("Quid coniuratio est?")
EXPLOSIVE NEW FACTS REVEALED IN MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF FOSTER [The Spotlight, 08/07/95]
Since the strange death of top White House aide and close, long- time Clinton family confidant Vince Foster, The Spotlight has been inundated with a wide variety of rumors, theories and other allegations regarding the circumstances of Foster's demise however it occurred -- whether by suicide or murder.
The Spotlight has never issued any formal editorial opinion regarding the matter, one way or another, although this newspaper has printed a number of stories over the past several years which have touched on Foster's death and its possible connection to a number of widely-publicized, high-level scandals including BCCI, Iraq-gate, Mena-Iran-contra and Inslaw, all of which have been, in turn, linked to one another and to both Reagan-Bush and the Clinton administrations.
On July 14 an explosive new theory relating to the mystery surrounding Foster's death was outlined on the nightly broadcast of The Spotlight's call-in talk forum, Radio Free America, with host Tom Valentine.
The guest was James Norman, a senior editor with Forbes magazine. Norman has been looking into the Foster affair for some time. (Forbes has not published Norman's work, nor is it expected to do so in the near future.)
At the time of Norman's appearance on RFA he was identified by name and as the senior editor of a well-known publication. Since Norman's appearance on RFA, however, his association with Forbes has been mentioned over the Internet.
A transcript of Norman's interview follows...
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TOM VALENTINE:
Your story is rather controversial. What are we going to learn?
JAMES NORMAN:
This has been the most amazing, frightening story I've ever
worked on in my career. It's so hard to believe that it's taken a
long time to get the facts checked and to understand it. The
bottom line is that at the time he died, Vince Foster was under
investigation for espionage.
TOM VALENTINE:
Who was Foster spying for?
JAMES NORMAN:
There's ample suspicion -- and this is never proven, although
there's substantial evidence -- it is known that at the time he
died, July 20, 1993, he was under investigation for suspicion of
espionage involving the state of Israel.
There was a group within the CIA and the intelligence community -- a computer intelligence group that had been given the authorization to hack their way into foreign intelligence data bases. This is something I think that is routinely done.
This group had hacked its way into a data base of Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad, and found Vince Foster's name there, which surprised them. From there they were actually able to track money back to a bank in Switzerland.
These hackers are a small group of government people and they actually have a name. They are known as the Fifth Column. If you call up the CIA and ask them about it, of course, they won't tell you anything. However, if you talk to enough people in the intelligence community you will learn that yes, the group does exist. Yes, they do this type of thing and yes, they are armed with Cray super-computers.
These are probably the best and brightest computer hackers in the world and they are working for the U.S. government and they bust their way into computers.
In the case of Vince Foster they found money going to his account at this bank in Switzerland, a small bank right on the Italian border. It's called the Banca Della Svizzera Italiana.
TOM VALENTINE:
Sherman Skolnick, the investigator from Chicago, has been a guest
on this show and he came across much of this same information, so
it seems as though what you are saying is confirmation. And you
are a well-known editor with a prominent publication. This is
interesting.
JAMES NORMAN:
We put a lot of effort into this investigation. The story was so
unbelievable. Now when you are dealing with sources in the
intelligence community, you never quite know who you are talking
to [in terms of their credibility or motivation in leaking
information -- Ed.], so it took an extra amount of effort in
checking this out. And lo and behold, the story corroborates on
many points from a wide variety of credible and knowledgeable
people.
TOM VALENTINE:
In short, U.S. government hackers broke into the Israeli Mossad's
database and ran across Foster's name.
JAMES NORMAN:
Then they hacked their way into the Swiss bank computers and
corroborated that yes, it was Vince Foster's account, and they
were able to withdraw enough information from the Swiss bank's
computer database so that they were able to mimic a withdrawal
transaction.
What happened was this. On July 1, 1993 Foster bought a round- trip ticket to Geneva at the White House travel office, which he put on his American Express Card. This was reported by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the London Sunday Telegraph on May 21. (See The Spotlight, July 3. -- Ed.)
I think what happened was that when the CIA people saw that he was making these one-day trips to Geneva, which he had been doing periodically, they decided to withdraw the money from Foster's Swiss bank account at that time. I think Foster probably called up the bank to tell them he was on his way and the bank told him: "Mr. Foster, you've already withdrawn your money," and that's when it hit him that something very strange was going on. He learned that the money had actually been withdrawn and deposited into the U.S. Treasury.
According to my sources, that's when he became so mysteriously and acutely depressed and couldn't sleep and his sister tried to set him up with a psychiatrist. Instead, he hired a lawyer and apparently made some discreet inquiries around the White House and somebody told him: "Vince, you're under investigation for espionage."
This set off a chain of circumstances. There was a supposedly coincidental meeting on the Eastern Shore of Maryland before Foster's death. According to the report by Robert Fiske, the original special counsel on the Whitewater affair and Foster's death, Foster and his wife made a trip to the Eastern Shore, supposedly for rest and relaxation. By coincidence, supposedly, the Fosters met Webb Hubbell and his wife there.
At the time, Hubbell was technically the number three person at the Justice Department, but I think it's well understood that he was actually running things there and was essentially the nation's top legal official.
He and Foster both came out of the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock and both were involved in a number of cases, representing a lot of the same clients.
This meeting between Foster and Hubbell has been characterized in both the Fiske report and in the Senate hearings on Whitewater as a "rest and relaxation" type affair. I don't think so.
I've been told by multiple sources that this meeting was under surveillance and that it was a heavy-duty damage control session held at the estate of a fellow by the name of Michael Cardozo, who heads Clinton's legal defense fund. He's the son of a major Democratic Party fund-raiser, Nathan Landau.
There may have been other White House officials at that meeting. What we have been told is that there was great concern about who knew what and who the money could ultimately be traced to. What we do know is that two days later Vince Foster was dead.
I am not in the business of speculating whether he committed suicide or whether he was killed. I'll leave that to others. I am also not speculating as to who might have killed him, except to say that there was a serious reason for him to be very depressed and there's a reason why a bunch of different people wanted him dead.
TOM VALENTINE:
With Foster dead, would the heat be off a lot of other people?
JAMES NORMAN:
You might think of it that way.
TOM VALENTINE:
Was Hubbell's name found in any of these computer files where
Foster's name appeared?
JAMES NORMAN:
I don't know anything about that. I wasn't investigating that.
Both Hubbell and Foster, we've been told, by multiple credible
intelligence sources, were both involved as behind-the-scenes
persons on behalf of the National Security Agency for a massive
international bank spying effort that this country has carried on
for more than a decade now.
[...to be continued...]
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