THE TRIAL OF VINCENT FOSTER
AIM REPORT APRIL-A 1995
THE TRIAL OF VINCENT FOSTER
The attention of much of the nation has been riveted on
the trial of O.J. Simpson as his "dream team" of high-
priced lawyers fight tooth and nail to convince a jury
that O.J. did not kill Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald
Goldman.
Simpson's lawyers are making heroic efforts to overcome
an avalanche of evidence pointing to their client's
guilt. They have left no stone unturned in their effort
to create reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors
and the public. They have challenged the competence and
integrity of the detectives and charged that their
investigation was flawed. They have combed California
for witnesses who might help them undermine the
prosecution's case. They found a Nobel laureate chemist
to help them attack the validity of the damning DNA
findings. No matter how outlandish their arguments, they
have captured the media's attention.
By contrast, another prominent individual has been
judged by the authorities and the media to be guilty of
a killing without the benefit of any defense that has
been reported by any of the TV networks or national
newspapers or news magazines. Not a single lawyer was
engaged to expose the serious flaws in the investigation
of his case or the hasty rush to judgment based on
incomplete, flimsy evidence. Even the family and close
friends of the accused failed to rise to his defense.
They all meekly accepted the findings of the police
without closely examining the evidence, much of which
was not made known to them and to the public until
nearly a year after the killing.
The accused himself was silent. He was unable to speak
out in his own defense because he was dead. The failure
of others to speak out on his behalf is hard to explain.
He was not the kind of person who would be immediately
suspect of committing such a crime. He was an upstanding
citizen with an excellent reputation. He was not a
nobody. He was a high White House official and a close
personal friend of the President and the First Lady. His
name was Vincent W. Foster, Jr. He was accused of
killing himself.
Suicide is different from murder, to be sure. It is a
crime that by definition is always punished by death. It
is also punished by the indelible stain it leaves on the
reputation of the killer-victim. That punishment is
particularly severe for a man of high character and
reputation. He would not want to be remembered as a
coward who would inflict grievous hurt and hardship on
his loved and loving wife and children, to escape some
petty embarrassment. Nor would he want it said that he
was so cruel that he would desert them without a parting
word, sentencing them to live tortured by the thought
that perhaps they were somehow to blame for his death.
The Rush To Judgment
That punishment was inflicted on Vincent Foster by
police investigators who jumped to the conclusion that
he had killed himself because they found a gun in his
hand and no sign of any struggle. They made and acted on
that determination before they knew the answers to many
vital questions, including these:
1. Did Foster own the gun found in his hand?
2. Did that gun fire the bullet that killed him?
3. Were his fingerprints on the gun?
4. Was there any blood on the gun?
5. Was the fatal shot fired where the body was found?
6. Was the spent bullet found there?
7. Were bone fragments from his skull found there?
8. Was any blood splattered on the vegetation?
9. Did gunshot residue show that he had fired the gun?
10. Was the attitude of the body consistent with
suicide?
11. Were the spilled blood and blood stains consistent
with suicide on the spot where the body was found?
12. Had anyone heard the shot?
13. By whom and where was he last seen alive?
14. Was he familiar with this little-known park?
15. Was there any evidence such as dirt or traces of
vegetation on his shoes, socks and trousers that showed
he had walked from where his car was parked to where his
body was found?
16. Did he have a motive for killing himself?
17. Through actions or words had he given anyone the
impression that he might commit suicide?
18. Did he leave a suicide note?
19. Did he put his affairs in order as if preparing for
death?
20. What was he doing in the hours before his death?
21. Was there any reason to suspect foul play?
22. Would anyone have had reason to kill him?
23. Was there any reason to think he might have been
killed?
24. Could he have died elsewhere and been moved to the
park?
The Park Police investigators reached and acted on the
conclusion that Vincent Foster had killed himself while
they were still at the crime scene on the night of July
20, 1993, but they did not officially make this charge
until August 11. They carried out their investigation
based on the assumption that it was a suicide.
Explaining to Senate Banking Committee investigators why
his investigation of the crime scene had not been more
careful and thorough, Sgt. John C. Rolla of the U. S.
