Vince: We Hardly Knew Ye
Part 8

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.")

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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.

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APRIL 4, 1994

G. Gordon Liddy Show, unofficial transcript Monday, April 4, 1994
11 o'clock hour

As you will recall from last week, I promised you a detailed discussion of the business of the man-in-the-van, and I am prepared to make good on that. Before we get to the newspapers, I'm going to go into my records here, and discuss it to lay out for you what I have. Then, after we have had the "Review and Comment on the News," if you want to discuss this with me, feel free to call up and ask any questions. I'll respond to the questions with as much as I know about it.

In the first announcements of death by gunshot of the late Vincent Foster, the Deputy Counsel to the President, his body was found lying as if in a coffin on a steep slope in Fort Marcy Park, Virginia. That was the twentieth of July.

If you will recall, the story was that a man in a white utility van had gone to the Park Service personnel and said that he had found a body up there by a particular cannon at Fort Marcy Park. That fact was relayed via 911 telephone call to the authorities in Fairfax County, Virginia. Subsequently, they did what they would do -- you know, they sent the ambulance and the rest of it, the appropriate people.

On March 11 -- not very long ago, ladies and gentlemen; we're only into early April now -- ABC News proudly announced that that was all a fake, that there was no man in any contractor's van, that what had actually happened was that a Park Service employee was embarrassed to admit that the reason he was up in this remote area of the park where the body was found, and where he found the body allegedly, had been up there to sneak a drink. And so there was no man-in-the-van. Then they proceeded to show a photograph, a close-up of a hand that had a revolver, and the thumb of the hand was in the trigger guard of the revolver. They said that this was of Vincent Foster. You couldn't tell; it was just a man. And they said, 'You see. It was definitely a suicide. The body hadn't been moved,' and this sort of thing. And there was no man- in-the-van.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have been contacted by a man who said, 'I was the man in the van.' I will tell you in essence what he told me. But before I do that, I want to refute ABC News. And here is how I refute ABC News. It is with the actual transcript of the 911 telephone call, which was received in the Fairfax County Public Safety Communications Center, at 17:59.59 hours. That is about a second[?] before six o'clock p.m. on the twentieth of July, 1993. This is between the dispatcher and the caller. The dispatcher is Marion White at call-taker position 11, and it says here that the caller is unknown. That would be the Park Service fellow. There is also on this recording a question directed to dispatcher Christopher Fox by Marion White. Christopher Fox's response is recorded on the accompanying transcript. The call ended at 18:04.01 hours. That is four minutes and one second after six p.m. on the twentieth of July.

And by the way, I will be publishing this entire transcript in the Liddy letter, my newsletter, for April. [Call (800)THE-G-MAN to subscribe and get all the details on this story.]

And here is what it says:

Dispatcher: Fairfax County 911. Do you have an emergency?

Caller: Yes, ma'am. There's a guy that come up to - uh - Turkey Run Park and reported that there was a dead body at Fort Marcy.

Dispatcher: At where?

Caller: At Fort Marcy Park.

Dispatcher: Where's that?

Caller: That's on the GWP [George Washington Memorial] Parkway.

Dispatcher: Who saw this person?

Caller: Yes, ma'am. He left out of there. He was in a contractor van.

Dispatcher: He what?

Caller: He left out in a contractor's van. A white van. And he said it was a -he just left him down there. And uh -

Dispatcher: OK. Where exactly is this dead body supposed to be?

Caller: Supposed to be up there at Fort Marcy at the where the cannon at.

Dispatcher: Is this a U.S. Park?

Caller: U.S. Park Police. I mean U.S. Park Service.

Dispatcher: OK. Hold on a minute.... Are you getting the dead body? (This question was directed to Christopher Fox, as stated beforehand.).... OK, sir.

Caller: Yes ma'am.

Dispatcher: For some weird reason, they're not answering. So if you could tell me exactly where this is, it would help.

Caller: It's uh - Know where 123 runs into the GWMP?

Dispatcher: Where uh - hold on a minute - where 123 runs into the GWP?

Caller: Yes, ma'am.

Dispatcher: OK.

Caller: OK. It's - uh - one mile south - about 3/4 of a mile south. And - uh -there's a fort there called Fort Marcy on the Parkway. There's a -there's a body. This guy told me there was a body laying up there by the last cannon.

