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– In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.
–Abraham Lincoln

But the Dreyfus Affair…is not fixed in space and time. The combat of the individual against society, truth against deception, is specific neither to France nor to the end of the nineteenth century.
–Jean-Denis Bredin

With the study of history in America’s schools and universities being replaced with “social studies”, “multiculturalism”, and other pseudo-scientific and “sensitive” approaches to the study of the human condition, one of the time-honored features of the traditional history course is also likely to go out the window, and it will be a pity. That is the challenging “compare and contrast” essay question that we never had enough time to do full justice to on final exams. A well- crafted “c&c” allowed us to show what we did or didn’t know about at least two historical events and, at the same time, forced us to think and to put things into perspective. Our only regret is that our professors seemed to leave almost all such analysis to callow students, engaging in much too little of it in their all-too-linear lectures.

To demonstrate the strength of the “compare and contrast” method in elucidating history, I propose herewith to apply it to the Dreyfus Affair, which began with the arrest of Captain Alfred Dreyfus in France on suspicion of treason in October of 1894, and the Vincent Foster case, which began with the discovery of the deputy White House counsel’s body almost a hundred years later, on July 20, 1993. As the Dreyfus Affair disrupted France, the Foster death, and its handling by the authorities, has shown signs that it will haunt the U.S. government into the next century.

Perhaps too much has been made of the relationship between the official framing of Captain Dreyfus and French anti-Semitism. By

regarding it so, we are able to distance ourselves from it, treating it as just one more example of the irrational behavior that mindless bigotry can engender or, alternatively, we are tempted to dismiss it as an episode which has been kept alive in history by the same powerful and influential people who keep reminding us of our collective guilt for allowing the Holocaust.

In either case we would be greatly in error. It is indeed true that Dreyfus was a relatively low-level, anonymous officer in the French army, and mistakes and miscarriages in the imperfect world of jurisprudence, especially military jurisprudence, happen all the time. But the way in which the case unfolded–and unraveled–did in fact almost tear France apart, actively polarizing virtually the entire society in ways seldom experienced in any country except on occasion during the prosecution of an unpopular war. It may have started as a relatively small case, but it grew into a gigantic affair, “one of the great commotions of history,” for the same reason that the Foster case has the potential to do the same. The French government, and virtually the entire French ruling establishment, including the press, put its prestige on the line in defense of a blatant injustice, an eventually provable lie.

The fact that Dreyfus was Jewish was no more than incidental to the original suspicion. An act of treason had demonstrably taken place. Pressure mounted quickly to find the guilty party. German espionage success had been a major contributing factor in the humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. The country was already beset with a general paranoia. The stab-in-the-back explanation for military defeat after World War I was not original with the Germans. Now, a document divulging military secrets was discovered en route to the traditional enemy. Dreyfus was in a position, or at least almost so, to have been the sender, and he seemed just the right type of quiet, unsociable, stiff, cold, generally disliked person to be capable of the dastardly deed. That he was of an ethnic group generally suspected of being insufficiently loyal to Mother France was just one more factor persuading the military accusers of Dreyfus’ guilt, and some of his key accusers were indeed openly and fiercely anti-Semitic. We can best relate to the situation, however, by recognizing that Jews in France at the time were among the demons du jour, along with Germans, foreigners in general, and Freemasons, much like our current ruling establishment has its militia members, far-right Christian extremists, and even angry white males.

Convinced though they were of his guilt, they were not convinced they could convict him in an open court with the evidence in hand. But too much political capital had already been invested, partly on the basis of strategic leaks to a sympathetic press who puffed the story up, for an innocent verdict to be permitted. A trial was held in secret before five military judges, and a unanimous verdict of guilty was duly rendered upon the basis of a dossier assembled, and to a degree, manufactured, by the prosecution. The defense was, quite illegally, never permitted to see–in fact, was at the time unaware of–the essential evidence against the accused. The death penalty for political crimes having been abolished in 1848, Dreyfus was condemned to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island off the coast of South America. Newspapers across the political spectrum all hailed the swift guilty verdict.

Further nailing down the case, the false story that Dreyfus had actually confessed was soon published, and reprinted, in various organs sympathetic to the government. That, the unanimous verdict of the military panel, the opinion of the newspapers, and the natural tendency of the populace to accept the word of authority, was enough to satisfy almost the entire country, at least initially.

For the next three years, the case stayed largely out of the public eye, though a few individuals, uneasy about the closed trial and the excessive zeal with which it had to be sold to the public, began probing into the matter, discovering some of the weakness of the case against Dreyfus and uncovering evidence that pointed to another officer by the name of Major Ferdinand Walsin- Esterhazy, a bon vivant of dubious character who was unmistakably a gentile.

Ironically, in his memoirs published in 1930, German Military Attache Maximilian von Schwarzkoppen revealed that the traitorous major’s first overture was made on July 20, 1894, ninety-nine years to the day before the Foster death. Other parallels to the case are striking. One of the largest is the similarity of the national mood. As it neared the end of the century, France was having trouble coping with what was perceived as the decline of traditional values. The following quote refers to the election of 1893:

Above all, one ought to note the troubling lassitude of the voters–out of ten and a half million who were registered, fewer than seven and a half million votes were cast. Do the abstentions indicate that the regime was perceived as a system of impotence and corruption by a segment of the population?

