Vince: We Hardly Knew Ye
Part 9

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.

: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :

APRIL 8, 1994

G. Gordon Liddy Show
Friday, April 8, 1994
One o'clock hour

Interviewed via telephone,
Mr. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,
The Washington Bureau Chief for the Sunday London Telegraph; Previously the economics editor for same, covering economic affairs; Was the Central American correspondent for the Economist in the mid 1980s.

LIDDY: He has been in the lead on the "Whitewater case", if you please. Here we have a situation where the British newspapers have been scooping just about every newspaper in the United States, with the exception, I would say, of the Washington Times, on this whole l'affaire Whitewater and the death of Vincent Foster, etc.

First of all, Mr. Evans-Pritchard, thank you for being with us.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
It's a pleasure.

LIDDY: In the 1930s -- I remember them because of my age -- here in the U.S. the American press was bombarding us with stories of Edward VIII, the King at the time, and the American divorcee he subsequently married after his abdication; whereas in the UK the press really suppressed the story. So if a subject of the King wanted to read about it, he had to have the newspapers shipped over from the U.S. The reverse seems to be going on right now. One gets excellent reportage of the Whitewater affair and the rest of it through your newspapers, while for the most part ours are rather lackluster. Would you agree?

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
It is a strange parallel. In the 1930s the British establishment press closed ranks and did suppress the story, amd anybody who wanted to find out what was going on had to get an American paper. So it's a little bit the other way around. But to be fair there are some -- as you point out, the Washington Times, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal have all been quite aggressive on all this.

LIDDY: But you seem to have stolen the march on the others. You're right out there with excellent articles.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Well, that's very kind of you. I spent quite a bit of time in Arkansas, which I think is an angle that the Washington press corps has not really looked into very closely. They tend to be Washington centered.

LIDDY: I'm not sure they know where Arkansas is.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
When they go down there, they don't, I think, talk to the right people. They tend to talk to the tame opposition. It's really a kind of one-party state, and the Republican opposition is to some degree co-opted. The Stephens family, and the financial conglomerate that dominates the state, dominates both parties and has financed both parties in gubernatorial campaigns. So to get the opposition view to the "regime," if you like, you have to go way beyond that. You have to go and sit down with people and eat beans with them in trailers and discuss what's happened to them. I don't the Washington press corps has done that.

LIDDY: Heaven forbid that a member of the Washington press corps should deign to eat a bean, let alone drop dead in a trailer. These people have a much more inflated view of their uh-

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Well, you know, these people in Arkansas, people who have been sources to me are good people -- you know, they're salt of the earth people -- but they're fairly rough. And they like guns. And they have a sort of style that rubs the Washington press corps up the wrong way.

LIDDY: Especially the liking guns part of it. That's how I rub them the wrong way. I like guns too. Tell me - There seems to be now a counter-attack going on. I have here a copy of the Executive Intelligence Review, which is sort of a newsletter published in Washington, D.C. There's a piece here by an Edward Spanhaus who in effect alleges that this is a coordinated drive to unseat the President, directed by the Hollinger Group -

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
They own my paper.

LIDDY: - and other suspects include: The Rothchilds, of course; jews are always suspect. <Liddy says this sarcastically.> Margaret Thatcher; she's in on the plot. Israel, and the Jerusalem Post, and what have you; they're in on the plot.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
They've accused us of the Hebron Massacre in Israel to try to destabilize the peace talks. They've accused us of trying to cause a civil war in South Africa by promoting the Inkatha-Zulu movement. They accused us of murdering Colosio in Mexico, as well.

LIDDY: I have this list here of the great spiders that sit at the web, that control everything in the world. It includes, of course, the Pope. It always includes the jews. It includes the Council of Foreign Relations, and the Bilderbergers. But this is the first time that your menacing, sinister empire has been brought to my attention, sir.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
The British Intelligence, they say, is behind everything, and we fermented Whitewater. We are orchestrating the whole thing in order to destabilize the Clinton administration, and punish him for changing America's posture towards Britain in its foreign policy.

LIDDY: There are actually groups in the United States that believe that your Queen in behind all the heroin traffic in the world. We have some very strange people in the United States.

Tell me - Have you investigated, and what are your conclusions if you have arrived at any, about the Foster death.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Well, I think you know more about this than anybody else, since you found the man who discovered the body.

LIDDY: I wanted to discuss that a bit with you -

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
If he wants to talk to me, I'm all ears!

