-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_exnews/19990915_xex_foster_death.shtml <A HREF="http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_exnews/19990915_xex_foster_death.sh tml">Foster death report sees professional 'hit' </A> ----- WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 15 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Foster death report sees professional 'hit' Court unseals 511-page document charging obstruction of justice ------------------------------------------------------------------------ By Sarah Foster © 1999 WorldNetDaily.com A three-judge federal panel yesterday unsealed a 511-page report, submitted by Kenneth Starr grand jury witness Patrick Knowlton in June, which -- in the view of its authors -- presents incontrovertible evidence of conspiracy and cover-up by the Justice Department and the Office of the Independent Counsel in connection with their investigations into Vincent Foster's death and counters the official conclusion that the top White House official "committed suicide by gunshot in Fort Marcy Park on July 20, 1993." At the same time, the panel -- headed by David B. Sentelle, with Richard D. Cudahy and Peter T. Fay -- denied Knowlton's request that this report be attached as an amendment to the Interim Report (the "Starr Report") on the investigation of Foster's death, which was released Oct. 10, 1997. There has been no final report. The just-released document is certain to fuel the ongoing controversy surrounding the administration's scenario of Foster's death. It is a point-by-point analysis and refutation of the 114-page, double-spaced, Starr Report, overpowering it in both size and substance. Knowlton's report is, in fact, an expansion of an earlier 20-page filing, also by Knowlton -- comprised of a nine-page letter and 11 pages of exhibits -- which had been accepted by the same panel as an attachment to the Starr Report. Knowlton filed that report in September 1997, a month before Starr's Report was released. The statute authorizing creation of the Office of Independent Counsel allows persons "named in the report" to request permission to attach comments to reports. Over strenuous objections by the independent counsel, the Special Division of the U.S. Court of Appeals -- the same panel of judges which authored yesterday's ruling -- granted that permission and ordered the Office of the Independent Counsel (OIC) to include Knowlton's 20 pages in the appendix to the Starr Report. John Clarke, Knowlton's attorney -- who has worked tirelessly on the case -- discussed the significance of today's ruling and the report with WorldNetDaily, portions of which were provided by fax. "The report has been under seal," he said. "That means it had to be kept secret until a decision was made by the court. Even the fact that we filed it was kept secret. "We asked them (the court) for a couple of things," Clarke continued. "We asked them to lift the seal as soon as they made their decision, which they did. And we also asked them to substitute it (the report) for our 20-page filing. They didn't do that; they did not order it attached to Ken Starr's report." But not because they rejected the evidence, Clarke is quick to note. "What they said was they didn't have jurisdiction to grant relief," he explained. "They didn't rule against us on the merits of what we were asking; they just said that they didn't have jurisdiction under the law to give this relief." Knowlton charges Starr's investigation simply added "another layer to the 6-year-old ongoing Justice Department cover-up" -- a cover-up that began the night of the death and continued through subsequent investigations including an initial 16-day examination by the FBI and two probes by the two independent counsels -- a reference not only to Starr's work, but to that of Special Counsel Robert Fiske, whose report was issued June 30, 1994. Knowlton's two reports are built on charges developed in a civil suit he filed Oct. 25, 1996, charging FBI agents, U.S. Park Police employees and others with obstruction of justice, witness intimidation, and personal harassment. An amended complaint was filed last October adding defendants and additional information. The civil rights suit was dismissed Sept. 9. Today Knowlton was expected to file a motion to reconsider that ruling while he prepares to appeal the ruling of John Garrett Penn to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. "We're attempting -- in both these actions -- to prove that there was a cover-up surrounding events in the death of Vince Foster, and, I think, we've pretty clearly done that," Knowlton's attorney John Clarke told WorldNetDaily. "It's a cover-up from one end to another." "The current report is more complete than the earlier one," said Clarke. "The other had five points demonstrating a cover-up, but this really nails it down. The Starr Report makes about 80 points, and not a single one stands up to scrutiny. Not one. "In this report we've proved there was a crime -- though we're nowhere near the point where we can say who did it or why," he said. In Clarke's opinion: "I think the evidence is consistent with a professional hit." Foster's body was found July 20, 1993, at 5:50 p.m. near the northwest corner of Fort Marcy Park, Va., 700 feet from the parking lot. He was lying on his back on one of the three earthwork berms that comprise the fort. There was no evidence of a struggle. The official cause of death -- touted from the outset as a suicide -- was declared due to a gunshot fired into the mouth, the weapon, said to be a black 1913 Army Colt .38 Special six-shot revolver, was said to have been found in Foster's hand. This, despite insistence by the civilian witness who discovered the body that Foster's arms were at his side, palms up -- and not a gun in sight. The bullet allegedly went through the soft palate and exited near the top of the back of his head. Depression was the reason cited for the supposed suicide, though most of his friends said Foster gave no indication of being depressed and were shocked when they heard the news. The White House account from the outset was met with a barrage of criticism from some very vocal, outspoken critics -- among them Western Journalism Center, the parent organization of WorldNetDaily. Another is witness Patrick Knowlton, 44, who had stopped briefly at Fort Marcy an hour and a half before the body was discovered. He insists Foster's silver-gray 1989 Honda was not in the parking lot at 4:30 p.m. when he arrived, though Foster had presumably driven it there, parked, then walked 700 feet to the earthworks of the fort where he took his own life. Knowlton did, however, see a mid-1980s model, rust-brown Honda with Arkansas plates and a blue late-model sedan. Knowlton later reported that no one was in the Honda, but the driver of the sedan stood by that car watching him "menacingly" as he walked into the woods seeking a secluded place where he could relieve himself, and he was still there when Knowlton returned a few minutes later. Knowlton notified the U.S. Park Service as to what he had seen in the parking lot as soon as word of Foster's death was made public on July 21, but was not contacted for a statement until the following spring. FBI agents interviewed him in April and May 1994 prior to the release of the Fiske Report, but falsified his account of what he saw. Despite Knowlton's insistence that the car he saw was a 1983-84 rust-brown Honda, the agents in their report wrote that he had seen Foster's 1989 Honda. It was clearly important to establish that Foster's car was in the parking lot at 4:30 p.m. since the medical examiner and others later set the approximate time of death between 2:00 and 4:20 p.m. The question is -- if Foster's car was not at the park at 4:30 p.m., as Knowlton insists, where was it? And if Foster did not drive to the park, how did he or his body get there? Those are just two of the glaring inconsistencies in the official account, which are examined by the authors of the report: Knowlton himself, a master-carpenter who has since become a certified private investigator; attorney John Clarke, who wrote the report; and Washington entertainer Hugh Turley. Turley -- a magician, skilled in the art of sleight-of-hand -- was intrigued by the behind-the-scenes machinations of those engaged in the cover-up, the "smoke-and-mirrors, now you see it, now you don't" aspects of the case. "He could recognize diversionary tactics and would point out where they (the OIC investigators and FBI) were playing hide-the-ball in their operations and reports," Clarke said. In addition to the 511 pages of the analysis itself, the Knowlton Report has an additional 600 pages of 184 exhibits, all but five of which were generated by the government itself. "We have worked strictly from what is in the public record," said Clarke, referring to the materials the Knowlton team had at its disposal. These include testimony, depositions, reports of various kinds, FBI interview reports, photos, laboratory reports, investigators' memos and handwritten notes. The team also drew on accounts by witnesses contacted in 1994 in preparation of the Fiske Report but who were never subpoenaed to appear before the Starr grand jury. "We set this out as a trial, showing people the evidence, asking them to look at it," said Clarke. "We know people have theories about what happened, but we aren't trying to prove any of that -- only that there was a cover-up. We show where the FBI and others falsified reports, we show how and where there were omissions, but we've stayed away from exploring any of our own theories as to who the killer was or who might have ordered the hit." "Unless we had hard evidence -- either a deposition, testimony or a report -- we didn't use it," said Clarke. Acquiring that evidence wasn't easy, in part because much of it is off limits. The OIC built its case to an astonishing degree on documents not yet released to the public, thereby hamstringing verification of its findings by independent investigators. "In its footnotes the Starr Report refers readers to documents that purport to prove the conclusions it makes," Knowlton's Report declares. "Of these 353 footnotes, 265, or 75 percent of them, refer the reader to documents that are unavailable." In their evaluation of the Starr Report, the three researchers focused on its inconsistencies and contradictions. "People say, 'Well, even if this-or-that point (in the Report) is wrong the greater weight of evidence shows he (Vince Foster) committed suicide at Fort Marcy Park,'" said Clarke. "They're looking at the evidence the right way, but they're not looking at all of the evidence. They're taking on faith what Starr has to say, and they figure you have to expect one or two anomalies. They're right. You could expect a few -- but not every point should be an anomaly. "Yet every point the Starr Report makes is, in