Copyright © 1996 The Telegraph plc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduced with permission.
The Electronic Telegraph   Sunday 17 March 1996   World News
[World News]

Clinton author has missed the smoking gun
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Forget Whitewater, the real scandal lies in the Foster case, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard BILL AND Hillary Clinton picked well when they invited the journalist James Stewart to write what amounts to the authorised work on the Clinton scandals.

In his new book Blood Sport, brilliantly marketed as a treasure of startling revelations, the Pulitzer Prize winner has all but absolved the Clintons of any serious wrongdoing in the complex web of Arkansas business dealings known as Whitewater.

Nobody is questioning Stewart's integrity as a journalist. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, he is the author of two acclaimed books on financial fraud. But critics are asking whether he was manipulated by the Clintons and then used as an instrument of subtle disinformation when he was offered unique access to the key players in the Clinton inner circle.

It was Susan Thomases, a New York lawyer, political fixer and close friend of Hillary Clinton, who first proposed the book scheme to Stewart in March 1994. Acting as an emissary of the First Lady, she proposed the project as a way of vindicating the Clintons after a barrage of attacks by "right-wing" interests.

After Stewart accepted the proposal, Thomases herself became a key source, and this is where the trouble begins.

In an astonishing claim, Thomases told Stewart that the late Vincent Foster confided his secrets to her just days before he supposedly shot himself in a Virginia park. At the time Foster was the Deputy White House Counsel and was handling the private financial affairs of the First Family.

According to Thomases, they met furtively in a private rooming house where Foster confided that his marriage was going to pieces and that he was overwhelmed by the pressures of Washington. Thomases said she was concerned about "the change in his appearance and demeanour".

All this would seem to lend credence to the official story that Foster was driven to suicide by depression. But it contradicts everything Thomases told the FBI in June 1994.

Her confidential FBI statement - which Stewart clearly has not seen - said that she and Foster "had lunch together with some other people in Washington" and that "she noted no change in his demeanour or physical appearance" and that "his death came as a complete shock to her and she can offer no reason or speculation as to why he may have taken his life".

It is a criminal offence to give false statements to the FBI in an investigation. It is therefore legitimate to ask whether Thomases misled Stewart and if so, what was her purpose?

Plainly, the genesis of this book needs to be examined carefully.

This is not to say that Stewart offers a flattering picture of the Clintons. He describes the panic at the White House when a group of Arkansas state troopers began to talk to the media about their years as pimps to Bill Clinton in his time as Governor, escorting him on his sexual escapades. And he confirms stories that the President telephoned one of the Troopers in late 1993 to offer him a plum federal job to sweeten him up.

He also recounts a scene in which the current Governor of Arkansas, Jim Guy Tucker, allegedly threatened one of the troopers saying: "You will not survive this. Your reputation will be destroyed. You can never work in law enforcement again."

As for Hillary Clinton, Stewart accuses her of making false statements on a credit application. He also disputes her claim that she was just a passive investor in the Whitewater property venture, showing that she seized control of the operation with a maniacal sense of purpose in the hope of squeezing money out of it.

But even if his points are correct Whitewater is trivial stuff, involving tiny amounts of money. Most of the incidents took place more than a decade ago. They are typical of the way that governors operate all over the South.

At the end of the day, Whitewater is hardly the sort of issue that should paralyse the presidency of the most important country in the world.

Of course it is possible that Senator Al D'Amato will uncover something in his interminable Senate hearings, although he appears to be spinning his wheels. There is also the criminal investigation of Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel in charge of the Whitewater scandal. He is currently prosecuting Jim Guy Tucker and the Clintons' Whitewater partners, Jim and Susan McDougal, as part of his "bottom up" strategy of ensnaring the First Couple.

But Starr is now hated in Arkansas, reviled as a "carpetbagger" from Washington, and it is doubtful whether he can secure convictions from an Arkansas jury. If the Governor is acquitted over the next few weeks, then the case against the Clintons will almost certainly collapse.

Ultimately, it is not Whitewater that threatens the Clinton presidency with a scandal of historic proportions. What really matters is the government cover-up of Vincent Foster's death, and on this point Blood Sport swallows the official version - hook, line, and sinker.

The Fiske Report, released in June 1994, concluded that Foster committed suicide where his body was found and that "there is no evidence to the contrary". Stewart derides those who challenge these findings as "conspiracy theorists".

But he has not kept up with the literature on this subject, failing to mention that the lead prosecutor investigating Foster's death, Assistant US Attorney Miquel Rodriguez, resigned in disgust last year because he felt that he was being obstructed by the FBI and by independent counsel Starr from pursuing serious indications of foul play.

It is clear that Stewart has not delved deep into the archive of police documents that undermine the Fiske Report. He is also confused about some elementary details of the case. For example, he seems to think that a "silver gun" brought to Washington by Foster's widow, Lisa, was the suicide weapon. It was not.

When Mrs Foster was shown a picture of the actual weapon, a black 1913 Colt .38, she told the US Park Police that it was "not the gun she thought it was". In fact, the gun has never been identified by any member of the Foster family. No matching ammunition has ever been found. Foster's fingerprints were not on the weapon - though somebody else's were.

Stewart ignores the finding of three handwriting experts, including Professor Reginald Alton of Oxford University, who concluded that the "suicide" note - found torn up in Foster's briefcase with no fingerprints on it - was a forgery.

This is the only serious analysis of the note that has been undertaken. By contrast, the efforts of the US Park Police and the FBI were cursory. They did not even use multiple samples of Foster's handwriting.

The omission of the forgery allegation is no small matter. The title of the book is taken from a phrase in the suicide note where Foster supposedly writes that "ruining people is considered sport" in Washington.

In a sense Stewart's whole book is validation of the suicide note. It is a literary endeavour that serves to bolster the case, however unwittingly, that Vincent Foster did indeed put a gun in his mouth because he was distressed about harsh editorials in the Wall Street Journal and suchlike. But what if the note really was a forgery?

Reading the book it is clear that Stewart has focused all his efforts on interviewing the "big shots" in the Clinton circle, many of whom have a strong motive for masking the truth.

But he has not made a fraction of the same effort to hear the tale of the countless people - crime scene witnesses, paramedics, funeral home workers, etc - who have no axe to grind.

This sort of journalism typifies the style of the Washington-New York opinion elite. It is why the US media is seen by many Americans as the hand-maiden of the ruling class, not defenders of the underdog.


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