And a contemporary observer, Jacques Chastenet, wrote, “The French malaise is above all moral.”

Foster More Serious

At the same stage in the developments, the Foster death would seem to be relatively more important and the official findings at least as dubious. Foster, though little known to the public, was the second ranking person in the White House legal office and a long-time associate of the First Lady, Hillary Clinton. He is also often described as a life-long close friend of Bill Clinton because he was born and raised in Clinton’s home town of Hope, Arkansas. This is not quite accurate because Bill moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, when he was five years old, and they did not stay in touch.

According to the official record, Foster was last seen leaving his office at about 1:00 pm on a Tuesday before his body was found at around 6:00 pm by an unlikely anonymous passerby in a hidden corner of a small, preserved Civil War relic known as Fort Marcy Park across the Potomac River in Virginia, a place a few miles from his Georgetown home that Foster, a newcomer to Washington, was never known to have visited. A revolver was reportedly in his hand (though the passerby would eventually surface with the claim that he got a clear look at the hands, and the palms were up and nothing was in them.).

From the beginning the newspapers and the government described the death as an “apparent suicide” though there seemed to be little about even the circumstances known at the time for suicide to be at all apparent. The only thing the authorities really had was the gun in the hand, but it’s not that hard for murderers to put a gun in the hand of their victim, and the untraceable 1913 vintage revolver, made up of parts of two guns, found in Foster’s hand bore all the earmarks of the typical planted weapon. Furthermore, since the recoil of a powerful weapon such as the .38 caliber on the scene almost always causes the gun to fly out of the hand of one who fatally shoots himself, the fact that the gun was still in the hand is, in itself, a suspicious circumstance.

The haste of the snap judgement alone also should have been enough to generate suspicion. Initially, there was no hint of a motive for the “suicide”. Foster was described as the White House’s “Rock of Gibraltar”. Friends and colleagues in Arkansas expressed astonishment that such a solid, stable, even-tempered and responsible person would take such a drastic and ultimately irresponsible action. Both President Bill Clinton and his spokesperson, Dee Dee Myers, told us that Foster’s suicide was just one of life’s mysteries for which there could never be an answer, and Clinton, in a eulogy to Foster asked us to “remember him for how he lived, not for how he died.” In so doing he was at the same time telling us that, yes, the death was by Foster’s own hand and that it is the sort of ignoble deed that is best not dwelt upon. Some White House reporters privately expressed a concern over the President’s apparent readiness to accept the verdict of suicide of a close friend and associate instead of placing the full powers of his office behind a thorough investigation, but none of the reporters’ doubts found their way into print. That the Park Police instead of the FBI were permitted to handle the case also raised some eyebrows, but not in public.

In slow and awkward stages the story of the mysterious, motiveless suicide began to change. The first attempt at changing the story amounted to something of a false start. The little-read Washington Times of Saturday, July 24, four days after Foster’s death, carried an inside article about depression in which Ms. Myers was quoted as saying of Foster, “His family says with certainty that he’d never been treated (for depression).” But on the front page was a story based upon information from an anonymous “source close to the Foster family” who said that Foster was, indeed, experiencing emotional problems and had turned to other family members for psychiatric recommendations. Among the family members mentioned to the reporter was brother-in-law, former Arkansas Congressman Beryl Anthony. The reporter had telephoned Anthony and asked him about the allegation and Anthony had responded, “That’s a bunch of crap. There’s not a damn thing to it,” and angrily hung up the phone. (I wrote a short letter to the Washington Times on July 26 wondering aloud who this anonymous source might be and what he might be up to and concluding that from all we were being told about Foster, in the existing moral climate, he seemed a better candidate for murder than for suicide. The letter was not printed. It was the first of several that I have written to the Washington Times on the Foster case. None have been printed.)

The next significant contribution to the theory that Foster was experiencing psychological problems came four days later in the Washington Post Wednesday, July 28, on page A8. The first sentence bears quoting in its entirety:

White House officials searching the office of Vincent Foster, Jr. last week found a note indicating the 48 year- old deputy White House counsel may have considered psychiatric help shortly before he died July 20 in what investigators have concluded was a suicide, federal officials said yesterday.

The full quote is important because two days later, as part of a much longer article on the ongoing investigation, the Post said that the note had been found by the Park Police in Foster’s automobile at Fort Marcy Park, which was eventually in the report released by the Park Police almost a year later. (The July 30 Post article said, however, that the list contained the names of two psychiatrists, both of whom were named and one of whom was interviewed. Neither had been contacted by Foster. The problem here is that when the police report was released, three names were on the list and the names were blacked out as though to protect their confidentiality. The blackouts were missing in a version of the police report released some time later, and the first name on the list, the one not named in the Post article, looked as though it had been written in a different hand.)

It is also interesting to observe that mention of the list of psychiatrists does not turn up in police records until July 27, though the police had all evidence from the car in hand the night of the 20th.

