right now, in our Washington, D.C. studio and he comes live on satellite. Gary, the Park Police: I have never thought of them as being skilled homicide investigators. Why were they doing this?
LANE: Well, the Park Police were involved, Pat, because it occurred in a park. The body was found in a national park, so obviously the National Park Service comes in. But the point here is: President Clinton could have asked the FBI to step in immediately, and he did not.
ROBERTSON: Why, do you think?
LANE: Well, I think... well, that would just be speculation... The people that I have talked to that have investigated this thoroughly, the skeptics, are saying they think that was part of a situation to, or an attempt to, control the situation. The Park Police are not, as you say, as skilled in investigating homicides and the like; the FBI would be moreso.
ROBERTSON: I don't understand the trajectory of that bullet. We haven't got the autopsy, but no bullet was found. What is being made of that particular piece of evidence?
LANE: If you don't find a bullet, then you cannot prove that the bullet that actually killed Vince Foster was the one that was from the gun that was in his hand. He had a 1913 Colt revolver in his right hand; his associates and friends tell me that he was left-handed. So why would someone put a gun in their right hand if they were left-handed and they were going to kill themselves?
Now, aside from that, the gun itself: You cannot prove that the bullet that killed Vince Foster was from that gun, unless you find the bullet and you do ballistic tests.
There's another question about ballistic tests: if, in fact, they had or had not been done. That report has not been released.
And it isn't known if that 1913 Colt revolver even belonged to Vince Foster.
ROBERTSON: You might also say, does the 1913 Colt revolver actually work and fire bullets. Has anybody tested it, to see if it's functional?
LANE: It isn't known, because no one is releasing information. We cannot find out if a ballistic test was done on that gun or not. The White House is not releasing the information. They're not releasing the autopsy report. This is all under the control of the Justice Department, Attorney General Janet Reno. And they're also not releasing the police report. We were very fortunate to get a copy of that narrative report from the paramedics who arrived on the scene.
[...]
Patsy Thomasson made it back into the news yesterday. The New York Post's Christopher Ruddy reports that three anonymous White House sources put her at the middle of a "cats and dogs" scramble to find the combination to Vincent Foster's safe the night of his death.
Ms. Thomasson is director of the White House's Office of Administration, which handles personnel, payroll and computer matters -- and, Mr. Ruddy reports, safe combinations. The officer in charge of security was out of town, but the safe was eventually opened in the wee hours of the morning, his sources say, and documents were removed and sent to the Clinton's personal lawyer, David Kendall of Williams & Connolly. Yesterday, White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty told reporters that to the "best of his knowledge" there was no safe in Mr. Foster's office: "I don't think there was a safe, as I understand it." Experience with this administration forces us to inquire what Mr. McLarty understands as a safe; previous members of the counsel's office say it always used to have one.
Ms. Thomasson is best understood as the White House Waldo. It was previously understood that she, Bernard Nussbaum and Margaret Williams, Mrs. Clinton's chief of staff, did visit Mr. Foster's office the night of his death. {3}.
-------------------------<< Notes >>-----------------------------
{1} International Workers Bulletin, Vol. 2 No. 6, Feb. 7, 1994.
[Excerpts only]
{2} The Spotlight, Feb. 28, 1994. [Excerpts only]
{3} "Who is Patsy Thomasson?" The Wall Street Journal, March
10, 1994. [Excerpts only]
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"