It's 6 months into the Clinton administration. Vincent Foster is tasked with completing the blind trust declarations, essentially a list of all the Clinton assets to be turned over to the trustees to manage during the four years of the Clinton Presidency. However, Vincent is in a bind. It seems that some of the Clinton assets do not bear close examination with regard to their origin, not to mention there being more of them than is widely believed. Worse, a certain family member wished to keep a cash reserve available with which to play the stock market. That this is precisely the sort of activity the blind trust is designed to prevent is, of course, a technicality. So the pressure is on Vincent to complete the trust declarations in a less than all-encompassing manner, leaving those slightly embarrassing assets off of the list and in the broker's accounts (via intermediaries, of course). That the blind trust is six months late proves there is a problem, and that the blind trust IS less than all encompassing is later to be confirmed by the testimony of Carolyn Huber, who lets slip that a file cabinet with (among other documents) insurance papers on the Clinton Condo is in the private residence, in violation of the blind trust.
The problem is, It's Vincent's neck if the fraud is ever revealed. Poor Vinnie has recently been stricken by a bout of integrity. It seems that what may have been acceptable actions in Little Rock was no longer so acceptable in Washington D.C. Vincent discusses resigning with his wife, Lisa Foster, and drafts a list of reasons to resign at his desk at home, then requests a formal meeting with Bill Clinton for Wednesday, July 21, 1993.
Needless to say, if Vincent Foster resigns without completing the blind trust, it will bring even more attention to the fact that the trust declarations are already 6 months late. It's bad enough that Hillary had use of her own investment capital while the Health Care Reform was playing yoyo with pharmaceuticals stocks, but an _intentional_ concealment of assets is another thing!
Finding another lawyer the Clintons can trust will take a long time, again bringing more attention to the troublesome trust declarations. Best for everyone if Foster completes the declarations himself, or at least appears to. If the latter, Foster can't be around to challenge the authenticity of his signature and paperwork. At this point, plans are made. Several phone calls to a psychiatrist are made from Foster's White House phone while he is out of the office. Bill Clinton has a long meeting with Louis Freeh.
From his actions in his office on the final day of his life, it's clear that Foster did not intend completing the trust declarations prior to resigning. According to the sworn deposition of his secretary, Foster read the paper and other minor "mark time" activities up until his departure after lunch.
On the weekend prior to his death, Vincent Foster and his wife head off for a small mini-vacation, to help Vincent cope with his recent stresses. Just by "coincidence", Webster Hubbell and his wife are also vacationing the same location, and while the women play tennis, Webster tries to convince Vincent Foster to "stay with the team". Foster declines. On the way back home, Lisa Foster notes that he is more stressed than before.
On Monday, Marsha Scott has a long private meeting with Vincent Foster. Again, she implores Vincent not to rock the boat. All Marsha will ever state to the press is that Vincent was struggling with "A decision" and the entire content of her FBI interview will be redacted, a fancy word that means "to edit".
Immediately following the meeting between Marsha Scott and Vincent Foster, a phone call is made from the White House to the Los Angeles home of TV Producers Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth Thomason, where Hillary Clinton is staying. Immediately following that phone call, it is announced that on the following day, Tuesday, July 20th, 1993, Hillary will fly from Los Angeles to Little Rock, instead of her previously planned return to Washington D.C. In the meantime, Clinton fires FBI head William Sessions and schedules an announcement for the next morning to announce that Louis Freeh is the new head of the FBI.
On Tuesday morning, Vincent Foster attends the ceremony announcing that Louis Freeh will be the new head of the FBI. On his way to or from the ceremony, he is observed passing a checkpoint by Secret Service guard Skyles.
On Tuesday afternoon after lunch, Vincent Foster leaves his office, saying he'll be back. At about the same time, White House spokesperson Dee Dee Myers is finishing a press conference. Dee Dee has, as they say, a "reputation" as a party girl (as do so many other female members of the WH press corps). Vincent is no saint; he's already been seen publicly grabbing Hillary's rear end and "deep" kissing her at restaurants. The Little Rock contingent seem to be swingers, for the most part. So, Vincent, figuring that nothing beats stress better than a lunchtime quickie and planning to resign tomorrow anyway, heads off to the WH basement with Dee Dee, where there are some old bedrooms off of a secret tunnel to the Treasury Building that often serve as trysting places. Vincent and Dee Dee are just warming up, getting Dee Dee's blond hair on Vincent's clothing, when Vincent is grabbed from behind by Clinton's gubernatorial head of security (and former Rodeo Clown) Raymond "Buddy" Young. Raymond has been implicated in many of the Arkansas "horrors", and was drug runner Barry Seal's contact at the Governor's mansion. As such, he stands to also go down in flames if the blind trust and it's connections to Mena come under investigation.
