From server@prairienet.org Mon Jun 26 09:23:32 1995
	id JAA17808; Mon, 26 Jun 1995 09:23:25 +0200
	id AA00666; Mon, 26 Jun 95 02:22:01 CDT
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 5 Num. 31
X-Comment:  Conspiracy Nation



              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 5  Num. 31
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")


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NEW REVELATIONS IN FOSTER'S DEATH
By Reed Irvine
Chairman, Accuracy in Media Inc.


Watergate would have died a quiet death had it not been for the 
persistence of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who had the 
support of a few editors who sensed that they might be on to 
something big and who were willing to pursue a story that their 
peers derided. Not intimidated by the consensus of this pack, 
their paper brought down a president and won a Pulitzer.

The consensus of the pack today is that there is nothing to the 
evidence that the death of Vincent Foster involves a scandal that 
could dwarf Watergate. Only two reporters, Chris Ruddy of the 
Pittsburgh Tribune Review and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the 
London Sunday Telegraph, are doing the kind of investigative 
reporting that Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein did on Watergate. 
They have exposed serious flaws in the investigations conducted 
by the Park Police and the FBI, but their findings are ignored by 
the journalistic pack.

Why? Dean Baquet, an investigative reporter for the New York 
Times, told me that while some very good questions have been 
raised about Mr. Foster's death, the New York Times would not try 
to find the answers because he believed they would just turn up 
more unanswered questions. That is a terrible excuse, but it is 
better than the non-answers we have had from others, including 
the Washington Post and the Washington Times.

Accuracy in Media is challenging those papers to tell their 
readers the facts about Mr. Foster's death by paying them to run 
full-page ads in which we charge:

1) That the police jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Foster 
committed suicide before they had done any investigation.
2) That the forensic evidence was overwhelmingly against the 
finding that he shot himself at the spot where his body was 
found.
3) That the official reports ignored or misrepresented evidence 
that cast serious doubt on conclusions prematurely reached.
4) That Kenneth Starr's investigation appears to have been 
derailed.

Mr. Starr, who succeeded Robert Fiske as independent counsel, 
reopened the investigation of Mr. Foster's death. He assigned 
Miquel Rodriguez, a hard-driving assistant U.S. attorney, to 
handle the grand jury probe.

Mr. Ruddy has reported that Mr. Rodriguez was doing what Mr. 
Fiske should have done until his politically active Democratic 
superior, Mark Tuohey IV, began putting obstacles in his way. Mr. 
Rodriguez, not wishing to be part of another cover-up, resigned, 
and the investigation's course was altered.

This reminded some of President Nixon's effort to derail the 
Watergate investigation by firing special counsel Archibald Cox, 
but it didn't excite any interest on the part of the media, 
including the Washington Times.

A serious weakness in Mr. Fiske's report was the flimsiness of 
its reason for Mr. Foster's alleged suicide -- his being upset by 
three critical Wall Street Journal editorials and by the White 
House travel office mini-scandal. A week after Mr. Foster's 
death, White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers said she would 
"never intimate" that he would kill himself over such trivial 
matters. But finding nothing better, Mr. Fiske made these the 
official explanations.

Mr. Evans-Pritchard has now turned up what may be the key to the 
Foster mystery. In a story in the May 21 Sunday Telegraph, he 
claimed that Mr. Foster made at least two secret unofficial short 
trips to Switzerland and cancelled a third 12 days before his 
death. This was news even to his widow.

If true, all explanations of Mr. Foster's death must be put on 
hold until more is known about these trips.

The papers spirited out of Mr. Foster's office may contain the 
answers. Those who took custody of those papers must tell what 
they know to the grand jury.

Mr. Foster's credit card and travel records should be subjected 
to scrutiny as thorough as that given the records of the late 
William J. Casey when charges that Mr. Casey travelled to Europe 
in July 1980 to block the release of American hostages held in 
Iran were reported by the media in 1991.

[From "Letters To The Editor", *Washington Times*, National 
Weekly Edition, 6/19-25/95, p. 38.]

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To subscribe to *The Washington Times, National Weekly Edition*, 
phone 1-800-636-3699.

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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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    Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"        
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