("Quid coniuratio est?")
Senator Pryor (D-Arkansas), speaking on C-Span's Washington Journal on August 9, 1995, asks, in response to a caller inquiring about the late Vince Foster's stop-on-a-dime trips to Switzerland, that people not believe the "hate mongerers" out there. So, to ask questions, to have doubts about the official story on Foster's death, is perilously close to becoming "hate speech". And as anyone who has attended a major university lately knows, "hate speech" is verboten.
Senator Pryor says that Foster's clandestine and mysterious trips to Switzerland "didn't happen". In this, he is contradicted by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the London Telegraph, James Norman, a senior editor at Forbes magazine, and others. So who are we to believe, a politician or some reporters? Tough call.
Senator Pryor asks that people not believe the "conspiracy theories" about the strange death of Foster. "Oh, please," he says, "For the sake of Foster's poor family, let the man rest in peace."
I have two problems with those noble defenders of the still bereaved Foster family who demand that anyone having questions should stop asking them. Number one, Vincent W. Foster, Jr. was a public figure. As such, he is not just the private property of the easily upset next-of-kin, but "belongs" to us all; we all have "standing" in the matter of his death and have a perfect right to keep asking questions -- even tough questions. Number two, I find it suspicious that the Foster family does not want these persistent questions looked into. Questions surrounding Foster's death have not arisen in a vacuum nor are they without merit. So why wouldn't the Foster family want them answered?
Why wouldn't the Foster family want them answered? It might be, as Norman and others are claiming, that Vincent W. Foster, Jr. was a spy who sold out his country for a few million dollars. That would be a good explanation as to why the Foster family is "satisfied" with the official investigation and begs that we stop looking into the matter.
But some of us still dare to speak.
Jean Lewis has also dared to speak, although regarding different circumstances. Appearing before the House Banking Committee, Resolution Trust Corporation [RTC] investigator Lewis charged that government officials had thwarted her investigation into the failed Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan. "This committee should know that I believe there was a concerted effort to obstruct, hamper and manipulate the results of our investigation," she alleged. {1}.
What is so daring about saying that? Lewis was close to the late Jon Parnell Walker, a Senior Investigation Specialist with RTC who had been trying to get the Madison case moved from Arkansas to Washington, DC. Soon thereafter, "Jon was looking over a possible new apartment in Lincoln Towers in Arlington, Virginia, when reportedly he suddenly decided to climb over the balcony railing and jump." {2}. So Lewis is daring in that, besides possibly harming her career, her testimony could lead her to "suicide".
Oh but hey, the "American people" are tired of hearing about Whitewater. No, what they are tired of is the stupid O.J. Simpson trial. The American people are intensely interested in Whitewater, or they would be if they were honestly told the whole convoluted story. Instead, they are given the impression, by the newsfakers, that Whitewater "is just a minor dispute over a 69 thousand dollar real estate development." {3}. L'affaire Whitewater is bigger than that. It is, according to New York Post reporter John Crudelle, a "massive financial scandal, the likes of which has never been seen before." {4}.
The American people are sick to death of the putrid O.J. Simpson trial. "They're also tired of the media not asking proper questions about the Clintons," adds Sherman H. Skolnick, the Chicago-based investigator. "The way I describe it is, those that believe in 'fairy tales' have a hard time, in the beginning, when they hear what people like me say. If they've been believing only in the mass media, then they grew up believing in 'fairy tales' and in myths. My job, if I'm able to do it at all, is to disabuse them of the 'fairy tales' they believe in."
"If I only read the [Chicago] Tribune and the [Chicago] Sun- Times, if I only listened to the local TV, what could I possibly know? Not very much."
Skolnick, a long-time prober into Whitewater and related matters, makes the following prediction: "I now believe that, by Labor Day, the whole thing will be really heated up."
"Today [August 8, 1995], until today [the investigation] was nothing. But starting, I think today, there's gonna be real noise."
---------------------------<< Notes >>---------------------------
{1} Associated Press, August 8, 1995.
{2} "Murder, Bank Fraud, Drugs, and Sex" by Nicholas A. Guarino.
{3} "Whitewater, the Federal Reserve, and the C.I.A." by Sherman
H. Skolnick.
{4} John Crudelle, segmented into ABC's Nightline on August 8,
1995.
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"