[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 99 (Tuesday, July 26, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: July 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT VINCENT FOSTER'S DEATH
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Long). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the Chair recognizes
the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] for 60 minutes.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Today the Whitewater hearings started, and
everybody in the country is very interested in what is going to come
out of those investigations.
{time} 1930
The first vote that was taken in the committee was a vote on the
investigation into the former assistant White House counsel Vincent
Foster's death, and whether or not that should be discussed at these
hearings.
The vote went along party lines, exactly, and the Democrat majority
on the committee voted not to include any of the events surrounding Mr.
Foster's death in the hearings.
The reason they did that was because the report that was put out by
Mr. Fiske, the special counsel, indicated that Mr. Foster's death was a
suicide, there was no doubt about that, and that it was totally
unrelated to the Whitewater investigation.
Tonight what I want to do, Madam Speaker, is to ask some questions
and go into some of the information that I have found over the past few
weeks regarding Vince Foster's death and some of the questions that are
not answered by the Fiske report.
In my opinion, the Fiske report leaves glaring holes in the
investigation, and I think it is totally inaccurate in many ways.
First of all, on July 20, 1993, Vincent Foster left his White House
office at 1 o'clock p.m. He was later found dead by a confidential
witness, a gentleman driving a white van who stopped at the park and
wandered through and came upon his body near a cannon. He discovered
the body of Vince Foster at 5:45 p.m.
Emergency medical service personnel discovered the body shortly after
they were informed there was a body in the park by park personnel, that
had been informed of Mr. Foster's body being there and his death by the
gentleman called the confidential witness driving the white van.
Now, the confidential witness on March 27 of this year, because he
read some misinformation in the newspapers and heard it on television
and the radio, called G. Gordon Liddy, because he thought Mr. Liddy was
a person that he could trust, and he called Mr. Liddy and he met with
Mr. Liddy at his home, and they talked over the kitchen table and went
into the entire story of how he found Mr. Foster's body and what
happened out there that day and what he saw.
After I read Mr. Liddy's report and heard about it on the radio, we
started checking into the death of Vince Foster, and we found a lot of
inconsistencies, as I said, in Mr. Fiske's report and what actually we
believe happened.
Mr. Liddy, I talked to him several times, and he finally agreed to
try to set up an appointment with me with the confidential witness. The
only people that had talked to this person who found the body was Mr.
Liddy and later the FBI, between March 27, when he was interviewed by
Mr. Liddy, and July 21, when I interviewed him at his home.
The FBI met with him and went into a discussion with him for about 2
to 3 days. The confidential witness told me and Mr. Liddy that he came
to within 30 inches, 2\1/2\ feet, of the body. He said he leaned right
over and looked right down into Mr. Foster's face. He was not on a berm
some feet away, he was directly over Mr. Foster's body.
He stated very specifically that when he looked at Mr. Foster's body,
his head was looking straight up, facing straight up, and that the
hands were at his side with the palms up, and there was no gun visible
in either hand.
Now, the Fiske report, this report, quotes the confidential witness
as saying that he may have been mistaken. That there may have been a
gun in Mr. Foster's hand that he did not see because of the dense
foliage and the position of the hand.
Now, when I went out to his home and talked to him about this, this
is what the confidential witness told me. He said the FBI agents
pressed him on the issue of the gun, asking him as many as 20 or 25
times if he was sure there was no gun in the hand. According to the
confidential witness, the FBI said, what if the trigger guard was
around the thumb and the thumb was obscured by foliage and the rest of
the gun was obscured by the foliage and Mr. Foster's hand. The
confidential witness responded, he told me, he said well, I suppose
that if the only thing was the trigger guard around his hand, and I
suppose if it was lying like that with a leaf over it, I might not have
seen that, and the gun might have been underneath the back of his hand
and some foliage on part of it, there is a possibility that I wouldn't
have seen it, because I didn't count the fingers.
But the palms were up and the head was straight up.
Now, when I talked to him about this, he restated that. And he had
not seen a copy of the picture of the crime scene or the picture of Mr.