The observation that investigators had concluded the death was a suicide is also not correct, at least not in any official sense. That conclusion was officially made by the Park Police on August 10.

For the eventual official story that Vincent Foster committed suicide because of clinical depression, July 29, 1993, was a banner news day. The Washington Post headlined its scoop this way, “Note Supports Idea that Foster Committed Suicide”. What followed was the revelation that another note, this one written on yellow legal paper and torn into 27 pieces, had been found in Foster’s briefcase, a briefcase which had been searched on July 22 and had “all” its contents removed by Chief White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum in the presence of witnesses. The discovery had been made by attorney Stephen Neuwirth of the White House Counsel’s Office on July 26, but the investigative authorities had not been told about it for around thirty hours, or, at least, so we were told in the story. A seemingly critical news story line was begun, which has continued to the present, over the possibly “unwarranted delay” in reporting the discovery of the note, but the actual text of the note was not released, allowing the suspense to build for another twelve days while, in the meantime, the headline characterization of the mystery note imprinted itself on the consciousness of the public.

For its part, the New York Times on July 29 had a major story which began this way:

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 month of his life according to Federal officials and people close to Mr. Foster.

A “close associate” had told of Foster’s depression having been so bad that on one recent weekend he had spent the whole time in bed with the blinds drawn. The article also contained the first mention of the prescription of an anti-depressant by an Arkansas doctor, and a “person close to the family” told us that he had just begun to take it.

If the anonymous “Federal officials” and “people close to the family” were employed by the White House, they apparently had not yet let their official spokesperson in on everything. Here is an excerpt from Dee Dee Myers’ press briefing on the same day:

Q: You asked the family what, Dee Dee?

A: Whether he had been taking any medication. And I didn’t confirm it. And they made some point and I, you know–

__________

Q: And what can you tell us about the anti-depressant medication?

A: Nothing.

Q: Had he taken any of it?

A: I don’t know.

Q: Do you know what it was?

A: No. I don’t even know–The only thing I know about that is what I read in the New York Times. I don’t have it confirmed from another source.

Jumping ahead in our chronology quite a bit, it should be noted that neither Foster’s widow Lisa nor anyone else on the record has ever confirmed the “lost weekend” that Foster spent at home in bed with the blinds drawn as related to the New York Times by unattributed sources. The authenticity of the note was also later called into very serious question, about which we will have much more to say later, but for the moment, America’s two leading newspapers had succeeded in establishing in the public mind the rationale for Foster’s suicide. He was “depressed”.

Media Similarities and Differences

Even in the early stages of the scandal the similarities in the use made of the major media by the respective governments can be seen. The use of anonymous sources which propagate the government line in the Foster case is of a piece with the early leaks whipping up animosity toward Dreyfus and the ill-founded French reports after the trial that he had confessed. On the other hand, if the Foster case has not, and perhaps never will, escalate into the sort of national blow up that the Dreyfus Affair did, it will likely be because of the differences, not the similarities, in the press. Here’s how it was then in France:

Each time the Dreyfusards brought forward new evidence which they were certain this time must force a retrial, it was quashed, suppressed, thrown out or matched by new fabrications by the Army, supported by the Government, by all the bien-pensants or right-thinking communicants of the Church, and by the screams and thunders of four- fifths of the press. It was the press which created the Affair and made truce impossible.

Variegated, virulent, turbulent, literary, inventive, personal, conscienceless, and often vicious, the daily newspapers of Paris were the liveliest and most important element in public life. The dailies numbered between twenty-five and thirty-five at a given time. They represented every conceivable shade of opinion….

Newspapers could be founded overnight by anyone with energy, financial support and a set of opinions to plead. Writing talent was hardly a special requirement, because everyone in the politico-literary world of Paris could write–and did, instantly, speedily, voluminously. Columns of opinion, criticism, controversy poured out like water. [5]

When it comes to having access to news and information, we residents of this country reputedly by, of, and for the people can only feel extremely deprived by comparison. Whether one gets his news from newspapers, magazines, or the television, all he encounters is a drab uniformity, especially when it comes to questions of serious misdeeds by the government. Particularly perceptive people may have an inkling that something just doesn’t smell right, but they are given very little help by the increasingly lock-step press in determining what it is that’s wrong. In the case of the Foster death, as we have seen, from the very beginning the smell was particularly pungent, but anyone looking for reporting and analysis to satisfy his curiosity found… nothing, absolutely nothing. Rather than four fifths of the press being on the side of the government, in the Foster case, initially, exactly 100 percent lined up behind the Foster suicide verdict, even, as we have seen, before anything like an official finding was announced. But, come to think of it, that’s how it was, initially, with the Dreyfus verdict.

Most of the nations’s columnists, editorial writers, and other opinion molders rendered their support for the government position by simply ignoring the Foster death. The apparent intended impression to be created was that the evidence for suicide was so persuasive that the matter was unworthy of their comment, but they left open the opposite interpretation of their silence, that is, that there was no way that they could marshal the evidence to make a persuasive case for the government. At any rate, by their silence they tacitly gave consent to the government’s words and actions.

