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<A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.30/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City
Times - Volume 3 Issue 30
</A>
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Laissez Faire City Times
July 26, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 30
Editor & Chief: Emile Zola
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It is a crime to lead public opinion astray, to manipulate it for a
death-dealing purpose and pervert it to the point of delirium.
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I have said it elsewhere and I repeat it here: if the truth is buried
underground, it swells and grows and becomes so explosive that
the day it bursts, it blows everything wide open along with it.
-- Emile Zola
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America�s Dreyfus Affair, Part 6
by David Martin
The Reign of the Lie
It was a Wednesday night in the late summer of 1998 at the
mausoleum-like headquarters for America�s information commissariat in
Washington, DC, the National Press Club building. Deputy White House
Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr., had now been dead more than five years,
and in spite of three official investigations of his July 20, 1993,
violent death, all heavily involving the FBI, and some Congressional
pecking around the edges often represented as investigations as well,
the evidence of homicide as opposed to the official verdict of suicide
was as strong as ever. But in the dominant hollow terminology of the
time and the place, most of the nation�s citizenry, we were given to
believe, had achieved "closure" over this matter, and many other very
serious things of a highly-suspicious nature as well, and were satisfied
to "get on with their lives."
The gathering was the periodic meeting of an odd mixture of the
civic-minded, policy junkies, and likely government agents, replicating
in the flesh what one sees on Internet news groups. Officially, it is
called the Sarah McClendon Study Group, after the hostess of the
meetings, the doyenne of the Washington press corps who, as she does
periodically, had reserved the room for the occasion. On this evening
the guest speaker is another grande dame of the Washington press,
long-time chief UPI Washington correspondent, Helen Thomas, speaking on
the timely impeachment issue. Assiduous Foster-case researcher, Hugh
Turley, and I are there not only to hear what Ms. Thomas has to say but
also to see to it in the question-and-answer period that larger issues
don�t get overlooked by the 20-odd attendees.
We managed to get our points in. Mine, picking up on Ms. Thomas� remark
that President Clinton remains quite popular with women, was that he
would likely not be if the numerous allegations of thuggish intimidation
of various of his actual or would-be paramours had been properly
reported to the American people by the American press. Turley�s was that
Kenneth Starr is a good deal less upright than we are given to believe,
and the beliefs about his rectitude persist only because the American
press has failed to report on the lawsuit against several members of his
"investigative" team for witness intimidation. Ms. Thomas, who comes
across in person as every bit as much a Clinton partisan as news
magazine reporters and TV celebrities Eleanor Clift or Margaret Carlson,
was immediately hostile to my suggestion and, perceiving an "enemy" of
Starr as a friend, was initially quite receptive to Turley. By the time
Turley revealed that he was talking about the Foster case and t he
lawsuit of Patrick Knowlton, Ms. Thomas had agreed to review carefully a
copy of the addendum to Starr�s report on Foster that the three-judge
panel had forced Starr to include in his report on Foster. In the
process she had had to shush a couple of men in the back of the room who
knew right off the bat where Turley was headed and had tried to prevent
him from getting there.
Turley�s real main point, as was mine, was a truly heretical one to make
in such a place, that is, that there is major news suppression in the
country. That point was most vociferously challenged by a large, blond
fortyish man in the back--one of the shushees--who really didn�t like
the use of our word "suppression" one bit. Wielding the authority of one
who claimed to have worked for Ted Koppel�s Nightline and for ABC News
for many years, he staked his objection upon what seemed to me the
pedantic point that suppression requires conscious, collective agreement
not to report something that is newsworthy, and if we had no proof of
that we were irresponsible to sling around the charge of "news
suppression."
After the meeting formally ended, we continued our discussion of this
point in private. Attempting to get around the collective-action
prerequisite, I asked him if he would consider the actions of The
Washington Post alone in the Tommy Burkett case "news suppression."
"No," he responded, "just sloppiness."
"How can you say that? What do you know about the Burkett case, anyway?"
I shot back.
"I know plenty," said he.
"But what do you know?" I persisted.
"Stuff," was his last word on the subject, which he said with great
bravado as he broke off the discussion and then walked away at a
surprisingly fast clip. It really had to be seen to be believed.
The Tommy Burkett case is by now quite familiar to readers of this
series, and it might ring a bell with the readers of Christopher Ruddy�s
The Strange Death of Vincent Foster or Ambrose Evans-Pritchard�s The
Secret Life of Bill Clinton, who both mention it briefly,
Evans-Pritchard elaborating somewhat more than Ruddy. Burkett was a
21-year-old college student in a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC, who
was found dead in his room in his parents house on December 1, 1991. The
Fairfax County Police, who did virtually no investigation, ruled death
from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The parents later exhumed the body
and a second autopsy revealed a cleanly broken jaw, a mangled ear, and
numerous bruises and scrapes. He had clearly been beaten to death. The
parents also learned later through confidential informants that Tommy
had been doing undercover work for the Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA). The original autopsy doctor was James C. Beyer, the same person
whose later autopsy of Foster, as with Burkett, was absolutely vital to
the suicide conclusion.