LIDDY: Oh, I know. Everybody wants to talk to him, and I have no propriety interest in him at all. I gave him my word that I would not disclose his identity because that was the only way that he would agree to talk. He is, frankly, frightened. He said he didn't want to end up "like that guy I found." I suppose -

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Were you able to have a long discussion with him?

LIDDY: Yes, I did. I, in my misspent youth, was a special agent in the FBI, and so I interviewed him using the techniques that we would use. And I drew up a Report of Interview in the same form, the FD302.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Oh, right.

LIDDY: And I had all the time that I wanted with him. He gave me all the time I wanted. All the man wanted -- he didn't want money; he didn't want anything -- he just did not want to be identified. He was upset -- I don't know who it was that was putting out the story that there was no man-in-the-van, and allegedly the body was first discovered by a Park Service employee who invented the story of the man-in-the-van to cover the fact that he was sneaking a drink in a remote area.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
That came from a White House leak to the New York Daily News.

LIDDY: Well, that's interesting because I have acquired the actual transcript of the emergency 911 call -

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Oh! Have you?

LIDDY: Yes, I have. Now wait just a minute, and let me page to that ...

.. So clearly, there was a man-in-the-van. This business put out by the White House was false. I guess they didn't know that there existed a recording of this call.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
I'm a bit surprised by all - particularly Fiske, the special prosecutor, is moving so quickly to declare the Park Police's investigation to have been an authentic one.

LIDDY: I sent him a copy -- or actually I sent it to his subordinate who is running the Foster inquiry here in Washington, D.C., with the separate grand jury -- I sent him a copy of my report of interview via Federal Express. I don't know whether he's going to pay any attention to it or not. But there's a number of things that don't look right here.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
If they give the thumbs up to this and say it was definitely a suicide without any further serious investigation, then I think it throws into doubt the credibility of the whole Fiske probe.

LIDDY: I think it does. And of course, there are people who have been concerned that Fiske was a friendly was put into place, as you know. I don't know whether that's true or not, but that's been about.

I would like to call you attention to something else. This is the official report of interview of Cory Ashford, who has five-year's experience with Fairfax County Fire and Rescue, assigned to the Maclean Firehouse. This is not by me; this is by someone else -- These are official records that I have here, from the Fairfax authorities.

Mr. Ashford says, amongst a lot of other things that he says, that "after receiving instructions from the female officer, Ashford and Harrison proceeded to move the body into the bodybag." Now, Mr. Pritchard, are you aware of the allegation that, although when you looked at the body there wasn't any blood to be seen except around the nose and the mouth, allegedly there was this massive amount of blood along the back of the body.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
I'd heard that reported, yes.

LIDDY: Now, this is the chap who picked up the body and put it into the body bag. It says, "Ashford does not remember seeing a great deal of blood. He did not get blood on his hands. He did not later have to clean his hands or his clothes due to the blood." Where's all this blood? And this is a fellow who had to put his hands underneath him and lift him up and put him in the body bag.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
<gravely> Right.

LIDDY: Now, the very significant thing that I want to get into next is what the man-in-the-van told me....

LIDDY: .. <Liddy reads from his own report of interview>

"At this point Liddy asks witness if he had seen the photograph of what was purported to be Mr. Foster's hand with its thumb in the trigger guard of a handgun. Witness stated he had not seen such a photograph and appeared surprised, stating he had observed both hands of the body and that neither held a gun. He stated that in his opinion, had a shot been fired, it would have been heard by the guards across the road at the home of a 'rich Saudian Arabian.'"

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
May I interrupt you here for a moment?

LIDDY: Sure.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
You know, my colleague Steven Robinson, from the Daily Telegraph, went to the houses about a month ago behind the park, to the closest ones to the park, people who might have heard the gunshots, plausibly, if they had been out in their gardens on a Sunday afternoon in July, and not a single one of them had even been questioned at any stage.

LIDDY: That is remarkable.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
I mean, there was no serious investigation. It was quite obvious.

LIDDY: As a matter of fact, another thing in the records that I have here, another person at the scene said that they took a 'non- aggressive' approach to the investigation, whatever that may mean.

At any rate, "Liddy asked the witness whether he was sure there was no firearm in evidence. Witness was emphatic, stating he had spent several minutes observing the body closely, and there was absolutely no firearm there. Liddy then picked up from the table a wristwatch with a metal band and inserted his thumb into the band in the manner Liddy recalled seeing the thumb in the published photograph and asked witness again, was he sure he saw no gun in association with the body in the manner Liddy demonstrated. Witness stated he was absolutely positive that there was no firearm with the body in that or any other fashion."