Foster's hand. So there was a picture that we took from ABC news that I
showed to this gentleman, and when he saw it, he became visibly angry
and he told me that that was not what he saw at the crime scene,
because the picture shows the gun in the hand underneath the hand with
the palm down, and the gun partially obscured by Mr. Foster's body.
He said time and time again to me, that couldn't be that way, that
was not the way it was, because both of the palms were up, there is no
question about that. I saw no gun, and the head was straight up.
He also told me that at the bottom of the body, the vegetation had
been trampled down like somebody had been walking or messing around
that area for some time. He also told me that there was a wine cooler
bottle near Mr. Foster's body, and that was never mentioned in the
Fiske report.
Now, why was there no mention of this in the report, and why did the
FBI and Mr. Fiske go to such lengths to say maybe the gun was obscured
by some leaves or something? The gentleman that saw the body said very,
very clearly, there was no gun in the hand, the palms were up and the
head was up. And in that situation, the body had to have been moved by
somebody.
Now, regarding the head, Mr. Fiske said that when the emergency
personnel got there to investigate the crime scene, they must have
moved the head. The fact of the matter is, the head was moved before
they even got there, because the confidential witness said that he saw
the head facing straight up.
Now, there was a blood stain on the victim's cheek and a blood stain
on his shoulder, and the report of the forensic expert said that the
head had to be against the shoulder. It could not have been straight
up. So how did his head get straight up? Because dead people do not
move their heads. Somebody had to move that body. Somebody had to move
the hands and somebody had to move the head.
In addition, in the report Mr. Fiske said that maybe one of the
emergency personnel moved the body, but he did not ask any of the
emergency personnel if they touched the body. Nobody admitted to
touching it. Everybody said they didn't. So how does Mr. Fiske in the
report say that somebody moved the head, come to that conclusion, when
the confidential witness, the first person on the scene, said it
was straight up?
Now, the FBI did not find the bullet or skull fragments at the park.
On July 20th, 1993, the Park Police conducted a search for the bullet
that killed Vince Foster using one metal detector and walking around
that area of the park. They didn't find anything. They didn't find one
bullet, they didn't find one mini ball, they didn't find one belt
buckle.
One year later, 9 months later, the FBI went out there with 16
experts and they used modern day technology, and they found not one,
not two, but 12 bullets, none of which were Mr. Foster's, the bullet
that killed Mr. Foster, and they found all kinds of other things,
including civil war mini balls. Why is it that for 9 months nobody
found any of this evidence? The Park Police said they looked for it
with metal detectors, but they didn't find anything.
In addition, the FBI 9 months later searched around the body, dug to
a depth of 18 inches, and found no bullet or bone fragments.
Now, why wasn't the bullet that killed Vince Foster found in that
park? I talked to some forensic experts and ballistic experts in
California. They told me that the maximum distance that bullet could
have traveled after it left his skull was no more than 12 to 1,600
feet. With all the technology that they had and all the time they spent
out there, they should have been able to find that bullet.
Here is an interesting thing. He had the gun in his hand, but there
were no fingerprints on the gun. How in the world can a person commit
suicide using a gun and there be no fingerprints on the gun?
Now, the argument is used by the special counsel that the heat of the
day caused the fingerprints to melt off of the gun, that the sun and
the heat caused extreme heat and that caused the fingerprints to be
melted off.
I went out there. I walked all over that site. That site is
completely covered by trees. There is all kinds of foliage above where
the body was found.
{time} 1940
It was found in a fairly cool area of the park. Those fingerprints
could melt off that gun. I also talked to other forensic experts that
said, even if that were the case, there still would have been some
residue that could have been picked up, some fingerprints that could
have been picked up by good forensic technology and experts.
Even if you went along with there not being any fingerprints on the
gun, they found an alleged suicide note in his briefcase torn into 27
pieces. There were no fingerprints on any of the 27 pieces. It was not
out in the sun, this suicide note or alleged suicide note. How did the
fingerprints get off of that?
