Ambrose Evans-Pritchard interviewed on the George Putnum Show (with guest Ray Briem)
Radio Station KIEV, Los Angeles, March 3, 1997

George Putnam: The internationally-famed Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, one of the top reporters in the world. He writes for the London Sunday Telegraph. He has covered this overall story - of Clinton, the fiasco in the White House - he has concentrated on the Vince Foster story. I asked Ray Briem to come into the studio early to engage in this conversation with Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, with whom we have the greatest respect.

It's fascinating, a week ago Sunday that there was a scurrilous attack on the so-called 'Clinton Crazies' and at the top of the list were people like Ambrose and {Hugh} Sprunt. Ray and I are a bit embarrassed because we weren't mentioned in this story. But Ambrose is on the line at this time.

We cannot believe what we've read in your story, sir, but you've always been on top of it. Welcome again to KIEV in Los Angeles.

Honest to God, this is unbelievable! A crime scene photograph from the investigation appears to prove that the Federal authorities have lied about the case and perpetrated and perpetuated a cover-up that continues to deceive the Foster family, the U.S. Congress and the American people.

How did you come by this picture, sir?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Well, I'm afraid I can't reveal that. I can assure your listeners that it is authentic and I know enough about the genesis of that photograph and the story behind it to be pretty sure of my facts. It's important because it's a unique testimony, if you like, of the crime scene as it was when the paramedics first arrived to deal with the body. Almost all the other crime scene photos of importance have disappeared. The original set of Polaroids taken by the first Park Police officer on the scene have all disappeared. All the 35mm official crime scene photos taken by the Park Police technician were underexposed and deemed useless, and many other Polaroids taken by three other PP's have also disappeared. All that was left was just a small group, 18 of them, which have been circulating among investigators.

Only one of them was important and that was this one. And, it turned out that they dummied-up this one to mislead investigators and the Congress. They made it look as if it wasn't a wound on the neck; they made it look as if it was just a blood stain. All you could see in the dummied-up version was a smear of blood. In fact, they were claiming that that smear of blood was a 'contact stain' from the head bouncing against the shoulder, but, in fact, that wound on the neck is the origin and source of the blood that comes down the neck and trickles down the collar.

George Putnam: And the exact location of the wound, sir?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: From the right-hand side about halfway along the jaw and about an inch below the jaw.

George Putnam: Is there an exit wound, because in identifying a body or person who had committed suicide, the entry wound was very small that I found in this identification, but it blew out the back of the head if it entered the mouth.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: According to the official story, Vince Foster put a .38 caliber Colt - fairly powerful - into his mouth and blew out the back of his head and there was an exit wound of 1" by 1-1/4" in the autopsy report; but, all of the paramedics who handled the body said the same thing, that they did not see any exit wound. One of them, Corey Ashford, who actually picked up the body from the shoulders and cradled the head in his hands - the back of the head where the wound was supposed to be - got no blood on his hands and no blood on his clothes at all and did not see an exit wound.

Furthermore, the doctor who certified death, Julian Orenstein, at the Fairfax County Hospital told me that he didn't see an exit wound either. He kind of gave a rather bizarre answer, he said, "Well, I didn't look around there. My suspicions weren't aroused so I just didn't look." Which made me think.... but, anyway, he was not prepared to commit himself to the position that there was an exit wound either. So basically, we've got all the original people who handled the body who do not have a vested interest in distorting the case, saying they didn't see an exit wound.

Ray Briem: This is a blockbuster story! It's has to be the story that maybe 'undoes' this whole thing.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Oh no. It will be ignored.

Ray Briem: You really think so?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Oh, they always are. It doesn't make any difference.

George Putnam: How can they? The national press has to pick it up ... Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report has to pick up this one, will they not?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: No. They'll just go on their merry way. Nothing will happen.

Ray Briem: You talk about the size of the wound being that of an old 'sixpence'. If I recall, that's about the size of an American penny, right?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: A dime, I think. About a dime. Possibly a penny, yes.

Ray Briem: And marks by a black 'stippled' ring. Now that's suggestive of a gunpowder...?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Yeah - it's sort of a dotted look. It looks like engraving dots going around in a circle and they're black. That's typical of a gunpowder burn. It would suggest that a gun had been pressed into the neck or fired at very, very short range.