Raymond grabs Vincent in a headlock and snaps Vincent's neck. This leaves a trauma visible on Foster's neck, and also triggers a spontaneous ejaculation (normally associated with broken neck).
Dee Dee is a witness, and following July 20th, 1993 develops a drinking problem of monumental proportions which affects her work and eventually results in being arrested for driving while under the influence. Leon Panetta tries to fire her on several occasions, only to have Bill Clinton intervene without explanation. Finally she leaves the WH for another position, with the mainstream media.
Raymond Young and Craig Livingstone roll up Vincent's body in a carpet and carry it down the tunnel to the Treasury building. The door is locked from the Treasury side only. The carpet is impregnated with fine mica particles, as the older portions of the White House are insulated with mica insulation (common in New England). The mica flakes cover Vincent Foster's clothing. The carpet, with Foster's body in it, is loaded into a vehicle. Craig Livingstone grabs Foster's key ring. Raymond in the vehicle and Craig in Foster's car, head for Fort Marcy Park.
Following a path he has scouted the day before( where he was seen by a young woman), Raymond, aided by Craig, carry Foster's body into the park, lay it down on the berm, and fire a gunshot into Vincent Foster's mouth, using a silenced, small caliber gun.
But disaster strikes. The small caliber low velocity bullet, rather than penetrating Foster's skull, ricochets downward, exiting the neck near the right ear. This is clearly a NON-fatal wound.
Hearing footsteps, Young and Livingstone hide, while a passer by spots the body, but without a gun in the hands. The passer by leaves, and Young and Livingstone, now aware of the press of time, quickly place a "drop gun" with one fired bullet under Foster's hand and leave. It's intended that the drop gun be traded for a real gun from Foster's house later in the investigation. Either accidentally, or with the intent to copy them, Craig Livingstone still has Vincent Foster's keys in his pocket.
At this point, Raymond Young is done. On the next day, July 21st, the day Vincent Foster planned to resign, Raymond will be appointed the new director of the F.E.M.A. Southwestern region. In March 1997, he will become the number two man in F.E.M.A. returning to Washington D.C.
At Fort Marcy Park, Vincent Foster's body is examined by the paramedics, Park Police Sergeant John Rolla, and the Medical Examiner for Fairfax County, Dr. Donald Haut. Dr. Haut notes a "gunshot wound mouth-to-neck" on page two of his Medical Examiner's Report, but makes no mention of a gunshot wound out the back of Foster's head, even though (with Rolla's assistance) he rolls Vincent Foster over and makes an examination. What John Rolla saw at that point has been redacted (edited) from the official record. EMS Technician Richard Arthur also notes the gunshot wound to the neck, and describes it in his sworn deposition to the Senate Whitewater Committee. Arthur does NOT mention an exit wound out the back of Foster's head. EMS Sergeant Gonzalas never sees a gunshot wound out the back of Vincent Foster's head and EMS Technician Cory Ashford is convinced (and later testifies) that there is no such exit wound out the back of Vincent Foster's head. Dr. Haut's report authorizes an autopsy by Dr. James C. Beyer. Haut's report is sent to Beyer. John Rolla inserts the Polaroid photos taken at the crime scene into the case file and that too is sent to James C. Beyer.
Hillary Clinton arrives in Little Rock and immediately a flurry of phone calls occur between Hillary and various members of her WH staff. A special MIG team of technical experts is logged into the White House and Foster's safe, earlier locked, is suddenly found open. Foster's office is looted of billing records and blind trust documents. The hard disk is physically removed from his computer. Index documents are altered.
Craig Livingstone returns to the White House where (along with other staffers) he is seen carrying papers out of Vincent Foster's office. Among those papers are the billing records later to turn up in the residence with Hillary's fingerprints on them. Also gone are the records pertaining to Clinton assets relating to the blind trust. A search is made for a suicide note. Despite a request from the Park Police to seal Foster's office, it is left open all night. Craig Livingstone goes to the morgue to make the official identification of Foster's body (a man he claimed he never met) and returns Foster's keys to Foster's pocket.