Now, you must understand, sir, what happened was that this fellow had gone up there seeking privacy to relieve himself. Then he saw what he thought was some trash. Then he saw it was feet, and he thought perhaps it was someone sleeping. Then he went over, and he stood, he said, with his feet three feet from the man's head and spent an appreciable period of time staring at him, and noticed that bloating had already set in. Eyes were partially open, glazed. He observed some blood at the nostrils and some blood at the mouth. Flies were crawling in and out of both. The body was laid out absolutely straight. The clothes were, from his point of view at least, expensive. The shoes were on the feet. They were together. And he held his hands out to me and said this is the way his hands were. This was before I had discussed the firearm with him, or the lack thereof. He's just absolutely positive that there was no gun at that time.

I have since been given to understand, on authority that I trust but cannot verify, that there are certain FBI agents involved in this investigation who are now absolutely convinced that, however Mr. Foster died, he didn't die there. That that body was moved.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
<gravely> Right.

LIDDY: Just the fact that this is going on, I would think, should set off alarm bells all over the place.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Did you also say anything about whether there was a covering of leaves because all over the photographs that were released -

LIDDY: He made no mention of leaves whatsoever there. He did say that down at the bottom of that forty-five degree slope, which was part of the rampart behind which was the cannon, there was brush, and that brush appeared trampled.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Right. Right.

LIDDY: There was a bottle of what he called a wine cooler nearby, and when he left the place he walked by Mr. Foster's car and noticed what he called a four-pack of wine cooler inside that car. We've heard nothing about any wine cooler. He gave a detailed description of a stain on the shirt, which he did not believe to be blood, but sort of a death 'vomitus' which included the wine. And he showed me a utility glove of a rather purple color, and he said, 'This is the color of the stain.' I mean this man was giving me tremendous detail here, and a lot of stuff that I've never seen published at all.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
I was just wondering about the leaves because it struck me that they -- in the picture -- that they were kind of yellowy-brown. And I remember going up to Fort Marcy Park a couple of days after the body was found. It was sort of lush and green, and I don't remember any yellowy-brown leaves around.

LIDDY: No, and that would be inconsistent with the 20th of July, would it not?

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Well, I would have thought so. Maybe there could have been a few tucked away somewhere, but, you know.

LIDDY: Yes. By the way, I had never been to Fort Marcy Park in my life, and this man gave me a hand-drawn map, and he showed me, 'These are the features,' and so on. He detailed on there the path that he took. I followed that map, and without difficulty at all found the site, and every other thing that he - And while was standing there, I looked over -- because I was wondering about this Saudian Arabian prince's house; I wasn't aware of that -- and sure enough, there was a very expensive home, and I photographed it from there just to show that you could see that. And then he traced the way he went back down past the car, which he identified as a Honda, and what have you. And he gave me great detail the way jacket, which matched the trousers on the body, how it was on the passenger seat, etc. I mean he was very, very detailed about all of these things.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
That exactly fits into what I read in the report by Sergeant Gonzales, who submitted a report the night after they collected the body.

LIDDY: This, it would seem to me, would cause the American people to have great cause to question what is going on in terms of this thing. And if they come out and say Mr. Foster shot himself, and that's the end of it, I don't think, in many areas, that that would be accepted.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Well, it's going to be a disaster. It poisons the whole judiciary.

LIDDY: Yes, it does.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
It's disastrous for a democracy once people start losing confidence in the prosecuting authorities. They have to do this properly.

LIDDY: Yes. And of course, right away, the first thing that anyone familiar with the United States that would set off alarm bells, here you have the Deputy Counsel to the White House found in a remote park, dead of a gunshot wound, and the FBI is not the lead investigative agency. It is the Park Police, not necessarily known for its long history of extraordinary sleuthing.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
The whole conduct of this investigation smacks of Arkansas procedure. They got away with this for ten or fifteen years down there, and they thought they could do it at the federal level. Well, they're dealing in the big league now.

LIDDY: But so far, they've apparently been getting away with it. In spite of the revelations that you've been making, that the Washington Times has been making -

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
But they're up against federal law enforcement agencies of integrity.

LIDDY: Well, that's true, but I understand that the several FBI agents who are convinced that the body was moved, however and wherever it was killed, that they are being really kept screwed down to the table. They're keeping a lid on this.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
They can't go on doing this indefinitely. People will speak out eventually.