Park Police said: "If there's some suspicion, which
there wasn't then, is not now and never has been, then,
yes, it would be more of a crime scene." (Banking
Committee Hearings, p. 436)
Even though he saw none of the usual splatter of blood
and tissue on the vegetation surrounding Foster's body,
Rolla had no doubt that Foster had inflicted the wound
found in his head with the .38 caliber Colt revolver
found in his hand. No doubts were aroused by the failure
to find the bullet or the fragments of skull that it
blew out of Foster's head. Rolla said he "probed" for
the bullet and the Park Police claimed they searched for
it with a metal detector the next day, but without
success. A thorough FBI search eight months later failed
to find either the bullet or the skull fragments.
With that as a beginning, let us imagine what a lawyer
like Robert Shapiro or Johnny Cochran or F. Lee Bailey,
the Simpson "dream team," would do if hired to defend
Vincent Foster against the charge that he had killed
himself. Let's call this figment of our imagination
Johnny Bob Lee, a famous Arkansas defense attorney, and
pretend that he has argued his case in a court hearing.
We will assume that the media were as eager to report
his words as they are those of the Simpson lawyers and
will summarize what they might have said.
HEADLINE: LEE CLAIMS FOSTER SUICIDE FAKED, POLICE FOOLED
BY GUN
Johnny Bob Lee charged today that the police had no
evidence to prove that the gunshot that killed Vincent
W. Foster, Jr. was fired at the spot where his body was
found. They found no bullet, no skull fragments and no
splatter of blood and tissue on vegetation surrounding
Foster's body. (Banking Committee Hearings, p. 2123) The
hard evidence that Foster shot himself was all missing,
Johnny Bob declared.
The veteran defense lawyer charged that Park Police had
not even tested Foster's hands for powder burns to prove
that he had fired the gun that was found in his hand. He
said the dark mark on Foster's right index finger that
they assumed to be a powder burn could have been eye
shadow for all they knew. He pointed out that the
autopsy report showed a similar mark on Foster's left
index finger, and this presented a problem for the
police which they had simply ignored. Rather than being
proof that Foster had fired the gun, Lee argued that
these marks were actually evidence that Foster's death
was a homicide disguised to look like a suicide.
Lee said gun experts all agreed that if the marks were
powder burns, they had to come from the gap between the
cylinder and the barrel of the .38 Colt revolver. For
both right and left index fingers to have been exposed
to the gases from that gap, Foster would have had to
fire the gun while gripping the cylinder with both
hands. He said that is not only an awkward, unnatural
way to fire a revolver, it is impossible.
Lee pointed out that even Park Police technician Peter
Simonello had testified that Foster could not have fired
the gun while gripping the cylinder with both hands.
(Banking Committee Hearings, pp. 662-663). The police
and the FBI had nevertheless cited the powder burns as
proof that Foster had fired the gun. "Isn't it
interesting," Lee told the court, "that we have what are
said to be black powder burns on both index fingers,
where they shouldn't have been, but none on Foster's
face, where they should have been. And these Keystone
cops and our vigilant news media, didn't even find that
suspicious! They were blinded by the gun in Foster's
hand!"
Gun Should Have Aroused Suspicion
Lee said the gun that convinced the police they were
dealing with a suicide is actually additional evidence
of a disguised homicide. He said the police found no
evidence to prove that gun killed Foster. He promised to
call experts who would testify that the damage done to
Foster's mouth and skull by the shot fired inside his
mouth would be more consistent with a smaller caliber
weapon. They would say that the blast from a weapon that
powerful would have scorched the inside of his mouth and
the recoil would have knocked out or chipped some of his
front teeth. No such damage was found.
Experts would also testify that in the absence of
cadaveric spasm (instant rigor mortis) the gun should
have fallen from Foster's hand or been dislodged when it
struck the ground, Lee said. He argued that the gun in
Foster's hand should have been cause for suspicion that
the suicide was faked.
That suspicion should have been heightened, Lee said,
when no fingerprints were found on the exposed surfaces
of the gun. Lee said Foster would have sweated profusely
if he made the long walk from the parking lot, and his
prints should have been on the gun if he had handled it.
But if the gun were planted, Lee said, those doing the
planting would wipe it clean and try to put Foster's
prints on it. With a cold corpse, he said that isn't
easy.