They said there was no dirt on the shoes, yet he walked over 200
yards from the parking lot into the park. When Foster's clothing was
examined by the FBI lab, it said it did not contain any coherent soil
but they did find some particles of mica, like off of leaves on his
clothing and his shoes, which is consistent with the mica in the park
at Fort Marcy Park.
The Fiske report states that it was a dry day on which he died and
that the foliage leading up to and around Foster's body was dense. It
concludes that it was unlikely there was a great deal of exposed moist
soil in the park that soiled his shoes. He would have had to walk a
long way from his car to that second cannon, it is the furtherest
cannon in the park. On a dry day his shoes would have been stained
either by grass or dirt. So why was there no dirt or grass found on
either one of his shoes?
There was a blond or light brown hair, blond and light brown hairs on
his chest, on his T-shirt. They did not match Mr. Foster's hair.
In response to a question from Robert Novak, a noted columnist, Mr.
Fiske said that ``while we have not concluded where the blond hair came
from, there is no evidence to suggest that it provides any evidence of
circumstances connected to the death.'' How does he know that? How does
he know that? Because of these conclusions that they jumped to in this
report. There were also carpet fibers all over the body on all parts of
his clothing; there was carpet fibers on his jacket, his tie, his
shirt, his shorts, his pants, his belt, socks and shoes. The FBI made
no effort to trace the origin of the hair or the red wool fibers found
on Mr. Foster's clothes. Why did not Mr. Fiske attempt to find out who
the hair belonged to and where these carpet fibers came from and why
would Mr. Fiske assume that this evidence was not relevant to the
investigation without first investigating it?
Almost every homicide detective or department in the country will
tell you, when you go to a crime scene like this, you assume it is a
murder, a homicide until you prove otherwise. You do not assume it is a
suicide and then try to prove it is a homicide. You assume it is a
homicide or a murder and you try to prove otherwise.
Let me talk to you about the forensic experts. This is a very
important part of Mr. Fiske's report. He devotes 730 pages to the
credentials of the forensic experts. He does not devote any appreciable
space to the coroner, the only person that saw the body.
The forensic experts, the four of them that signed this report, they
based their conclusions almost entirely on the coroner's report 9
months earlier. They never saw the body, never visited the crime scene.
All they did was read the information provided by the coroner to come
to their conclusions, and they looked at some of the blood samples and
other things.
Now, the coroner was a man named Dr. James Beyer. And on two previous
occasions, one in 1989 and one in 1991, he declared two deaths
suicides. I want to tell you about those two deaths.
According to the Washington Times, Dr. Beyer overlooked critical
evidence in the 1989 Timothy Easley stabbing and supported a police
finding that the death was suicide. The death was later changed to a
murder, homicide, after an outside expert, another forensic expert, Dr.
Harry Bonnell, noted that Dr. Beyer's original report contained glaring
errors, including a missing stab wound. He missed a stab wound in the
victim's hand and getting the color of his hair wrong. This gentleman
that did the report on Mr. Foster said, when he did this autopsy on
this Tim Easley, he said that, Tim had gray hair, when his hair was
dark brown.
Regarding the stab wound in the hand, Dr. Bonnell, the second
forensic expert said, ``I cannot understand how any competent forensic
pathologist could miss it.'' Dr. Beyer, the man that did the autopsy on
this fellow, and did it on Vince Foster, later said the cut on Easley's
right hand was consistent with a needle mark, though in his report he
did not even make mention of the cut or a needle mark.
Forensic pathologists are supposed to make notes of everything that
they see on the body. Dr. Bonnell also said it was doubtful that the
Easley stab wound into the chest had been self-inflicted because of the
angle. A good coroner would have caught that.
Eventually, it was later found that Easley's girlfriend, Candy
Wharton, was the killer and she admitted stabbing Easley. But he had
declared this a suicide and the autopsy report was completely wrong.
And it took a second expert to go in there and point out the glaring
mistakes made by Mr. Beyer, Dr. Beyer.