LIDDY: Well, I hope so, because this is very bad.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
I mean, I don't believe a word of anything they said about Foster. I don't know what happened.

LIDDY: No. I don't either.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
There's been so much covering up, and disinformation, and, you know, I'm just deeply suspicious at this point.

LIDDY: Well, I think that, were you not, I would question your, not your sanity, but I would certainly question your common sense. What do you see as the future here? Is this thing going to drag out until 1996?

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Well, I guess - It's in a sort of lull at the moment. I imagine that if there are hearings in May, which seem most likely, there will be another burst of interest, and another burst of revelations.

LIDDY: Well, now one hears that these "hearings" are going to be under, say, Mr. Gonzales [Rep. Henry Gonzalez, D-Texas] and what have you, who have expressed already their opinions that there's nothing to this, and who have the power to control the identities and the nature and the testimony and the rest of it. It could well be that that control can contaminate the process.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Well, I imagine in the Senate it will be a bit tougher.

LIDDY: Yes, yes, I think you're right; I think you're right.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
In any case, these things have a habit of getting out of control. They have a life of their own once these things start. I imagine, whatever their intentions at the beginning of the hearings, they won't be able to keep the lid on.

LIDDY: Well, the other thing that makes wme wonder about that -- and you've reported on it -- this blatant - We have the spectacle of Mr. Packwood in the Senate who's being accused 25 years later of making some untoward remarks to some women and things of that sort. And people are trying to drive him out of the Senate. And yet we have, as recently as 1992, a very credible allegation by a young woman that she was approached by state troopers, brought to Bill Clinton, who exposed himself to her and asked for sodomy. And she fled, but no big firestorm trying to drive him out of office.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
You're talking about the Paula Jones story. Yes, that was '91. She was working at the desk at a conference, and she was summoned by an armed state trooper to the governor's room. And so she meekly went along, thinking it was to do with work. And she was hit upon pretty quickly in a rather grotesque way. He then leaned on her and said, 'Your boss is a friend of mine,' and made her feel - it was coercive.

LIDDY: Yes, and that of course is exactly the definition of the newly minted statute that we have in this country about sexual harassment as a crime.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Well, that's right. And she went back down, really distressed and shocked, and immediately told all her colleagues about it, and they've submitted affidavits. She was afraid she'd lose her job, of course, for quite some time afterwards and was in quite a distressed state.

Essentially, as I understand it, most of Clinton's sort of Packwoodesque behavior was done at one arm's length through armed troopers. They would actually do the soliciting and they would make the proposition, so I suppose that would give him some technical deniability. On the other hand, his list is much longer than Packwood's, and this is coming out.

LIDDY: Yes, indeed. One other thing I wanted to ask you about: The seeming reluctance of the establishment press in the United States to print anything other than that which they are absolutely forced to out of sheer embarrassment because they are being shown to be non-professional and almost incapable of doing so by their peers. Do you think that this may be because, whatever their private thoughts about allegations concerning the Clintons, they are friendly toward the notion of a collectivist bent that we have in the White House, that that sort of fits with their own private agenda?

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Yes, I think there's some of that going on. I think there's editorial suppression at some of the major papers and news networks. They don't want to rock the boat -- because it's the President, and world stability depends on his being able to govern effectively -- and I can understand that. But they also didn't hold back in quite the same way, or at all, with Reagan. So that argument I don't think can be taken too far. But I also think there's a certain amount of sheer ignorance. I think a lot of the Washington press corps just live in this sort of odd, liberal ghetto here.

LIDDY: This little fever swamp.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:

fever swamp - with contact with the rest of the world. And Clinton talks their sort of language. He sounds like a straight- forward, law school yuppie. They can't really believe that he's something quite different.

LIDDY

Further to your business of your speaking about the suppression, there's the incident of the Washington Post's reporter, Michael Isikoff, being suspended for his outrage for this story, about this young woman, being spiked by the Post.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Poor ole Isikoff. I feel rather sorry for him. He's a top-class reporter. I'm into his footprints everywhere I go. He's doing very good work out there, and his stuff's just not getting into print. I don't know where it's going.

LIDDY: Maybe he'll write a book. He's certainly not going to get it into the Washington Post.

EVANS-PRITCHARD:
Well, if he's got any pride, he'll resign.

LIDDY: That's true. We'll have to look for that.

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

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