Hugh Sprunt's Letter to Dr. Cyril Wecht
(author of Grave Secrets), October 10, 1996

Thursday, October 10, 1996

Dr. Cyril Wecht
1200 Centre Avenue
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15219

Dear Dr. Wecht:

Allan Favish has told me that you are willing to receive a copy of my "Citizen's Independent Report" on the July 20, 1993, death of Vince Foster, and I am pleased to enclose it. I hope you find it interesting on several different levels. All I ask is that you believe me when I say that everything in the report was written in good faith and that you approach the report with an open mind.

I paid for the enclosed copy out of my own pocket. The report is available (merely for the cost of copying and shipping) directly from a number of copy shops. Versions of it are also available from various Web Sites. I make not a cent on it, indeed, I paid to have 200 copies distributed to various political types and the media in the hopes of getting reasonable responses to what I believe are legitimate questions about the government investigations into the death.

I am not a Republican - I am not even a conservative! A friend of mine whom I respect greatly and with whom I took a Bar Review course in 1979 was a Special Assistant to the President for the first six months of the Clinton Administration.

I work almost exclusively from government documents on the Foster death that I obtained directly from various Federal agencies. These documents comprise the underlying official record (at least, the publicly-available portion) on which various government reports on the death are based. One of my main concerns is that the reports' contents do not appear to indicate an unbiased approach to the data in the underlying official investigative record.

Since I think it might help you right off the bat to know a little more about my background, there is a one page CV following page 164 of the enclosed report.

I have some connection to the Pittsburgh area in that my little brother got his Ph.D. (computer hardware design) from CMU, and married a local patent attorney before he moved to Portland, Oregon, with Intel. My great-uncle, Doug Sprunt, was a pathology professor and another uncle, Worth Sprunt, was an eye surgeon in Chevy Chase, but I have no medical training at all (as you can see from the CV).

I would welcome hearing from you regarding any aspect of the Foster death, especially if you have information that can reconcile the many problems I have with the government reports covering the Foster death. I have some problems (consistency and so forth) with the underlying investigative record as well, but the contents of the reports amazed me after I studied the documents on which they were purportedly based.

I have read the chapter on Vince Foster in your book Grave Secrets. I do not know the reason for it, but a lot of the information that was given to you about the Foster death certainly appears to contradict data in the official underlying investigative record. My guess is that you were given some information that you took at face value and that you have had the opportunity to read only a little, if any, of the documents constituting the underlying publicly-available official investigative record of the death.

Let me give you some examples of my concerns that are drawn from your Foster chapter. There are dozens of examples in my report on the Foster death of similar material inconsistencies (a charitable characterization, I believe) between the underlying official record and the contents of the reports, but I hope the material below will provide a decent starting point.

Foster's thumb was not caught "behind" the trigger, but in front of it - between the trigger and the rear edge of the forward curve of the trigger guard. I have tried to duplicate this "pinning" of the thumb with a similar revolver in my possession, but without any luck whatsoever, even when wearing thick gloves.

As I interpret the description of the "pinning" of the right thumb's nether joint, the claimed results would seem to require that anyone firing the gun would have his "trigger digit" pinned in a similar manner. This seems very strange - remember the official death gun was an Army Colt .38 Special revolver, a gun that would have been designed to allow an officer wearing gloves - whether for cold weather or otherwise - to easily fire the gun in the stress of combat. Obviously, too, army officers' hands come in all sizes, sizes that must be accommodated by their personal firearm.

There is no mention in Dr. Larry Watkins' FBI interview that Foster "begged the doctor" (quote from your Foster chapter) to keep his alleged depression confidential when he called Dr. Watkins in Little Rock the day before the death [Indeed, Dr. Watkins' FBI interview has significant material in it that contradicts the Fiske Report's conclusion that Foster was depressed]. Dr. Watkins is the only doctor known to me with whom Foster consulted near his date of death.

