Foster freeze
“Although there is no evidence to show that Foster found out about the pending FBI raid, or had anything to do with the matters under investigation, the timing fanned media interest.”Īccording to the IRS, failure to file corporate tax returns is a criminal offense punishable by a $100,000 penalty, not to mention possible disbarment. “In an eerie coincidence, a federal magistrate in Little Rock signed the search warrant authorizing the raid on Hale’s office only hours before Foster’s mysterious suicide,” Hosenball writes. But where Isikoff and Schneider trod gently on the FBI raid/Foster suicide connection, reporter Mark Hosenball tromps as heavily as he can in Monday’s Newsweek. Like a dog with chiggers, the press has been scratching at the Whitewater story, Clinton-linked financial scandals, Ozark S&L misconduct, and assorted Bill and Hillary Arkansas perfidy since the 1992 campaign. Such was the subtext of Michael Isikoff and Howard Schneider’s Washington Post Page One story “Clintons’ Former Real Estate Firm Probed” (11/2), which in responsible daily journalism fashion didn’t fling any innuendo about Foster’s role in the festering Arkansas scandal until the final grafs. As the Clintons’ personal attorney, did he fear that the blame would fall on him? McDougal, who has accused Bill and Hillary (a partner with Foster in the Rose Law Firm) of ethical and perhaps criminal lapses. while the Clintons were half-owners? Or that he was suicidally anxious about the allegations of former Arkansas S&L owner James B.
real-estate venture? What if Foster, who was the Clintons’ personal attorney in Arkansas, was not fretting about White House travel office improprieties or any other presidential difficulty when he wrote in his note, “I did not knowingly violate any law or standard of conduct”? What if he was instead thinking about his failure three years running to file corporate tax returns for Whitewater Development Corp. What if Foster killed himself on July 20 because he knew that the FBI would that very afternoon be raiding the Little Rock office of David Hale, with whom Hillary and Bill Clinton had invested $70,000 in the Whitewater Development Corp. But what if this honorable, ethical man had good reason to fear Journal Editor Robert Bartley’s feral dogs because he thought they might be on their way to uncovering something shameful in his past? Clinton said, “I certainly don’t think that can explain it, and I certainly don’t think it’s accurate.”ĭenying the possibility was surely Clinton’s way of saying that the paper defamed in Foster’s pre-suicide note (“The WSJ editors lie without consequence”) had killed him.įoster’s distress at the Journal‘s editorials has been explained away as evidence of his naiveté by the Blumenthals and Von Drehles and DeParles. Instead, it did the polite thing, publishing only a few skeptical paragraphs about the Foster suicide (hats off to William Safire) while some overtalented writers, like the Washington Post‘s David Von Drehle, the New Yorker‘s Sidney Blumenthal, and the New York Times‘ Jason DeParle used the event to wax maudlin on death’s rich pageant instead of broadening the inquiry.īut because even a pathological liar can sometimes reveal the truth, reporters should have paid more attention to Clinton’s answers during suicide week when they asked him if the hazing of Foster by the Wall Street Journal editorial page’s quadrupeds had contributed to the lawyer’s demise. Since funerals doth make gentlemen of us all, the press didn’t shout Clinton down Sam Donaldson-style. Later in the week, the president repeated in serial-liar fashion his belief that no one will “ever know exactly why” Foster’s life “ended the way it did.” Of course, by stonewalling reporters’ questions and limiting the investigation of the death, Clinton was able to fulfill his prophecy.
“What happened was a mystery about something inside of him,” Clinton said. Attorney’s Office to accuse Clinton of concealing evidence. So when the grieving president met the press in the Rose Garden the July day after his lifelong friend Vincent Foster committed suicide and said, “There is really no way to know why these things happen,” the reporters should have dropped their notebooks and rushed to the U.S.
Whether discussing his draft status, his smoking techniques, his relationship with Gennifer Flowers, or the fine points of his administration’s programs, Clinton has time and again demonstrated his unique relationship with the truth. Whenever Bill Clinton is pressed to talk straight, he skitters, winces, and finally hollers louder than any occupant of the White House since Nixon.