Now, in December 1991, another autopsy, Dr. Beyer ruled the death of
Thomas Burkett, Jr., as consistent with a self-inflicted wound. It was
a gunshot wound just like Vince Foster's into the mouth. He said this
was a suicide.
According to the New York Post, this second autopsy conducted, there
was a second autopsy on this body conducted by a Dr. Erik Mitchell that
detailed serious omissions in Dr. Beyer's autopsy.
This second autopsy came after the family complained about things
they saw at the funeral, and the body was taken out of the ground. They
exhumed it. It noted trauma and discoloration to this gentleman's right
ear, which could indicate he was beaten before a shot was fired into
his mouth.
Burkett's family noted that the ear was so disfigured and bloody,
they thought he had been shot there. Dr. Beyer never noted there was
any problem with the ear. Dr. Beyer also failed to identify a fractured
jaw which could also indicate that the man was beaten before he was
shot.
The second autopsy also noted that Burkett's lungs had not been
dissected during the autopsy. But Dr. Beyer said he had opened up the
man's chest cavity and looked at the chest. He lied. He did not do
that.
This is the man that did Vince Foster's autopsy. The second autopsy
also found no trace of gunpowder in the mouth. Dr. Beyer left blank the
section for powder burns on gunshot wound chart. So why did Mr. Fiske's
pathologists in the Vince Foster case base so much, if not all, of
their findings in their report on the conclusions of a medical examiner
who has been challenged, not once but twice in the last 3 years for
flawed autopsies and flawed reports? Why did Mr. Fiske's pathologists
base so much of their report on an autopsy of a medical examiner who
has a history of omitting important evidence from his autopsy reports?
The fact of the matter is, this report has so many holes in it you
could drive a truck through it and it is not worth much of the paper
that it is written on.
Yet the media of this country has said, this is a very thorough
report. It eliminates any doubt that Mr. Foster was killed someplace
else, and it proves that it was a suicide. Let us go back over this
real quick.
There were no fingerprints on the gun. Nobody explained whose hair
was on his body. They never found the bullet. The man who found the
body said that the head was straight up, the hands were palms up and no
gun was visible. When he saw the picture that was on ABC News, he said,
``that couldn't be that way. They have misrepresented what I saw. They
misrepresented what I saw.''
The Fiske report states that Dr. Beyer was unable to take x-rays of
Mr. Foster's head because his x-ray machine was broken. Yet in the park
police report, he says, that determining if there are bullet fragments
in the skull, he said in the park report, he says, that x-rays of Mr.
Foster indicated there was no evidence of bullet fragments in the head.
So he says that he took an x-ray in the park police report, but in Mr.
Fiske's report it says there was no x-ray. Now, who is right? I do not
know. But we ought to find out.
Determining if there are bullet fragments in the skull is very
important to determining how far the bullet would travel. Did Dr. Beyer
take x-rays of Vince Foster's head or did he not? If Mr. Fiske's report
is wrong, is that the case, or is it the park police report that is
wrong?
{time} 1950
Regarding the sound, there was a couple in that park probably 100 or
200 yards away. Across the street from the site where the crime was
committed is the Saudi Embassy residence. He has five security guards
in the yard at all times for security purposes; five, not one, two,
three, four, but five. One is in a little guard house, one is in a
mobile van, and the other three roam around. They watch that park all
the time. In fact, on occasion they go into the park when they think
there is something suspicious going on.
That residence is about 300 feet or 100 yards from the crime scene.
They did not hear a bullet sound that day. Nobody reported hearing a
bullet sound. The couple that was there reported not hearing any sound.
They said the reason for that is because when he put the gun in his
mouth and pulled the trigger, it probably muffled it, but I talked to
some experts in homicide who deal with this on a regular basis and they
say there would definitely have been a report or a sound from that kind
of a gunshot wound because of the revolver's cylinders that are outside
of the barrel of the gun.
We did an experiment yesterday morning. I had a homicide expert come
out to my home. We built up something that was similar to a head and we
put a 4-inch barrel of a gun, a 38, the same kind of weapon we are
talking about, into the mouth of this head-like thing we created. We
had people stand 100 yards away, the same distance as it is from the
Saudi Arabian ambassador's home. You could hear the bullet very
clearly. You could hear the gunshot very clearly.