The absence of blood on the gun was additional evidence
that it was not the gun that killed Foster, Lee said.
The gun was supposedly fired with the muzzle pressed
against the soft palate in Foster's mouth, creating a
bloody mess. How come, Lee asked, the gun came out
clean? The FBI lab tests found not a trace of blood or
tissue on the gun. Lee said it was unfortunate that the
Park Police processed the gun for fingerprints before it
was tested for blood, because this provided an excuse
for the tests turning out negative for blood. He said
that if there was any blood, it should have been easily
visible, but no one saw any. Lee was sure none would
have been found if the testing had been done in the
proper order. He said the FBI found a trace of DNA on
the gun, but it did not tie the gun to Foster. Its
origin was unknown, and it was common to 6 percent of
whites and 8 percent of Hispanics and blacks. (Banking
Committee Hearings, p. 1919).
Another flaw in the theory that Foster used that gun to
kill himself is that it was not his gun, Lee said. He
charged that the Park Police and Fiske created the
impression that Foster owned that .38 Colt even though
they had evidence that this was not true. Lee pointed
out that Foster's widow and his grown children could not
recall ever seeing that gun. The police had sent a photo
of the gun to Sharon Bowman, Foster's sister, and had
gotten back a message via a White House aide that it
resembled one her father had owned that may have been
given to her brother Vince. (Banking Committee Hearings,
p. 2169)
Johnny Bob said Sharon Bowman's son, Lee, who had hunted
with his grandfather and had used his guns, told the FBI
that his grandfather owned a revolver that may have been
.38 caliber, but "he didn't remember the black handle
and the dark color of the metal." (Banking Committee
Hearings, p. 1807). Foster's widow said the gun was "not
the gun she thought it must be a silver six-gun, large
barrel." (Banking Committee Hearings, p. 2227) Lee said
that Peter Markland, the Park Police officer who
interviewed Mrs. Foster, included the "silver six-gun,
large barrel" remark in his notes but omitted it from
his report. Lee said this was because the authorities
did not want it known that the revolver Foster owned was
silver, not black.
A gun was found in Foster's home, he said, but it was
never described in any reports. Lee said it had to be
the silver gun mentioned by Mrs. Foster. Describing it
would have ruined the effort to tie the black .38 Colt
to Foster. He described the Colt as a typical "drop
gun," an untraceable weapon used to stymie a criminal
investigation. He said there was no evidence that Foster
ever owned or even touched that gun while alive. He
pointed out that the man who found the body was certain
there was no gun in either hand. The only EMS worker to
describe the gun said it was a big brown and black
automatic, not a black revolver. He even drew a picture
of it. (Banking Committee Hearings, pp. 883, 1564) Lee
said that if the police didn't tamper with the evidence,
they certainly let their conclusions shape the way they
viewed it
HEADLINE: LEE CLAIMS BODY WAS MOVED
Johnny Bob Lee, continuing his indictment of the Park
Police and Fiske/FBI investigations of Vincent Foster's
death today, asserted that evidence presented in
official reports proved that Foster's body had been
moved to Fort Marcy Park. Lee said the absence of blood
and tissue splatter on the vegetation near Foster's body
was a good indication that he was not shot on the spot
where the body was found. That, he said, was confirmed
by the paucity of blood at the crime scene. He pointed
out that Corey Ashford, who handled the bagging of the
body, couldn't remember getting blood on his uniform or
his disposable gloves. (Banking Committee Hearings, p.