fact, an anomaly, with inadequate explanations and downright lies. From one end to another there's nothing in there that's true," he said. "We don't know where Foster was killed or when," he continued. "It could have been at the White House compound and his body was brought to the park along the back road; or he could have been driven to the park while he was still alive. We simply don't know. However, we do know that there is no record of his driving his car from the White House -- only that his body shows up five hours after he was seen alive by a Secret Service man at 1 o'clock." To Clarke it's "obvious" what happened -- even though he doesn't know where or when. Foster died from a gunshot wound to the right side of the neck, near the jawline, between the ear and the chin -- with the trajectory of the bullet going upwards through the tongue and into the brain. It struck the skull about three inches below the top of the skull, fracturing it, but not exiting. Blood drained from the entrance wound onto his neck and right shoulder and also accumulated in his mouth. The gun used was a .22 or other low-caliber "which would account for the small amount of blood reported by the paramedics and Park Police officers who were among the first at the scene," Clarke explained. Since Fort Marcy is a national park, law enforcement within its boundaries is the responsibility of the U.S. Park Police, a federal agency. "Over 20 people (Park Police and paramedics) saw the body at the park and nobody reported a large exit wound at the back of the head," Clarke said emphatically. "Plus, the bullet was never found." Continuing on this theme, Clarke observed there is some testimony indicating the bullet may have exited the back of Foster's neck and did not remain in the skull, even though it was not found at the park. "But that's not the point," he said. "The point is there was a bullet entry neck wound and everyone from the Park Police to Kenneth Starr has tried to cover that up." Asked what he considered the most significant findings in the report, Clarke drew attention to the section about the gunshot residue on Foster's hands, which the OIC maintains is proof that he fired the gun. The Knowlton Report offers an interpretation its authors believe is more in keeping with the facts. "Foster couldn't have fired the weapon with the gunshot residue the way it was left on his hands," Clarke said. "The residue was caused by Foster holding his hands consistent with a defensive posture." That is, "His hands were spread open; he wasn't touching the gun, though he seems to have been pushing the barrel away when the gunman pulled the trigger." >From page 250 of the Knowlton Report: "Mr. Foster held his hands with the palms facing the revolver's cylinder -- consistent with his hands being in a defensive posture."To clarify this interpretation, the Report includes an illustration showing the likely position of Foster's hands. Clarke also characterized as "significant" the fact that the manufacturer (Remington) of the bullets that were found in the official death weapon has never used what is called ball smokeless powder. "Ball smokeless powder is what was found on Vince Foster's body and clothing,' said Clarke. "We think that's significant because it's used for reloads. But professional hit men also use it to get particular firing characteristics out of a gun. That would be consistent with there being no exit wound. They'd put a light powder charge in the gun so that it wouldn't blow the back of his head off as it would, had it been stock ammunition. That's why I think it was a professional hit." A third major finding, in Clarke's opinion, was the role played at the Fort Marcy Park crime scene by Sgt. Robert Edwards -- a role the FBI and later the OIC tried to conceal. By carefully going over the statements of the "firefighters" (emergency medical technicians), paramedics and Park Police officers, the Knowlton team was able to compile a minute-by-minute timetable of who arrived when, where they went, what they did, who and what they saw, and so on. Comparing the timetable with the witness accounts of the state of the body, "We found out that the body had been tampered with at Fort Marcy Park and by whom," said Clarke. "It was Sgt. Edwards. We have flat-out proved that." Edwards has long been recognized by Foster-death skeptics as a mystery man. He was with the Glen Echo Station of the U.S. Park Police, but was not the shift commander that evening nor was he one of the detectives on the case. "I still don't know who he is," said Clarke. "(Investigator John) Rolla testified he had never seen him before and nobody knew who he was -- but I don't know if he (Rolla) was right on this because there was never any follow-up on the depositions. "But he (Edwards) was definitely assigned to the Glen Echo station, because I called there and learned he had been transferred to Georgia." Specifically, Edwards was transferred to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center at Glynco, Ga., to serve as an instructor, according to a statement obtained by WorldNetDaily though a Freedom of Information Act request in 1997. Despite his somewhat ambiguous position at the Glen Echo station, at 6:28 p.m. Edwards arrived and took charge of the investigation -- only to disappear 20 minutes later as quietly as he had arrived. For over 15 minutes he was alone with Foster's body. It was not his earliest involvement in the case. According to