Vince Foster’s death: An FBI cover-up?

By WND Staff

The death of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, although
over seven years past, continues to generate heated controversy. The
sheer number of websites and published articles on the subject testify
to the belief of many that foul play may have been involved. Researcher
Hugh Turley recently co-authored a book with crime-scene witness Patrick
Knowlton and his attorney, John Clarke, entitled

“Failure of the
Public Trust.”
The book presents documented evidence supporting the trio’s belief in an FBI cover-up surrounding Foster’s death.

Zoh Hieronimus interviewed Turley on her syndicated radio show.

The Zoh Show
can be heard weekdays from 12 to 3 p.m. Eastern time.

Question: Why have you, Patrick Knowlton and John Clarke all stayed the course when so many think that the truth about Vincent Foster’s death will never be told?

Answer: It is being told and it’s important because what we are really fighting for is pretty simple — honest government. I think that is something we all deserve and we can all seek and share — whether we are Republicans or Democrats. That’s what the battle is all about.

It centers around Patrick Knowlton because he is the key witness in the case. He was at Fort Marcy Park the day that Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster’s body was found and he witnessed the fact that Mr. Foster’s car was not at the park. Officially, we have been told that he drove there and committed suicide. But the facts don’t support that when you look at the evidence and we’ve compiled a lot of it at our website,

www.FBIcoverup.com.
There are a lot of documents there that we filed in court.

Q: Do you have any new information?

A: Recently, we’ve gotten a lot of new documents from the government through a Freedom Of Information Act suit by Accuracy In The Media. John Clarke was representing them in this suit. We’ve attained about 1,400 more pages of documents from the government. Many of them are redacted but a lot of them aren’t. Information continues to trickle out. We’re just going to keep putting it up at our website and publishing it and sharing it with the American people.

Q: Could you give us a quick summary of the highlights of what your team found versus what the Fiske and the Starr reports contain?

A: We’ve been told incorrectly by the American press and our officials that there have been numerous investigations of Foster’s death when, in reality, every investigation that has been done was conducted by the FBI. The initial Park Police investigation was a joint investigation with the FBI; the FBI reinvestigated with Mr. Fiske and again with Mr. Starr. The Senate did hold some hearings but they limited their inquiry into the Park Police investigation and not the death investigation itself.

Also, there were a lot of problems with forensic evidence of the case. Witnesses at the scene saw a wound in Mr. Foster’s neck. Starr, in his report, said that the crime scene photographs don’t support this. Unfortunately, there’s evidence that the crime-scene photographs disappeared, especially the important initial ones that were taken by the first police officer at the scene. Mr. Foster could not have fired the gun. The evidence shows that the gunpowder in his hands doesn’t support the fact that he could have held the gun and pulled the trigger at the same time. None of the 26 witnesses who were at the scene saw the official entrance or exit wounds in Mr. Foster’s body that we’ve been told are there. There was tampering with the body at the crime scene. People moved the body to conceal the neck wound — and they also replaced an automatic pistol in Mr. Foster’s hand with a black revolver which, by the way, has never been identified by any member of the family as being Mr. Foster’s. Some of them have changed their stories over the years; by and large, it’s been an unidentifiable gun. And there’s been obstruction of justice in the case, primarily around witness Patrick Knowlton.

Q: Would you explain what happened to Patrick?

A: Patrick Knowlton is a key witness in the case. He came forward to tell what he saw. The FBI interviewed him. They falsified their reports of what he saw and, when he complained, he was subpoenaed by [Independent Counsel] Kenneth Starr to testify before the White Water grand jury. At that point, Mr. Knowlton suffered witness intimidation on the streets of Washington, D.C., and the FBI participated in that witness intimidation. We have proof of that. That’s what our case is about. I am disappointed that in this election season, none of our government officials seem to be concerned with grand jury witness intimidation. There are a lot of popular issues that are proven to be good for popular debate but this one seems to be off-limits.

Q: Share with us the recent court actions you, Patrick Knowlton and John Clarke are a part of and why they are so important.

A: It’s really important because it’s going to determine whether or not our government functions as it was intended to by the Founding Fathers. We’ve had a failure at the executive branch level with Mr. Starr, who used the FBI to reinvestigate the FBI several times. The legislative branch has failed the American people because the congressional oversight of the crime failed to look into it.

Very significant is the failure of our press. Our press has failed to tell the public the facts of the case and that’s a serious breakdown. Although they are not elected, they certainly play an important role in keeping the public informed on this issue.

Q: How many legal procedures has Patrick been through? This is his last appeal, isn’t it, before he would petition the Supreme Court?

A: Yes, it is. It started with a case filed in 1996 due to the violation of Patrick’s civil rights. When he was subpoenaed, he was intimidated, and that’s against the law. It’s part of a larger conspiracy that we’ve alleged to conceal the truth about Mr. Foster’s death. The civil case has been thrown out time and again. On July 27, we filed what’s called En Banc, that is, we have taken it to the United States Court of Appeals and given all of the documents and all of the evidence — there’s well over a 1,000 pages — to all 15 judges on the Court of Appeals here in Washington, D.C.

Q: What is their task?

