Lawyer loses appeal on Foster photos: Court rules Polaroids of dead Clinton staffer...

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Tuesday, June 25, 2002 | By Jon Dougherty

[bert]

Vince Foster is dead and gone.

His legacy to America is Free Republic. Many of us came here to discuss this very significant event in American History.

He did not suicide. He was murdered. Why?? we don't know.

[honway]

Democratic power broker under new press scrutiny
By Christopher Ruddy

FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW

WASHINGTON - Who did Vincent Foster and Webster Hubbell meet the weekend before Foster's death in July 1993? Nathan Landow.

Landow, a real estate mogul, has been a Democratic party power broker for decades. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter nominated him for an ambassadorship to the Netherlands, but Landow withdrew in the wake of press reports linking him to organized crime figures.

Landow has been thrust front and center in the current Zippergate scandal involving President Bill Clinton. Press reports say Kathleen Willey, who dramatically told "60 Minutes" her story of an improper sexual advance by the president, alleges Landow pressured her to keep quiet about the matter. Willey alleges Landow last fall had her flown on a chartered jet to his coastal estate in Easton, Md., where he requested that she simply deny anything improper had taken place.

Landow, while acknowledging he met Willey at his estate, has denied he tried to persuade her not to tell the truth.

This is not the first time Landow's close ties to the Clinton White House have come under press scrutiny.

A year ago, the Washington Post reported that Landow and Peter Knight, another confidant of Vice President Al Gore, had pressured two Indian tribes to pay lobbying fees to them in the tribes' efforts to regain lands from the federal government.

The Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt also reported that Landow had sought to involve Webster Hubbell, then under investigation in the Whitewater case, in a money-making real estate deal.

Starr's office has been investigating whether Clinton administration supporters swayed contracts and fees to Hubbell in order to buy his silence during Starr's Whitewater probe.

In a letter to the Journal dated March 20, 1997, Landow denied Hunt's report. "I barely know Mr. Hubbell and have never had a discussion with him concerning business of any kind, nor have I participated in any group that has done so," Landow declared.

Landow's letter didn't mention at least one contact with Hubbell. Hubbell, Foster and their wives spent part of the weekend before Foster's death at Landow's Maryland estate, along with Landow's daughter and son-in-law, Harolyn and Michael Cardozo.

Foster's widow, Lisa, told FBI investigators probing his death that the weekend trip was nothing more than a rare opportunity for the couple to take a break. In fact, it was their first weekend together since Foster moved to Washington, and going into it the pair had no set agenda and no plans to see the Hubbells.

The Fosters received a call from Hubbell's wife that Saturday inviting them to join the Cardozos at Landow's house.

The Fosters did so, and Hubbell initially described the weekend to the FBI as not having anything to do with Foster's concerns about White House matters. "Foster spent his time reading the paper, boating, hitting some golf balls and being introduced to eating fresh crab," Hubbell's 1994 statement to the FBI reads.

The Fosters' invitation seems to have been hastily arranged.

On Saturday morning, Hubbell was at the Justice Department for a meeting with Attorney General Janet Reno, White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum and FBI Director William Sessions. Reno, Hubbell and Nussbaum demanded that Sessions resign as FBI director; he refused to do so.

After the meeting, Hubbell and his wife left for the Maryland shore and arrived there during the mid-afternoon. Apparently, one of the Hubbells' first orders of business upon beginning their belated weekend was to call Foster.

Their invitation probably didn't spring from loneliness. The Hubbells already had the company of the Cardozos and Landow himself.

Cardozo, a Washington lawyer and power broker in his own right, later went on to head up Clinton's first legal defense fund.

Hubbell later told a Senate committee and wrote in his book, "Friends in High Places," that the weekend getaway occurred while administration colleagues were concerned about Foster, the deputy White House counsel.

Hubbell testified at the Senate hearing that Foster feared his phones were tapped. In Maryland, Foster indicated to Hubbell that "we really need to talk" but suggested they do so in a "park somewhere" when they returned to Washington.