Dispatcher: Last what?

Caller: Huh?

Dispatcher: There's a body laying near what?

Caller: There's a man laying up there by the last cannon gun?

Dispatcher: Near the last what? I can't understand a word you're saying.

Caller: The last cannon gun.

Dispatcher: Cannon.

Caller: Yes, they have cannons up there. Those big guns.

Dispatcher: Oh. OK.

Caller: Uh-huh. At Fort Marcy.

Dispatcher: OK. You sure he's dead?

Caller: Huh?

Dispatcher: You sure he's dead?

Caller: Well, that's what this guy said. I'm takin' his word you know.

Dispatcher: OK. I'll get hold of them, and I'll send the ambulance.

Caller: OK.

Dispatcher: All right.... Park.

U.S. Park: (unintelligible)

Dispatcher: Hi, could you - This is Fairfax County. Could you respond with our ambulance to Fort Marcy Park near the last cannon gun? There's supposed to be a dead body.

Park: OK.

Dispatcher: OK.

Park: All right.

Dispatcher: Thank you.

Park: You're welcome.

This statement was typed, as recorded, by Laurie Unthang[?], and that was on March 9th. This is event number 932011315, Fairfax County Public Safety Communications Center. Now, there is the refutation of ABC World News Tonight. It's a lot of bunk. Why did they want to deny that there was a man in the van who actually found the body?

Well, I have interviewed this man, and I want to say, to be fair about this, that not only did I go to a lot of trouble to try to corroborate and verify that this man was what he said he was, working on this also was Jerry Seper of the Washington Times, who is an ace reporter down there. Also working on this was my son Thomas Purcell Liddy. He's 32 years old. He is a Marine Corps captain in the Reserve. He's had plenty of active duty. And he is a lawyer at Collier, Shannon, Rill, and Scott in D.C. A married man with a child -- serious man. We have worked very hard on this, and there're fourteen different points that we came to that verify that this guy is who he says he was.

Now, I'll tell you what he said. He said that between 17:30 and 17:45 hours - that's 5:30 to 5:45 - on July 20th, he was going northwest in his white utility van -- that's the way you heard it on the transcript here -- along the GWMP in Virginia on his way home from work. There was a lot of traffic, and it was barely moving. The outside temperature was about a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Nothing was happening, and he had to go to the bathroom.

So he pulled off the Parkway to the entrance of Fort Marcy Park. By the way, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to describe this park to you, and tell you how I'm able to do so. I had never been to Fort Marcy Park, but this witness, who extracted a promise from me of anonymity -- and I will not give him up; I will not give his name up. He's terrified. He doesn't want to end up like Vince Foster, and I don't blame him. At any rate, he gave me a map of Fort Marcy Park, and then later on, very recently, I went in there. Now, they've closed it off. They don't want you up in there. But you know me. I just put myself back in burglar mode, and off I went.

And using the map that this man gave me, drawn in his own handwriting, I was able to locate all of these points that he said.

At any rate, he wanted, of course, to go someplace where he would not be observed. So he went way up there by the second cannon to relieve himself. And that's where he found the body, which he thought at first was asleep. And he went really close to check it. And he described how the eyes were partially opened and glazed, how there was a small amount of blood coming out of the nostrils and the mouth. There were flies crawling in and out there and what have you. The body had started to bloat, face had started to bloat. Remember now, it's a hundred degree heat, and so forth. And then he said to me -- he described exactly where he was lying. He said it was like a forty-five degree angle. I said, 'What do you mean, "like a forty-five degree angle"?' And he described the construction of the rampart of the cannon, and he drew another picture for me showing exactly how the body was lying there. And then he described how the body was straight, up and down, feet together, hands at the sides, palms open and up. He said, 'I spent minutes examing this body,' and made sure he was dead, and so on and so forth. And then he held his hands out and showed me the way the hands of the body were. And I said, 'Fine. Where was the gun?'

And now, I will tell you, ladies and gentlemen, why, in my opinion, they want to deny that he's the man who found him.

Because he said, 'THERE WAS NO GUN.' No gun when he found the body. Later on, when these other people arrived, maybe then there was, but there sure wasn't when the man discovered the body.

