Starr Probe Concurs: Foster Killed Self

Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr announced Tuesday that he has concluded that White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster committed suicide in 1993, officially resolving a controversy over a death that some opponents of President Clinton had labeled a murder.

In a forceful statement, Starr said his findings were “based on investigation, analysis and review of the evidence by experts and experienced investigators and prosecutors.”

With the announcement, Starr became the latest in a string of investigators--including a previous independent counsel, Robert B. Fiske Jr.--to reach that conclusion. Although Starr’s announcement contained no details from his investigation, it said he and his staff “concluded that Mr. Foster committed suicide by gunshot in Ft. Marcy Park, Va., on July 20, 1993.”

But the findings almost certainly will not satisfy skeptics who have filled the Internet and radio talk shows with dark statements that Foster, a close friend of both the president and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, met his death at the hands of Clinton aides or sympathizers who allegedly wanted to keep him from spilling White House secrets.

Starr announced his findings as he filed a confidential report on the investigation with a U.S. Court of Appeals panel of three judges that presides over independent counsels. Under the court’s policy, any person mentioned in the report will have an opportunity to comment before the judges decide whether to release it publicly. The comment period could take months.

Fiske conducted a 1994 investigation with assistance from the FBI and forensic experts. Even though he reached the same conclusion as Starr, he conceded that all questions could not be answered.

The fatal bullet, for example, was never located, and no fingerprints were found on the .38-caliber revolver dangling from Foster’s right hand, Fiske reported. Yet Fiske said in his report of more than 100 pages that “evidence overwhelmingly supports” a finding of suicide.

Fiske, a former Republican-appointed U.S. attorney for Manhattan, had been named by Atty. Gen. Janet Reno in early 1994 to conduct an independent investigation of Whitewater-related matters.

He was succeeded in that post by Starr, who said at the time of his appointment that he would take another look at Foster’s death as part of the broader Whitewater investigation.

Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who has publicly suggested foul play in Foster’s death, said through a spokesman that he “would want to read the complete findings [of Starr] before making any comment.” Burton is chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which has been looking into the Democratic fund-raising controversy.

Foster had been a Little Rock, Ark., law partner of Mrs. Clinton and Webster L. Hubbell, a former Justice Department official who pleaded guilty two years ago to defrauding clients and his law firm colleagues. Mrs. Clinton and other members of the firm had worked on legal matters relating to the now-defunct Madison Guaranty Trust Co., a savings and loan at the heart of the Whitewater real estate investigation.

At the time of his death, Foster was under intense pressure at the White House. A House committee uncovered evidence last year that Foster was concerned that Mrs. Clinton might be criticized for her involvement in the firing of seven White House travel office employees in the early months of Clinton’s first term.

Foster also had expressed fears that the Internal Revenue Service might question his conclusion that the Clintons lost money on their investment in Whitewater, a failed Arkansas real estate development.

Records cited by Fiske show that four days before his death, Foster went to a White House medical unit for a check of his blood pressure. He was worried that his heart was racing.

About that time, Fiske’s report said, Foster told his sister, Sheila, in a telephone call that he was battling depression for the first time and did not know how to handle it. She offered to make an appointment with a psychiatrist, but he expressed concern that it could jeopardize his federal security clearance.

Still pending is Starr’s inquiry into the first lady’s long-missing law firm billing records, first subpoenaed by Fiske, that mysteriously showed up in the White House residence in January 1996. A Senate committee that looked into the matter last year heard evidence that the records may have been secreted from Foster’s White House office shortly after his death on Mrs. Clinton’s orders.