Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 6  Num. 42
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")

Thanks to "DC Dave" for sending me the following item from London's Sunday Express, 29 October 1995:

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QUIET BRITISH PROFESSOR WHO COULD DESTROY CLINTON "Aides death could be as damning as Watergate." (By Gill Harley)

He is more at home in an English county, digging his vegetable patch, watching cricket and studying the handwriting of the great poets.

But 75-year-old Oxford Professor Reginald Alton is the man who could bring down President Clinton.

He has declared as a forgery the suicide note supposedly written by senior White House aide Vincent Foster -- a friend of the Clintons who was found with a bullet wound to his head.

              And as Professor Alton flew back to 
       Britain yesterday he said: "There's so much about 
       the case I can't talk about."

"The forgery is as nothing compared to the evidence of all sorts of dark deeds and jiggery-pokery bubbling under the surface."

-+- Damning -+-

"When the truth comes out it will be totally shocking if it appears the state has just done away with an inconvenient man."

"If Clinton's administration falls because of this, it won't only be because of our findings."

"Some of the people I met there believe it will be as damning as Watergate."

"If it is, it will be as equally damaging to the collective psyche of the nation and the trust it puts in its leaders."

Last week the donnish emeritus fellow of St. Edmund Hall at Oxford University -- who Americans regard as a character from a P.G. Wodehouse novel -- said the suicide note supposedly written by Foster was a forgery.

His pronouncement rocked America and fueled speculation that Foster, found dead in 1993, was murdered. Foster, a close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, was linked to the so-called Whitewater affair.

He had been a partner at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas, with Hillary Clinton at the time her husband was Governor of Arkansas.

The company has been accused of buying cheap land and after obtaining building planning permission, selling it on at much higher prices.

There were also rumors that Foster and Hillary had had an affair.

But just at the time the Whitewater scandal was looking as if it might turn into Clinton's Watergate, Foster's body was found on parkland outside Washington with a pistol in one hand and a bullet wound to the head.

No note was found near the body nor in Foster's office. But six days later Bernard Nussbaum, a White House legal counsel and friend of the Clintons, produced one on yellow lined paper. The writer, purported to be Foster, regretted the mistakes he had made, complained of hostile press coverage and concluded: "I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport."

At the Whitewater hearings last summer, senators expressed amazement that the note could have been overlooked. Some accused White House staff of obstructing the investigators on behalf of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton.

          Conspiracy theorists believe Foster was 
           murdered because he knew too much.

At a Washington press conference last Wednesday the professor of paliography -- more used to verifying the handwriting of poets like John Donne and Shelley -- declared the note to be a forgery.

The professor, who made his findings with two other international handwriting experts, said last night it was obvious it was a fake almost as soon as he received it at his Oxford home and compared it to 12 other samples known to be written by Foster. "For example, the 'b' is written completely differently," he said. "Foster would write it in one continuous stroke. In the note, the writer uses three strokes."

"Foster is also what I call a 'natural swaggerer' -- his letters have lots of elegant flourishes."

"The forger failed to spot this until about the tenth time, when he suddenly started using Foster's wide, saucer-shaped loops."

"Foster's hand is firm, fluid and constant. The forger's is inconsistent and his slopes are uneven."

Now James Dale Davidson, the editor of Strategic Investment who called the experts in, is passing their conclusions to Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater committee's special prosecutor.

-+- Loved -+-

And Alfonse D'Amato, chairman of the Senate Whitewater Committee, is to study a request from Republicans to subpoena Mrs. Clinton to give evidence.

The professor -- married since 1944 to French-born Jeannine, and with two grown-up sons and six grandchildren -- is a much-loved figure on the campus, where he is known simply as Reggie.

Most days he can be seen in his garden in baggy corduroy trousers, an old blazer and a battered hat.

He was extremely put out that the press conference organisers insisted he wore a suit.

I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."