Why did none of the five people that were on duty that day guarding
the ambassador's residence not hear a bullet sound, the shot? Why did
the two people in the park not hear the shot? It could very well be
because it did not happen there.
The gentleman that found the body said that he believes the body was
moved, because it was lying so straight. the people who came out, the
emergency unit that came out to investigate the body, said that it did
not look like anything they had every seen before, because the body was
so straight and laid so perfectly. There was very little blood around
the head. Usually when there is a gunshot wound to the head, there is
blood and bone fragments all over the place. There was none of that.
The Fiske report writes this off as a result of noise from traffic
and construction machinery operating around the residence. I might add
that when we did this experiment yesterday morning there was earth-
moving equipment all around the place making all kinds of racket, and
you still could hear the gunshot very clearly. If Vince Foster shot
himself at Fort Marcy Park, why didn't any of these guards hear the
shot?
In addition to that, he took a pager with him when he left the White
House. If you are going to commit suicide, why would you take a pager
with you? Why were there no fingerprints on the gun? Why did they not
find the bullet?
If the hand was in the position that the FBI said it was in, we put a
gun on our finger, on a thumb just like that, and the butt of the gun
would have been sticking up. There is no way the confidential witness
could not have seen it. We did that at this house. He said ``I would
have seen it. There is a question.'' There was no gun on that hand. The
hand was not in that position, and he was visibly angry.
The question is, why did Mr. Fiske say there is no connection between
Vince Foster's death and the Whitewater investigation? There are a lot
of questions about that. Vince Foster died at 6 p.m. on July 20. He was
found in that Fort Marcy Park. Shortly after 9 p.m. that night White
House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty was told about his death. McLarty
ordered Vince Foster's office sealed. He said, ``We don't want anybody
going in or out of there.'' He ordered the office sealed right after he
found out about it. However, the office remained unlocked until 11 a.m.
The next morning. Why?
During that time, less than 3 hours after Vince Foster's body was
found, three people went into that office: Bernie Nussbaum, President
Clinton's Chief Counsel; President Clinton's Special Assistant, Patsy
Thomasson; and Mrs. Clinton's Chief of Staff, Margaret Williams. They
went in there, and for 2 hours they took files out pertaining to
Whitewater, the income tax returns, and only the good Lord knows what
else.
Bernie Nussbaum said they were in the office for 10 minutes. The Park
Police said they were in there for over 2 hours taking files out. We do
not know what happened to those files, at least not all of them.
During his first search when they went in there, Whitewater files and
President Clinton's tax returns were removed, as I said before, and we
know many were turned over to David Kendall, president Clinton's
attorney. Incidentally, those should not have been in the office. That
is personal stuff and it should not have been in there under official
auspices, because Vince Foster was not his official attorney, he was
Assistant Counsel to the President.
White House officials did not confirm or even admit that this July 20
search took place in Vince Foster's office for almost 6 months. It was
not until people found out about it that they said anything about it.
Two days later evidently they did not get everything out of there that
they wanted, because on July 22, 1993, Mr. Nussbaum and other White
House officials went into Mr. Foster's office a second time, but by now
it had been closed. They collected more documents. Some were sent to
President Clinton's attorney, and others were sent to Vincent Foster's
attorney, James Hamilton. During the second search Mr. Nussbaum, citing
executive privilege, would not allow the Park Police or the FBI to come
in there with him. He said, ``We don't want you guys in here because
this is executive privilege.'' They do not know what he was taking out
of there.