However, one of Vince's big sisters, Sheila Foster Anthony, then a high official in the Justice Department, did tell the Bureau that Foster did not want to follow her advice, given on Friday, July 16, 1993, that he contact a psychiatrist.

Why? Because, Shelia said, her brother feared the effect a psychiatric consultation would have on his [pending] security clearance. However, she reported to the Bureau that Foster had told her, the Monday before his Tuesday death, that he had decided not to consult a psychiatrist. In the words of her FBI interview report, Foster "was feeling good."

Mr. Fiske says Foster called a psychiatrist [Dr. Hedaya, one of the names Sheila told the Bureau she gave Foster on the 16th], but no message was ever left and no contact with Dr. Hedaya was ever made. Fiske says that Foster charged his two attempts to reach Dr. Hedaya by phone to Foster's home number (though the calls were not long-distance or toll calls from the White House) because he was worried about his security clearance.

Of course, the fact that these two calls, which Fiske states were made using the phone on Foster's desk, were charged to his home phone (something anyone can do who knows Foster's home number) ensured that there would be an itemized listing on his home phone records (and his phone bill) "proving" that he had called Dr. Hedaya.

Flagging the two attempts to contact a psychiatrist on his home phone records seems to me to have been counter-productive and counter-intuitive from Mr. Foster's point of view: a needlessly-created "red flag" for anyone performing a security investigation on Mr. Foster, presumably a so-called "Background Identification."

I was routinely cleared for "Secret" during my time in the service and have responded to requests from various intelligence services over the years, outfits that were performing security checks on other individuals, and can assure you that checks on folks seeking "Top Secret" clearances - Sheila's words to the FBI - are going to be very thorough.

Lisa, Foster's wife, never confirmed that Foster "had, indeed, been under treatment for depression just before his death," at least not in any publicly-available statement she made to the FBI or to the Park Police. She did know that Dr. Watkins had prescribed Desyrel for Foster, and Foster is said to have taken one 50 mg tablet the night of the 19th, but if you read Dr. Watkins' FBI interview, he states that he prescribed the Desyrel for insomnia since it had no side effects (he was wrong - it has at least one fairly rare one that may occur to you!) and would be effective immediately re insomnia. Dr. Watkins told the Bureau that, when he prescribed the Desyrel, he thought it would take a week or more to have any anti-depressant effect, but his concern was Foster's insomnia, not any alleged depression.

Furthermore, what did the US Park Police Investigator, the "in-charge" at the body site at Fort Marcy, say under oath regarding what Sheila Foster Anthony told him about Foster's mental state when the US Park Police investigators appeared at the Foster home the night of the death around 10 PM? [You can see I write like the tax attorney I am!]

"Sheila Anthony was talking with us, I spoke with her, Cheryl [The other Park Police Investigator] spoke with her, she was very cordial. I remember asking her, did you see any of this coming, and she stated no. Nobody would say anything about depression or that they noticed some signs, they were worried." Many of these same people told the press the opposite a few days later - was this conceivably after they all had had a chance to "get on the same page?" Along these lines, please see, in Appendix IX of the enclosed report, the partial transcript of a Dee Dee Myers White House press briefing in a letter I wrote to the editor of "American Psychologist" on February 12, 1996.

More quotes from the same deposition re what the Park Police Investigators learned at the Foster home the night of the death regarding Foster's mental state:

"Nobody said he was depressed, nobody knew anything..."

"I mentioned, did you see this coming, were there any signs, has he been taking any medication [N.B.]? No. All negative answers."

Did Lisa Foster herself say anything on the "depression" issue to the Park Police that night? Here is an extract from the FBI statement of the same investigator regarding what he learned from Lisa at her home the night of the death [the words are those of the Investigator's FBI Interview Report, Form FD-302]:

"He does recall eventually [after things had calmed down somewhat] conversing with Mrs. Foster [,] specifically asking her if she had any indication that anything was wrong with her husband, with Mrs. Foster responding in the negative."

