[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 89 (Tuesday, July 12, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      QUESTIONS ABOUT FISKE REPORT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, for some time I have been very 
concerned about the investigation by the special counsel, Mr. Fiske, 
into the Whitewater affair, Vince Foster's death, and possible money 
laundering of drug money through the Arkansas Development Financial 
Authority.
  One of the reasons I am very concerned about Mr. Fiske is he was 
connected to Mr. Clark Clifford and BCCI. He represented him during 
that investigation. He represented the International Paper Co. when $10 
million in Arkansas Financial Development Authority funds was loaned to 
the International Paper Co. He represented them when 500-plus acres of 
land was sold by the International Paper Co. to the Whitewater 
Development Corp. Mr. Fiske recommended Bernie Nussbaum to be the 
associate counsel to Mr. Walsh during the Iran-Contra investigations. 
And Mr. Fiske recommended Louis Freeh to Mr. Nussbaum, then the 
Assistant to the President of the United States, Mr. Clinton, to be the 
head of the FBI. All of these things took place, and yet the head of 
the Justice Department decided to make him the special counsel to 
investigate the Whitewater affair.
  The first report came out this week, and it dealt with the death of 
Vince Foster. Mr. Fiske said that he was convinced that Mr. Foster did, 
in fact, take his own life and that the overwhelming weight of evidence 
compels this conclusion.
  However, there are a lot of questions that have not been answered, 
answers that we as a Congress and the people of this United States need 
to have.
  First of all, there was a witness, a witness who stopped by the park 
to go to the bathroom, and he walked up into this area and he saw this 
body. And this gentleman that went up to this area said he looked at 
the body quite closely, and he noticed the head was straight up and 
that the hands were at the side and there was no weapon anywhere. He 
did not see a gun in either hand.
  As a matter of fact, Gordon Liddy interviewed this man, and that is 
what this man said. He stated that in his opinion if a shot had been 
fired, it would have been heard by the guards across the road at the 
home of a Saudi Arabian, whose home he observed near the cannon. The 
witness said he had not seen such a photograph where there was a gun 
and appeared surprised, stating he observed both hands of the body and 
neither had held a gun. This is an eyewitness who was there and saw 
firsthand the body before anybody else did.

  He was emphatic that there was no gun there. Yet on page 31 of the 
Fiske report in a note at the bottom of the page, Special Counsel Fiske 
said he wanted to test the veracity of the confidential witness. He 
concluded, based on information provided by the witness never mentioned 
in any public accounts, this witness was accurate and genuine and the 
first person to discover Mr. Foster's body. But the witness' certainty 
about the lack of any firearm is dismissed in the report by Mr. Fiske 
as a mistake. The witness, we are told, was standing in a position from 
where he could not see Mr. Foster's hand. Yet before and after this 
investigation, the witness said he did see both hands and there was no 
gun in either hand.
  Most of the glaring problems in the Fiske report are the questions 
not asked. The FBI lab found blonde or light brown hair on Mr. Foster's 
clothes which did not belong to Mr. Foster. Who do those hairs belong 
to? Similarly, carpet fibers were found on Mr. Foster's clothes. What 
is the origin of those fibers? Could identification of this evidence 
help us to determine where Mr. Foster spent his last afternoon before 
he was killed or committed suicide?
  All of us who have been watching the preliminary hearings on murder 
charges against O.J. Simpson are aware from several days of testimony 
that the technology exists to test all sorts of material at a crime 
scene. I believed tests of the hair and fiber found on Mr. Foster could 
go a long way to answering questions which continue to be raised about 
his death.
  The problem is that many of these questions are left unanswered and 
unasked by Mr. Fiske. The blood trails leading from Mr. Foster's body 
would seem to defy gravity. His head was lying on the side of his 
shirt, because the blood coagulated on his face and shirt. Yet when 
they found the body, the face was straight up. Dead men do not move 
their head. Somebody moved the body. Who moved the body? Mr. Fiske 
needs to start asking these questions and instructing the FBI to get 
these answers.
  I have been skeptical about a lot of the other things. For instance, 
not only was there hair on Mr. Foster's body and carpet samples, there 
was semen in his shorts. And the question is, did he have some sexual 
activity that afternoon? If so, where did that take place? And whose 
hair was the blonde hair found on his body?
  These questions have not been asked. Yet they say that Mr. Foster 
committed suicide at that location. The fact of the matter is when they 
dug around the body to find bone fragments, they found no bone 
fragments in the skull. They could not find the bullet. Yet they were 
there for several weeks. The fact of the matter is there are more 
questions to be answered. Mr. Fiske, the special counsel, needs to be 
taken to task until he gets those answers.

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