Walt Harrington, a writer for the Sunday magazine of The Washington Post
, interviewed the parents at length about their experience,
demonstrating great enthusiasm over the prospects for an ensuing article
as he did so. No article ever appeared. To this date The Post, in fact,
has blacked out the Burkett story. They have written nothing, not even a
simple news report.
To my mind it is one of the most compelling examples of blatant news
suppression that one is likely to find, and the large blond
self-proclaimed ABC News veteran initially claimed a familiarity with
the case. But he was bluffing. Put somewhat less politely, he was lying,
and he had been caught in the lie right off the bat. This calls to mind
our experience with Wall Street Journal columnist and TV commentator,
Paul Gigot, who, as we recount in "Dreyfus 5," claimed that his
newspaper had hired a handwriting expert who had determined that the
torn-up note "found in Foster�s briefcase" had, indeed, been written by
Foster. The only difference is that we hadn�t the means to catch Gigot
in the lie almost as soon as it left his mouth. That only came later.
The experience also provided a poignant reminder of one of the things
that most offends one about the whole Vincent Foster episode. It�s the
lying. Such lying is a hallmark of oppressive regimes across the
political spectrum from the far right to the far left. It is a chilling
thought, and one perhaps that not too many people have had. One must
begin to examine things for himself to realize the extent to which the
United States of the late twentieth century has begun to resemble such
regimes. Lying and tyranny, wherever one finds them, are bound up with
one another. Consider what the famous Soviet writer Boris Pasternak had
to say about it in his epilogue to his novel, Doctor Zhivago:
"It isn�t only in comparison with your life as a convict, but compared
to everything in the �thirties, even to my easy situation in the midst
of books and comfort, that the war came as a breath of deliverance...its
real horror, its real dangers, its menace of real death, were a blessing
compared to the inhuman reign of the lie."
I would fault only his use of the adjective, "inhuman," because,
unfortunately, lying is an all-too-human failing, but it is one the
better angels within us strive to overcome. We do so not only because it
offends our innate moral and religious sense and because it goes hand
and glove with tyranny, but also because lying is the handmaiden of
injustice, and a sense of justice seems to be even more innate in the
human species than a sense of truth. "That�s not fair" typically springs
much earlier from the toddler�s mouth than "that�s not true," but in a
mature society with pretensions of decency and civility the two can
hardly be separated:
"Truth and justice--how ardently we have striven for them! And how
distressing it is to see them slapped in the face, overlooked, forced to
retreat!"
"Not for one minute do I despair that truth will triumph. I am confident
and I repeat, more vehemently even than before, the truth is on the
march and nothing shall stop it. The Affair is only just beginning,
because only now have the positions become crystal clear: on the one
hand, the guilty parties, who do not want the truth to be revealed; on
the other, the defenders of justice, who will give their lives to see
that justice is done."
Thus did Emile Zola appeal to the people of France a century ago. As
truth and justice go together, so, too, do untruth and injustice.
In my study of both the Foster case and of the framing of Captain Alfred
Dreyfus in France I have become acquainted with a variety of
propagandistic methods by which the authorities have managed to do
damage to the truth, to leave a false impression with the public. As we
have noted, it has become easier to do so than it was for the French at
that time because both our political and our media power are a great
deal more concentrated than was theirs. A much narrower spectrum of
opinion is represented by America�s dominant news media, and they are
generally much more in thrall to the government on major issues. What is
more, the political choices that the voters face are much more narrowly
circumscribed. On major issues such as world trading arrangements or
exposing deep, systemic national corruption, the two dominant parties
might as well be one party, not all that different from the one that has
controlled our southern neighbor, Mexico, for most of this century.
I have summarized the techniques used by our ruling Uni-party and its
media cohorts with the following list, a list which has enjoyed wide
circulation on the Internet:
Fourteen Techniques for Truth Suppression
1. Dummy up. If it's not reported, if it's not news, it didn't happen.
2. Wax indignant. This is also known as the "How dare you?" gambit.
3. Characterize the charges as "rumors" or, better yet, "wild rumors."
If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn
about the suspicious facts, it can only be through "rumors." (If they
tend to believe the "rumors" it must be because they are simply
"paranoid" or "hysterical.")