Actually, William Safire, token conservative columnist at the New York Times, but somewhat tainted by his former employment as speech writer for the disgraced Richard Nixon, did write a few early articles giving voice to his skepticism about the rush to the suicide conclusion, but he did not persist. Similarly, the conservative Wall Street Journal expressed some misgivings editorially and predicted that the Clinton administration would bear a stain that would not go away by allowing the Park Police to do only a cursory investigation of the Foster death rather than having a full-scale, open FBI investigation. They also picked up on the little noted Washington Times article in which Foster’s brother-in-law refuted the allegations of the anonymous source that Foster was seeking psychiatric help, concluding that certainly something seemed to be amiss. But, even though ensuing revelations made the government position ever less tenable, the Journal, like Safire, lacked staying power on the issue and eventually fell into the habit of referring to the “Foster suicide”, which, as the routine practice of all the other news organs, was the most powerful reifier of the government’s “suicide-from-depression” position.

Returning to the Foster case chronology, on August 10 the Park Police and the Justice Department held a news conference at which they announced their official finding of suicide in the case. The fact that they were most unforthcoming with substantive answers to questions at the lightly-covered conference and did not at the same time release their report on their investigation was given little attention by the press because the Justice Department, instead, used the occasion to release the text of the by-now celebrated note. Again, of the major national newspapers, only the Wall Street Journal expressed any semblance of an objection to the stated requirement that, if they wanted to see the police report, they would have to go through the drawn out, cumbersome, and ultimately uncertain procedure of submitting a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Their rivals devoted their attention mainly to analyzing and commenting upon the newly-revealed contents of the note, treating it, for lack of anything better, as a suicide note.

With the note taking center stage, it is important that we take a critical look at its contents as well as the circumstances surrounding its reported discovery and unveiling. As observed before, it was hand-written on a sheet of yellow legal paper which had been torn, actually, into 28 pieces (intentionally mutilated to make handwriting analysis difficult?) with one piece, where initials and date might be expected, strangely missing. The act of tearing had produced no fingerprints on the document. The briefcase in which it supposedly turned up, as noted earlier, had been previously inventoried, after which it had been left “empty” on the floor of the office. Foster had been known for his gentlemanly nature and the grace and clarity of his writing in his legal briefs, but here is what the nation was told he penned and then curiously tore up and saved in his briefcase:

I made mistakes from ignorance, inexperience and overwork
I did not knowingly violate any law or standard of conduct
No one in The White House, to my knowledge, violated any law or standard of conduct, including any action in the travel office. There was no intent to benefit any individual or specific group
The FBI lied in their report to the AG
The press is covering up the illegal benefits they received from the travel staff
The GOP has lied and misrepresented its knowledge and role and covered up a prior investigation
The Ushers Office plotted to have excessive costs incurred, taking advantage of Kaki and HRC
The public will never believe the innocence of the Clintons and their loyal staff
The WSJ editors lie without consequence
I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport

To call this collection of random jottings sophomoric and peevish and wholly out of character for a man of Foster’s caliber is to understate the case. From its text alone, the reassembled note virtually screamed “fake”. One could easily interpret it as a construction whose deceptive purpose was to persuade the public that Foster did, indeed, commit suicide, but not over anything very serious. What personal “mistakes” could the man have been talking about anyway, and what “lies” by his antagonists? He didn’t say. Furthermore, if his performance, and that of his cohorts, was as blameless as he goes on to say it was, what was the problem? What was ultimately so serious that he should feel compelled to abandon his family, his loved ones, and his responsibilities by taking his own life?

A detached, objective press would have to be wondering aloud if this could really be the writing, or the thinking, or the actions of the man Vincent Foster was known to be? Yet, with virtual unanimity, they ignored all the textual problems and bizarre circumstances surrounding the note’s discovery and seized upon the squalidly self-pitying last item, trumpeting it as the note’s main message. Here, obviously, was a poor, weak wretch about to slink off to the Washington area’s most out-of-the-way place and end it all with suicide.

One reporter at the press conference did ask Chief Robert Langston of the Park Police if the note had been authenticated. The chief responded that a “handwriting expert” had reviewed it and told them that it had been written by Foster, and so did the widow, Lisa (who claimed no particular expertise in recognizing forgeries, we might add). He did not say who the expert was nor what means of authentication he had used, and there was no follow-up question. The gathered scribes should have been made a bit uneasy by the fact that no photocopies of the note were released, “at the very strong urging of the family of Vince Foster”, according to Deputy Attorney General Philip B. Heyman. No explanation was given for the odd family plea, and one can think of no innocent reason for it.

The truly unsatisfactory, and unsatisfying nature of this historic news conference is well summed up with this concluding exchange between Justice Department spokesman, Carl Stern, and Sarah McClendon of the tiny, obscure McClendon News Service:

MR. STERN: Sarah, if you put in a Freedom of Information Act request, we’ll make sure that it’s handled.

Q: (off mike)– Freedom of Information Act–(off mike). I want to know what–

MR. STERN: Okay, Sarah.

Q:– (off mike)–of things we should know now. Are you going to give it to us or are you not?

