GOP Alleges Cover-Up After Foster Suicide

Using the worn leather briefcase of the late White House aide Vincent Foster as a prop, Senate Republicans charged Tuesday that White House officials had conspired to obstruct an investigation of Foster’s 1993 suicide because they feared it would uncover embarrassing details of President Clinton’s Whitewater land deal.

Chairman Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) said that the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which opened new Whitewater hearings Tuesday, has obtained documents showing that Foster was concerned about the controversy at the time of his death nearly two years ago. In addition, D’Amato noted that Foster’s file on Whitewater was one of the first things that White House aides took from his office after the suicide.

Promising they would present new evidence in the future, Republicans advanced the theory that White House aides refused to permit law enforcement officials to inspect the documents in Foster’s office after the suicide because they feared it would compound the political embarrassment that the President and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton were experiencing because of Whitewater.

“What all of these documents tell me is that the White House certainly had reason to worry about a Department of Justice search of Vincent Foster’s office,” said Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.). “Imagining the nervousness of the White House suspecting that these documents and others existed and that they were easily discoverable during the suicide investigation, a great deal of odd behavior is explained.”

For their part, Democrats acknowledged that the White House staff may have made some mistakes in judgment in the hours and days after Foster’s suicide. But they dismissed these errors as the natural response to what Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) described as “a deeply human reaction to a deeply human tragedy.”

The leadoff witness, former Associate Atty. Gen. Webster L. Hubbell, recalled how stunned and confused Foster’s colleagues and friends were when they learned that he was dead. “I have had some tough times in the last two years,” said Hubbell, who will soon go to jail for 22 months for defrauding his former law firm, “but that was the worst day of my life.”

Democrats also argued that then-White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum was justified in denying law enforcement officials free access to the documents, which were protected by attorney-client privilege shared between Foster and the Clintons as well as the principle of executive privilege that allows the President to protect the secrecy of official materials.

“The basic questions is, was there a conspiracy to cover up?” observed Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), one of only three senators who voted against conducting the hearings. “My initial conclusion is that mistakes were made but there has been no conspiracy to cover up.”

In an effort to dramatize Republicans’ suspicions, Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska) noted that White House officials initially overlooked 27 scraps of paper at the bottom of Foster’s briefcase. The scraps later proved to be the remnants of what is thought to be a discarded suicide note.

Murkowski held up Foster’s briefcase with 27 scraps that the senator had placed inside. “It’s very hard for this senator to understand why it took four days to find it,” he said, giving photographers ample opportunity to take pictures of the scraps.

Objecting strongly to Murkowski’s actions, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) complained that there is no evidence anyone at the White House ever held the briefcase up to eye-level as the senator from Alaska did. Furthermore, he said, some pieces of the note were said to have been hidden in the creases at the bottom of the briefcase.

In his note, Foster said: “I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here, ruining people is considered sport.”

A boyhood friend of the President and a former law partner of the First Lady, Foster was found dead in a park in suburban Virginia on July 20, 1993. An immediate investigation by law enforcement officials determined that he had committed suicide with his own gun, and all subsequent inquiries have reached the same conclusion.

The hearings begun Tuesday are a continuation of an inquiry initiated by the committee last year, when Democrats still controlled Congress. Although the panel is now focusing on the events of July, 1993, D’Amato said that it eventually will tackle the central question of Whitewater: Did the Clintons benefit improperly from their investment in the Ozarks land deal with Arkansas savings and loan owner James B. McDougal?

Democrats insisted that Republicans had scheduled the hearings primarily--as Simon put it--”as an opportunity to throw mud at the President.” They complained that American taxpayers already have invested at least $10 million in investigations of Whitewater by Congress, the government and independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

“There are far cheaper ways of embarrassing each other,” quipped Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

Even though the independent counsel ruled last year that Foster’s death resulted from a bout of depression, some Republicans still cling to the notion that his suicide was somehow related to Whitewater. At the time of his death, they noted, Foster was reviewing papers from Whitewater in an effort to determine the Clinton’s tax liability from the investment.

Quoting from Foster’s handwritten notes, Mack recalled that the lawyer had recommended that the Clintons decline taking any additional tax deductions for their losses on Whitewater because poor record-keeping had rendered it “a can of worms you shouldn’t open.”

The Republicans’ theory will be reinforced by the anticipated testimony of one Secret Service agent, who has said that he believes he saw a White House aide removing a box believed to contain the Whitewater files from Foster’s office on the night of his suicide.

White House officials deny that any documents were removed from Foster’s office that night. Nevertheless, they acknowledge that Margaret A. Williams, the First Lady’s chief of staff, removed files from Foster’s office two days later, stored them briefly in a cupboard in the First Family’s residential quarters and then gave them to the Clintons’ personal lawyer.

When Republicans charged that Nussbaum obstructed the inquiry into Foster’s death by refusing to give investigators full access to all his files, Democrats countered that investigators never sought permission to search the office.

Hubbell disclosed for the first time that he was told in late July, 1993, by then-Deputy Atty. Gen. Philip B. Heymann that Park Police investigators had complained to the Justice Department that Nussbaum had given them only the documents that he judged to be pertinent to their case. But he said Heymann added that “he did not think that Bernie had interfered.”

Democrats portrayed this clash with police as a natural result of a characteristically aggressive style of lawyering by Nussbaum, who no longer works in the White House. “That’s Bernie’s personality,” Hubbell shrugged.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Inquiry

Background on the hearings being conducted by the Senate Special Committee on Whitewater:

THE COMMITTEE

Chair: Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) and 16 members

Time: The hearings started yesterday and will be held on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursday from 9:30 am EDT to 1 pm EDT. They may run until the Senate’s August recess.

Subject of current phase: How White House officials responded to a law enforcement investigation of the suicide of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster on July 20, 1993.

KEY QUESTIONS THIS PHASE

* Did White House officials obstruct a criminal investigation of Foster’s death?

* Did White House officials improperly remove Foster’s Whitewater file and other documents from his office after his body was found?

* Did Justice Department officials and other law enforcement officials have a right to search Foster’s office?

* How did the White House officials who searched Foster’s office for a suicide note overlook 27 scraps of paper at the bottom of his briefcase that appear to explain his decision to kill himself?

WITNESSES WILL INCLUDES:

* Webster Hubbell, former U.S. associate attorney general

* Bernard Nussbaum, former White House counsel.

* Margaret Williams, First Lady’s chief of staff.

* Patsy Thomasson, deputy assistant to the President.

* U.S. Park Police officers Cheryl A. Braun, John Rolla and Robert Hines.

* Treasury Dept. Chief of Staff Sylvia M. Mathews

* White House Communication Director Mark D. Gearan

* Former Asst. to the President David Watkins

* Former Director of the U.S. Secert Service John Magaw.

Researched by D’JAMILA SALEM / Los Angeles Times