1347) Others had said there was a pool of blood under
Foster's head, but it was only visible when the head was
moved. There was some blood on the right shoulder of
Foster's white shirt, some on his right cheek and jaw,
and two dried tracks of blood that had flowed from his
right nostril and the right corner of his mouth over and
under his right ear to the back of his neck. There was
also a spot of blood on his shirt in the area of his
right rib cage. The FBI lab found traces of blood on one
of his shoes and his belt. (Banking Committee Hearings,
p. 243)
Lee said the paucity of blood and the absence of
splatter indicated that the shooting and most of the
bleeding occurred elsewhere. That was where the missing
bullet, bone fragments and splatter might have been
found had the case been investigated as a homicide
promptly and vigorously. Lee said evidence that the
body was moved was found in an FBI lab report dated May
9, 1994, which said that the blood on Foster's right
shoulder and on his right cheek and jaw showed that at
some point, his face had rested on his shoulder. Blood
from his mouth and nose soaked the shoulder of his
shirt, and this left what is called a transfer stain on
his cheek and jaw. Lee quoted the report as saying: "The
available photographs depict the victim's head not in
contact with the shirt and therefore indicate that the
head moved or was moved after being in contact with the
shoulder. The specific manner of this movement is not
known." (Banking Committee Hearings, p. 242)
Lee rejected the explanation for the movement of the
head given in the Fiske Report that one of the early
observers on the scene moved it. He said there was no
evidence to support this. Everyone who saw the body at
the crime scene said the head was face-up and denied
that they moved the head or saw anyone move it.
Lee also dismissed the contention by Fiske and his team
that if the small amount of blood found on Foster's
clothing and skin was proof that the body had not been
moved. They claimed that moving the body would have
caused more spillage of blood. (Banking Committee
Hearings, p. 226) But Lee said that experts agreed that
such spillage could be minimized by using bandages. Lee
said that the altered position of the head, combined
with the evidence that the shot had not been fired in
Fort Marcy Park, proved that the body was moved. He
pointed out that that could explain the blood found on
the lower part of Foster's shirt, his belt and one shoe,
stains that did not fit the suicide-in-the-park
scenario.
Lee said the movement of the body also explained why it
was laid out as if in a coffin, as one of the EMS
personnel described it, head up, arms at his sides, and
legs extended. " Laid out' is the right word," he said.
"Foster did not fall in that position. He didn't sit on
that steep, dirt slope in his shiny dress shoes and his
neat pin-striped pants, blow out his brains and then
extend his legs and drop his arms to his sides. He was
carried to that spot and gently laid out with a gun in
his hand. That is why his shoes and pants were not in
the least bit soiled by the long walk up the dusty path
from the parking lot. Fiske's pathologists said this
laid out' position was just what was to be expected if
Foster sat down on the hill and shot himself. (Banking
Committee Hearings, p. 54) They and those who planted
the gun forgot one thing. If Foster's right thumb was
inextricably trapped in the trigger guard, gravity alone
would not have determined where the right arm fell. The
gun's powerful recoil would have forced his lifeless
hand away from his body, and his right arm would have
been found at least partially extended to the side."
HEADLINE: NO FOSTER SUICIDE MOTIVE, LEE SAYS
"Nothing about this case is more absurd, "Johnny Bob
Lee declared, "than the sudden discovery a week after
Vince Foster's death that he was suicidally depressed."
He pointed out that none of Foster's family, close
friends or co-workers, including the President, could
think of any reason why he would have committed suicide
when they were first questioned. All said that he was
behaving normally.
Lee noted that when White House press secretary Dee Dee
Myers first said at a press briefing a week after
Foster's death that he had been "having a rough time,"
reporters protested that this contradicted all that they
had been told previously. Lee recalled that Myers backed
down saying, "There was absolutely no reason to think
that Vince was despondent. Nobody believed that." She
then agreed with a reporter who said that Foster
certainly wouldn't kill himself over the White House
travel office scandal and over the Wall Street Journal's
complaining that it couldn't get a picture of him. Myers
said, "I would certainly never intimate that he would.
There's no way we'll ever know why.
But, Lee pointed out, in the absence of any better
explanation, the Wall Street Journal/travel office
induced depression soon became accepted as the reason
for Foster's alleged suicide. It was incorporated in the
Fiske Report in June 1994, and has gone unchallenged by
the news media. (Banking Committee Hearings, pp. 186-
192)
Lee said it was sad that so many people accepted this,
most of all his friends and family. "Vince Foster was a
man of strong character and a tough minded lawyer," Lee
declared. "It is ludicrous to think that such trifles
would cause him to take his life and abandon his loved
ones. I propose to take the testimony of all the co-
workers and friends who said they had seen no evidence
of any altered behavior or depression, ranging from his
secretary to the President and First Lady. But let me
cite one who is already on the record, Linda Tripp, the
executive assistant he asked to bring him a hamburger
for lunch from the White House cafeteria. Tripp said she
was surprised to find that he had sent an intern to see
what was taking her so long. She said she hadn't been
gone very long and that he must have been in a rush. He
left the office right after finishing the hamburger. In
a rush to commit suicide? The man eats his hamburger
while reading a newspaper and leaves, saying, I'll be
back.' Was he rushing off to kill himself? Incredible!