Park Police investigator John Rolla arrives at the Foster home to ask questions of Lisa Foster regarding the "suicide". There is no suicide note on the premises. On being told that Foster appears to have shot himself with his own gun, Lisa Foster asks for a description of the gun. On hearing that the gun is black, Lisa Foster abruptly terminates the conversation and leaves the room, because the only gun the Fosters have in Washington D.C. is the silver gun she herself packed and brought to Washington D.C. but she does not mention the silver gun to Rolla. Rolla notes Lisa's odd reaction in his report.
Webster Hubbell is informed of Foster's demise and is dispatched to the Foster house where, by his own testimony, he searches for Foster's gun (an odd thing to do with Foster lying dead in Fort Marcy Park, with gun supposedly clutched in hand). Hubbell is also looking for a suicide note or anything that might be construed as a suicide note and finds the partial resignation list Foster had written some days before.
Hubbell _knows_ that Vincent Foster has a gun because Vincent Foster's sister, Susan Foster Anthony, works in his office, and she, like Vincent, inherited part of their father's extensive gun collection. The problem is, that the gun in Vincent Foster's home is silver, making a swap for the drop gun impossible. The dark blued steel gun has not only been seen, but photographed, and is now, minus fingerprints, part of the official evidence. Lisa Foster is later shown a photograph of the dark blued steel gun and does not recognize it. Months later, she will be shown the silver gun and will be told that it's the gun found with her husband. She will then identify it as the gun she packed and brought to Little Rock. Robert Fiske will then claim that Foster owned the dark blued steel gun he was found with based solely on Lisa's recognition of the silver gun.
Meanwhile, the resignation outline, in Foster's handwriting, is altered with added paragraphs to make it read more like a suicide note. An attempt to add a signature is botched, however, and without another genuine Foster document to work with, the altered note is torn in a very odd fashion that removes the piece with the botched signature. Vincent Foster's fingerprints are not on this paper, oddly enough, but Bernard Nussbahm's are!
Vincent Foster is examined by Dr. Beyer. His autopsy report indicates that x-rays were taken, but he will claim none were. His toxicology report shows that there was no Diazepam in his flood, which the FBI will later contradict. The photos inserted into the case file by John Rolla vanish. The first page of Dr. Haut's report is altered, with a word erased and the word "head" typed in (the page two description is missed). At this point, the non-fatal neck wound seen by Dr. Donald Haut and EMS Technician Arthur (and possibly by Rolla) officially ceases to exist, and Dr. Beyer leaves blank the box for neck injuries on the wounds description page. In it's place, the official wound track from the mouth and out the back of the head, an exit wound that apparently did not exist at Fort Marcy Park, appears. Beyer's autopsy reports that there are no bullet fragments inside the wound track out the back of the head, an impossibility for a wound supposedly created by a soft lead unjacketed .38 caliber bullet.
Following his examination, Vincent Foster is shipped home to Little Rock and buried. Three days after his death, on paperwork bearing his purported signature, the Clinton Presidential Blind Trust is completed.
The follow up investigation into Foster's death is handed to Robert Fiske, a lawyer with strong ties to BCCI, in turn linked to drug money laundering and the CIA. Like Raymond Young, Robert Fiske has a vested interest in not allowing Foster's death to threaten the drug cartel and even goes so far as to assure everyone, on page 27 of his report, that the blind trust had nothing to do with Foster's "depression".
Louis Freeh gets the cleanup phase, harassing witnesses and altering testimony to fit the desired outcome of "suicide". Witness Patrick Knowlton eventually sues the U.S. Government and the FBI for harassment. His is hardly the only lawsuit, and revelations of FBI lab "errors" benefiting the prosecution in dozens of high-profile cases casts further doubt on the validity of the government's view of events.
Then, in March of 1994, in response to rumors that Vincent Foster met with foul play, the White House leaks one of the crime scene photos to ABC-TV who broadcasts it. In Los Angeles, an academy award nominated special effects expert just happens to see the broadcast picture, notices the complete absence of blood in the scene, and remarks to his wife, half in jest,"what an obvious fake!"
All hell then breaks loose! :)