MR. STERN: Sarah, I don’t think we have that available at this–at this point.

Q: Well, why don’t you?

MR. STERN: You want some special servicing? Is that it? You’re not content to wait and do it the normal way, through a Freedom of Information Act request?

Q: No. Hell, no. I’m not–

MR. STERN: Okay.

Q: –going to wait on that.

MR. STERN: Thank you very much.

END

Thus were the reporters, and the nation, left hanging. A commitment had been made eventually to tell all about the police investigation when the first FOIA request was finally answered, but not just now. The secret case against Dreyfus for treason had been matched by the secret-for-now case against Foster for self-murder.

Defending the Government

Unwilling to share with the public the facts behind their case against Dreyfus, the government and its defenders made their argument principally over the motivation of the protagonists. From this standpoint alone, they would appear to have been on firmer ground than either their opponents at the time or those who have used a similar defense of the government in the Foster matter. What rationale could have possibly been strong enough for France’s generally apolitical Army to fabricate an elaborate case against one of its own? Who could possibly let himself believe such a thing, that the honorable men entrusted with the defense of the nation against their immediate, and very threatening enemies, the Germans, could be capable of such an outrage? Had not the Minister of War, General Auguste Mercier, assured the military editor of the influential newspaper Figaro that, from the beginning they had “proofs that cried aloud the treason of Dreyfus” and that his “guilt was absolutely certain”? [6]

Mercier’s parliamentary aide, General Riu, put it this way, “Today one must be either for Mercier or for Dreyfus; I am for Mercier.” “If Dreyfus is acquitted, Mercier goes,” said the royalist-leaning l’Autorite, and a military colleague demonstrated his grasp of what was at stake by noting that, if in a retrial “Captain Dreyfus is acquitted, it is General Mercier who becomes the traitor.” L’Autorite raised the stakes one step higher by observing that, since Mercier was a member of the government, “If Dreyfus is not guilty then the Government is.” [7]

At least in the early stages of the Foster matter, no one making the case for the government had the stature of the distinguished, upright warrior , Mercier, around whom it could be personified. Certainly, the virtually-anonymous Chief Langston of the Park Police did not qualify, and from his indifferent performance during his one moment on center stage it was clear that he was not bucking for the job. Neither were the possible fabricators of evidence as apparently free of motive or as impeccable of reputation as were General Mercier and his staff. It was known that Foster’s office had not been immediately sealed off as requested by the Park Police and that the police were, in fact, not even allowed into the White House until a day’s delay. When they did arrive, they were not permitted to examine the possible evidence within Foster’s office directly. Rather, they were required simply to take down the information that was provided them by the White House legal office staff, or more precisely, by Chief White House Counsel Nussbaum as he went through Foster’s papers. This was the appointee of a president already wracked with scandal barely into the first year of his office. Foster, though a government employee, was said to have been assigned the task of putting the financial property of the Clintons into a blind trust (and who knows what else?). In that capacity he would have known more about the Clinton family finances than any man alive, and his death had rendered him safely beyond any future subpoena.

Those people who eventually materialized to suggest skulduggery in the Dreyfus Affair also were more vulnerable to having their motives impugned, at least in the popular imagination, than are the Foster case critics. Since the original Dreyfusard, the journalist Bernard Lazare, was himself Jewish as were many others who in due time rose to his defense, it was easy to believe that they were just sticking up for a co-religionist regardless of the man’s likely guilt. But the insinuations went much deeper. There was already profound suspicion in France of the growing power and influence of the new money represented by Jewish finance capital, and anti-Semitism had not yet had itself discredited by the excesses of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. Though the three thousand copies of Lazare’s pamphlet on the case were largely ignored by the influential people to whom he had it distributed, eventually, through sheer force of argument and the inherent and growing strength of his case, he began to pick up allies. As he did, a powerful counter reaction was generated.

In due time, all new evidence dug up by those favoring a new trial for Dreyfus was laid by the Nationalists in the lap of a sinister conspiracy called the “Syndicate”. The Syndicate was not only said to include Jewish bankers, politicians, and journalists but also such enemies of traditional France as Freemasons, Socialists, and foreigners in general, particularly Germans. The great majority of the French populace found it easy to believe, and they were helped along in that direction by the lion’s share of the press, that the entire purpose of questioning the Dreyfus verdict was to embarrass and undermine the state, and that those who were doing it were just the sort of people that one would normally suspect of such a thing.

One could hardly deny that Jews like Lazare were leaders of the Dreyfus cause, and that it took money, of which Jews had a large and growing sum, to publicize it. Had Dreyfus not been Jewish and with a strong, well-off family behind him, had he been just an average French captain with the same personality in the same situation, one might seriously question whether anyone with any real clout would have taken up his cause in the first place. The eventual exoneration of Dreyfus, to take a novel approach, might be seen as a sign of the first tiny glimmering of Jewish media power in the West, but they were as yet too weak to have pulled it off without truth, and certain key, brave adherents to truth on their side.

