EXPERTS SAY FOSTER'S SUICIDE NOTE WAS A FORGERY
By Reed Irvine and Joseph Goulden
Once again the bulk of the national media have fallen flat on their faces on the Vincent W. Foster, Jr., death mystery. What we are seeing is perhaps the most glaring example of journalistic non-performance -- even malpractice -- of this century.
The latest gaffe involves its lack of coverage when another part of the contrived story that the deputy White House counsel killed himself collapsed under the examination of experts.
Although a large volume of forensic evidence suggests that Foster did not die in Fort Marcy Park in Virginia, where his body was found, proponents of the suicide theory have repeatedly cited the existence of the "suicide note" as proof that Foster was despondent over the pressures of his work in Washington -- including the multiple scandals engulfing his old friend Bill Clinton and his former law partner, Hillary Rodham Clinton -- and finally went off the deep end and shot himself.
The note, however, is now debunked as a forgery. This is the collective opinion of three handwriting experts who spoke at a Washington press conference in late October. They are Reginald Alton, a don at Oxford University in England and one of his country's foremost experts on falsified documents; retired New York detective Vince Scalice; and Ronald Rice, a Boston investigator, both certified handwriting experts. They were brought into the matter by James Dale Davidson, publisher of the Strategic Investment newsletter.
Working with enlargements of the note and ten exemplars of Foster's handwriting, the experts noted numerous discrepancies, both in the formation of individual letters and in general style. As Alton said, "I am as convinced as I can be from photocopies that the note was a fake." The Oxford don said it was the work of what he called a "moderate forger, somebody who could forge a check or a pass in a prison camp" Questions also remain as to how Foster could have torn the note into 28 pieces -- 27 were found, one is missing -- without leaving any fingerprints on the paper. Scalice and Rice said the fact that the note was torn should have been a red flag to investigators. In Scalice's words, "Any time a document is torn, mutilated, something spilled on it, suspicion should be aroused."
In addition, several persons, including a Park Police detective, looked into the briefcase the day after his death and saw no note. Not until the White House belatedly began claiming that Foster suffered from depression did the note mysteriously appear.
So what reporting did the national media do on this bombshell forgery disclosure? The Reuters news service moved a 650-word story which ran in scattered papers around the country, including The Washington Times. The Associated Press, which services most American newspapers and radio and TV stations, buried the forgery revelations deep in a long story about other Whitewater matters, implying to editors, "Don't take this seriously." Not a word of the forgery charge appeared in The New York Times (formerly the "newspaper of record"), or The Washington Post which bases its claim to importance on its pursuit of a Republican president. The Big 3 TV networks ignored the story.
Conversely, British newspapers told readers a good deal about the forgery. The London Sunday Express featured Alton as the "quiet British professor who could destroy Bill Clinton," and reprinted samples -- one from the note, the other from a business letter -- which even to the untrained eye were disparate. One had a block capital letter "I," the other "I" was cursive. The Daily Telegraph also ran a major article.
The Wall Street Journal in an editorial praised publisher Davidson and reporter Chris Ruddy of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review for "pushing the envelope" on the Foster story. Then it added a disdainful sniff: "our checks with law enforcement sources we trust find that the handwriting analysts...are not widely known."
The Foster note was originally authenticated by Sgt. Larry Lockhart, U.S. Capitol Police, who compared it with one sample of Foster's handwriting. Last August we showed him enlarged portions of those two documents without telling him what they were. He told us that the note was probably a forgery. That has now been confirmed by the three experts, with far better credentials than Lockhart, using at least ten different samples of Foster's handwriting.
Handwriting experts can differ. "Well known" experts who declared the forged Hitler diaries authentic were proven wrong. If The Wall Street Journal or any other media organizations doubt the latest findings, they should get other experts to study the documents and give their opinions. The dubious provenance of the note and the miraculous absence of fingerprints alone should incline the media to welcome the first truly independent expert evaluation of its authenticity. Their failure to report these findings, preferring Sgt. Lockhart's first opinion, shows how toothless these watchdogs have become.