VINCE FOSTER COVER-UP UNRAVELING
By Reed Irvine and Joe Goulden
The official cover-up of what really happened in the death of the late Vincent W. Foster, Jr. is beginning to unravel. The dogged investigative reporting of Christopher Ruddy of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of London's Sunday Telegraph continues to uncover new evidence of flaws and dishonesty in the investigations which concluded that Foster killed himself in Fort Marcy Park.
The evidence that Foster's body was moved to the park outweighs the evidence that he died there, and it has grown stronger with time. Working alone, these two reporters have done more than the U.S. Park Police and two independent counsels combined to get to the bottom of Foster's death.
On October 22, The Sunday Telegraph published an artist's sketch of a possible suspect in the Foster death. If there had been a proper investigation of Foster's death by the police and the FBI, a similar sketch could have appeared in U.S. papers and on TV immediately after Foster's death. The police were contacted that very night by a witness who had an encounter with the possible suspect in the Fort Marcy parking lot an hour and 15 minutes before Foster's body was discovered.
Evans-Pritchard recently interviewed Patrick Knowlton, the first person reported by the police to have seen Vincent Foster's car in the Fort Marcy parking lot. Knowlton called the police as soon as he learned of Foster's death to tell them what he had seen. The police wrote a very brief report, saying that Knowlton drove into the park to relieve himself and had seen two cars in the parking lot, one brown with Arkansas plates, and the other metallic blue with Virginia plates.
It said a Mexican-American seated in the blue car stared at Knowlton, making him feel uncomfortable and that Knowlton left as soon as possible.
FBI agents interviewed Knowlton nine months later. Their report said that the man in the blue car had glared at Knowlton and had exited his car and "closely watched" him as he went into the woods and returned, making him feel "extremely nervous and uneasy." The report described this man as a Mexican or Cuban in his twenties and said, "He (Knowlton) could not further identify this particular individual nor his attire and stated he would be unable to recognize him in the future."
Knowlton was stunned when Evans-Pritchard showed him these reports. They left out and falsified some important information. Knowlton said that when he parked his car, the man in the blue car lowered his window and gave him a threatening look. Fearing he might be mugged, he hid his wallet under the seat. As he got out of his car, the man got out also. Knowlton thought he was going to be attacked, but the man stood by his car, watching him closely as he walked into the woods and returned.
Knowlton said he told the FBI that he could pick this man out of a line-up. He said their statement that he would not be able to identify him was "an outright lie." He worked with an artist to produce the sketch that accompanied the Telegraph's story.
Knowlton provided a piece of information that adds significantly to the evidence that Foster's body was transported to the park. He said he noticed that the driver's seat of Foster's car was pushed up close to the steering wheel. If true, this is strong evidence that the 6'4" Foster did not drive the car to Fort Marcy. This wasn't mentioned in the police or FBI reports.
Knowlton said the FBI agents showed him a photo of a glossy blue Honda with Arkansas tags, fancy wheels and a dent in the back and tried "about 20 times" to get him to say that was the car he saw in the parking lot. Knowlton insisted that the car he saw was an older model with a dull brown finish, and he refused to change his story.
The Fiske report said, "When shown photographs of Foster's car, he (Knowlton) said the car he saw appeared darker in color and more compact." That made it appear that the car with Arkansas tags that Knowlton saw may not have been Foster's. But Knowlton was right. Foster's car was brownish, not blue. Fiske made no mention of the suspicious-acting man in the blue car or the position of the driver's seat in Foster's car.
An hour later two other witnesses saw two men in and about Foster's car. Combined with Knowlton's report, this casts strong doubt on the suicide theory, but independent counsel Fiske ignored their stories. Thanks to Ruddy and Evans-Pritchard, Starr can't do that.