(Banking Committee Hearings, p. 1534)
"Experts will tell you that the activities and behavior
of Vince Foster prior to his death are definitely not
those of a despondent and suicidal man. He had just
returned from a pleasant weekend with his wife and
friends on the Maryland eastern shore. His sister Sharon
was arriving from Arkansas for a visit that night, and
he planned to take her to lunch at the White House. A
lawyer friend was flying in from Denver to see him the
next day, and he had an appointment with the President
the day after. Nothing devastating had happened and no
impending catastrophe loomed before him. He was not
mentally imbalanced and there is no way that he would
forsake those he loved most without even saying good-bye
or leaving a note of explanation simply because he was
having a little trouble sleeping. Vince Foster did not
rush from his office with the intention of killing
himself. He had neither a motive nor the means to do
so."
HEADLINE: WHO KILLED VINCE FOSTER, LEE ASKS
Johnny Bob Lee, the Arkansas attorney who took on the
unusual task of defending Vincent W. Foster, Jr. against
the government's charge that he killed himself, wound up
his defense today, claiming that he had proved that
Foster did not commit suicide in Fort Marcy Park by
shooting himself in the mouth with a .38 Colt revolver
that was found in his hand. Stressing that there was
nothing to connect that gun to Foster, Lee said that the
former White House Deputy Counselor had neither the
means nor the motive to kill himself that afternoon.
Lee said that in showing that Foster did not commit
suicide and that his body was moved to the spot where it
was found, he had accomplished all that he set out to
do. It was the duty of the government, not him, to find
out how, why and at whose hand Vince Foster died. That,
he said, was a duty that the Park Police, the FBI, and
Robert Fiske, the former independent counsel, had all
ducked, choosing to ignore all the evidence that pointed
to Foster's innocence in order to avoid the difficult
task of finding the truth. He charged that they were
abetted in this by virtually all the news media. They
had eagerly accepted a motive for Foster's suicide that
they had once agreed was absurd. They had ridiculed as
wild conspiracy theorists the few journalists who had
the integrity and courage to dig up the evidence and
expose it to public view. The great New York Times had
refused to report even the unanswered questions about
Foster's death, saying it feared it would only discover
more unanswered questions.
Lee said he hoped that independent counsel Kenneth
Starr would focus on trying to answer the question, "Who
killed Vincent Foster?" He said he himself had no idea
who it was or why they did it, but he hoped that
Foster's real friends would now come forward and give
Kenneth Starr their full cooperation in his efforts to
find the answer to that question. He asked the news
media "to take off their blinders" and join in the
search for those responsible for Foster's death
EDITOR'S NOTES
THIS AIM REPORT WAS INSPIRED BY THE DOGGED EFFORTS BEING
MADE BY O.J.
Simpson's lawyers to win the acquittal of their client.
It occurred to me that it would be interesting to see a
clever lawyer mount a similar defense of Vincent W.
Foster, Jr. Not knowing any lawyers willing to do that,
I created one and named him Johnny Bob Lee, using the
first names of Simpson's attorneys, and put myself in
his shoes. I made extensive use of the two-volume
collection of documents relating to the investigation of
Foster's death published by the Senate Banking Committee
under the title "Hearings Relating to Madison Guaranty
S&L and the Whitewater Development Corporation
Washington, D.C. Phase." In performing this exercise, I
was driven to a conclusion that I had previously refused
to draw that Vincent Foster did not take his own life.
That is what the evidence tells me. I think you will
agree.