However, Dee Dee Myers, the White House Press Secretary, said,
``Bernie,'' Mr. Nussbaum, ``went through and sort of described the
contents of each of his files, of what was in the drawers, while
representatives of the Justice Department, the Secret Service, the FBI,
and other members of the counsel's office were present.'' According to
another source over there, however, the FBI agents and the Park Police
were ordered to sit on chairs out in the hall while the White House
staff went through these documents. Mr. Nussbaum gave the FBI and the
Park Police no indication of what he was taking. One FBI agent stood up
to look in the room, and he was reprimanded and told to sit down,
citing executive privilege. The Park Police later discovered that
Whitewater records had been removed from Vince Foster's office during
the second search after they visited James Hamilton, Foster's lawyer, a
week after the death to review a personal diary that was also taken.
What was in that personal diary? Perhaps he could have told us whose
blond hair was on his chest and where he might have been, where those
carpet samples came from. We will probably never know.
Hamilton allowed Park Police to briefly inspect Vince Foster's diary
and other documents. However, he did not allow them to make copies,
citing privacy concerns, and he refused a request for access to the
diary and documents by the Justice Department. Mr. Fiske does not even
mention the diary in the report. He does not say anything about it. I
wonder why Mr. Fiske didn't mention that. Why did he not go into some
of the details there which might have shed light on the hair and carpet
samples, other things, where Mr. Foster was before he died?
On July 27, 1993, White House officials revealed that on July 26 they
found a note, supposedly written by Vince Foster, in the bottom of his
briefcase. it had no fingerprints. They said they had missed the note
in the first two searches. They went through all this stuff two times.
The third time they found 27 pieces of paper in the bottom of his
briefcase. It bore no fingerprints. It was unsigned and undated. I
wonder why it took so long to find that and why there were no
fingerprints.
Here are some questions we still need to have answered. I have been
accused of being a McCarthyite and compared to Joe McCarthy because we
are asking these questions. I would think any sound investigation would
want these questions answered.
When did White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty give the order to
seal Vince Foster's office? How was the White House staff informed that
the office was to be sealed, and why was the office not sealed until 11
a.m. the next morning?
Did Bernie Nussbaum, Patsy Thomasson, and Maggie Williams know about
the order not to go in there because it was supposed to be sealed? How
did they learn in the first place about Vince Foster's death? Did
somebody order Nussbaum, Thomasson, and Williams to search Vince
Foster's office, or did one of them make the decision to search the
office?
If someone ordered them to search the office, what were they told to
look for? If it was Nussbaum, Thomasson, or Williams' idea to search
the office, what were they looking for?
What would Hillary Clinton's Chief of Staff be involved in the search
of Vince Foster's office? I do not know what that has to do with the
First Lady and her Chief of Staff.
Why did they remove the Whitewater files, and what happened to all of
them? Were other documents taken?
Were other documents destroyed? How can we be sure, because they went
in there, even though the office was supposed to be sealed?
Where were the documents when they entered the office? Were they in
locked files or a safe? If so, how did they get those open?
Shouldn't they have left everything there for the police to examine
first? That is a clearcut question that should have been answered
clearly. They should not have been in there taking stuff out, not after
the mysterious death of one of the most important people in the White
House.
Instead of keeping the FBI from doing its job, shouldn't the White
House staff have been giving law enforcement their full cooperation
after their friend and colleague was found dead?
If Vince Foster was President Clinton's friend, and he was, why
didn't the President immediately order the FBI to take charge of the
entire investigation, instead of allowing the Park Police to take
charge? The Park Police has little experience in investigating
suspicious deaths.
Clothes of Mr. Foster were put in dirty paper, they were
contaminated, and the crime scene was not investigated properly. It was
a real mess, and anybody who reads this report would see there should
have been some more professional help out there.
Why were there no fingerprints on that note? What documents were
given to Vince Foster's attorney, James Hamilton, and what was given to
Clinton's attorney, David Kendall? Were any destroyed?
Who were all the White House officials involved in the second search
of Vince Foster's office? Did the White House staff have the legal
right to keep the FBI and the Park Police from searching Vince Foster's
office as part of an investigation into his death, as they did?
{time} 2000
Has the Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs requested the
telephone logs of Bernie Nussbaum, Patsy Thomasson, and Margaret
Williams for the period immediately following the Foster death until
the actual search of his office? If not, why did not the special
investigation which started today ask those questions? They did not ask
any questions. They just said we are not even going to talk about it,
we are not going to go into Foster's death because it is not related to
Whitewater. That is just baloney. We should know from these three
officials who they talked to and why right after his death.
