[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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