MIKE WALLACE'S FAKE FOSTER PROBE
By Reed Irvine and Joe Goulden
On October 8, as the FBI was heading into its fifth week of an exhaustive search for the bullet that killed former White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster, "60 Minutes" aired a vicious attack on Christopher Ruddy, the reporter who forced the reopening of the Foster investigation in January 1994, six months after the White House thought it had buried the case for good.
Ignoring the fact that FBI agents were literally making a shambles of Fort Marcy Park in their inch-by-inch search for the missing bullet, Mike Wallace claimed his own investigation found that there are no valid grounds for questioning the theory that Foster committed suicide in the park.
Wallace acknowledged that some sloppy police work had enabled Ruddy "to raise all sorts of questions about Foster's death." He said, "We've dealt with the most important ones. We've examined the others." His program ended with a declaration that the evidence supported only one conclusion: Foster committed suicide in the park.
Wallace's claim that he had dealt with the most important questions raised about Foster's death was false. There are a number of questions for which there are no answers that are consistent with the suicide-in-the-park theory. Wallace ignored all of them. He discussed only three questions that he thought could be answered easily or dismissed, claiming he had examined all the others.
One was why the gun was found in Foster's right hand even though The Boston Globe reported that he was lefthanded. That was never an important issue because, as the police suggested, he could have gripped the gun with his left hand and pulled the trigger with his right thumb, which was found caught in the trigger guard. Since a family member finally disclosed last spring that Foster was actually righthanded, Wallace knew that this long-dead question could be attacked without fear of contradiction.
Wallace ridiculed a suggestion that carpet fibers found on most of Foster's clothes may have come from his body having been rolled up in a carpet and moved. Many people have criticized the investigators for not trying to find out where the carpet fibers came from, but few, if any, have seriously suggested that the body was rolled up in a carpet. "60 Minutes" suggested the carpet fibers were from Foster's home and that they got on every piece of his clothing because they were all put in the same bag. That may or may not be true, but the carpet fibers are important only because they might have revealed where Foster spent his last hours if their origin had been discovered.
The only question Wallace addressed that is relevant to the ongoing debate over Foster's death is the claim that the small amount of blood observed at the scene is one of several indicators that he did not die in the park. The fact that there was little blood was noted by the medical technicians who found the body. One of them, Sgt. George Gonzalez, told the FBI that "there was not much blood at the scene for the manner in which the victim died." Corey Ashford, who lifted the body by the shoulders, cradling the head, said he "did not recall seeing any blood and did not recall getting any on his uniform or his disposable gloves."
"60 Minutes" ignored them, focusing on Dr. Donald Haut, the part-time county medical examiner who approved the removal of the body. Chris Ruddy has Haut on tape saying, "There was not a hell of a lot of blood on the ground." Wallace asked Haut if he told Ruddy "there was an unusual lack of blood at the scene." He said, "No," saying that there was "plenty of blood" for Foster to have died there, creating the illusion that Ruddy had misquoted him.
But Dr. Haut told the FBI that the amount of blood was small and that he didn't recall seeing blood on Foster's shirt or face or any blood on the vegetation around the body. Dr. Haut concluded from this that a low velocity bullet had been used, but the spent cartridge case in the gun in Foster's hand was stamped "HV," meaning high velocity.
Mike Wallace didn't mention all this because the small amount of blood, together with the absence of skull fragments, brain tissue and blood spatter and the fatal bullet, means there is no forensic evidence to prove that Foster shot himself in the park. That is why the FBI has spent a month looking for the missing bullet.
We asked Wallace in a phone conversation to cite one piece of forensic evidence that supported the suicide-in-the-park theory. He ducked and dodged. After we asked the question literally ten times, he said, "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll put it on paper." When we reminded him of that promise the next day, he asked, "What do you mean by forensic evidence?"
This is one of the country's best investigative reporters? As Mike himself might say, "Give us a break!"