That's the scoop. And it's given the lie to ABC News. And you just ask yourself, why are they putting out false information?

.. If you think Whitewater is receding, you've got another thing coming, ladies and gentlemen.

Caller: <Wayne?>... I'd just like to know, in view of these allegations, what in your opinion will be the ramifications of this.

Liddy: I think they will try to ignore it.

Caller: Of course they will. And they'll say, you know, 'He's waited so long. He's just doing this for personal gain,' etc. etc.

Liddy: What happened was, I think, that he got upset by the ABC News thing that said that he didn't exist. I can assure you that he exists. In fact, I've seen the man. And I've interrogated the hell out of him.

Caller: Well, why has he not been interrogated by anyone else?

Liddy: Because when he came forward, he came to me. He's quite frightened for his life because of the information that he has. The way he put it he said, 'I don't want to end up like that guy lying on the ground.' He had no idea when he found this body that it was Vince Foster. I interrogated him at length. He described the clothing, the fact that they were expensive. And by the way, he also described certain things that are mentioned no where else, possibly to spare the family embarrassment. He said that there was a wine cooler bottle by the body. He looked into this guy's car, and he saw a four-pack of wine cooler there. He described exactly how the man's coat was put on the back seat. This man was really detailed.

Caller: Up until now we could only suppose or maybe take for granted that the Park Service did a shoddy investigation, just kind of glossed it over, etc. But if this is true, this means that there's a conspiracy full-blown going on here.

Liddy: One would be certainly able to legitimately come to that conclusion. It doesn't necessarily mean, however, that Foster didn't commit suicide. He could well have committed suiced elsewhere; they take the body and someone says, 'Whoops! You forgot the gun!'

Caller: I understand that, but who planted the gun? Where did it come from?

Liddy: That's a very good question. I'm trying to find something in all these documents that I have here. I've got the -

Caller: Who was first to arrive there as far as we know?

Liddy: OK. Let me see here. Let me look at these documents. ... I've got all these Fairfax County documents here. By the way, these people were not interviewed until February and March of this year, by the authorities here. These things are of recent date. Let me see if I can get to this. ... I'm paging through things now to try to answer your question correctly, because there was a whole bunch of people who eventually responded on this thing. I'm trying to find out from these who it was first. . . .

Liddy: . . . Wayne, I have looked through the materials that I have here. And I am now quoting from what is labeled as Matt's notes.

The date is the 11th of March, 1994. Interview of Sergeant George O. Gonzalez, Jr, Fairfax County Department of Fire and Rescue. He was interviewed in the presence of several people, including David Bobsian<?>, who was the Fairfax County Attorney. Let's see what he has to say here... :

He was asked by the interviewer,'Walk us through the events of the day.'

Mr. Gonzales said that he was stationed at the Reston firestation #5. He was on detail to the Mclean station on 7/20/93, the day of the Foster incident. He said he responded from the Mclean firestation, and they say where that is. He said he was dispatched, 'for a possible dead person next to a gun or cannon in the Park.' He was part of a three-person team on an ambulance. The other members were Todd Hall, the driver, and Rich Arthur, the advance life support assistant (ALS). He said how they got there and what have you.

He said he began 'getting the feeling that something was wrong.' Boy, was he right about that. He said that as they got to the entrance, they drove across the median into the park drive, and he noticed 'twenty feet from the entrance a Mercedes parked on the side of the park drive.' He describes it as either light blue or silver blue, a 190 or 300. He did not see the driver. Now, bear in mind that the witness I talked to, the man who actually found the body, when he went in, he described the two automobiles, which fits the official description, by the way. That's one of the things he got right. And he didn't see any other vehicle. There wasn't any Mercedes or anything else. And someone else in here, when they arrive, they see a black Cadillac. Again, and these cars disappear. The Mercedes is gone, and the Cadillac is gone. And the gun has appeared.