A: We’ve asked all of them to review this evidence and to give us a hearing. You see, Patrick hasn’t had a hearing yet. Every time they’ve been before a court, it’s been thrown out for failure to prove a meeting of the mind, that is, that these conspirators got together and plotted this event. It’s possible to do when we have a hearing. There’s been no discovery; there’s been no public hearing in court allowed. I’m not a lawyer; I’m just a layman. I’ve been following the case. All we need is one judge, just one of the 15 to tell Patrick and John that they can have a hearing. And, if that fails, then we’ll go on to the Supreme Court.

Q: You’re saying that the reason the courts have denied Patrick the right to have a hearing is that Patrick, even without a hearing, is supposed to be able to prove that there was a conspiracy, a meeting of the minds. How can you prove that if you don’t have a hearing and the power to do depositions?

A: That’s the point. That’s what we are fighting for, to have a chance to get the facts out. We haven’t had that opportunity yet. It doesn’t stop us from trying and I am not discouraged. I remember the case of Alfred Dreyfus in France went on for 13 years before an innocent man was set free. When I jumped into this, the evidence was so clear, so obvious that Mr. Foster didn’t kill himself, I thought it would come out immediately. Three or four years into it, I realized it could be longer. The process has dragged on. But we are very confident that we have the truth on our side and, when you know the facts and you can back up every bit of evidence, there is no reason for us to stop. If these judges don’t want to go with it, we’ll go to the Supreme Court. And we’ll go beyond that. We are not going to stop because we have the truth.

Q: You told me that you have found more confirmation that what really took place at the crime scene is not at all what is reported in the federal government’s reports.

A: There are thousands of facts in the case. One of them is that Mr. Foster’s car was not there that night his body was found. We found lots of evidence of that, which is on our website. But some of the things are not on the website. For example, Park Police Officer E.J. Smith, who was responsible for processing the car and the gun found at the scene that evening, we just recently learned was not even interviewed until 1995. That’s remarkable in light of all the evidence that the car was not there. This person has been sort of out of the loop all these years and they never interviewed him.

Also, a key fact in the case is that Mr. Foster had a bullet wound to his neck (versus the claims that he only had a mouth and exit wound behind the head). Now, officially, Mr. Starr and others have said that this [neck] wound does not exist, that the crime scene photographs prove it. Well, eyewitnesses saw it. A medical doctor at the scene documented it in his report, but Starr maintains that the photographs prove it wasn’t there.

Q: Tell us what you know about the photographs.

A: The photographs disappeared. Starr argued that the photographs didn’t disappear. He said, for example, that a certain Sgt. Edwards did not take photographs. We have a document from the FBI; it’s called a victimology report. It states, and I’ll quote, “Edwards took photographs.” There’s more evidence that Edwards took photographs in our book and on our website. The people saw him taking photographs; it’s in their reports that they saw him taking photographs. But this recent document is just another example. There’s literally thousands and thousands of official documents that prove the case. We haven’t interviewed one witness or done any investigation on our own; we look at the official record. The official record itself proves that the FBI and the Office of the Independent Counsel under Kenneth Starr covered up the apparent murder of the Deputy White House Counsel.

I want to share one other thing that I learned about an hour ago. I stopped at the University of Maryland, went to the bookstore and I picked up a history book. They are now teaching history wrong at the University of Maryland.

Q: Give us the example of what you found.

A: A book that’s called “American Passages,” which is used in a U.S. History course, states that Vincent Foster committed suicide. That is absolutely false. The book reads like propaganda. It says that anyone who disagrees is a Clinton-hater. I’m neither a Clinton-hater nor a supporter. I don’t support Republican candidates too much either. I’m just looking for justice, an honest government. And, when our history books are wrong — and the book, by the way, costs $60 — students are paying for propaganda and they borrow money to pay tuition. I don’t recommend you study history at the University of Maryland.

Q: What do you think are the five biggest discrepancies between the official report and what you all know to be true, based on the evidence that’s been attached to the Office of Independent Counsel report, as required by the court?

A: Some of the biggest discrepancies are attached to the Independent Counsel’s report. People should order and read Mr. Starr’s report because our 20 pages are tacked on. Some of the biggest issues are: Mr. Foster’s car was not at the park; he had a bullet wound in his neck; the gun didn’t belong to him. The FBI has been part of every investigation — and that’s pretty suspicious right there. They’ve only had one investigative agency involved over the seven years that it has been investigated. Technically, it’s still under investigation because Robert Ray, the current Independent Counsel, is still in operation. This case is technically still open and going and that’s one of the reasons that some of the comments have not been released to us, because they claim that it’s still under investigation.

Q: Is there an effort to close this as soon as the current administration comes to a close?

A: I’m sure Ray’s going to have to close shop at some point. He’s been talking about trying to close up this fall, but that won’t stop this case, because there is no statute of limitation on murder. And Mr. Knowlton was harassed and intimidated by the FBI. They did alter his testimony. They did try to get him to alter his. And we can prove it and continue to prove it.

We encourage people to get out and check out some history themselves. We have plenty of documents at our website and everyone is invited to come and take a look. I’ll answer any and all questions. I do public speaking. Any time anyone wants to discuss the facts, we’ll defend what we’ve written.


Related stories:


No ‘independent’ probe of Foster death


Altered evidence in Foster death?