Let us go down to the Rose law firm in Little Rock. Jeremy Hedges, a
part-time courier at the Rose law firm, told a grand jury that he was
told to shred documents from the files of Vince Foster after special
prosecutor Robert Fiske had announced he would look into Foster's
death. Fiske was appointed on January 20 and down at the Rose law firm
they start shredding these documents. Even before a subpoena is issued,
the law prohibits people from intentionally impeding an investigation
by destroying evidence they know investigators want. Yet they were
shredding these documents down there. In February, after Fiske served
subpoenas on the law firm's employees, Hedges and other couriers
employed by the firm were called to a meeting with Ron Clark and Jerry
Jones, two of the firm's partners. This is the Rose law firm now.
Jones, one of the partners, challenged Hedges, the courier, challenged
his recollection that he had shredded documents belonging to Foster and
cautioned him against relating assumptions to any investigators from
the FBI or anyone else. Hedges said, ``I shredded some documents of
Vince Foster's 3 weeks ago.''
Jones replied, ``How do you know they were Foster's? Don't assume
something that you do not know.'' And Hedges said he was certain they
were Foster's files because of the initials on the files. They were
Vince Foster's initials.
Jones then said, ``Well, don't assume they had anything to do with
Whitewater.'' They were trying to tell him not to say anything about
the shredding of the documents or that they had anything to do with
Whitewater. The box Hedges was told to shred had all its file folders
that were marked with VWF, Vince Foster's initials. None of the
documents he said he saw related to the Whitewater Development Corp.
but he was destroying hundreds of them very rapidly in a shredding
machine. However, another Rose employee told the Washington Times that
documents showing the Clintons' involvement in the Whitewater project
had also been ordered destroyed. The shredding reportedly occurred on
February 3, 1994. During the 1992 presidential campaign, three current
or former Rose law firm employees said that couriers from the Rose law
firm were summoned to the Arkansas Governor's mansion by Hillary
Clinton who personally handed over records to be shredded back downtown
at the Rose law firm. The shredding began after the New York Times
reported on March 8, 1992, the involvement of Governor Bill Clinton and
his wife in the Whitewater Development. Couriers made at least six
other trips to the Governor's mansion during the campaign and in each
trip they were given sealed, unmarked envelopes with instructions that
they were to be shredded at the firm. The shredding continued through
the November 3 general election. Records belonging to Webster Hubbell,
Vince Foster and William Kennedy III were also shredded. A current
employee said, a conservative estimate would be that more than a dozen
boxes of documents were ultimately destroyed.
I hope my colleagues will get this: James McDougal and his wife
Susan, who are now divorced, have said that they personally delivered
all of the Whitewater records to the Governor's mansion in 1987 at
Hillary Clinton's request. She had all the Whitewater documents taken
over to the Governor's mansion in 1987 and when this story broke in
1992 in the New York Times during the presidential campaign, she sent
them back to the Rose law firm for shredding. Then finally during the
presidential campaign the Clintons said that the records had
disappeared. And people, Mr. Fiske and others are saying, there is no
connection between Vince Foster's death and the Whitewater Development
project when he had all those records in his office and they were being
shredded down at the Rose law firm along with documents that had
already been shredded that were in the Governor's mansion pertaining to
the Whitewater Development Corp.
Why would the Clintons order that the records from the Governor's
mansion be shredded during the 1992 presidential election? Could it be
just a coincidence that the shredding began just after a March 1991 New
York Times article detailing Bill and Hillary Clinton's involvement in
Whitewater? Why would officials at the Rose law firm order a courier to
shred documents bearing Vince Foster's initials after Robert Fiske
announced that he would investigate Foster's death? That is impeding
justice.
Would not Vince Foster's former colleagues at the firm want to
cooperate in every way with an investigation into their friend's death?