WHEN INDEPENDENT COUNSEL KENNETH STARR REOPENED THE
FOSTER
investigation last January using a grand jury, it
appeared that he, unlike his predecessor, Robert Fiske,
was determined to learn the truth. But on Feb. 22, The
Wall Street Journal ran a page-one story by Ellen
Pollock and Viveca Novak saying that little was likely
to come of Starr's Whitewater investigation. It said
that anyone counting on Starr's finding "a solution to
the mystery of a top White House official's death was it
really suicide or was it murder? is destined to be
disappointed." On March 23, the Journal ran another
front-page story by Ellen Pollock trashing the handful
of people who have been pointing out the serious flaws
in the Foster investigations. She named Chris Ruddy,
whose stories for the New York Post beginning in January
1994 reopened the Foster case; Joe Farah, whose Western
Journalism Center has been buying space in national
newspapers to reprint Ruddy's stories from the
Pittsburgh Tribune Review; James Davidson, publisher of
Strategic Investment newsletter; and Pat Matriciana of
Jeremiah Films. Davidson and Matriciana have each
produced excellent videos on the Foster case. Pollock
sought to leave the impression that these are all
"conspiracy buffs" who are spreading wild rumors about
the Foster case to sell videos and rake in
contributions. My letter responding to Pollock appeared
in the Journal on April 11, together with letters from
Davidson, Farah and Gary D. Martin.
I FOUND ON TALKING TO ELLEN POLLOCK THAT SHE DOESN'T
KNOW MUCH
ABOUT the serious flaws in the Foster investigations.
She accepts the Fiske report as gospel. Her answer to
all my efforts to get her answers to the big unanswered
questions was, "I don't want to argue any point with
you. I'm not going to." I saw that she was being used by
someone who hoped to discredit any investigation, much
as she had been used a year earlier to discredit Chris
Ruddy's stories. She had a story in The Wall Street
Journal on April 4, 1994 saying that Robert Fiske would
issue his report before the end of April and would
confirm that Foster committed suicide. That was one of
the leaks that prompted the New York Post to halt
Ruddy's aggressive reporting on the Foster case. Ruddy
recently showed that when that story ran, Fiske's
investigation was still in its preliminary stage. He had
not yet interviewed the most important witnesses in the
case and the FBI lab had not reported on its findings.
THE MOST DISTRESSING NEWS COMES NOT FROM POLLOCK BUT
FROM RUDDY,
who reported on April 6 that Miguel Rodriguez, the
prosecutor in charge of the grand jury investigation of
the Foster case had resigned in March. Ruddy's sources
said Rodriguez left "because he believed the grand jury
process was being thwarted by his superior." That would
be Mark H. Tuohey, III, a Democratic activist said to be
close to Associate Attorney General Jaimie Gorelick.
Rodriguez was said to be upset by interference in the
choice of witnesses and delays in quizzing them. In
three months, only a dozen witnesses have been
questioned, and some key people have yet to be summoned.
Ruddy quoted Thomas Scorza, a former federal prosecutor
and a professor of legal ethics, as saying that he would
have resigned under the circumstances described, but he
would have made a public stink about it. Rodriguez has
not made a stink. A former colleague of Starr's
commented that Starr is a fine man but he suffers from a
desire to please everyone. It appears in this case that
he decided to please Mark Tuohey and sacrifice Miguel
Rodriguez, whose determined efforts to learn the truth
were making some people in Washington very nervous.
WHAT'S MAKING SOME PEOPLE NERVOUS IS THE NEW EVIDENCE
RODRIGUEZ
found. Ruddy's story on Rodriguez's resignation cites
three important advances: 1. Photographic evidence not
previously available to the investigators; 2. Strong
evidence that the gun in Foster's hand had been moved or
switched; 3. Development of a clear theory that the body
was moved No. 1 suggests good prints have been obtained
from the underexposed Park Police negatives. No. 2
suggests the prosecutors have reason to believe that the
police may have substituted the .38 Colt revolver for
the large caliber automatic that paramedic Richard
Arthur said he saw under Foster's hand. This helps
explain why Rodriguez subjected the police to such rough
grilling. Ruddy and The Sunday Telegraph have reported
other Park Police cases that raised doubts about their
honesty and their competence.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Miguel Rodriguez's resignation is
disturbing. It suggests that Starr has decided not to
play hardball. He will get no heat from the media for
that. I fear the worst unless more is done to bring the
facts in this AIM Report to the attention of the public.