Defenders of the government in the Foster case have hardly been above attacking the motives of the skeptics, either. Unwilling as they are to examine publicly the particulars of the matter, belittling the critics and attacking their motives is all that is left to them. An interesting contrast with the Dreyfus Affair here is the near reversal of roles. To be sure, those raising questions are being accused of wanting to bring down the government, but in this instance they are precisely those nationalist, traditionalist, Christian conservative, anti- internationalist types who so staunchly defended the government in the Dreyfus Affair. The defenders of the government, on the other hand, are the “liberals”, “progressives”, “internationalists”, and in another irony, they are backed up in the media, at least in such outstanding examples as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the weekly magazine, the New Yorker, by the same sort of finance capital that was said by their opponents to be behind the Dreyfusard “Syndicate.”

The Role of the Intellectuals

The Dreyfus Affair is also duly famous for the role played in working for justice for the falsely convicted man by France’s famous intellectual class. Most notable of them all was France’s preeminent writer, Emile Zola, who, at the height of the uproar, wrote a letter to the influential newspaper, l’Aurore, given the title J’Accuse by editor (and future Premier) Georges Clemenceau, which accepted the challenge of the Nationalists who said that proclaiming Dreyfus’ innocence was to imply the government’s guilt. Indeed they were guilty, said Zola eloquently, and he called the roll of the guilty parties, detailing their crimes. The evidence would admit no other conclusion. For his trouble he was tried and sentenced to a year in prison for libel.

Watching the performance of America’s intellectuals in the Foster case, one could easily become disappointed and even disillusioned. People who make their living with their wits, with their critical faculties, seem to have abdicated all responsibility to bring them to bear here. More even than the general public, who polls show have a healthy skepticism about the official line on the Foster death, they appear eager simply to believe what they are told, what it is most comfortable to believe. But there is precedent for this greater credulousness of the intellectuals, so there is no real reason for disillusionment. No group of Americans swallowed more uncritically the gigantic lies of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union than did our leftist intellectuals, continuing to believe in the “workers’ paradise” even at the height of the Stalin purges, the show trials, and the Great Terror. Nothing seems to paralyze their discerning powers so much as the pronouncements of those who demonstrate good intentions toward society’s less fortunate. A Democratic President, just like a brutal but distant communist dictator, is simply given a great deal more slack by these people than anyone perceived as being “conservative”.

America’s high-brow, general interest magazines, identifiable by the fact that they publish a poem or two here or there, have all had articles making small of any and all allegations of scandal related to the Clinton White House, reserving their most scornful tone for the suggestion that Vincent Foster might not have committed suicide. These magazines include Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and the New Yorker. Perhaps fittingly, the most intellectually snobbish and the one which publishes the most poetry, the New Yorker, has been the most active in espousing the government’s case, weighing in with an article on Foster’s suicidal “depression” even before the August 10, 1993, official suicide “verdict” was rendered and again with an article in September 11, 1995, based upon an exclusive interview with the reclusive widow, Lisa. Both articles are emotional, impressionistic, and superficial, whose scarce supply of hard facts does as much to undermine as to support the official suicide verdict, at least for one who reads carefully and can look past the loaded language. No major magazine has attempted anything resembling its own, independent analysis of the Foster death case.

If the government protagonists in the Foster case have lacked their General Mercier, so too have the critics lacked their Emile Zola. Actually, it is a commentary on the state of letters in modern America that no one would really expect a prominent writer to adopt a high profile challenging the government in a case such as this. In the first place, one would be hard pressed to think of any current literary figure with anything like the stature, the eloquence, the moral authority of a Zola. America’s literary community likes to think that it is above such mundane matters as politics, and its contempt for the everyday concerns of the average person is generally reciprocated by the latter.

But one prominent literary figure did offer his opinion on the case in a national magazine. Using the occasion of the shot-gun suicide of drug-ridden rock performer Kurt Cobain, on April 18, 1993, Newsweek had William Styron, most noted as the author of the fictionalized memoirs of the leader of a 19th century Virginia slave rebellion, The Confessions of Nat Turner, reflect for its readers on Vince Foster’s presumed depression. Styron’s qualification for the assignment was that he claimed some expertise on depression, having suffered from it himself and having written a book on his experience. His authority for Foster’s case were the questionable newspaper accounts already mentioned and an anonymous “close friend” of Foster’s–much like the New York and Washington Times anonymous sources– who noted that Foster was “clearly depressed”. He would not identify the anonymous close friend when called on the phone and later queried by mail. One can’t help but wonder if the source was the same one who told Sidney Blumenthal for his August 9, 1993, New Yorker article that Foster had lost 15 pounds (a “fact” which Styron duly repeats). Later, official records revealed that Foster had weighed 194 pounds during a December 1992 physical exam in Little Rock and at the autopsy his corpse weighed 197 pounds (more on this later).

In sum, Styron’s performance for Newsweek was truly a sad one, and would have been very disappointing to anyone still harboring the notion that our “serious” writers are serious seekers after truth.