In your chapter you state that "About 4 P.M., a witness noticed a car that was later identified as Foster's parked in a lot at Fort Marcy. . ." You are correct that the car in question "was later identified as Foster's". However, the witness (Patrick Knowlton) has consistently told the FBI that the car he saw could not have been Foster's 1989 taupe gray four-door Honda Accord sedan since the car he saw parked at Fort Mary was a completely different color and several years older than Foster's Honda.

Knowlton was interviewed by the FBI again about a month later. In my opinion, it is clear from the contents of the second interview report that the sole purpose of the second interview was to attempt to get the witness to change his original statement and agree that the car in question was Foster's. He refused to do so. Subsequent personal interviews with Knowlton confirmed my interpretation of the reason for the second interview.

Knowlton never sought any publicity as a witness in the case. The FBI originally asked him not to go to the press and he did not do so, even turning down requests for interviews. However, once his FBI interview became available to the public, a reporter contacted Knowlton and showed him (for the first time) copies of his own FBI interview. He said that what the FBI had written was "a pack of lies" and did not properly reflect what he had told the Bureau. For what it is worth, Mr. Knowlton is a Democrat! At the time he was interviewed by the FBI (spring of 1994) he had a Clinton-Gore Campaign sticker displayed in his apartment (eight blocks from the White House).

Knowlton (with whom I have met on several occasions and for whom I have done some pro-bono work in connection with his allegations of witness tampering) was subpoenaed before the Washington , D.C, "Whitewater" grand jury in November 1995 (only after a newspaper article on him was printed). The day he was issued his subpoena, and for months afterward, he was severely harassed and threatened on the streets of DC. The technique used is a standard one to intimidate and discredit witness's testimony (identical techniques were employed in the 1960s to compromise civil rights activists, according to a book on Martin Luther King).

Knowlton has passed a lie detector test administered by a highly respected retired FBI polygraph expert (both as to what he saw in Fort Marcy Park and as to his harassment), has undergone a psychological evaluation that shows he is not delusional or paranoid, and has scored very well on memory tests.

Knowlton and his attorney have written a detailed Report of Witness Tampering (I reviewed three drafts of it and did what I could to ensure that the report was as accurate as we could make it). Knowlton's report is available from his attorney, John H. Clarke [(202) 332-3030]. I encourage you to obtain a copy of this report. I think it will knock your socks off! Patrick Knowlton should be a "poster boy" for the ACLU - any American interested in civil liberties should be outraged by what he reports. Happily, much of what happened to him was witnessed by news reporters and his girlfriend (a Ph.D. in Management), and documented contemporaneously in notes, tapes, and even photos.

I was present the first time Knowlton described his harassment in person to a live audience. They were quite impressed, both with the facts of his story and the way in which he related his experiences. I have done my own "due diligence" re Pat Knowlton. I do not have the resources the FBI could bring to bear but, for the nonce, believe Pat completely and also have come to consider him a personal friend.

In the Foster chapter of Grave Secrets, you wrote, of this witness's description of the vehicle, "A suit coat was neatly folded on the passenger's seat." This was the suit coat ultimately officially identified as Foster's (and matching the suit pants on Foster's body at Fort Marcy Park). However, the witness (Knowlton) says he told the FBI that the coat in question was draped around the back of the driver's seat (as if the seat back were a mannequin "wearing" the coat). This appears to be a trivial difference, but there is some coverage in my long report on the "migration" of the coat over time that afternoon and the potential significance of this movement.

Of the Confidential Witness's ("CW's") description of Foster's body [this witness is not Patrick Knowlton; I do know the Confidential Witness's name, phone number, home address, and have been by his house, but I will respect his request for anonymity, as did the US Government], you write "...he saw blood around the man's face." This is somewhat misleading, I believe. In his first FBI interview, the Confidential Witness stated that the only blood he saw was a small amount of dried blood at Foster's nostrils and a small amount of dried blood on Foster's lips. That's it. Later the FBI indicated that in another interview the blood CW had seen included some streaks of dried blood on Foster's face.