Clarke, it was Edwards who granted Park Police Officer Kevin Fornshill permission to respond to the scene, even though Fornshill was on duty guarding the CIA headquarters which is not far away. Fornshill reportedly had heard the report on the police radio at 6:05 p.m. of a dead body at the park and asked leave to attend. With permission from Edwards, Fornshill left his assigned post and arrived at Fort Marcy either by unmarked car or scooter (accounts vary), possibly before the Fairfax County emergency response team four minutes later. Fornshill told firefighter Todd Hall and paramedic George Gonzalez, who were among the first arrivals, to go in one direction to look for the body, while he went in another and discovered it before anyone else. Here is a synopsis of the following 45 minutes: Upon finding the body, Fornshill called Hall and Gonzalez over to its location and radioed word that it was an apparent suicide. Hall noticed a gun in Foster's hand -- something the civilian who discovered the body, in later interviews by the FBI, adamantly denied was there. Clarke recreated the scene for WorldNetDaily: "Fornshill all of a sudden appears with these two firefighters, he just appears out of somewhere in the park proper -- not in the parking lot as some people reported -- he appears in the park, directs the two paramedics to go one way, he goes the other way and finds the body. "Then he calls the two paramedics over; they come over; through the trees Hall sees people running away from the body site; and Fornshill who was at the body for over 10 minutes, sometimes alone, claims never to have seen the weapon -- and he radioed it (the death) an apparent suicide." At 6:17 Officer Franz Ferstl -- the patrol officer on the beat -- arrived and at 6:24 began taping off the scene. Fornshill's supervisor, Sgt. Edwards, radioed he had arrived, and Fornshill began walking to the parking lot. Between 6:24 and 6:29 Ferstl taped off the scene and took seven Polaroid pictures. Several paramedics and firefighters arrived; they saw dry blood on the right side of Foster's shirt. Paramedic Richard Arthur saw a small caliber bullet wound in the right side of the neck, just under the jaw line. He also noticed a large caliber semi-automatic pistol in Foster's hand and concluded it didn't match the smaller caliber bullet hole in the neck. At 6:25 Richard Arthur and his team returned to the parking lot. Fornshill, too, had left the body site and met Sgt. Edwards as he was approaching it. Edwards told Fornshill to return to his post at the CIA. At 6:26 Edwards arrived at the site while Ferstl was taking pictures. He asked Ferstl to hand over the seven Polaroids and ordered him to return to the parking lot. The photos were not inventoried and Edwards never turned them in as evidence. >From 6:27 until 6:43, Edwards was alone with the body. How did he spend that time? According to the Report, "Sometime during the over 15 minutes Sergeant Edwards was alone with the body, an untraceable .38 caliber black revolver replaced the automatic pistol in Mr. Foster's hand. Edwards also moved Mr. Foster's head to the right side, causing blood to flow out of the mouth onto his right side (and leaving a stain on the right cheek from its contact with the bloody right shoulder). This made it appear that the blood already on the right side, which had in fact drained from the right side neck wound, had come from the mouth. He thus concealed the existence of the neck wound (inconsistent with suicide), and made it appear as if Mr. Foster may have been shot in the mouth (consistent with suicide). The official explanation for the contact blood stain on the right cheek is that it had appeared when an unknown fire-and-rescue worker checked the pulse." Of those witnesses who saw Foster's body before 6:27 p.m., investigator Christine Hodakievic was the only one who saw it after Edwards had been alone with it. Her report addressed the activities in the parking lot, however, not the appearance of the body at the site. When she saw photographs of the body later, she said the appearance of the body had changed from when she saw it. Park Police officers who were now arriving later reported that Foster's shirt had fresh wet blood on it as well as the older, dark dried blood the earlier witnesses had seen. No one recalled seeing bone fragments, brain matter or an exit wound. Investigator Rolla examined Foster's head and found only a "mushy spot" near the top of the skull at the back, which would be consistent with there being a fracture. Sgt. Edwards disappeared as mysteriously as he arrived. He was observed taking Polaroids -- which he later reportedly denied. No one knows when he left, but it was some time around 6:50. For all his involvement at the scene, there is no public record of his being interviewed by the FBI or Fiske investigators. "There's something very strange there," Clarke observed. Here are some other "very strange" happenings and OIC contradictions detailed in Knowlton's report: The cars at the park: Foster's silver-gray 1989 Honda was allegedly found in the parking lot, though even that isn't certain. Commented Clarke: "The Park Police describe the car that was found as silver. Almost everyone else -- including Patrick -- describes it as red, rust-brown, or brown. We make the point that it really doesn't matter when Vince Foster's car arrived, if it ever arrived. One theory is it never arrived -- that they brought it in at night and