Enter Christopher Ruddy

Perhaps the weight of Mr. Styron’s dubious authority was felt necessary by mid-April of 1994 because, earlier in the year the Foster case had produced its potential Bernard Lazare in the person of New York Post reporter, Christopher Ruddy. Ruddy, the 29-year-old Irish Catholic son of a New York policeman, on January 27 produced his first shower of new information as a part of what would become a veritable flood in the months and years ahead (Lazare, by the way, was barely 30 years old when Alfred Dreyfus’ older brother, Mathieu, induced him to take up the cause). Here, remarkably, it would appear, was the first American reporter who didn’t rely primarily upon the government for his information on the case. Rather, he was able to interview actual witnesses to the body discovery scene, two of whom among the emergency workers were willing to be quoted upon what they had seen. And their accounts much more seriously than before called into question the official suicide story.

What they said they saw was a body lying perfectly straight with the arms against the body and a revolver still in the hand. One of the workers who helped put the corpse in a body bag said he didn’t recall seeing any blood or an exit wound. The scene, in sum, was altogether different from what these experienced emergency workers would have expected from a man having blown out his brains with a .38 caliber revolver. It also conflicted with the experience of the New York homicide experts with whom Ruddy consulted, according to his report.

This was news which could not be ignored, though it was by the major news networks and the New York Times. The Washington Times played it straight with a front page article on the Ruddy revelations the next day along with a chronology of the main developments in the case. The Washington Post remained silent until the next day, January 29, 1994, which was a Saturday, and buried the article away at the very bottom of page 2 of their Metro or local news section. Because of its importance the story is presented here in its entirety, complete with heading and the commentary that I wrote on it at the time, that is, without the benefit of the considerable hindsight that we have acquired as new evidence has surfaced. To get the impression that the Post intended to convey, and probably did to those who depend on it and other mainstream sources for all their news, the reader should make a serious effort to skip over my commentary–the part in italics–the first time through. After having read it with the commentary, one might consider reading it one more time a la Post reader after having completed reading this entire paper to get a more thorough appreciation of its conscious deceitfulness.

Doubts on Clinton Aide’s Death Silenced

It is not the doubts which have been silenced. They have been magnified. The witnesses have been temporarily muzzled, but they did get their stories out, which is a great credit to their courage and integrity. One should be able to say as much for the Post.

Two Fairfax County emergency workers who have questioned whether the death of White House aide Vincent Foster Jr. was a suicide have been asked by county officials not to discuss their suspicions publicly, a fire department spokesman said yesterday.

The suspicions, the doubts, the questions of the witnesses are not at issue here. What they report they saw is what is at issue.

Paramedic George Gonzalez and emergency worker Kory (sic, it’s Cory) Ashford, who were among the first people to see the body of the deputy chief counsel at Fort Marcy Park last July, have told county officials that the scene seemed unusually tidy for a suicide to have taken place there.

Gonzalez and Ashford said they thought it strange that Foster, who died from a gunshot wound to the head, had little blood on his clothing and was still holding a .38- caliber pistol in his right hand.

Gonzalez and Ashford said that in similar cases they had seen, the force of the gunshot had caused the person to drop the weapon, a county source said.

In the case of Gonzalez we are fortunate to have both an expert witness and an eyewitness together in one person. Gonzalez, the New York Post reported, has had 13 years experience as a rescue worker and has seen the results of numerous hand-gun suicides. But the New York Post did not rely solely on his experience. They also talked to numerous homicide experts in New York City who agreed that the scene was highly unusual for a suicide.

The fact that Foster was stretched out neatly on his back also made the emergency workers wonder about the circumstances of his death, the county sources said.

Also with his arms straight by his side. How did he get into that position after he had blown his brains out with the gun in the mouth? Why was there no blood or tissue on the gun, as is common in these cases?

Several forensic experts, however, said yesterday that the lack of blood on Foster and the position of his body were consistent with federal authorities’ ruling that the death was a suicide, even though such deaths often are more gruesome.

Notice the strategic “however.” The New York Post also talked to experts. This article suggests a false conflict, the amateur witness versus the “experts.” Though by great happenstance the condition of the body may be “consistent with” the official declaration, it is statistically a great deal more consistent with murder staged to look like suicide, which New York officials say is a relatively common occurrence.

“There’s a lot of variability, depending on the gun and the type of ammunition used,” said Michael Baden, director of forensic science for the New York State Police.

But we know that this was a .38 revolver, and we know the ammunition that was used. The “variability” observation is irrelevant. Thirty-eights of this type make a big, bloody mess.

“The bullet wound in the mouth does not necessarily cause blood to come out of the mouth.”

Blood out of the mouth is not in question here. The mouth is the only place anyone saw blood, oozing from the corner. If he died on the spot there should have been a big pool of blood around the body. There was none.

Gonzalez and Ashford have consistently described the scene of Foster’s death as tidy, but only recently indicated their suspicions that his death might not have been a suicide.

But only this week have their observations, or anything like them, appeared in print anywhere, and they are highly significant. If Washington Post reporters had heard of such descriptions, as they imply, they are guilty of journalistic malpractice, or worse, for not reporting them.

After reports of their concerns appeared in the New York Post, the workers scheduled a news conference yesterday to respond to a barrage of media questions.