You write that Foster's "blood-spattered glasses were found more than eight feet away." There is no publicly-available document of which I am aware, that indicates there was any blood on the glasses. The Fiske Report does not so state, the underlying FBI Lab Reports do not so state, etc., etc. What is your source that states Foster's glasses were "blood-spattered?" This is an important point because the only official link that places Foster's glasses on or near his face at the time the official death gun was said to have been discharged into his soft palate is the presence of a single grain of powder of the same type found in the discharged cartridge [Fiske, page 42]. The enclosed report addresses this issue, and other issues related to Mr. Foster's glasses, in detail.

The glasses were found "more than eight feet away," though. Indeed, they were found nineteen feet down the slope from Foster's head ("up-range" - opposite the direction in which one could expect the head to move from the shot). Fiske says the glasses must have "bounced" down the slope. The "bouncing" hypothesis of Mr. Fiske has been tested many times on the slope in question by those who do not accept various aspects of the official reports.

Given the steepness of the grade, the exposed roots, and the vegetation at the official location of the body, "test" glasses don't bounce the way Mr. Fiske described, certainly not nineteen feet from the official location of Foster's head or upper torso. The Fiske Report itself is the only place, as far as I know, that indicates Mr. Foster's dress shirt had a pocket (Mr. Fiske states that the glasses could have been in Foster's shirt pocket and thus have been close enough to have the "ball-shaped" piece of powder - unburned?! - deposited on them from the fatal shot).

The official evidence reports and related documents are silent on this issue. What might we conclude if it turns out that Mr. Foster's shirt did not have a pocket? Do any of your sources have the definitive answer to this question? The shirt itself is presumably still being retained and a proper chain-of-custody still exists.

I note in passing that nineteen feet below Foster's feet places the glasses at the point where the slope changes - as one approaches the body site from the west, one is walking down a moderately steep slope. As one reaches the bottom of this slope, one starts to climb the 30-40 degree berm slope on which the body was found. Is it impermissible to speculate whether the abrupt shift from "downhill" to "uphill" might have dislodged Foster's glasses as he was transported up the berm slope, unconscious or dead? I know this will sound "out of bounds" to you, and I do not insist on this having happened. However, there are a number of other corroborating (or at least consistent) details on this point that are covered by the enclosed report.

Your Foster chapter goes on to state, ". . . the nearest building [to the body] the home of Saudi Arabia's ambassador, is located several hundred yards away." That is partly correct. The distance from the body to the front door of the Saudi Residence is ~240 yards [See Appendix I of the enclosed report]. However, this building is not the closest building to the body (or, even to the park itself, despite what Mr. Fiske said in his report at page 55).

The closest building is ~100 yards away from the body's official location some five yards to the west of so-called "Cannon Two." There are numerous buildings closer to the body than the Saudi Compound (see Map V in Appendix II). Indeed, one of the closer buildings to the body belongs to a current senior Democratic Senator who is not standing for re-election this fall. I make no connection between his home and Foster, but mention this point merely to indicate Fiske's error about the Saudi Residence.

Oh, by the way, I used aerial photos of the park to confirm these distances. Fiske had access to some aerial photo work done especially for his investigation (referred to by him in a letter to the Senate Whitewater Committee) - I wonder how, and why, he "blew" such a simple measurement since he made a conscious decision to make the "distance" point in his report.

A related point about the area around the park: press accounts often indicate that Fort Marcy Park was "out of the way" and "overlooked the Potomac River." I assume this information was provided the reporters to reinforce the image of Mr. Foster's having chose a bucolic setting in which to end his own life.

