Vince Foster's Mysterious Death -

The top stories this hour in an apparent White House lawyer Vince Foster was found dead last night. The so-called Clinton death list has circulated for years as a political talking point with dozens of names often cited as people connected in some way to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Among those cases the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster has drawn the most sustained attention and controversy. Our job is to gather facts and to evaluate those facts and to get at the truth. I have a very strong belief in facts and in truth and that the facts will come out and the truth will come out eventually. Foster's death in 1993 cast a shadow over the early Clinton administration prompting extensive media coverage and multiple It also became a focal point for critics of the Clintons who argued the circumstances raised broader questions about transparency and accountability within the administration and federal institutions. Investigators recovered torn fragments of a note from Foster's briefcase. After reconstruction by the FBI, the note described frustration with Washington politics and personal strain. Officials said it reflected Foster's state of mind but did not indicate foul play. Critics have long disputed that conclusion. This is the case we are examining. Who was Vince Foster? What was his connection to Bill and Hillary Clinton? What positions did he hold that could have proved criminally detrimental to the Clintons? How did Vince Foster really die? Hello, I'm Colin Heaton, former history professor, Army and Marine Corps veteran, and welcome to this episode of Forgotten History. The beginning of the toughest 26 days in Marine Corps history. The 36th president of the United States died this afternoon. Vincent Walker Foster Jr. was born January 15, 1945 in Hope, Arkansas, the same town where Bill Clinton was born. He was a childhood friend of Clinton and a partner at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. Foster played a key role in the Clinton administration overseeing sensitive legal matters. Foster attended Davidson College in North Carolina where he graduated with a degree in psychology and went on to study law at Vanderbilt University before transferring to the University of Arkansas School of Law where he graduated first in his class. Foster was a respected lawyer and a trusted advisor known for his integrity and dedication. Foster then initiated the hiring of Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Rose Law Firm where she became its first ever female associate and later first female partner which included two other Rose Law Firm partners William H. Kennedy III who served as associate counsel and Webster Hubble. Foster and Hubble had a strained relationship possibly due to ethics especially after Hubble became associate attorney general of the United States the number three job in the Department of Justice under his friend then president Bill Clinton but he resigned in 1994 and was convicted of defrauding his former partners at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. Further investigations and indictments followed him until 1999. During 18 months in prison and afterward Hubble turned to writing first a memoir and then legal thrillers. The Arkansas connections to the Clintons were all mired in controversy. This was problematic for Foster who was appointed deputy White House counsel in January 1993 shortly after Bill Clinton took office. Foster seemed out of place since he was well known for his meticulous work ethic and was highly respected in the legal community. He oversaw the vetting for President Clinton's appointees including Hubble which was tough given the perceived corruption of those Clinton selected such as the failed Zooey Baird nomination due to the Nanogate scandal. The equally unsuccessful Kimba Wood and Lennie Guinier appointments were also under Foster's purview. Foster was responsible for overseeing the legal aspects of the administration's policies and actions and he also managed the personal finances investments and business interests of the Clintons which included the Whitewater Project. He also had to run damage control over the travel date scandal involving Hillary. Foster knew all their secrets. The Whitewater controversy gained more attention following Foster's death leading to further investigations since Foster was supposed to be interviewed and possibly subpoenaed by the Department of Justice in several criminal investigations regarding the Clintons. On July 20th 1993 it was reported that Vince Foster was found with a gunshot wound to his head in his car at Fort Marcy Park off the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Virginia at about 6 p.m but there was a problem. Patrick Knowlton was in the park where Foster was killed pulling off to relieve himself and he parked next to an older brown car with an Arkansas tag on his left and another blue car on the opposite side of the brown car with a dark complexion to man who glared at him after he exited his car. On July 20th 1993 I stopped into Fort Marcy Park at 4 30 p.m in the afternoon as soon as I pulled up into the lot. It's a driveway I think it's about two-tenths of a mile long. The first thing I saw when I pulled up was this rust brown square backed vehicle with an Arkansas license plate. Knowlton said he saw a briefcase in the Honda though park police never found any such briefcase. Foster's car was also never logged in or out of the White House parking lot that day. Knowlton thought it was strange but thought nothing else of it. So I turned the tv on and I kicked back and 11 o'clock news comes on the first