At any rate, ... who got there first? ... He said they passed the first cannon and saw nothing. He searched a little closer and they went on. Mr. Todd Hall and Mr. Forshon<?> saw Foster's body first, although this fellow, Mr. Gonzales, was right behind them. They called Fairfax County by radio. He said that you could tell immediately that the victim was dead. And he says that there was, by that time, a gun in the man's hand. He says, however, 'I find it odd to have a body laid out like it was. You would not expect hand or body in this position.' Remember, this is a guy who goes to these things regularly. He said they [Foster's arms] were perfectly to the side. He said he doesn't believe the position of the body indicates the victim was standing when he was shot. He said, 'If he were standing, he would have fallen down the hill.' And, as I told you, I have been there. I've been there where Foster's body was, because I have the map that the man-in-the-van gave me. It's quite steep. I think that Mr. Gonzales is correct in his assumption.

There's something else I want to read to you.

Caller: So this would imply that between the time the man-in-the- van saw the body and the time that the rescue people got there, someone planted a gun.

Liddy: The gun got there. How, I don't know. I just don't know. But there's something else that I want to read to you. Let me see. This is from another interview. This is from Cory Ashford, five years' experience Fairfax County Fire and Rescue, assigned to the Mclean firehouse. He was there. And he says [through the interviewer], 'After receiving instructions from the female officer, Ashford and Harrison proceeded to move the body into the body bag. Ashford does not remember seeing a great deal of blood. He did not get blood on his hands, did not later have to clean his clothes due to blood.'

My friends, there's a lot more investigation that needs to be done here before there is a conclusion that this man shot himself there. I leave that, of course, to the proper authorities. They're going to be angry enough at me for coming forward with this, but the man checks out. And as I said, I've seen the van. I've seen the man. I've interviewed him extensively. As a matter of fact, I have a report of interview all written and typed up. I'll give you the heading of it:

Report of Interview
Interview of Anonymous Witness
Interviewed by G. Gordon Liddy
Date of Interview: 22 March 1994
Transcribed: 27 March 1994.

And I did this the way one did it when one did the FD302 when one was a special agent of the FBI, back in the days when the FBI was the FBI. It's ... six pages. And it's got a lot of stuff in it. I'm going to publish it in my newsletter in case anybody wants to read the entire thing, <To subscribe to the Liddy Letter, call (800)THE-G-MAN.> including the Special Prosecutor if he wants. You know, I'd be happy to send it to him if he wants it, but I will not release this man's name. The reason I got this information from this man, who is very frightened for his own life, is because I said, 'I will not give you up.' Anybody who knows me knows I won't give him up. And if they put me in jail for contempt, well, I've been there before. Been there. Done it. No big deal. I keep my word.

Caller: Well, how is it possible that something like this got such a shoddy investigation? No ballistics testing, no -

Liddy: Well, I don't think that the powers that be wanted a first- rate investigation. Look at the date of these things that I'm - the dispatcher's call. You know the call to the 911 dispatcher? That was typed up and everything, and here we have it. And that was done March 9th. Now remember, you've got the bad information being put out by ABC News on March 11th. March 9th this was available, I would think, to ABC News, although I got this by ... another route. Let's put it that way. I'm going to print this thing too. You can see it and draw your own conclusions. Let's see ... the interview with Cory Ashford, that's March 4th. This Matt's notes thing, this is the interview I read to you that was in the presence of the Fairfax County Attorney, that's March 11th. That's this year. Let's see what else we have here....

OK. This is a memorandum, Fairfax County, Virginia, to the County Attorney from the Chief Deputy, and it identifies the personnel who were involved in the incident. And that's February 24th. And who gets to investigate - Remember, you've got the violent death by gunshot under mysterious circumstances of the Deputy Counsel to the President of the United States. And who's the lead investigative agency? The Park Police. You know? That's like having the Ames espionage case being investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobaccco, and Firearms.

Caller: I was going to say the Agriculture Department.

Liddy: Well, about the same. Oh, my. All right, sir. If there's anything else I can tell you about this, I'd be happy to.

Caller: Have you been contacted by any press about this?

Liddy: I have been contacted by Jerry Seper, who is a lead reporter on this Whitewater thing, although there are a lot of others. He's with the Washington Times. The information I have, I have given to him.

Caller: Well, we can only pray the truth comes out.

Liddy: Yes, sir. I agree.

Caller: And saves us all.

<end>

Brian Francis Redman bigxc@prairienet.org "The Big C"

Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"