Hubbell also acknowledged that upon arriving at the White House the Monday after the weekend he first reported to Chief of Staff Mac McLarty. According to Hubbell, McLarty's first queries were about Foster. "A lot of us are worried about Vince," Hubbell quoted McLarty as saying.

Hubbell and the official reports of Foster's death remain fuzzy as to why White House officials including McLarty were so concerned about Foster, especially after he told Hubbell he had an enjoyable weekend.

Independent Counsel Robert Fiske and Starr, his successor, developed detailed reports on Foster's state of mind and the factors they concluded led to his death in Fort Marcy Park.

There is no public record that they interviewed the Cardozos or Landow about Foster's last weekend to ascertain whether the get-together had any hidden purpose. - -

[kcvl]

WASHINGTON POST, January 26, 1978: Two prominent Washington investors [Nathan Landow and Smith Bagley] with connections to the Carter administration were involved in a proposal to build a hotel and gambling casino in Atlantic City, with Washington gambling kingpin Joe Nesline as a consultant. Nesline's involvement with the casino venture became known Jan 14 when federal and local police raided Nesline's Bethesda apartment. . .

FBI agents seized a file containing and memoranda spelling out a proposed $85 million deal involving Bagley and Landow... [It] was not the only gambling venture in which Nesline had been involved with Landow... Involved in the St. Marten venture were Landow and Edward Cellini, a brother of Dino Cellini, a former associate of organized crime figure Meyer Lansky...

In November... [t]he party at [the] Landow home was observed by Montgomery County plainclothesmen, who took down license plate numbers of guests' cars. Officers of the county's organized crime section have had Landow under surveillance for nearly a year. They learned from Florida police that Landow had an interest in a now defunct corporation whose concealed owners allegedly included an identified member of the Carlo Gambino Mafia "family."

Secret Service agents who were at the party to protect the president's son, questioned the Montgomery County plainclothesmen who explained their interest in Landow.

[honway]

Director Fired, 1993 -- Judge William Sessions is the first FBI director in American history to be fired. Clinton fires Sessions and immediately replaces him with White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum crony, Louis Freeh. Nussbaum later resigns after evidence emerges he obstructed Foster death investigation.

Vincent Foster Death Investigation, 1993-? -- The day after Sessions is fired, Clinton friend and White House aide Vincent Foster is killed.

[kcvl]

July 2: The White House issues a report on the travel office, written by outside auditors. Although the report does not criticize Foster directly, it says his office could have averted the incident but failed to do so. (Why this big attention on the travel office matter to the exclusion of everything else?

Foster really had nothing to do with the travel office, but he was--quite illegally--working on the Clinton's private finances, apparently hung up on getting their investments into a blind trust, something that, by law, should have been done before Clinton assumed office. In that illegal capacity for a government employee, Foster probably knew more about the Clinton family finances than any man then alive, and he is now safely beyond subpoena.

Notice, too, that there is no mention of Foster's meeting with Deputy Attorney General Webb Hubbell and Nathan Landow at Landow's Eastern Shore estate just two days before Foster died. There is also no mention of the curious one to two hour closed-door meeting with Clinton political fixer Marsha Scott the day before he died. Scott claims not to remember what they talked about. Landow was never interviewed by anyone, either in the government or the press.)

[kcvl]

Landow's closest connection to Clinton is son-in-law Michael Cardozo, who ran the now-defunct Clinton legal trust. He is married to Landow's daughter Harolyn, who worked with Willey as a White House volunteer in 1993.

Landow says he considers Willey a friend of the family, and did fly Willey to his estate on the eastern shore of Maryland for a two-day stay.

But Landow told CNN it was Willey, not anyone at the White House, who asked him to do that, and he denies trying to influence her testimony.

