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VINCENT Foster, the Arkansas lawyer whose mysterious death is still the subject of official investigations, orchestrated secret surveillance of Bill Clinton in 1990, two years before he became Deputy Counsel in the Clinton White House.

The claim is made by the widow of Jerry Parks, a Little Rock investigator allegedly contracted to do the work. What is more, Mrs Parks's husband told her the operation was instigated by Foster's law partner: Hillary Rodham Clinton. The allegations have to be treated with great caution. They are based on the word of one person and are almost impossible to corroborate. Even so, Jane Parks's story deserves to be reported.

Her husband went on to become chief of security at the Clinton-Gore headquarters during the presidential campaign. A few months later, in September 1993, he was murdered, gangland-style, in a case that has never been solved by the Little Rock police.

Vince Foster had died two months earlier in circumstances that have led to formal accusations by the US Senate of a White House cover-up. His body was found in a Virginia park, next to a civil war cannon, with an unidentified revolver lodged in the right hand. His death was recorded as suicide at first, but the case has been re-opened by independent counsel Kenneth Starr. After two years, Starr has still not concluded whether it was suicide or murder. Jane Parks, 43, has never sought out the press. She reluctantly told me about her former husband's ties with Foster during a dinner at her house two months ago. She has now finally consented to go on the record, saying she is weary of living with secrets.

She said that her late husband, Jerry, respected Vince Foster. Around 1985, he started taking on sensitive assignments for him. These appeared to have involved a variety of strange activities - including two mysterious trips the two men took to the town of Mena, west Arkansas, during the 1992 presidential campaign.

"Jerry had a reputation for doing high-profile cases for prominent people. He knew how to keep his mouth shut," she said. Nevertheless, he confided in his wife, and told her about the covert surveillance of the state governor in 1990.

She said: "Jerry asked Vince why he needed this stuff on Clinton. He said he needed it for Hillary."

She believes that Hillary Clinton was trying to gain leverage over her husband, possibly in relation to future divorce proceedings. It is possible Mrs Clinton wanted to get to the bottom of persistent rumours about her husband's philandering before subjecting herself and her daughter to the media glare of a presidential campaign. At the time, Mrs Clinton and Vince Foster were partners at the Rose Law firm. The two were so close, in fact, that they even shared a brokerage account called Midlife Partners. Several new books claim that the two were lovers for many years.

Mrs Parks said that Foster had telephoned her husband over a hundred times at their home outside Little Rock, and when she met him at a political function Foster complimented her by saying: "You must be Jerry's wife, I'd heard he'd robbed the cradle." She said her husband started having dealings with Foster around 1981, when the Rose Law firm represented Guardsmark, the security firm that Parks was working for at the time. Later, Parks set up his own business and took on personal assignments for Foster.

It appears that Parks collected extensive surveillance files on Bill Clinton over the years

On one occasion, Parks was asked to provide home security for Foster's brother-in-law, Lee Bowman, whose house was damaged in a fire. Mr Bowman, confirmed the story, saying that he was struck by the way Foster insisted that Parks was a man who could be trusted.

It appears that Parks collected extensive surveillance files on Bill Clinton over the years - though not always for Foster. Some of it was clearly undertaken for other clients. Parks's son Gary, now 25, accompanied him on several night missions in 1987 which involved watching the apartments of Gennifer Flowers and other women, using long-range cameras.

Parks also did some spying on Clinton in 1984 when the Governor attended a number of cocaine-and-sex parties given by his younger brother, Roger, at the Vantage Point apartment complex where Jane Parks was manager.

Roger Clinton went to prison shortly afterwards for dealing in cocaine. In a police surveillance video taken at the time, Roger can be heard saying that he must get some cocaine for his brother: "He has a nose like a vacuum cleaner."

Parks kept a set of photos and hand-written notes at his home. The files were stolen in a burglary in July 1993, about the time of Foster's death. "That's when Jerry got paranoid," said Mrs Parks. "He believed that Foster had been murdered and he was afraid that he'd be next."

His paranoia was vindicated. Two months later, on September 26, Parks was shot several times at short range outside Little Rock. An eye-witness told Mrs Parks that he saw an Arkansas State Trooper leaving the scene of the crime. No charges have been brought.

During the early part of 1993, Parks constantly battled with the White House. He told his wife that the Clinton campaign owed him more than $60,000 for work done by the firm. Asked if it was possible that her husband could have played "hardball" with the White House to recover his money, Mrs Parks replied: "He would never have been so stupid as to try to blackmail the President of the United States."

During the summer of 1993, the debt was suddenly paid in full. Mrs Parks has had trouble finding out what happened in those months - and which White House telephone numbers her husband may have called - because police have removed records from Mr Parks's office.

She says her home was also ransacked, with as many as eight federal agents in her house at one time - flashing FBI, Secret Service, IRS, and, curiously, CIA credentials - not to mention visits by Little Rock police officers. A computer was purged by an expert, files went missing and 130 tapes of telephone conversations were confiscated. "I've asked them to give it all back, but the police refuse to relinquish anything," she said. "They told me there's nothing they can do about the case as long as Bill Clinton is in office."

When she told the FBI agent in charge that the murder could have a political dimension because her husband had had dealings with Vince Foster and Bill Clinton, the man cut her short. "He threw up his hands and said 'I don't want to hear anything about that'," said Mrs Parks. The FBI office in Little Rock seemed surprised at the suggestion that its agents were involved. "It's a homicide. We don't have jurisdiction," said an official.

Mrs Parks's allegations clash with the usual description of Foster as a well-meaning lawyer, out of his depth in the cut-throat world of Washington. But revelations that the White House Counsel's Office, where Foster worked, was behind the illicit request of over 900 FBI files has changed the picture dramatically. The White House is now leaking information that Foster was responsible for hiring Craig Livingstone - exposed as a dirty tricks operative - to head security. If Foster did indeed hire Livingstone, it is not far-fetched to suggest he previously hired Jerry Parks.

As for Mrs Parks, it is hard to see why she might fabricate this story. She has shunned the media spotlight for the past three years, refusing substantial offers of money from tabloid publications. She is a Pentecostal Christian, has remarried and retreated to the Arkansas hills, where she is seeking a quieter life, having developed multiple sclerosis. The White House has refused to comment.

This report appeared in the last edition of the Sunday Telegraph

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