Ray Briem: You talk about Brian Blackbourne, the San Diego medical examiner and you quote him saying that he told the Telegraph that he had not seen anything that would indicated trauma on Vince Foster's neck.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: When I'd spoke to him last year, he was just finishing up his report. He said he'd not seen anything of that kind.

Ray Briem: Then there's Henry Lee, who testified in the O.J. trial. Tell us about him.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: He was brought in by the Starr investigation to review the case and in my opinion to basically try and find something that would justify a conclusion of suicide.

Ray Briem: We've seen the latest report on Vince Foster which is a piece that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and they announced that the final report was ready and sources close to the investigation said that it would be deemed a suicide.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Well, Don knocked the ball across the net so we knocked it back!

[Laughter] You certainly did!

George Putnam: It's interesting to me that so many people would have to be involved in this cover-up...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Not really. The paramedics are not, they've all told the truth. Some of the doctors have told the truth.

George Putnam: FBI laboratories?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Well, there's a problem there. But in fact, many people have told the truth and they've just been ignored. You have the prosecutor in charge of the case - Rodriguez - who tried to do his job. Who refused to be in on a cover-up... He's been ignored.

George Putnam: It's so amazing that each and every one of these turns, Ambrose, almost defies imagination. If you took this story to a producer in Hollywood, they'd throw you out of the office saying that these things can't happen at this level.

Will they exhume the body and do you think there's anything left of it at this point?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Well, it takes an investigation to exhume the body and I don't see any investigation.

Ray Briem: Dr. Cyril Wecht has now come around and said that the body should be exhumed.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Yes. In fact he said it at the time that he was brought in by the Senate Banking Committee by Senator D'Amato. He told Sen. D'Amato that the body should be exhumed and nothing was done about it. You know, nobody wants to deal with this issue. Everybody who is involved are just turning away. They don't want to confront it.

Ray Briem: Do you have a thought as to why?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Well, one obvious reason is that the authorities are too deeply committed to change course. You had, first of all the Park Police and then members of the FBI, then you had the Justice Dept. through the Fiske investigation and a number of people from the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington - which is an 'old boys' network out of a club - all committed to this. And then Starr takes over and he doesn't clean up the team. He keeps on many of the same people who were responsible for this in the first place. So his office is contaminated in Washington.

Ray Briem: I've said this many times in the past and I'll say it again... Is it not sad... is it not a sad commentary that we in this country have to read a foreign newspaper - The London Sunday Telegraph - to get the story???

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: I suppose it is and what it shows is that American journalists are under a tremendous amount pressure... they have to conduct their careers in this country or this city if they're in the Washington press corps, and if you step too far out of line, life gets very unpleasant for you. So, in fact, it's logical that a foreign or an alternative source kind of newspaper would be the ones investigating this. It'd be too hazardous for somebody from a major paper to commit themselves to a position that's inconsistent with the consensus.

Ray Briem: The White House 331-page report quoted you verbatim on many things... that you were one of the 'crazies', etc., etc. That you were part of the pipeline of the conspiracy journalists, but they called the London Sunday Telegraph a tabloid. It's not a tabloid, it's a full-fledged newspaper and I understand that it has a huge circulation all throughout Europe.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: We're about 900,000. The Daily Telegraph is 1.1 million. The Daily Telegraph is the biggest circulation broadsheet in Europe.

George Putnam: What is the reaction there to your story?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Too early to tell. I think people just don't know what to make of it at this point.

George Putnam: You say a prosecutor on the staff of Starr's staff has shown the photo to individuals 'off the record' including a leading forensic scientist in New York. May we have that reaction?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Yeah, I didn't name the person involved... what I was trying to reassure the reader is that this photograph is authentic... officially authentic... that a prosecutor who is currently serving on the staff of Kenneth Starr has been showing it to people to get their evaluation.

George Putnam: What about Starr, any reaction from him on this?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Not yet, I think it's too early.

George Putnam: What about his tough assistant?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Hickman Ewing. We'll have to see. I'll wait for a few days and see what happens.

George Putnam: I cannot believe that in this world in which we live a thing like this can happen so close to the Presidency of the United States and go unnoticed!

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: I don't know. It's very disturbing...