4. Knock down straw men. Deal only with the weakest aspects of the
weakest charges. Even better, create your own straw men. Make up wild
rumors (or plant false stories) and give them lead play when you appear
to debunk all the charges, real and fanciful alike.
5. Call the skeptics names like "conspiracy theorist," "nutcase,"
"ranter," "kook," "crackpot," and, of course, "rumor monger." Be sure,
too, to use heavily loaded verbs and adjectives when characterizing
their charges and defending the "more reasonable" government and its
defenders. You must then carefully avoid fair and open debate with any
of the people you have thus maligned. For insurance, set up your own
"skeptics" to shoot down.
6. Impugn motives. Attempt to marginalize the critics by suggesting
strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply
pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to make money (compared
to over-compensated adherents to the government line who, presumably,
are not).
7. Invoke authority. Here the controlled press and the sham opposition
can be very useful.
8. Dismiss the charges as "old news."
9. Come half-clean. This is also known as "confession and avoidance" or
"taking the limited hangout route." This way, you create the impression
of candor and honesty while you admit only to relatively harmless,
less-than-criminal "mistakes." This stratagem often requires the embrace
of a fall-back position quite different from the one originally taken.
With effective damage control, the fall-back position need only be
peddled by stooge skeptics to carefully limited markets.
10. Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as
ultimately unknowable.
11. Reason backward, using the deductive method with a vengeance. With
thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant. E.g.
We have a completely free press. If evidence exists that the Vince
Foster "suicide" note was forged, they would have reported it. They
haven't reported it so there is no such evidence. Another variation on
this theme involves the likelihood of a conspiracy leaker and a press
who would report the leak.
12. Require the skeptics to solve the crime completely. For Example: If
Foster was murdered, who did it and why?
13. Change the subject. This technique includes creating and/or
publicizing distractions.
14. Scantly report incriminating facts, and then make nothing of them.
This is sometimes referred to as "bump and run" reporting.
All of these techniques have been used in the Foster matter in lieu of a
discussion of the actual facts. Doubtless, most of them were used in the
Dreyfus Affair as well. We have already discussed how #6 and #7, in
particular, were relied upon heavily. The reputation and the honor of
the Minister of War, General Auguste Mercier, was placed against that of
the shadowy, Jewish-led international "Syndicate." With no one in the
United States commanding the respect that Mercier did then, our ruling
elite have had Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr play the role of the
partisan out to get President Clinton any way he can. Most recently that
reputation has been embellished to a great degree by the Monica Lewinsky
episode. The only ones who could possibly question him, they would have
us believe, when he lets the administration off the hook on Foster are a
tiny, irresponsible clique of folks politically aligned with the extreme
right. Most of them, the artificial scenario goes, are in the pay of
arch-conservative moneybags, Richard Mellon Scaife of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, or they are simply unscrupulous opportunists out to make
money. Facts, once again, are forced to take a back seat and the truth
is successfully suppressed.
The experience with our ABC news veteran at the National Press Club, as
with the Wall Street Journal�s Gigot earlier, brought home to my friend,
Turley, however, that I had left the oldest, the most obvious, and still
the most effective truth suppression technique of all off the list. That
is not just to create a false impression through the use of various s
ubterfuges, but simply to lie.
It is an old and effective technique, but it has one big disadvantage,
as President Clinton has had the misfortune to learn. One can get caught
in a lie. In the case of the Foster death, however, that danger is
substantially lessened by the disinclination of anyone with an audience
to point it out. Here we can see what is so truly bad about a corrupt
Fourth Estate. On the most serious of matters, government officials and
journalists as well can lie with impunity, knowing that they will not be
held accountable in the court of public opinion, and justice is the
loser.
Up to this point in the Foster case we have assigned central place to
the first of the truth suppression techniques, "Dummy up," that is, we
have noted repeatedly the blatant suppression of very important news.
There are a surprising number of examples of plain, provable
old-fashioned lies as well, but before we get into them we should note
that the Foster news suppression has continued in spectacular fashion.
In October of 1998 the aggrieved witness, Patrick Knowlton, amended his
complaint to name in his lawsuit alleging conspiracy to violate his
civil rights through harassment and intimidation, Deputy FBI Director
Robert Bryant and Dr. James C. Beyer, among others. The main reason for
naming Bryant relates to another bit of suppressed news, that is the
revelation of an FBI memorandum sent to Bryant only a couple of days
after the Foster autopsy which reported that the autopsy revealed no
exit wound. That memo had been obtained by Reed Irvine of Accuracy in
Media through a Freedom of Information Act request. Bryant, along with
the Park Police and Justice Department announced some days later, on
August 10, 1993, that they had concluded suicide, though he was aware of
this recently disclosed information that contradicted the official
version of the suicide. Beyer was named in the suit for general
misfeasance in his autopsy, but also specifically for moving up the
starting time contrary to accepted practice, beginning it even before
his announced starting time and apparently tampering with the evidence
in the process, and misreporting powder burns on the soft palate in
Foster�s mouth that a laboratory report contradicted.