The park does not "overlook the Potomac" - in the sense that I can guarantee you the river cannot be seen from the park. If one climbed the tallest tree in the park and looked toward the Potomac in the dead of winter, the Potomac might be visible, but I am not even sure about that. As to it's being "out of the way," the park is surrounded by high-income subdivisions and it is a mere 5.5 miles (bearing 119 degrees) to the White House (on the other side of the river).

One of the nicest homes in the neighborhood (southeast of the official body site) belongs to Senator Ted Kennedy. There is no scenic overlook of the Potomac, or much of anything else scenic, where the body was officially found. In fact, the spot were Foster's body was officially found is, in my opinion, not a particularly attractive spot at all, especially in the hot dry summer months of 1993 with all the dust and exposed roots that are on west side of that berm.

Of the Confidential Witness, you write "he admitted that foliage around the body may have hidden the weapon from sight." He later described under oath how the FBI had gotten him to admit of this "possibility." The FBI refused to show him any photos of the gun in the hand, despite his requests. After his FBI interview, and under oath, the Confidential Witness, when shown a photo of the gun in the hand said "that's not what I saw." He also stated that he would have "run screaming from the room" if the FBI had shown him the photo. Why?

The FBI had gotten him to concede that he might have missed the gun if it were under Foster's upturned palm. The Confidential Witness had already told the FBI that Foster's hands (besides being empty) were both "palm up." The problem? The photo shows Foster's hand cupping a clearly visible gun, palm down. The photo shows the gun clearly visible in a hand that was palm down. That's why CW said under oath, "I would have run screaming from the room" if the FBI had shown him the picture in question during his FBI interview.

By the way, the lead US Park Police investigator also stated under oath that when he first saw the body, the hands were palm up:

Question: "When you first saw the body, can you describe the position the hands were in?"
Answer: "Like this." [Nice try! Did he know that sort of verbal response is useless?]

Question: "You are indicating palms up?" [Clarifying question from Senate attorney.]
Answer: "Palms up, [arms] down by the side."

Would it interest you to know that the first US Park Police Officer to locate the body has adamantly repeated under oath that when he located the body and examined it visually up close to make sure the person was dead that he never saw a gun, in Foster's hand or anywhere else at the scene. Bear in mind that this officer was supposed to "secure" the scene for the investigators who arrived about 20 minutes later.

He says in effect, yeah, the gun was there, I guess. . . But he is emphatic that he never saw it. He also was ordered out of the park within a few minutes of his arrival (not waiting for the investigators to arrive) and he never wrote a written report of the incident. He hired a personal attorney right after the incident for reasons his brother and sister officers could not understand.

As to the "foliage" over the body that made the gun hard to see, take a look at the photo of the gun in hand leaked in March 1994 [Appendix III of the enclosed report]. The gun is clearly visible. When the FBI interviewed the Park Police Investigator whose deposition I mentioned early in this letter regarding why the gun was not easily seen, he described how, after Foster shot himself, the bullet had severed a branch, causing it to fall over the body and obscure the gun! This statement to the FBI appears in the 389 pages of FBI handwritten interview notes obtained this March via a FOIA action.

No other witness mentioned a branch covering the body, let alone a severed branch, let alone a branch that had been severed by the very bullet Foster is said to have fired into his soft palate! The statement from the Park Police Investigator was recorded in the handwritten notes, but apparently considered so ludicrous and self-serving that it was not included in the typed FD-302 interview report, even though the handwritten notes were the sole official source of the content of the FD-302. Why did the Park Police Investigator believe he had to attempt this very injudicious sally with the Bureau?

You report in the chapter that you were told, "The gun is family owned." There is a huge amount of official information on the gun in the enclosed report that addresses the gun's ownership and many other issues. The first thing you need to be aware of re ownership of the gun is that the widow was presented with a blown-up photo of the official death weapon on July 29, 1993 (her first interview with the Park Police after the night of Foster's death). What did Mrs. Foster tell the Park Police about the gun? "She could not Identify it," says the Park Police interview report.

