Police Request to Secure Foster’s Office Ignored

Presidential aides ignored an explicit request by police investigators to seal Vincent Foster’s office in the crucial hours after the White House lawyer committed suicide, a draft Senate report concludes.

U.S. Park Police investigators learned only the next day that their advice was not followed--and discovered that even after the door was locked, “anyone who wanted to” could enter if they signed a log.

The failure to secure the office, documented in the draft report by the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, has been previously reported. It permitted the removal of Whitewater files from Foster’s office to a locked closet in the White House residence--taken there by Margaret Williams, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief of staff.

Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), chairman-designate of the banking committee, has said the document removal will be a crucial focus of the next hearings on Whitewater--the name of the Arkansas land investment once partly owned by the Clintons.

The Senate hearings were to start by February, but D’Amato announced Dec. 13 that he would delay them. He did so after meeting with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, saying he would not interfere with Starr’s criminal probe.

The draft report obtained by the Associated Press is the Democratic-written account of the banking panel’s findings on Foster’s death after an investigation and a hearing last July.

The Democrats also have written a report that highlights the conflicting testimony of Clinton Administration officials who described their actions after learning that regulators wanted a criminal probe of Whitewater.

Republicans are preparing “additional views” that are expected to be highly critical of Treasury Department officials, who passed on information about the regulators’ probe to the White House. The entire Senate report is due out Tuesday.

The body of Foster, who was deputy White House counsel and a former law partner of Hillary Clinton, was found between 5:30 p.m. and 5:45 p.m. July 20, 1993, on federal parkland in Virginia. The banking committee concurred with findings of law enforcement officials and former special counsel Robert B. Fiske that Foster killed himself.

The report said that shortly after the body had been identified, Park Police investigator Cheryl Braun, asked White House aide David Watkins “to have Mr. Foster’s office secured and that Mr. Watkins agreed to do so.”

In her deposition to the committee, “Investigator Braun testified that she later learned the office had not been secured that night,” the report said.

The morning after the suicide, as Park Police officials met with White House aides, the officers learned that the office still had not been closed off.

The report said Capt. Charles Hume “believed that Mr. (White House Counsel Bernard) Nussbaum sealed off the room at about 10 a.m. on July 21, 1993.”

But this apparently was not correct, according to what Maj. Robert Hines learned that morning as Park Police briefed White House officials on the investigation.

“Mr. Nussbaum told him that Mr. Foster’s office would be posted with a security guard,” the report said. “Maj. Hines assumed that the office had already been secured.”

Despite Nussbaum’s comments about posting a guard, Hume made another discovery, according to the report.

He “saw that the door to Mr. Foster’s office was locked, but testified he was told by the agent guarding Mr. Foster’s office that anyone who wanted to go into the office was allowed inside as long as they signed a log,” the report said.

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The next day, July 22, Hume was concerned about the presence of two White House attorneys--Clifford Sloan and Steve Neuwirth--as he interviewed Foster and Nussbaum aides about their last contacts with Foster.

“Capt. Hume was troubled by the presence of Mr. Neuwirth, since he had seen Mr. Foster on the 20th before his death and Capt. Hume would normally interview witnesses separately,” the report said.