thing on the news is you know yesterday Vince Foster's body was found in Fort Marcy Park and his body was discovered at six o'clock and I was like wow I was there at 4 30 and his car was there. I saw this guy's car is white and so I'm thinking to myself this White House guy. His observations were corroborated by Judith Doody and Mark Feist who were at the park together that afternoon. They told investigators that a shirtless man was sitting in a brown Honda while another man worked on its engine. According to Ambrose Evans's Pritchard's book The Secret Life of Bill Clinton The Unreported Stories Doody and Feist watched as the man worked under the hood and walked off into the woods. Later four of the emergency workers first on the scene testified before Congress that they saw a wound on Foster's neck with two describing it as a gunshot wound. The way the blood collected around his shirt collar and shoulder was observed by some as unusual as was the overall lack of blood at the scene. Rug fibers were found on his body and were consistent with being rolled on the carpet. The note found at the crime scene was a forgery according to handwriting experts. It was found in a briefcase that was already searched and supposedly empty. Foster was in the White House that day but not seen leaving the White House on any security camera. There was virtually no blood where he was found and there should have been massive amounts given the way he allegedly shot himself. Even though he'd supposedly walked hundreds of feet into the park no soil samples were found on Foster's shoes. Those closest to him said he was not depressed. After seeing the news that evening Knowlton called the park police and gave his report on what he saw. According to the official report the park police discovered Foster dead from an apparent gunshot wound to the head. He was found holding a Colt 38 special revolver in his right hand with his thumb hooked through the trigger guard. However U.S. Park Police Officer Kevin Fornshill later stated that he did not recall seeing a gun at all when the body was initially discovered. No one in Foster's immediate family could identify the Black 38 Colt though his wife Lisa was aware of a silver handgun Foster kept in their bedroom. None of Foster's guns were registered with Washington D.C. officials. Made in 1913 the Colt 38 was too old to trace leading to Christopher Ruddy alleging that it was a drop gun i.e. a weapon left at a crime scene that can't be traced. The gun that must have been planted after the second team arrived and it was not Foster's own gun but a gun with two different serial numbers made from parts of multiple guns. The way Foster's thumb was jammed into the gun's trigger guard was also viewed after the fact as very odd by forensic experts. The result of this investigation was released as a joint report from the Department of Justice, FBI and Park Police on August 10, 1993. Despite his call it took nine months before Knowlton was interviewed by two FBI agents. The agents kept showing him Polaroid photos of Foster's newer silver car and not the much older brown car at the park trying to get Knowlton to admit that he could have been wrong about the car. Knowlton never changed his story he knew what he saw. The agents took notes and then left. Then 18 months after that initial interview and 27 months after Foster's death Knowlton was again interviewed by British journalist Ambrose Evans Pritchard of the London Sunday Telegraph. When Pritchard showed the typed up handwritten notes converted into his witness statement provided by the FBI from that interview the report contained information that Knowlton said was never mentioned by him. It was a lie. Knowlton said that it was a total fabrication by the FBI and it did not bear his signature as a verified statement because he never reviewed or even knew it existed. The other investigation was conducted by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs wherein both the majority Democrats and minority Republicans on the committee developed findings that reached the same conclusion in reports issued on January 3, 1995. On Tuesday, October 24, 1995 Knowlton's story hit the newsstands and it changed his life forever. Once his story hit Ken Starr issued a subpoena for Knowlton two days later but Knowlton was being watched. The fifth guy again followed us down to the street corner and as we approached the street corner on our street there wasn't the sixth guy standing on the sixth guy was another big guy he was sort of standing at ease as we approached the corner and this is when I thought well this is and there's hardly anybody on the street by the way it's not very crowded I'm thinking to myself now this is getting a little peculiar now I realize that these people really are staring at me it's not my imagination. From that point forward he was stalked followed and intimidated in what is known as gang stalking by the FBI. Most of these men were approaching Patrick and following him and staring at him before his predecessor had had stopped so it's back to back to back to back very very strange so we talked to eventually I talked to a number of experts who are familiar with this technique of intimidation and what they said was well yeah they're familiar with it it's used by federal intelligence and investigative agencies and what it does is it has two objects two purposes number one it warns the witnesses and scares the witnesses and intimidates the witness and if that doesn't work and the witness continues to tell the truth about whatever it is that that they've seen it will it will discredit him I mean who's going to believe somebody who says that every time he