WASHINGTON (AP) -- A senior FBI official pleaded guilty
to obstruction of justice Wednesday for destroying a report that
criticized the FBI's role in a deadly 1992 shoot out at the Idaho
cabin of white separatist Randall Weaver.
E. Michael Kahoe, who entered his plea before U.S. District Judge
Ricardo Urbina, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors investigating
other FBI officials involved in the case and whether they were
involved in a cover-up of the FBI's handling of the siege.
Cover ups are like cockroaches. Where there is one, there are likely to be hundreds. Once you tell a lie, it takes 3 more lies to protect it. Then several more to protect each of those, weaving an ever more absurd web of deception. That's what's called the "Conspiracy of mendacity".
Such a lie that requires ever more complex obfuscations is the lie that Vincent Foster placed a .38 revolver into his own mouth and pulled the trigger without getting any of his fingerprints or his blood on the gun or powder or bullet fragments from the gun into the wound. Long time readers will recall the absurd lengths that supporters of this myth have gone to to explain away this set of circumstances, ranging from a claim that sunlight erased Foster's fingerprints (but not the lone non_Foster print) to a claim that muscle spasms yanked the gun out of the way of the blood spray, but yet not to fast as to dislodge the gun from Foster's thumb. When faced with such questions as why Foster's prints aren't on the brass casings still in the gun, the supporters of the lie revert to dependence on "authority" and "established conventional wisdom". One lie promoter has gone so far as to publicly state that it's not to be considered a shame to be made a total fool of by the government. One should accept such an honor with dignity and pride.
However, the open admission that officials of the FBI (including the number 2 man under Louis Freeh) participating in a cover up in a case lends further credence to the matter of the silver gun.
For those who are new to this debate, a brief recap.
Vincent Foster was found with a .38 Revolver made by Colt Arms. It was built from parts taken from two other guns, and as a result had two serial numbers. The Frame number was 355055, and according to the records of the Colt Arms company (scanned and available at my website) the gun was manufactured with a standard blue finish.
In the Park Police record, the gun is describes as black. The accompanying photographs in the Park police report show a black gun. (Also scanned and available at my website.)
The photograph leaked by the White House to ABC-TV also shows a dark gun. Outside of a glint from the camera flashgun, the gun image is too dark to even detect the manufacturers blue color. One thing is quite clear, and that is that the sharp protruding edges of the gun, where the finish would wear off preferentially, show no signs of wear.
In all the Fort Marcy Park witnesses, in the Park Police, in the experts at the FBI and ballistics lab, the gun is never described as anything but dark blue or (more often) black.
No connection exists between that gun and Vincent Foster. Not even fingerprints.
Despite this, Robert Fiske (the ex-BCCI lawyer) inserted a comment on page 38 of his report on Foster a statement that Lisa Foster thought the gun found with her husband was one she had brought up from Little Rock Arkansas.
This statement came from an interview of Lisa Foster conducted by the FBI several months after the murder of Vincent Foster, under the watchful eyes attorney Jim Hamilton and Fiske's representative on the scene, Roderick Lankler.
In the original FD-302a report of the interview, as well as the handwritten notes (scanned and available at my website), the interviewing FBI agents describe the gun being shown to Lisa Foster as "silver colored", not just once, but several times. The gun is never described as dark blue or black. The FBI agents are not quoting Lisa Foster, they write down THEIR impressions of what is being said and done, and in their own words,"LISA FOSTER believes that the gun found at Fort Marcy Park may be the silver gun which she brought up with her other belongings when she permanently moved to Washington."
From both the FD-302a form (released as part of the first Senate Whitewater hearings) and the handwritten notes (pried loose via a FOIA lawsuit), it's clear that Lisa Foster was shown a gun she recognized as the gun she brought up from Little Rock, but it's equally clear that this is not the same gun as that found with Vincent Foster.
Once found out, this lie generated more lies to try to keep the cover up in place, including the ludicrous suggestion that Lisa Foster cannot tell silver from black, and that two FBI agents, and two lawyers heard and saw a black gun described as silver in writing and did not request a clarification or (as would be standard procedure) note the gun's serial number to preserve the chain of evidence.
One thing is clear, regardless of just exactly how the FBI's report came to describe a silver gun, it is utterly worthless in connection to the dark blued steel .38 found with Vincent Foster, yet that is precisely how Fiske chose to use it, paraphrasing (minus gun color, of course) Lisa's statement into his report to link the .38 revolver to Vincent Foster.
Today's newspaper carry official acknowledgement of a cover up by the FBI. We have here, in the FBI's own reports, hard proof of another.