[kcvl]

Michael Copperthite was called before the Alexandria grand jury. Copperthite is a Democratic consultant who ran up against curious Clintonista figure Nathan Landow who allegedly put the squeeze on him in connection with efforts to get Clinton administration support for an Indian land claim. What's that got to do with anything? Only that Kathleen Willey was flown in a private plane from Richmond to Landow's eastern shore estate where she also got the Landow treatment on how she was going to handle Clinton's alleged sexual assault on her in the Oval office.

[thinden]

an autopsy of Foster's body by the Fairfax County (Va.) Medical Examiner's office, "preliminary results include the finding that a .38-caliber revolver, constructed from two different weapons, was fired [into] the victim's mouth with no exit wound," the FBI report said.

does anybody remember the fibbers admitting the was no exit wound before?

[aristeides]

I've never understood how Clinton was able to fire Sessions. Isn't the reason an FBI Director has a 10-year term precisely to avoid a political firing? Granted, some charges of impropriety were being made against Sessions, but they struck me as penny-ante stuff, and I could never understand how anybody could think they justified Sessions's firing.

[honway]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/whitewater/docs/fosterviii.htm

Interesting catch, that's the first time I have read that there was no exit wound.

D. Search for Bullet

During the Park Police, Fiske, and OIC investigations, searches were conducted of Fort Marcy Park for the bullet that caused Mr. Foster's death.

On July 22, 1993, four Park Police personnel (Hill, Johnson, Rule, and Morrissette) searched with a metal detector the immediate area where the body was found. Their search for the bullet was unsuccessful.

Investigators in Mr. Fiske's Office conducted a search in the area where Mr. Foster's body was found. Their search for the bullet fired from Mr. Foster's gun was unsuccessful.

With the assistance of Dr. Lee, the National Park Service, and a large number of investigators, the OIC organized a broader search of Fort Marcy Park for the fatal bullet. The search was led by Richard K. Graham, an expert in crime scene metal detection. The search plan was devised utilizing information obtained through ballistics tests performed by the Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland.

[Fred Mertz]

That's interesting. I vividly recall that Fort Marcy Park was searched meticulously with metal detectors in search of the missing bullet. They found lots of interesting Civil War artifacts to include balls of ammo from that era.

[honway]

I've never understood how Clinton was able to fire Sessions

Neither could I. And why was Congress silent on the violation of the law they passed esatblishing the term for the Director of the FBI?

[berned]

Allan, thanks for your tireless work. You know what argument I would use in your appeal of this decision?

I would simply say that if some day, new evidence arose that re-opened the Vince Foster case (like maybe Fuhrman's upcoming book) and it turns out that Foster WAS indeed murdered, then every court and judge that ruled these polaroids be kept secret will be seen, and mentioned in the history books, as being part of the government-orchestrated coverup.

Just a thought.

[honway]

Favish says that last photo is particularly at issue, because an earlier published report claimed the existence of a neck wound on Foster's body that contradicts an FBI memo written two days after the deputy counsel's death.

If there was no exit wound from the head, then maybe there was a search for the bullet related to the possible neck wound.

The neck wound would explain why the photos are not being released.

[rdavis84]

"They learned from Florida police that Landow had an interest in a now defunct corporation whose concealed owners allegedly included an identified member of the Carlo Gambino Mafia "family."

Branson was Big on that for a while. Strangely enough, the records in the Sec. State system became "invisible". But Hard Copies exist elsewhere :-)

[cake_crumb]

"Favish says that last photo is particularly at issue, because an earlier published report claimed the existence of a neck wound on Foster's body that contradicts an FBI memo written two days after the deputy counsel's death."

...Which is probably why that photo wasn't released. I hope Favish appeals.

[rdavis84]

Remember my mentions of Benvenista's visit here?

[cake_crumb]

"Who did Vincent Foster and Webster Hubbell meet the weekend before Foster's death in July 1993?"

Guess we'll never know because they are both conveniently dead. Like sooooo many others who turned coat on the Clintons.

[rdavis84]

Sorry, meant last to be to you.

[nutmeg]

bump