The most voracious reader of American newspapers or listener to the news
on the airwaves, of course, would have no idea whatsoever that this
latest event, this naming of the second highest official in the FBI and
of the Foster autopsy doctor as defendants in an important lawsuit, had
taken place. While the blackout of this more important news proceeded,
the public was busy falling victim not only to Truth Suppression
Technique #1, but also to variations of #13 and #9, with the Monica
Lewinsky matter. The host of extremely serious scandals associated with
the president could all be boiled down to the relatively trivial illicit
sex question, a monumental distraction or changing of the subject, and
the system could be made to appear to be working by, in effect, coming
half clean about the president�s corruption.
A Parade of Lies
The public would not have been so ripe for distraction and "confession
and avoidance," however, had all the other techniques not been practiced
on them throughout, not the least of which is the latest we are adding
to the list, plain old lying. Reviewing the Foster case, one is
surprised at how often members of the press and the government have
resorted to outright whoppers. We are not talking about merely
misleading statements or sweeping conclusions based upon weak evidence,
matters that might be subject to some honest disagreement, nor do we
propose to examine the numerous instances where the chance is quite high
that the person is lying. Rather, what we propose to do in the remainder
of this "Dreyfus" installment is to point out instances in which clearly
identifiable individuals tell obvious lies for the furtherance of the
official conclusion that Vincent Foster committed suicide out of
depression.
Let us look first at the nationally-televised attempted destruction of
the reputation of the one American reporter, Christopher Ruddy, who has
consistently demonstrated skepticism about Foster�s death. Bear in mind
that, as I indicate in Part 2 of this series, that was a reputation
demolition in which there is a very high likelihood that Ruddy
conspired. The more important of the two instances in which Ruddy was
pounded on national television was by Mike Wallace on October 8, 1995,
on 60 Minutes. By less than honest reporting methods Wallace was able to
leave the impression with the viewers that Ruddy had misrepresented what
Medical Examiner Dr. Donald Haut said about blood at the scene. He then
nailed Ruddy quite effectively by revealing that Ruddy exercised
editorial control over a video in which the narrator asserted
unequivocally that Foster was left-handed, when, according to Wallace,
Foster was actually right-handed. Therefore, the fact that the gun was
found in the right hand was not the anomaly that the narrator of the
video so confidently stated it was.
Neither matter was so cut and dried as Wallace represented them. Ruddy
had taped his conversation with Dr. Haut and had told Wallace so, and
the tapes would prove, according to Ruddy later, that Haut had changed
his story about the blood, but Wallace never checked that evidence
against Haut�s on-camera statement. And Ruddy had corrected himself in
print about Foster�s dominant hand and had told Wallace, but, again,
Wallace ignored that fact on his program. One might say that, in
essence, Wallace was lying in each instance here, but we can do better
than "in essence." Wallace went on, in his authoritative baritone, to
make the following statement: "The forensic evidence shows that the
fatal bullet had been fired into Foster�s mouth from the gun found in
Foster�s hand and that Foster�s thumb had pulled the trigger."
No doubt most people believe that Wallace was telling us the truth. "He
wouldn�t just baldly lie about something this important, would he?" And
if he was telling the truth, that pretty much seals the matter, doesn�t
it? The only, quite-unlikely, murder possibility remaining if Wallace is
truthful here is that Foster had been rendered unconscious and someone
then placed the gun in his hand, maneuvered the muzzle of the gun into
the mouth, and then pressed Foster�s thumb against the trigger.
But, in fact, Wallace is flatly lying. There is no evidence whatsoever
connecting the supposed fatal bullet to the revolver found in Foster�s
hand. How could there be when the bullet has never been found? As far as
the evidence of Foster�s thumb having pulled the trigger goes, it is
interesting that on television Wallace has Rep. William Clinger state
that the depressed mark noted on Foster�s right thumb indicates that he
had used that thumb to pull the trigger. Clinger, of course, has no
medical-examiner qualifications for arriving at such a conclusion (See
my two-letter exchange with Wallace�s producer, Robert Anderson, over
this and other matters in the Appendix.). Maybe Clinger was picking up
on some legerdemain by Special Prosecutor Robert Fiske on this point:
"The physical evidence also demonstrates that Foster himself pulled the
trigger. An autopsy photograph depicts a mark on Foster�s right thumb
consistent with the recoil of the trigger after firing. Based on the
existence of this mark and Park Police scene photographs showing the
position of the gun, the Pathologist Panel concluded that after Foster
fired the gun, his �right thumb was trapped and compressed between the
trigger and the front of the trigger guard..� Pathologist Report,
Paragraph 8."