I suggest that we buy space in key papers to print this
report or portions of it. If you agree, please fill out
and return the coupon below. Also send the enclosed card
or a letter to Kenneth Starr
AIM Column -- October 11, 1995
MIKE WALLACE'S FAKE FOSTER PROBE
By Reed Irvine and Joe Goulden
On October 8, as the FBI was heading into its fifth week of an
exhaustive search for the bullet that killed former White House Deputy
Counsel Vince Foster, "60 Minutes" aired a vicious attack on
Christopher Ruddy, the reporter who forced the reopening of the Foster
investigation in January 1994, six months after the White House
thought it had buried the case for good.
Ignoring the fact that FBI agents were literally making a shambles of
Fort Marcy Park in their inch-by-inch search for the missing bullet,
Mike Wallace claimed his own investigation found that there are no
valid grounds for questioning the theory that Foster committed suicide
in the park.
Wallace acknowledged that some sloppy police work had enabled Ruddy
"to raise all sorts of questions about Foster's death." He said,
"We've dealt with the most important ones. We've examined the others."
His program ended with a declaration that the evidence supported only
one conclusion: Foster committed suicide in the park.
Wallace's claim that he had dealt with the most important questions
raised about Foster's death was false. There are a number of questions
for which there are no answers that are consistent with the
suicide-in-the-park theory. Wallace ignored all of them. He discussed
only three questions that he thought could be answered easily or
dismissed, claiming he had examined all the others.
One was why the gun was found in Foster's right hand even though The
Boston Globe reported that he was lefthanded. That was never an
important issue because, as the police suggested, he could have
gripped the gun with his left hand and pulled the trigger with his
right thumb, which was found caught in the trigger guard. Since a
family member finally disclosed last spring that Foster was actually
righthanded, Wallace knew that this long-dead question could be
attacked without fear of contradiction.
Wallace ridiculed a suggestion that carpet fibers found on most of
Foster's clothes may have come from his body having been rolled up in
a carpet and moved. Many people have criticized the investigators for
not trying to find out where the carpet fibers came from, but few, if
any, have seriously suggested that the body was rolled up in a carpet.
"60 Minutes" suggested the carpet fibers were from Foster's home and
that they got on every piece of his clothing because they were all put
in the same bag. That may or may not be true, but the carpet fibers
are important only because they might have revealed where Foster spent
his last hours if their origin had been discovered.
The only question Wallace addressed that is relevant to the ongoing
debate over Foster's death is the claim that the small amount of blood
observed at the scene is one of several indicators that he did not die
in the park. The fact that there was little blood was noted by the
medical technicians who found the body. One of them, Sgt. George
Gonzalez, told the FBI that "there was not much blood at the scene for
the manner in which the victim died." Corey Ashford, who lifted the
body by the shoulders, cradling the head, said he "did not recall
seeing any blood and did not recall getting any on his uniform or his
disposable gloves."
"60 Minutes" ignored them, focusing on Dr. Donald Haut, the part-time
county medical examiner who approved the removal of the body. Chris
Ruddy has Haut on tape saying, "There was not a hell of a lot of blood
on the ground." Wallace asked Haut if he told Ruddy "there was an
unusual lack of blood at the scene." He said, "No," saying that there
was "plenty of blood" for Foster to have died there, creating the
illusion that Ruddy had misquoted him.
But Dr. Haut told the FBI that the amount of blood was small and that
he didn't recall seeing blood on Foster's shirt or face or any blood
on the vegetation around the body. Dr. Haut concluded from this that a
low velocity bullet had been used, but the spent cartridge case in the
gun in Foster's hand was stamped "HV," meaning high velocity.
Mike Wallace didn't mention all this because the small amount of
blood, together with the absence of skull fragments, brain tissue and
blood spatter and the fatal bullet, means there is no forensic
evidence to prove that Foster shot himself in the park. That is why
the FBI has spent a month looking for the missing bullet.
We asked Wallace in a phone conversation to cite one piece of forensic
evidence that supported the suicide-in-the-park theory. He ducked and
dodged. After we asked the question literally ten times, he said,
"I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll put it on paper." When we reminded
him of that promise the next day, he asked, "What do you mean by
forensic evidence?"
This is one of the country's best investigative reporters? As Mike
himself might say, "Give us a break!"