Wouldn't Bill and Hillary want to? Who gave the initial order that Rose
law firm documents belonging to Vince Foster, Webster Hubbell and
William Kennedy be destroyed during the 1992 presidential election? Who
gave the initial order that Vince Foster's records be destroyed this
year after Robert Fiske was appointed special counsel? Who gave the
order that Bernie Nussbaum and Patsy Thomasson search Vince Foster's
office and remove files right after his death last July along with
Hillary Clinton's chief of staff? But the most damning thing that I
have talked about tonight is the confidential witness, because if Vince
Foster's body was moved, this report is not worth the paper it is
written on.
I believe that his body was moved. The head was straight up. Yet the
forensic expert said that was not possible because the cheek had to be
lying on the shoulder because of the bloodstains. But the confidential
witness who found the body said it was straight up before anybody got
there. Who moved the head? He said the hands were palm up and there was
no gun visible. He said he did not count the fingers and that is why he
told the FBI that if there was a ring around this thumb that might have
been obscured by a leaf and the gun was underneath the back of the hand
obscured by leaves, he might not have seen them.
He said, ``I saw the fingers, I didn't count all the fingers, and I
saw that the palms were up.'' When I showed him the picture of the gun
in Vince Foster's hand, he said, ``Oh, my gosh, that's wrong, it was
not like that at all.'' And he visibly got angry, because he said that
the hands had to have been moved after he saw the body and reported it
to the park employees who contracted the police.
How did that happen? If somebody took that body there and they saw
this guy coming up there, they probably hid because he was not
expected. And when he left, they knew there would be police all over
that place before too long. And he probably went back there and rammed
the gun on the hand and tried to get out of there as quickly as
possible. There was a wine bottle that was lost, that was never found.
If it was there, why wasn't it reported? It was probably taken away
because there might have been fingerprints on it. There were no
fingerprints on the gun. There were no fingerprints on the suicide
note. They did not find any brain or skull fragments at the site. They
did not find the bullet. The people around that area that were security
guards less than 100 yards away did not hear any shot. All of these
questions need to be answered. And the Fiske report does not answer
them. Now we have got this very narrowly defined Whitewater hearing
over there with the Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs and
they will not allow anybody to talk about this. They do not want this
brought up. In fact, they voted on party lines today to not allow this
to happen. My question is, why? Why are not these questions being
asked? And why are not they being answered. If there is nothing to
hide, there should be no reason why these questions are not answered.
Yet they do not even want to talk about it, folks. They say there is no
connection between Vince Foster's death and yet he was the personal
attorney for Hillary and Bill Clinton and he had the Whitewater files
in his office when he mysteriously died that day.
Documents were shredded after he died down at the Rose law firm with
his initials on them. During the 1992 presidential campaign they were
shredding documents that were related to Whitewater that were in the
Governor's mansion at Little Rock. Then they said they could not find
those documents relating to Whitewater. You have to be almost blind not
to see the connection.
I would just like to say to my colleagues, who I hope are paying
attention to this special order, and anybody else that is listening,
please check into the questions I have asked tonight. Do not take my
word for these things. Do not draw any conclusions like I may have
drawn. But at least ask the questions. I would like to say to any media
that might be paying attention, why are not you asking these questions
instead of just taking this thing at face value? Everybody says, oh, my
gosh, this thing is absolutely correct because of the credentials of
the forensic experts. But the four forensic experts that they talked
about, to which they devote 70 pages in this document, base their
report almost entirely on a coroner's report who has been guilty of
malfeasance in office twice in the last 4 years. They never saw the
body. They were not at the crime scene. They took the report right off
of the coroner's desk and took it at face value. And this guy has been
proven wrong on two murders that he called suicides in the last 3
years. It does not make any sense to me. I hope it does not make any
sense to my colleagues.
Lincoln said, ``Let the people know the facts and the country will be
safe.'' How about a few facts on this?
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Long). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentleman from New
York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60 minutes.
[Mr. OWENS addressed the House. His remarks will appear hereafter in
the Extensions of Remarks.]
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