Fiske was good enough to furnish us with the three and one-half page
report of his four consulting pathologists as an appendix, and, sure
enough, the concluding quote is right there in paragraph 8, but there is
no mention of autopsy photographs depicting a mark. Consequently, there
is no conclusion that the mark shows that Foster fired the gun with that
thumb, or even that it is "consistent with the recoil of the trigger
after firing," which is really nothing but a tricky nonsense statement
by Fiske. The supposed mark or indentation is also consistent with his
thumb having been wedged in there after the gun was fired as well, and
if, in fact, there was such a visible indentation in the photographs
that is a much more likely explanation.
Perhaps the failure of Fiske�s experts to support the conclusion which
he appears to attribute to them explains why Kenneth Starr in his report
more than three years later on Foster has as yet made public none of the
reports of his hired experts even though fully three-quarters of his
footnote references are to those reports. In effect, Starr has returned
us to where we were after the first official suicide verdict on August
10, 1993. We now have a conclusion based upon multiple secret reports
instead of just one, not unlike Captain Alfred Dreyfus� conviction for
treason based upon secret evidence. All the while our media "watchdogs"
seem perfectly content with the state of affairs.
The first influential TV trashing of Ruddy occurred on March 11, 1994,
in the wake of his New York Post "photo blunder" article in which he
left the clear impression that the Park Police had taken no photographs
at all of the Foster death scene. Jim Wooten on ABC Evening News just
four days after Ruddy�s article appeared produced a photograph of a hand
with a gun which he said was, indeed, one of the crucial crime scene
photographs that Ruddy had reported did not exist. Later a still of the
photograph with the ABC logo in the corner appeared in Newsweek, and it
has since been reproduced in many other places. "Pro-cop" author Dan E.
Moldea, with his special access to the Park Police, has the photograph
as well in his book, A Washington Tragedy, How the Death of Vincent
Foster Ignited a Political Firestorm, but, unlike the others, he didn�t
have to use ABC�s copy. He got his photo straight from the Park Police.
Like Mike Wallace, though, Wooten could not leave well enough alone with
this Ruddy embarrassment. He went on to say that Ruddy was wrong about
the absence of blood at the scene as well, and showed a photograph of a
sylvan setting in which he said blood was obvious. It was a lie.
This, supposedly, was another crime scene photograph that had been
taken, and again Ruddy had apparently been contradicted. Unlike the hand
with the gun, this still photograph didn�t get reproduced for the print
media. No wonder. Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media has examined the
video and, just as I recalled from the TV, he sees no obvious blood in
evidence, but what is worse, he sees no green foliage, as there would
have had to have been on July 20, the day of the death.
And here is the best that Kenneth Starr can do in his report referring
to Dr. Henry Lee�s examination of a scene in which a man who, according
to the autopsy doctor, and the autopsy doctor alone, has blown a hole an
inch by an inch-and-a-quarter out the crown of his head:
"Dr. Lee stated that one photograph of the scene �shows a view of the
vegetation in the areas where Mr. Foster�s body was found.
Reddish-brown, blood-like stains can be seen on several leaves of the
vegetation in this area.� He also noted that �[a]close-up view of some
of these blood-like stains can be seen in [a separate] photograph.�"
Recall, though, that Park Police investigator Renee Abt told Moldea that
they had looked for blood on the foliage and found none, and that what
Lee takes for blood is merely leaf disease.
If is very, very hard to come to any conclusion about Wooten�s claims
for what his photograph shows than that he is simply lying. Had Foster
fired the gun as Mike Wallace described and had it produced the sort of
massive exit wound that Dr. Beyer described, there would have been a
good deal of blood and other tissue on the foliage under and around the
path of the bullet. It would be nice for the government�s case and for
Wooten�s credibility if it were there, but it wasn�t.
Lies Fit to Print
Wallace and Wooten are hardly alone in the press with their lies on the
Foster case. Working our way forward in the alphabet, let us look at the
performance of the stalwart New York Times duo of reporter Douglas Jehl
and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Anthony Lewis, in the wake of the
Fiske Report. The August 5, 1994, Lewis column in particular is a
veritable virtuoso performance in propaganda, employing a number of the
truth suppression techniques, and like his counterparts from the fake
right, Lewis goes out of his way to perpetuate the notion that the
Foster death, like many another high-level scandal, is strictly a
partisan political issue. The column, entitled predictably enough, "The
Grassy Knoll," is such a representative sample of the sorry genre of
Foster cover-up articles that we can�t resist sharing with the reader a
good deal more than his out- and-out lies:
The desperate nature of the Republican effort to make something of
Whitewater was on marked display in the Senate hearing on the death of
Vincent Foster. Partisan zeal would not yield to elemental human
decency.
