It’s Paranoia, Not Conspiracy in Foster Case

With no hint of self-consciousness, the Clinton White House has distributed a 331-page file with the strange title, “The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce.” It charges that certain media outlets--especially two I’m associated with, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review published by Richard Mellon Scaife in Greenburg, Pa. and the Western Journalism Center in Sacramento--are spreading right-wing conspiratorial theories concerning the July 20, 1993, death of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster Jr.

According to the file, such irresponsible reportage finds its way into the nation’s “media food chain” and even goes global when these rantings are “reprinted on the Internet, where they are bounced all over the world.” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry then picked up the tempo by characterizing reporters like myself as “crazy,” “conspiracy theorists” and even “nut cases.”

Several of my Tribune-Review reports on Foster’s death are reproduced in the file, but, curiously, all have been reduced in size to the point of unreadability; only the headlines are discernible. (News articles critical of my reporting appear full-size.) One would think that in a voluminous file like this, the White House would be eager to point to concrete examples of conspiratorial-type reporting.

But had those Tribune-Review articles been shown in readable form, the reader would have realized that they contain none of the capricious theorizing the White House quite correctly charges is being circulated on the Internet: that Foster’s death is linked to Israel’s Mossad; that an Austrian hit squad silenced Foster because of his knowledge of a supersecret software program; that Foster feared CIA manipulation of Wal-Mart stock might be disclosed, ad absurdum.

To the contrary, in three years of reporting on the case, I have rejected any notion of conspiracy and have never claimed Foster was murdered. Rather, I’ve simply questioned some highly problematic aspects of the case, the same problems being probed by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, whose inquiry into Foster’s death is still open.

Indeed, the case might well have stayed open because of the legitimate questions raised in my reports: for example, why key evidence in the case is missing, including crucial autopsy X-rays, death-scene photos and even the bullet said to have killed Foster.

Other inconsistencies that those reports dealt with included the absence of fingerprints on the gun and of “blowback” material from the gun blast, the gun’s remaining neatly in his hand, right at his side, after an explosive recoil, the unusual paucity of blood and the failure of a paramedic to note an exit wound.

But what might have rankled the White House most in those reports was their suggestion that the unresolved issues of the Foster case, troubling as they were, were overshadowed by the way officials have handled the case. The search of Foster’s White House office after his death, for example, has all the appearances of being dictated not by standard police procedures but by political expediency.

The file’s authors were likely irked as well by such nonconspiratorial matters as witnesses’ claims that their official statements were manipulated or perhaps even altered. Even the FBI’s former director, William S. Sessions (who was fired the day before Foster’s death), has said that the bureau’s role in the case was “compromised from the beginning.”

Rather than accept and address such legitimate points of inquiry, the White House has chosen to smear and marginalize those who raised them.

The Clinton administration was able to distance itself from the immoderate attacks on Kenneth Starr by James Carville. It will have difficulty, however, disassociating itself from the excesses of the “conspiracy commerce” files and McCurry’s invective. For if the words were not actually the president’s, the tone surely was. Last November, flush with victory, Clinton gave an impromptu speech to a gathering of Little Rock supporters, reported in USA Today, in which he characterized as “a cancer” those who had made an issue of Whitewater and other ethical matters. Clinton promised to “cut [them] out of American politics.”

That sounds like the sort of thing one associates with an Oliver Stone portrayal of Richard Nixon. Let thoughtful Americans, then, read both the “conspiracy” files and the works that are attacked therein and decide for themselves just who is being conspiratorial here.