But Sgt. Blount, a spokesman for the county’s Fire and Rescue Department, said yesterday that Fairfax officials ruled out a “statement and question” session because of the possibility that inquiries into Foster’s death could become a part of a federal investigation into President Clinton’s ties to a failed Arkansas savings and loan. Foster, who had been treated for depression before his death, handled some of the Clintons’ affairs in Arkansas, including their investment in the defunct Whitewater Development Corp.

The mention of treatment for depression is entirely gratuitous, thrown in to reinforce the judgment of suicide. Four days after the death, on July 24, 1993, the Washington Times quoted White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers as follows: “His family says with certainty that he’d never been treated (for depression).” Foster’s immediate family, to date, has never publicly confirmed such treatment nor has any doctor. No record was ever produced to confirm the Post’s earlier assertion that he had a prescription for an anti-depressant filled. The Post’s assertion that he took that anti-depressant the night before he died is contradicted by what little has been released from the autopsy report, which said that no drugs were found in his system.*

Special Counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr., who is investigating the Clintons’ ties to Whitewater and the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, has said he will examine the Foster suicide to determine whether there are any ties to his work on Whitewater Development. But Fiske has given no indication that he believes the official finding of suicide should be reviewed.

He has given no indication that it should not be, either. And is it not prejudicial and nonsensical for the Post to write that Fiske probably won’t look into “the Foster suicide” because “he has given no indication that he believes the official finding of suicide should be reviewed”? Should they not say “the Foster death” in this instance?

U.S. Park Police officials said yesterday that there is “no doubt” that Foster committed suicide.

Maj. Robert Hines, the Park Police spokesman, said no ballistic test was performed on the antique 1913 revolver found in Foster’s hand because a bullet was never found.

But Hines said an examination performed by federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found that residue in the bullet chamber during a test firing was identical to the residue in Foster’s hand, indicating that Foster had fired the gun.

Surely they must know that it indicates no such thing. Gunpowder residue is gunpowder residue. It is not unique to a particular gun or particular ammunition except in exceptional cases such as a black powder muzzle loader. Even if the hand and the gun residue could be positively linked, so what? A corpse offers little resistance to the firing of a gun in the hand or to smudging with residue swabbed out of a gun barrel.

The conclusion was further supported by the autopsy, which found gun residue in Foster’s palm.

If Foster fired the gun, how did residue get on his palm? Wouldn’t it be on the back of his hand, if anywhere at all?

The Park Police report on Foster was due to be released, but sources said it is being delayed because of concerns that Fiske will want to review it.

Until the Washington Times reported on December 20, 1993, that among the things secretly removed from Foster’s office the night he died were files related to Whitewater Development Corporation, the White House was effectively resisting the call for a special prosecutor. Why has the police report, including the autopsy, been kept secret all these months?

*A good deal of evidence related to Foster’s “depression” did come to light after January 29, 1994, but the case for it remains as weak, if not weaker, than ever. The family doctor in Little Rock was interviewed by members of Fiske’s team and he claims to have talked with Foster by phone and to have prescribed an anti-depressant by calling it in to the Morgan Pharmacy in Georgetown, which supposedly delivered it to his home the day before he died. However, it is indeed curious that Foster was able to make connection directly with the doctor, talking to no one else in the office. No mention is made in the official record, which was released in two large volumes after Senate hearings in the summer of 1994 (more about those later), of billing records, copies of the prescription, or, most importantly, of long-distance telephone records of the call by Foster to Little Rock or the call from the doctor to Georgetown. Furthermore, the level of the dosage is much too low for the treatment of clinical depression (50 milligram tablets of trazadone). At that level of dosage it is no more than an anti-insomnia medicine. So whatever one is to believe about the medication, the Post is wrong to state categorically that Foster “had been treated for depression.”

There is more reason to doubt whether any consumption of medication ever took place. Fiske, in his report, says confidently that, “Lisa Foster saw Foster take one tablet during that evening.” We learn from the Senate hearing documents, however, that when lead investigator Sgt. John Rolla of the Park Police asked Lisa at her home the night of the death if Foster had been taking any medication, she responded “no”. He also concluded in his written report on that evening that none of the family members present could think of any reason why Foster would have taken his own life. Those family members included, in addition to the widow, his daughter and both of his sisters.

The FBI lab, working for Fiske, also claims to have detected the traces of trazadone in Foster’s blood which the original toxicologist missed, though one of his specific tests was for anti-depressants. The probity of the FBI lab, however, in 1996 came under fire from one of its own chemists, Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, who accused them of misreading evidence to benefit the prosecution in a number of cases, most notably in the prosecution of those accused of the World Trade Center bombing in New York City. In the Foster case, as well, the truthfulness of the FBI has been called into serious question. In the Fiske Report the claim is made that an FBI team visited the site where Foster’s body was discovered and excavated to a depth of 18 inches in search of bone fragments or any other residue beneath where Foster’s head had lain. Reporter Ruddy talked to an archaeologist from the Smithsonian Institution who was present and he says no such digging was done. I also talked with a regular visitor to the park who is quite familiar with the site. He was there only a few days after the date of the claimed excavation and saw “no signs of digging.”

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