Ever since the assistant (sic) White House counsel committed suicide in
July, 1993, the political right has tried to use the death to attack
President and Mrs. Clinton. Conservative commentators claim that Mr.
Foster killed himself over the Whitewater affair, or was murdered.
As crackpots from Mark Lane to Oliver Stone had a theory about President
Kennedy�s assassination, so with Mr. Foster they have come up with
conspiracy fantasies. A newsletter suggested that he had died in a
Virginia apartment, and the body was moved to the park where it was
found. Rush Limbaugh reported that charge to his large audience,
embellishing it to say the newsletter "claims that Vince Foster was
murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton."
All these claims were exhaustively investigated by the independent
counsel on Whitewater, Robert B. Fiske, Jr. His massive report concluded
that Mr. Foster committed suicide because he was depressed, as he had
been earlier in his life. The many colleagues, family and friends
questioned by the counsel�s staff said Mr. Foster had never mentioned
Whitewater was a cause for concern.
Last month Mr. Foster�s family pleaded for an end to the use of
"outrageous innuendo and speculation for political ends." It was "so
unfair," the statement added, "for the family�s privacy and emotions to
be pawns in a political struggle."
All in one short article Lewis waxes indignant, knocks down straw men,
calls the skeptics names, impugns motives, and invokes authority. He
even changes the subject to the Kennedy assassination, about which he
leaves no doubt that he is in the same camp, defending the indefensible
Warren Commissions findings, as is his putative adversary over Foster,
Christopher Ruddy. So he has given us numbers 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 13 of
the popular techniques for truth suppression--anything but facts about
the case--, but when he talks about the "massive report" of Robert Fiske
he is giving us the newly-minted technique number 15. He is simply
lying. As we noted in the first installment of this series, the body of
the Fiske report is only 58 double-spaced pages in length. No one with
an iota of integrity who has actually bothered to crack its pages would
call it "massive," or "exhaustive," for that matter. Most of its
seven-eighths of an inch in thickness comes from the 97 pages of the
resumes of Fiske�s team of pathologists and the fact that the text is
printed on only one side of the paper.. But if invoking authority is
what you are up to, a "massive report" surely does sound authoritative.
Lewis� suggestion that Foster had been depressed "earlier in his life"
looks a lot like a number 15 as well. He doesn�t say where that bit of
intelligence came from. Here�s what the Fiske Report says:
Foster�s family and friends said that Foster did not experience any
extended period of depression prior to the spring of 1993. Although he
experienced some brief episodes of depression and anxiety, these
appeared to be resolved without treatment. From time to time Foster
experienced what his wife described as anxiety or panic attacks, marked
by heavy sweating or a strained voice. In late 1992, he told his
physician in Little Rock, that he was feeling depressed and anxious. At
least two of Foster�s close relatives have suffered from periods of
depression.
Reading this carefully one encounters here what sounds like a normal
man, not the man with the history of depression that Lewis suggests,
especially when one notes that the wife, Lisa, and Dr. Watkins were
rather slow to come around with their stories of Foster�s recent
agitated frame of mind. Furthermore, "suicidologist," Dr. Alan L.
Berman, who labored so hard in Kenneth Starr�s much longer report to
persuade us that Foster was suicidally depressed, for some reason didn�t
see fit to tell us about any bouts with depression "earlier in his
life," so we can safely assume that they did not happen.
Dishonest as he is in this column, Pulitzer Prize winner Lewis still is
not the worst bearer of false witness in America�s "newspaper of record"
when it comes to the Foster case. That prize belongs to reporter Douglas
Jehl. This is from his July 1, 1994, report on the freshly-released
Fiske Report, which he presents to us without any degree of objectivity
or skepticism, but amplified and embellished through the medium of the
White House in an article entitled "First Whitewater Report Pleases
Clinton Advisers."
The special prosecutor devoted nearly 200 pages to his review of an
exhaustive investigation that he said left no doubt that Mr. Foster, a
kindergarten classmate of the President�s and former law partner of Mrs.
Clinton, put a revolver in his mouth and took his life July 20, hours
after he left his office in the White House West Wing.
Very few citizens have the time, the natural skepticism, the
inquisitiveness, or the resourcefulness to order a government document
like this for themselves. They depend on the newspapers, and they expect
that what they read in the newspapers is the truth. But Mr. Jehl and The
New York Times lied. The investigation was in no way "exhaustive," and
58 scant pages are not "nearly 200 pages." One might say that Jehl is
including the various exhibits and the doctors� resumes, but they cannot
be construed as the special prosecutor�s "review."