The interviewer's handwritten notes in my possession explain further: "Not the gun she expected it to be. Silver six-gun large barrel." Up to that point, Lisa had expected that Foster killed himself with a "silver gun" she had brought up from Little Rock. That is why, when she was presented with a photo of the black official death gun, "she could not identify it." For more on this see, the enclosed report, especially the May 1996 Article on Jim Stewart's book Blood Sport reproduced in Appendix IX of the enclosed report.

You comment in the chapter on what you told Roman Darmer: "... why was the medical examiner [Dr. Donald Haut] not immediately called to the scene to examine the body and the scene of the death, and collect and preserve the evidence properly?" A good question. However, you apparently are not aware that Dr. Haut told the FBI that he arrived at Fort Marcy at 6:45 PM EDT. The body was located by the Park Police at 6:15 PM EDT (nearest minute - time based on the locating officer's first radio call that he had found the body). For reasons of his own, Fiske chose to report that Haut arrived at the park at 7:40 PM (the enclosed report discusses what those reasons might be).

The arrival of the ME within 30 minutes of the police finding the body is certainly speedy enough by most standards, right? Strangely, Dr. Haut's written report was not made public. He made a number of statement to the FBI that are totally inconsistent with the content of the official reports. Here's a quick example of just one. The gun was removed from the hand, we are told, shortly before Haut arrived on scene. With only the body to observe, Haut told the FBI that he thought Foster had been killed with a "low-velocity weapon." Apparently, that is something of a term of art. Do you know what the phrase means? He also indicated to the FBI that he had seen more damage done to a head by a shot from a .22!

You wrote "Foster was depressed. His physicians [sic] said so." I have mentioned Dr. Watkins above along with some of his comments about Foster's state one day before his death. He is the only Foster physician that appears anywhere in the public record as far as I know. Who told you there was more than one Foster physician and do you have that doctor's name?

You wrote "Combine these circumstances with a bio-chemical predisposition to depression... " Do you have any evidence of such a pre-disposition? The only evidence on point of which I am aware comes from long-time friend and family doctor, Larry Watkins. Here is what he told the FBI on this issue: "Asked if he had known Foster to have suffered from any kind of depression before, Watkins advised that he had not..." To be charitable to the FBI here, I will assume that "before" refers to "before Foster's death" and not "before he shot himself because he was clinically depressed." Watkins continued: "Foster was not one to come to Watkins with stress-related problems." I assume one stress-related problem could be "depression."

Dr. Wecht, I appreciate your plowing through this letter. It turned out to be several times longer than I originally planned to write, but I decided to provide my comments on your chapter in an effort to stimulate some personal interest in what I have to say in the enclosed long report. I have been encouraging the government to release the thousands of pages it has on the Foster death investigation that have not been made public, just in case the answers to some of the questions I raise in my long report are in that material. Once the investigation is complete (whatever the outcome), I hope the government will release all the underlying investigative record, but I really rather doubt it will!

My initial impression of your Foster chapter in Grave Secrets is that someone has been giving you the wrong information (certainly they have been giving you information that, for whatever reason, I have not seen, though I am well-versed in thousands of pages of Foster-related documents that have been made public).

I welcome your comments. I am sure that some of my "pathological" concerns (no pun intended!) described in the report can be resolved by you without difficulty. I have no medical training and thus had to write my report from the point of view of the intelligent (I hope) layman!

I look forward to hearing from you at your convenience. If I may be of any help to you as you read the enclosed report, please do not hesitate to contact me.

I tried to write somewhat redundantly to ensure the facts I reported (and my analyses) were understandable - I am sure that is not always the case, but I hope you will bear with me as you read an amateur's efforts.

As you can see from the enclosed reports there are numerous specific cites to the official record to facilitate your own "due diligence" with regard to my report.

Warm regards,

Hugh Sprunt