leaves his building there are strange men on every street corner following him and staring at him. The American public was told that Foster's death was investigated by the park police independent counsels Robert Feisk and later Ken Starr probes which all concluded self-termination. The FBI and Congress both looked into the case supporting that conclusion but then there was Knowlton and the truth and the liberal media would not cover the story regarding the glaring lies distortions and discrepancies. On October 19th 1997 the Starr report was released. Associate independent counsel Miguel Rodriguez had resigned previously from Starr's investigation citing a cover-up. The independent counsel themselves and the FBI beat me back and in fact threatened me told me to quote this is a quote back off or either back off or back down they used both of them. You know I it's I have I have been communicated with again and told you know to be careful where I tread. I can tell you this that it has not only to do with my career reputation but it also has to do with my personal health. There were five separate points he said that conflicted with the facts proving a cover-up but Knowlton nor his statement after being interviewed stalked and intimidated was ever included. This was not until judge David Centelli along with judges Fay and Butzner who were aware of Knowlton ordered his information and evidence of the cover up submitted by Patrick Knowlton to be included as part of the final report on Foster's death over the objections of Kenneth Starr. Kenneth Starr filed a nine-page motion asking the judges to reconsider their order to include evidence of criminal activity by his own staff. The same day Starr filed a second motion asking the judges not to include the evidence of the cover-up including the statement. Starr's motion to reconsider was denied. The final 20 pages of Starr's report includes evidence of grand jury witness intimidation and murder. Judge Peter T. Fay even said Knowlton contradicts specific factual matters and takes issue with the very basics of the report filed by Kenneth Starr. Judge John D. Butzner added I suspect that if we deny Knowlton's motion we will be charged as conspirators in the cover-up. The correspondence between judges John D. Butzner and Peter T. Fay and David B. Centelli is found in the papers of Judge Butzner at the University of Virginia Law Library. This was the first time in history that an independent counsel was ordered to attach the information by a federal judge that challenged his own assertions proving a cover-up. Starr's report addressed several additional questions about physical and forensic evidence that had previously fueled speculation about the case and was easily challenged by other evidence. The report established that Foster owned the handgun and declared that the body had not been moved from its position prior to its discovery by police. But why? Because the evidence did not line up with the official narrative and the supposed bullet was never located and the wounds did not match the story. Of interest, the investigation did not include Foster's personal papers since Hillary Clinton's chief of staff Maggie Williams handled Foster's files and documents immediately after his death and their disappearance became an issue of much investigation itself. Aids for Clinton's ransacked Foster's office opened the safe and removed boxes of documents before it could be examined by investigators. Every point of the official investigations and coroner's report was a lie and could not withstand scrutiny when compared to the initial federal investigation. Amazingly, the media remained silent. They did not want to say anything about Patrick Nolton, the article and what he saw that added fuel to the cover-up. The press followed the government line for the next six years. At this point, the American press has a vested interest in not reporting this story, not telling the public about Patrick Nolton. Whether courts rule in his favor or against him, they're not going to tell the public. They don't want the public to know about Patrick Nolton or what he saw at Fort Marcy Park. Ironically, federal judge Brett Kavanaugh was the judge who absolved the Clintons in this case, all based upon the questionable reports. Defenders of theory point to a draft of a resignation letter that was found torn into 27 pieces in a briefcase after his death. Associate White House Counsel Steve Neworth discovered the torn pieces of the note in Foster's briefcase supposedly on July 26. After receiving the note from Neworth, White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum handled the note various times before giving it to Park Police Lieutenant Joseph Megby the following evening. But there was no self-termination note. Now here is where it gets very interesting. Independent Counsel Robert Ray's report regarding the Whitewater controversy stated, the FBI laboratory performed a 1995 fingerprint examination of the note and identified Nussbaum's palm print on it as if he wrote it holding the paper down. Foster's prints were nowhere on the paper. Three independent handwriting experts stated that the note was a forgery, with Oxford University manuscript expert Reginald Alton stating that the forgery was done by a moderate forger, not necessarily a pro, somebody who could forge a check. It was not Foster's handwriting. This also contradicted the final report that stated that three separate handwriting analyses of the note by the Capitol Police and FBI determined that the handwriting on the note was in fact Foster's. Whoever these three supposed experts were, they were never brought forward or identified. In 1997, crime