Then, not content to lie, Jehl in his very next sentence manages to
sprinkle in truth suppression techniques 3, 4,5, 6, and 7:
Although the Park Police quickly concluded last year that it was a
suicide, the death of the 48-year-old Arkansan has spawned theories so
widespread and ugly that Mr. [Lloyd] Cutler [the White House counsel]
went on today to express hope that "those rumormongers and those parts
of the media that published their rumors will now leave the Foster
family in peace." Among the rumors spread by political opponents was
that Mr. Foster had been killed in another location and that his body
had been moved to the park.
The reader gets no hint of the host of anomalies already apparent to the
astute observer as detailed in "Dreyfus 1," nor would he guess that the
"part of the media" which has raised doubts, The New York Post and their
reporter Christopher Ruddy almost exclusively, had dealt primarily with
facts such as the paucity of blood and gore at the scene and the curious
straight positioning of the body with the arms down by the side "as
though ready for a coffin."
This is the same Douglas Jehl, we might remind you, who nine days after
the death, in another "special to The New York Times," had heavily
influenced public opinion in the case by revealing "facts" that came as
news even to White House spokesperson, Dee Dee Myers. We touched on this
briefly in "Dreyfus 1," but with lying as our theme, a somewhat fuller
treatment is in order. Here�s a longer excerpt from the Jehl article:
Clinton Aide Appeared Depressed Before Death, His Associates Say
Federal officials said today that a piece of paper with the names of at
least two psychiatrists had been found among Foster�s possessions, but
White House officials insisted that they had learned of the discovery
only late last night.
In contrast to White House assertions that there had been no signs of
trouble, Vincent W. Foster Jr., the longtime friend of President Clinton
who apparently committed suicide last week, had displayed signs of
depression in the final months of his life, according to federal
officials and people close to Mr. Foster.
Mr. Foster, the deputy White House counsel, had been so depressed about
his job that before his death he had spent parts of several weekends
working reclusively at home in bed with the shades drawn, a close
associate said today.
The 48-year-old lawyer had also told at least one doctor that he was
dispirited and had obtained the names of at least two Washington
psychiatrists, Federal officials and associates of Mr. Foster said. A
family doctor in Little Rock, Ark. sent antidepressant medication to Mr.
Foster.
The medication arrived in the final days of Mr. Foster�s life, but he
apparently had only just begun to take it, said a person close to the
family. This person said that Mr. Foster�s wife, Lisa, recalled after
her husband�s death that when he would try to smile it was a "forced,
hollowed-out kind of expression."
In a court of law, a witness who has been caught in a lie in his
testimony isn�t worth very much. Neither would he be permitted to pass
on what he says he has been told by people that he does not identify.
What evidence is there that Mr. Jehl isn�t simply lying here, as he
would provably lie later? Has he given us any reason to believe that
even the "federal officials" themselves and "people close to Foster" are
not simply inventions or stooges? What reason would they have had to
want to remain anonymous at this point, anyway? And what�s with this "at
least two psychiatrists" business? Didn�t they just tell us that they
have the list in hand? Can�t these "Federal officials and associates of
Mr. Foster" count? Might this have something to do with the fact that t
he photocopy of the paper with the list of names that was released with
the police investigative papers three weeks after the Fiske report came
out had the names blacked out?
Then when the same list was reproduced in the Senate Banking Committee
documents, the names appear--probably by mistake--, but the writing of
the first name, that of Dr. Robert Hedaya, is scrawled in block letters,
unlike the other two. It is easily perceived as an afterthought, added
at the beginning instead of the end to make it look less like a late
addition. Were they unsure at the time that Jehl wrote that Hedaya would
go along with the cover-up? He is the one, after all, who said in his
deposition that Foster�s sister, Sheila Anthony, had called him about
her brother�s depression just a few days before. Even more curiously,
Park Police lead investigator, John Rolla filed a report only a couple
of days (if it is not fraudulently back-dated, which seems a distinct
possibility) after the death in which he said he called each of the
psychiatrists, and Hedaya made no mention of the Anthony call, saying
only that he had not talked to Foster. Isn�t that strange? You�d think
he would have responded to the inquiring policeman, "No, Mr. Foster
didn�t call me about an appointment, but his sister did just this past
Friday."
While we are asking questions, we might also ask who Mr. Jehl works for.
