Note by White House Lawyer Detailed His Job Frustrations

The note White House lawyer Vincent Foster wrote before his apparent suicide resembled the outline of a resignation letter and mentioned specific job frustrations, an Administration official said Saturday.

In the note, Foster discussed embarrassment over the firings of White House travel office workers and his distress about critical editorials in the Wall Street Journal, according to U.S. News and World Report.

Foster died July 20 of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. The White House has disclosed it found a note torn up in the bottom of Foster’s briefcase last Monday and gave it to investigators.

A White House official confirmed Saturday--as reported by U.S. News--that the note resembled a draft of a resignation letter.

“If anyone didn’t know that Vince killed himself, then, yes, you’d think this was someone frustrated with his job and thinking about resigning,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The White House has declined to publicly characterize the contents of the note, other than to say it shed light on Foster’s state of mind and pointed to the fact that he was troubled by his job.

Clinton, in an interview in the same issue of U.S. News, said, “A lot of us are still grieving.” Foster was a boyhood friend of Clinton’s.

“But I don’t think we’ll find out much more other than that he was deeply disturbed,” Clinton added. “I was notified that there was some sort of note he’d written to himself that he had torn up that may shed some light on his state of mind. The minute I heard about it, I said: ‘Certainly that has to be turned over to the authorities. Let them read and evaluate it.’ ”

The White House said it has not released the contents of the note because the Justice Department had advised against it since the investigation into the death has not been completed.

The note showed that Foster was embarrassed by the criticism the White House counsel’s office received in the May firing of seven veteran civil servants who worked in the White House travel office, U.S. News said.

An internal White House review of the firings criticized the counsel’s office--although not Foster by name. Foster was deputy White House counsel.