reporter Dan Moldea was approached by Ragnery Publishing House, which was impressed by Moldea's published works to publish a book on the Foster case. In researching Foster's death, Moldea found that documents relating to the Whitewater Corporation were removed from Foster's office on July 22nd and sent to the Clinton's personal attorney, not to the FBI or any other investigators looking into Whitewater. This was evidence tampering. A separate point of controversy involved Park Police Major Robert Hines. Hines had spoken with the Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media and journalist Christopher Reddy. According to author Dan Moldea, and as Hines later publicly acknowledged, Hines had mistakenly told them that, There is no exit wound in Foster's head. I don't think there was anything nefarious here. Then on May 2nd, 1999, the Washington Post published additional details on the pursuit of a Foster conspiracy in an article by David Brock, a key figure in the Troopergate and Whitewater scandals in which Foster would have been a material witness. This involved two Arkansas State Troopers, Roger Perry and Larry Patterson, who had also previously given separate but mutually corroborating testimonies for supporting the attempted sexual assault on Paula Jones by Bill Clinton. Jones's claims of sexual misconduct and misuse of government resources against Bill Clinton, whom she said exposed himself to her and wanted oral sex in her hotel room in 1991, resulted in a settlement of $850,000 paid by Bill Clinton. Vince Foster was Bill Clinton's attorney through all of this and the situation sparked Bill Clinton's impeachment and a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. The article explained how Brock was summoned to a meeting with Rex Armistead in Miami, Florida at an airport hotel. Brock claims that Armistead laid out for him an elaborate Vince Foster murder scenario, a scenario that Brock found implausible. But here is what became known The FBI concealed the fact that Mr. Foster's silver car was not in the Fort Marcy lot by the time he was dead and Mr. Foster could not have driven to the park in his Honda. Knowlton identified the brown Honda owned by Foster as being there at 4 40 p.m. on July 20, 1993. This means that Foster died and somehow managed to move his own corpse into a separate newer silver Honda, which was amazingly free of blood. Patrick's account of what happened to him at the park is very important because we know from the forensic evidence that Vincent Foster was dead by 4 30 when Patrick pulled into Fort Marcy Park. There were only two cars in the lot, neither of which belonged to Vincent Foster. Then the FBI began witness tampering to intimidate Patrick Knowlton in connection with his grand jury testimony. There was also the evidence tampering. The FBI knew that Mrs. Foster could identify only a silver revolver, so FBI agents showed her a silver gun, told her it was found in Mr. Foster's hand, and falsely reported that she identified the black gun in Foster's hand. The FBI concealed the gunshot wound in the right side of Mr. Foster's neck, located by the responding paramedic, and then concealed the contents of the medical examiner's initial report and falsely reported that the 35 millimeter photographs taken at the crime scene were unclear. Also, the Polaroid photographs taken at the scene vanished from the evidence file along with the x-rays from the autopsy, which would have denoted a bullet. The American media suppressed the true length and contents of Starr's report, actually editing out all the evidence and testimony proving that Foster took his own life. The theory was impossible and misinformed the American people that Vincent Foster killed himself. The case has since been long closed. People that have been drawn into questioning the Foster case because of what's been published by Christopher Ruddy or the Washington Post, the Washington Times, may not be looking at the best evidence. The best evidence hasn't been reported, and people like Patrick Knowlton, his story hasn't been told. However, one irrefutable fact was that after Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, the Clinton scandals faced a fresh set of investigations. As the Clinton's personal attorney on the case, Foster knew too much about the intricate dealings. The White House stonewalled outside investigators and went through Foster's papers as Park Police only observed. We rely in this country on our press, our news media, to keep government honest and they're not doing it. In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in National Archives and Records Administration v. Favish that the pictures of the crime scene and autopsy should not be released to the public. When you start to get into the case, you find that every single point in the Office of Independent Counsel's report on the Vince Foster case, I mean every one of them is untrue. There's not one single point that the Starr Report makes that can withstand scrutiny when compared with the underlying federal investigative record in the case. What is a fact is that Vince Foster would have been the primary witness in every single criminal and civil investigation into the Clintons from his time as Attorney General and Governor of Arkansas to becoming President. No honest media coverage, no open debate, those cases simply went away just like Vince Foster. Very convenient. Thank you for watching this episode of Forgotten History. If you liked what you saw, please click like, share, and subscribe. And if you would like to assist with the ever increasing cost of production, please consider becoming a channel member and joining our Patreon page.