I just want to make a point here... I remember interviewing, a long time ago, one of the paramedics who found the body and he told me that there was a wound in the neck. Now at that point - it was long before we had any documents available - I just thought that I must be confused. But he was absolutely insistent, and then I did normal work and then we got more and more documents and we found that several of the paramedics saw trauma on the neck.

The Fiske report said categorically that allegations that there was some kind of trauma were fools because all of the crime scene photographs showed that there was no such wound. Well, that statement was an outright lie. Because this photograph does show the wound and it confirms exactly what the eyewitnesses have said... the paramedics who found the body... who have no reason to lie or conjure up some false piece of evidence. In other words, the Fiske report made a very specific lie.

Ray Briem: You once told me that you believed that the Vince Foster, quote, suicide -- that the Vince Foster affair is the Rosetta Stone.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Yes, well, I believe it is. I think what's clear isthat Vince Foster was being intensely lobbied by a number of people surrounding the President in the days before his death -- by the President himself the night before his death, who called him up from the White House, asked him just as Vince Foster was about to sit down and have supper at home, asked him to come back over to the White House, supposedly to watch a film, In the Line of Fire, where the Secret Service agent takes a bullet for the President. If you remember.... to meet Webb Hubbell and Bruce Lindsay and others. Clearly they were trying to lobby him on something to get him to change his mind or take a position. He'd been lobbied that same afternoon by Marsha Scott, who we now know was in charge of that White House data bank. He was lobbied between 1 and 2 hours, according to Vince Foster's secretary, behind closed doors; a very unusual event....

Ray Briem: How about that previous weekend at Cardozo's place with Hubbell?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: He was lobbied during the weekend with the Hubbells and others.

Hubbell's reaction when he heard about Foster's death is very interesting because he was in a restaurant in Washington. I'd spoken to someone who was with Hubbell when he was notified. He was ABSOLUTELY ASH STUNNED, ASH WHITE! He knew what it was about. I don't think he realized what the sanctions were going to be. I think that Vince Foster should have met that particular end absolutely stunned Hubbell. Hubbell's reaction was half fear.

George Putnam: What was Hubbell's exact quotation? I don't recall the exact words he spoke... didn't he say something to the effect that the 'ghost is up' or 'this is it' or ...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: No, I don't think so. He was so confused that he couldn't find the keys to his own car or where he'd parked it.

George Putnam: Oh, wait a minute! Speaking of keys... what has become of Craig Livingstone? ... the two sets of keys and why is it he was the one who went down to identify the body? The keys were not found at the scene, but were found on his person in the morgue!

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: What we know is that the Park Police officer, John Rolla, searched Vince Foster's pocket and didn't find any keys, even though it was a set of 4 keys and 2 rings - a quite a big clump.

George Putnam: He'd have to drive to get to the scene at Fort Marcy Park, wouldn't he?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: One would have thought it hard to drive without any keys. Anyway, the keys reappeared at the morgue in the pocket after Craig Livingstone and Foster's deputy William Kennedy turned up to identify the body.

In fact, the Park Police had said 'there's no need to identify the body, we've already identified it with his White House ID'... Livingstone and Kennedy insisted on going there. Shortly after they were there the keys turned up in Vince Foster's pocket. The official position is, 'Well, maybe they just missed it the first time around and the keys were there all along.' I'll let the listeners draw their own conclusions.

George Putnam: Fascinating that they can't find Livingstone... we can go to the moon, the Marshals are out, but we can't find Livingstone... Mr. Livingstone, WHERE ARE YOU?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: (chuckles) Um, YESSSSSSS.

George Putnam: Back in Minnesota, back on the farm, I used to run through the pastures avoiding the 'cow pies'. This administration comes up with a cow pie and their foot or mouth in it each and every day!

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Yes, , I'm afraid it's a very corrupt group of people.

George Putnam: (laugher) To say the least!

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: And it's not going to stop.

I'm very disappointed, in a way, to find out that Al Gore is also mixed up in some of this nonsense. I'd at least hoped that somebody up there had some integrity, but maybe not.

George Putnam: $40 million dollars worth, according to the latest report.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Yes, I was quite surprised to learn the degree of involvement.

George Putnam: Dick Morris said that the President could not have been re-elected without the help of Mr. Gore and his telephone calls. That's a statement today.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Yes.

Ray Briem: Ambrose, I want to thank you for what you have done on my program and thanks for being with us here with George. An absolutely sensational story! We'll watch for the fall-out.