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The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070
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Washington Inquirer
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08-05-94
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Aim Column

Senators Fall Down On Fiske Job
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by Reed Irvine and Joseph C. Goulden

     The Senate Banking Committee has blown what may be the last
chance to get at the truth of the Vincent Foster death and to
expose the fact that Robert Fiske can't be trusted to do a
thorough, objective probe of Whitewater.  In all the hours of
testimony on July 29, not a single Senator brought up the fact
that CW (the confidential witness) is adamant in stating there
was no gun in Foster's hand when he discovered the body.  The
Senators evidently bought the Fiske report's claim that CW had
retreated from his original story and had conceded that perhaps
there was a gun in Foster's hand that he was unable to see
because his view was blocked by foliage.

     Senators -and the media- should know better.  Fiske has
something in common with President Clinton, whose cause he is
ably serving in his stumbling Whitewater investigation.  With
Fiske, as with Clinton, it is important to examine his statements
with care.  We have discussed in earlier columns how Fiske's
report relies on an untenable theory to explain how Foster's face
picked up a contact blood stain from his bloody shoulder and then
assumed the upright position described by those who found the
body.  The Senators didn't even ask for the explanation, much
less challenge it. 

     Only one Senator, Robert Bennett (R.-Utah), apologetically
asked about the blond hair and carpet fibers found on Foster's
clothing.  Like Fiske, he didn't mention that the hair and fibers
were on his underwear and that there was also semen on his
shorts.  The FBI agents who testified admitted they made no
effort to find where the hair and fibers had come from.  No one
challenged their claim that this would not have helped them find
out if Foster committed suicide and why he did it.  The FBI, like
the Park Police, had decided before any investigation was made
that Foster committed suicide.  Satisfied that there was no foul
play, they left the investigation up to the inept Park Police,
who looked only for evidence that would confirm their verdict.

     The greatest challenge to that verdict was CW, the man who
first found the body and who finally came forward to tell his
story in late March.  His story was a shocker, because he said
that when he saw the body, the hands were at Foster's side, palms
up and there was no gun in sight.  The FBI found him credible,
but to Fiske, who had already leaked word that his report would
validate the findings of the Park Police, this meant that CW had
to be persuaded to change his story.  His report claims that CW
did just that.

     Thanks to Rep. Dan Burton (R.-Ind.), we now know better. 
Burton and Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R.-N.C.) are apparently the only
members of Congress with the courage to challenge Fiske.  Burton
did something which few members of the media have done.  He
double-checked Fiske's claim.

     Burton interviewed CW on July 21 and discovered that Fiske's
claim that he had "changed" his story was based on deception. 
Burton said, "He said the FBI agents pressed him on the issue of
the gun, asking him as many as 20 or 25 times if he was sure
there was no gun in his hand."  An agent asked, "What if the
trigger guard was around the thumb and the thumb was obscured by
foliage and the rest of the gun was obscured by the foliage and
Mr. Foster's hand?"  

     If this was true, CW said, he might not have seen the gun. 
That was all Fiske needed to suggest CW had acknowledged that he
may not have seen the gun because it was obscured by foliage. 
But CW did not change his story that he had seen both hands,
palms up.  He said he came "to within 30 inches....of the body"
and "looked right down into Mr. Foster's face."

     Burton showed CW a copy of the photograph that the White
House leaked to ABC News last March.  Burton says CW "became
visibly angry and he told me that that was not what he saw at the
crime scene, because the picture shows the gun in the hand
underneath the hand with the palm down, and the gun partially
obscured by Mr. Foster's body."  CW also said that "at the bottom
of the body, the vegetation had been trampled down like somebody
had been walking or messing around that area for some time."  He
also told of a wine cooler bottle near the body.  These points
were related to the FBI.  Fiske mentioned neither in his report.

     Burton put all this information -and much more- into the
"Congressional Record" on July 26 (pp H6246-6251); it was also
the subject of a Robert Novak column in the "Washington Post" on
July 27.  Incredibly, no one else in the media has pursued this
major discrepancy in the Fiske report, and not a single Senator
mentioned CW and exposed how Fiske had misrepresented his
evidence.  Sensitivity to the feelings of the Foster family is
admirable, but ignoring outright misrepresentations and declaring
a moratorium on the truth is not the way to honor Vincent
Foster's memory.

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