The fact that these two key articles are denoted as "special to The New
York Times" suggests that he is not a regular employee of theirs. Hasn�t
Mr. Jehl, whose anonymous sources are eventually virtually unanimously
contradicted by friends and associates who testify on the record, given
us good reason to believe that he actually works for one of those
organizations that counts lying as part of its "trade craft?" Whoever
their employer, Jehl and Lewis both would be high on my list of
candidates for the Duranty Prize, a proposed award named after the
Times� Moscow correspondent of the 1930s, Walter Duranty, who regularly
filed glowing and fictitious accounts of Joseph Stalin�s "workers�
paradise."
When we see how eagerly journalists like Jehl and Lewis seize upon the
suicide-from-depression report of Robert Fiske it becomes apparent how
necessary it was to get a high-profile special prosecutor on the case,
someone advertised as independent who is supposed to uncover wrongdoing,
but whose real role is precisely to cover up wrongdoing. It was deemed
so necessary that a connection to the long-ago Whitewater land scandal
had to be fabricated in the form of "Whitewater documents removed from
Foster�s office the night he died." We saw in "Dreyfus 5" how crime
writer Dan Moldea let Washington Times reporter Jerry Seper off the hook
by saying that he was simply "mistaken" about his sources for that
December 20, 1993, story revealing the Whitewater document removal,
when, in fact, it was very nearly the central lie in the entire Foster
death cover-up.
It may be rivaled, though, by one told in another "special to The New
York Times" in the summer of 1994. David Johnston, in a July 21 article,
reports that parts of the Park Police report have just been released,
three weeks after the Fiske Report came out, but the pages of the report
"offered little new." He doesn�t tell us that numerous sections of the
Park Police documents have been inexcusably and very suspiciously
"redacted" or blacked-out, but even so, there remained at least one Park
Police document that offered something new that is highly significant.
That is John Rolla�s contemporaneous report on his and detective Cheryl
Braun�s death notification visit to the Foster home on the night he
died. That report jumps out at the knowledgeable reader, but Johnston
doesn�t even bother to tell us of its existence (nor did any other
national reporter).
The Biggest Lie of All
Up to that point, the definitive word on the matter of the Park Police
and the Foster residence had come from the following passage in a major
front-page article in the July 30, 1993, Washington Post by Ann Devroy
and Michael Isikoff:
Police who arrived at Foster�s house the night of the death were turned
away after being told Lisa Foster and family members were too distraught
to talk. Investigators were not allowed to interview her until
yesterday. "That was a matter between her lawyers and the police,"
[White House counselor David] Gergen said, and the White House "had no
role in it."
This echoed what Frank Murray had reported in The Washington Times on
July 24:
"Park Police investigators had many questions about Mr. Foster�s final
hours but deferred to his friends and family by delaying contacts with
them until after yesterday�s funeral in Little Rock."
And to further make the point, Devroy and Isikoff say in their July 30,
1993, article that the widow, Lisa Foster, "yesterday was interviewed
for the first time by police."
Lies all. Did Devroy and Isikoff know they were reporting lies? Isikoff
surely did at least by August 15 when he wrote in The Post, adding an
invention of his own about Foster�s mental state and the definitive
nature of documents that he, but not we, had had the privilege to see:
"Foster�s attempt to seek legal help is described in more than 200 pages
of Park Police and FBI reports into his death that have not yet been
publicly released...those reports leave no doubt that Foster was
suffering from a worsening depression...." The Park Police documents
that were finally released added up to a scant 100 pages, and they
included, as we have noted, the Rolla report on his visit to the Foster
home. Isikoff had to have read that, but he passes up this early
opportunity to correct his earlier gigantic lie that the police had been
turned away. At the same time he inadvertently tells us several months
in advance that the 100 pages with its many redactions was only a small
par t of the written record withheld from the public. He also lets us in
on something else that he probably didn�t mean to. The FBI was a
participant in the investigation right from the beginning, and its
initial report is still secret. It is as though another 100-plus pages
have also been redacted in their entirety, blacked out, that is, as far
as the public is concerned, but not as far as a journalistic player in
the cover-up is concerned.
Even without these police documents in hand, it would have been a truly
amazing thing if Devroy and Isikoff were in the dark about the visit by
Park Police investigators John Rolla and Cheryl Braun to the Foster home
on the night of the death. A very large number of people, after all,
were there that night, as we later learn, and consider who they were. We
can start with the man who sets the tone for the reign of the lie,
himself, President Bill Clinton. In his written report Rolla curiously
makes no mention of the president�s arrival at the house, but he broke
the news a year later, shortly after the Johnston article about the
police report appeared in The New York Times. He and Braun did so in
their nationally-televised testimony to the Senate Banking Committee on
July 29, 1994 (This time it was The Washington Post�s turn to report
blandly that the testimony contained nothing new. The New York Times,
for its part, neglected to report on the hearing at all.).
--[cont]--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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