Reproduced with permission of The Progressive Review, 1739 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20009, 202-232-5544, Fax: 202-234-6222. Editor: Sam Smith, ssmith@igc.org.

The Strange Case of Patrick Knowlton
December 9, 1996

One of the lesser known (to the public at least) techniques of intelligence agents is to intimidate individuals by repeated overt surveillance. This technique, part of the tools of that dark trade known as psychological operations, is "often used by government agents against witnesses," according to a former FBI agent now a private investigator. Here's how a retired Army intelligence agent describes what goes on:

"Intimidation is one purpose of a close, obvious surveillance. It can be done for any number of reasons, such as forcing someone to cease activities, move his activities out of the area, soften him up for future interrogation, and many other reasons.

"The surveillance team, trained in controlling human behavior, have no fears of the surveillance 'target' reporting his fears/observations, as this actually plays into the hands of those people. In fact, they want him to report that he is being mysteriously followed. This is to make him appear paranoid and thus destroy his credibility as a witness. Many times it actually cases the target to develop long term or permanent emotional/mental problems."

Patrick Knowlton is now in federal court charging that he was a victim of just such harassment by some two dozen men. The particular facts of the case make it a bit hard for the government to claim that he is fantasizing. These include the fact that some of the incidents were witnessed by his girlfriend and some by an investigative reporter.

Why would anyone wish to intimidate Knowlton, a self-employed construction worker? His case presumes that it was because he had accidentally showed up at Fort Marcy Park about seventy minutes before Vincent Foster's body was found there -- and saw things that did not fit with later official descriptions of the scene. Such as a man sitting in a blue-gray sedan giving him a fierce stare, a car with Arkansas license plates that did not match Foster's and items in that car including a briefcase, suit jacket and two bottles of wine cooler.

Knowlton reported what he saw to the Park Police, but it was not until nine months later that he was interviewed by FBI agents, who went to great lengths to get him to change his description of the car with the Arkansas tags. After a story in the London Sunday Telegraph a year and half later, Knowlton was finally subpoenaed by the Whitewater prosecutor. On the very day of his subpoena the intimidation allegedly began.

This is just the tip of the story, but enough to give you a flavor a major unsettling incident related to Foster's death that the media has almost entirely ignored. Knowlton is suing on the grounds of interference with his civil rights, assault, and civil conspiracy, among other things.