Vince Foster was not only deputy White House counsel but also the personal attorney to Bill and Hillary Clinton. On the night of Foster’s death, top Clinton aides made a frantic effort to enter and remove documents from his West Wing office. In the days that followed, federal investigators were stymied in their investigation of Foster’s office and strange death.
The following happened within weeks of his death. Vince Foster finally files the missing Whitewater tax returns. On July 19, FBI director William Sessions is fired. Clinton personally orders him by phone to turn in his FBI property and leave headquarters.
That evening, Clinton security aide Jerry Parks’ wife Jane says she overhears a heated telephone conversation with Vince Foster in which her husband says, “You can’t give Hillary those files, they’ve got my name all over them.”
On July 20, Clinton names Louis Freeh as Sessions’ successor.
That same day, the FBI raids David Hale’s Little Rock office and seizes documents including those relating to Capital-Management.
Just hours after the search warrant authorizing the raid is signed by a federal magistrate in Little Rock, Vince Foster apparently drives to Ft. Marcy Park.
Foster was found dead of an apparent gunshot wound to the head in Ft. Marcy Park. His unoccupied car, a 1989 Honda, was found in the park’s parking lot. Several witnesses - before and after the arrival of the park police - have claimed they saw a briefcase in Foster’s car.
A so-called suicide note was found in an office briefcase that had been searched and found to be empty after Foster’s death. The note was torn into 27 pieces. Yet an FBI examination found no trace of Foster’s fingerprints on the note and three independent handwriting experts determined that Foster’s suicide note, was a forgery.
The Raid of Vince Foster’s Office
While the U.S. Park Police studied the body, Foster’s office at the White House was being looted.
Secret Service agent Henry O’ Neill watched as Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, Margaret Williams, carried boxes of papers out of Vincent Foster’s office before the Park Police showed up to seal it, yet the official identification of Vincent Foster’s body by Craig Livingstone did not take place until 10PM!
Another Secret Serviceman saw Craig Livingston remove items from Vincent Foster’s office in violation of the official seal. Witnesses also saw Bernard Nussbaum in Foster’s office as well. Three witnesses noted that Patsy Thomason, director of the White House’s Office of Administration, was desperate to find the combination to Vincent Foster’s safe. Ms. Thomason finally opened the safe, apparently with the help of a special “MIG” technical team signed into the White House in the late hours. Two envelopes reported to be in the safe by Foster’s secretary Deborah Gorham, addressed to Janet Reno and to William Kennedy III, were never seen again. When asked the next day regarding rumors of the safe opening, Mack McLarty told reporters Foster’s office did not even have a safe, a claim immediately shot down by former occupants of that office.
The next day, when the Park Police arrived for the official search of Vincent Foster’s office, they were shocked to learn that Nussbaum, Thomason and Williams had entered the office. Conflicts channeled through Janet Reno’s Department of Justice resulted in the Park Police merely sitting outside Foster’s office while Bernard Nussbaum continued his own search of Foster’s office. During this search, he opened and upended Vincent Foster’s briefcase, showing it to be empty. Three days later, it would be claimed that this same briefcase was where the torn up suicide note was discovered.
The boxes of documents removed from Foster’s office by Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, Margaret Williams, were taken to the private residence area of the White House! Eventually, only 54 pages emerged.
One set of billing records, under subpoena for two years, and thought to have originated in Foster’s office, turned up unexpectedly in the private quarters of the White House, with Hillary’s fingerprints on them.
So, who ordered the office looting?
Bill Clinton was unavailable, being on camera with Larry King. But Hillary Clinton, who had only the day before diverted her planned return to Washington D.C. to Little Rock, was on the phone from Little Rock to someone at the White House in the moments before the looting took place.
The death of Vince Foster is very unsettling. There is an amazing amount of inconsistent information surrounding his death, the investigation and the autopsy. And, of course, his close relationship with Hillary was intriguing. Many books have claimed that the two were lovers for several years.
To date, several unanswered questions still remain. What did the White House know and when did they know it? Another question: If Foster was not identified as a White House official until at least an hour and a half after police arrived, why were police officers associated with an elite federal unit on the scene within 45 minutes? Evidence suggests that White House officials were informed of Foster’s death, at least an hour before they claim to have been initially notified.
The FBI never officially investigated the case but simply signed off on the Park Police “probe.” The bureau had little choice.