In a mid-morning ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, Clinton named Louis Freeh as Director Designate of the FBI. This appointment aside, on that day, July 20, 1993, the FBI had no director.
Vince Foster, upon learning of the Hale warrant put in a hurried call to Clinton fixer James Lyons, a lawyer based in Denver.
At around 1:00 that afternoon Vince Foster finished the lunch he was eating in his office. (He removed the onions from his hamburger.) The next day he was scheduled for a personal meeting with the President, a meeting he had requested. Oddly enough, just a day or two before he had turned down an invitation from the President and Webb Hubbell to come over to the White House in the evening for a viewing of the film "In the Line of Fire." Why didn't he take the opportunity to meet informally with Clinton? Yet had arranged a formal meeting with the President for the 21st? The indications are that he intended to resign.
So after finishing his lunch early in the afternoon on the 20th of July, 1993, Vince said to his assistant Deborah Gorham, "I'll be back," and he left the office.
Between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. that evening, Foster's body was discovered in Ft. Marcy Park. When it was found that Foster was a high-ranking member of the Clinton administration the FBI was not immediately called in, and there was no institutional leader, i.e., Sessions was fired the day before, to insist that the FBI take charge of the investigation immediately.
Instead, the crime scene and the follow-up was handled by the U.S. Park Police. Crime scene photos were taken; they were underexposed. The body was sent to a septuagenarian medical examiner who had suffered at least one stroke. That's Dr. Beyer. He said he took x-rays of Foster; but he didn't, or did he? He says the x-ray machine was broken, but had never called to have it serviced.
Why did Beyer have Foster's body instead of the FBI pathologists?
So now there are no x-rays and no crime scene photos.
Foster is being called a suicide almost from the moment the Park Police arrive at Ft. Marcy Park.
Much later, after Foster is in the ground, these facts start to surface and the pattern of what they mean starts to become clear.
No crime scene photos; no FBI at the scene; a medical examiner incompetent for this job; no x-rays, but a lie by this same medical examiner that he had taken x-rays.
Then it turns out that at the crime scene there is no blood splatter. Huh? Foster was supposed to have shot himself in the head through his mouth. There should be a mess of blood and brains splattered in a characteristic pattern behind him.
There is no such splatter. What's more, when someone shoots himself in the head through the mouth his heart continues to pump blood and that blood is disgorged back through the wound and out the mouth, down across the chest of the victim. But on Foster there is no such blood.
Then there's the recoil of the gun. It usually results in two things. First, the force of the recoil, when someone shoots himself in the head through the mouth, usually results in some broken teeth.
Were any of Foster's teeth broken? No. Then the recoil should cause the gun to be thrown 15 to 20 feet away from the body. It goes flyin' out of the victim's hand. Where was the gun when the EMS crew reached Foster? In his hand.
Next, to get from where his car was parked in the Ft. Marcy lot to where his body was found, Foster would have had to walk several hundred yards. The soles of his shoes would have had samples of the park soil and flora on them. But they didn't. He must have walked barefoot to where they found him, and then cleaned his feet and then put the shoes back on. Makes sense, right?
The next day Foster was supposed to meet with the President, and he was also expecting the arrival of his sister, who was coming to Washington to visit him. He left no suicide note. The note that was found in the bottom of his briefcase, the third or fourth time it was checked and six days later, makes no mention of Foster taking his own life, although it does contain some apologetics that reflect favorably on his "clients," the Clintons.
What's more, two years go by and the note is analyzed by three independent handwriting experts, Donald Rice, Vincent Scalisi, and Reginald Alton, who each arrive at the conclusion, separately, that Foster could not have written the note in question anyway.
Alton has impeccable credentials. He is an internationally known authority on handwriting and manuscript authentication. He teaches at Oxford University, and his analysis of the note has never been questioned by anyone of equal stature. But, then again, why should it be? The media never reported his findings. It would seem like big news, but it is never reported. Odd, to say the least.
But the oddest thing of all happened as Vince Foster left the White House that last day he spent on earth. He passed the post of White House guard Skyles, they acknowledged one another, and Foster continued on to the White House parking lot. Skyles was the last person to see Foster alive. No one saw Foster in the parking lot or in his car; no one saw Foster drive out of the parking lot; no one saw Foster driving that day; no one saw him stopped at a traffic signal. No one saw Foster stop at any convenience store to purchase the wine coolers that were found near his body. No one saw him in the Fort Marcy parking lot. No one saw him walking in Ft. Marcy Park.
Just the oddest thing, to not be seen by anyone for more than four hours, and then to turn up dead in a park.
But we should just ignore all of these odd questions. After all, we have no reason to question the character of Bill Clinton or the people who work for him. They are all good people, right?
Like Patsy Thomsasson, the person who David Watkins paged at a Washington, D.C. restaurant in order to have her return to the White House and search Vince Foster's office for a suicide note. She's a logical choice, right? After all, she worked for Bill Clinton's Little Rock non-crony Dan Lasater, who did time for "giving away" cocaine. In fact, Patsy ran Dan's bond business while Dan was in the Federal pen. Patsy was a good choice to handle the "sensitive" task of rummaging through Vince Foster's things, much better than someone from the Justice Department or the FBI.
Then there's Maggie Williams. It was certainly appropriate for her to show up in Vince's office that night. She is Mrs. Clinton's "chief of staff," after all, and Mrs. Clinton ranks where in the Clinton administration? She holds what senior position? She's what? Oh, that's right, almost forgot, she's the President's wife. Yes, she's just the person to take control of the search of Foster's office through her surrogate, her "chief of staff," Maggie Williams. It certainly reassures me that the search of Vince's office was handled expeditiously.
And it is a shame that Secret Service agent Henry O'Neil, on duty that night at the White House, had to make a mess of things by imagining that he saw Maggie carry a stack of files out of the White House counsel's suite and down to Mrs. Clinton's office.
Just bizarre, isn't it, the lousy memory that these career Secret Service guys have?
Anyway, no reason to think anything was amiss. We have the character of Bill Clinton and the First Lady to depend on. I'm comfortable with that, aren't you?