photographed it there at night. But I don't know that for sure. "The point is it wasn't there at 4:30 when Patrick was there and Foster was presumably dead." Foster's missing keys: Investigator John Rolla checked Foster's pockets at the site and found no car keys, though Foster carried two rings of keys. Later that evening -- following a visit to the morgue by William Kennedy and Craig Livingstone -- Rolla checked Foster's pockets again and discovered both key rings. "We don't know that Livingstone or Kennedy put the keys in his pocket," said Clarke. "We know -- and documented -- that those two men were there at the morgue before Rolla arrived, something the OIC tried to conceal." The guns at the park: Only two of the witnesses who saw the gun before Edwards was there remembered what type of gun it was. Said Clarke, "One of them, (paramedic George) Gonzalez called it a revolver, and (paramedic Richard) Arthur is 100 percent sure it was a semi-automatic a nd even drew a picture of it while under oath. He was adamant about it. "So it looks like what Arthur saw was a semi-automatic, which is what the Park Police carry," Clarke observed. Lack of fingerprints: Foster's fingerprints were on neither the official gun nor its ammunition. The FBI lab explained that problem away, saying latent prints could be "destroyed" by the summer heat; however, one print was found on the pistol grip. Tests showed it did not match Foster's or the prints of any of the investigators handling the gun. "To this day, that print still has not been compared to those on file in the FBI database," the Report charges. The Autopsy: "The Starr Report hides the fact that the autopsy began before the police arrived, in violation of the requirements of the Medical Examiner's Office," observes the Knowlton Report; moreover, the autopsy was begun a day ahead of schedule and without the two investigating officers being in attendance. Originally scheduled for Thursday, July 22, Fairfax County Medical Examiner Dr. James Beyer, with only an assistant whose name he refused to divulge, began the autopsy some time before 10 a.m., Wednesday. By the time investigators did arrive, Beyer had destroyed considerable evidence about the alleged gunshot in the mouth. "Prior to our arrival the victim's tongue had been removed as well as parts of the soft tissue from the pallet," Officer James Morrissette reported. The OIC carefully omitted Morrisette's sentence from its report, saying six people attended the autopsy, but neglecting to mention they weren't all present when Beyer began his work. Missing X-rays: There are "conflicting reports" explaining the lack of x-ray evidence: x-rays were taken and readable (but lost); x-rays were taken but unreadable; the x-ray machine was broken; and that it worked "sometimes, but not for Mr. Foster's autopsy." Testifying before a Senate committee in 1994, Dr. Beyer said, "the machine wasn't working -- and I saw no need to take an x-ray." It's now "up to the American people," said Clarke. "We've shown a crime was committed. Congress has failed in its responsibilities and is not going to look at this until enough people know what happened and start demanding answers. The news media have failed -- they won't look at it because they have so much to lose. And the Office of Independent Counsel has failed. If word doesn't get out, it means that the Office of Independent Counsel is infected with the kind of corruption it is designed to expose and prosecute. "Now that it's been unsealed the Report will be on the Internet and in bookstores. But until we get our website finished Accuracy In Media will be taking orders for it. "So we're asking the American people to look at this (report), link to it, print it out -- even sell it -- we don't care," said Clarke. "But it's up to them to spread the word and get the truth out." Clarke said he's challenging Americans not to believe him and his friends -- not personally, that is. "One of the reasons why this document is so long is we didn't want to leave it for anybody to read it to believe us," he said. "We're saying don't believe us. We don't want you to believe us -- just read the evidence." Clarke is confident that "No really open-minded reader can walk away having read this document and think there is no cover-up." Knowlton's 511-page filing, unsealed yesterday, will soon be available on the Internet at FBIcover-up.com and can be ordered now from Accuracy In Media by calling 800-787-4567, ext. 100, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., EDT. Earlier related Stories: •A plea to reopen Foster probe 11-17-98 •Foster's death: the questions linger •Foster witness amends lawsuit •Some forgotten details of Foster death •A tragedy of a book •BOOK REVIEW: An American Tragedy •Nobody can explain Foster inconsistencies •New questions in Foster's death •Still lots of doubts about Foster •Connecting tailgate and Fostergate •New twist in unraveling Foster cover-up •FBI official in Foster case promoted •Foster report raises more questions than it answers •Shroud of secrecy in Foster case •Last hope for real Foster probe •Kenneth Starr's state secrets •Patrick Knowlton saga continues ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTACT WND | GO TO PAGE ONE | SEARCH WND ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ©1999 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This page was last built 9/15/99; 1:25:09 PM Direct corrections and technical inquiries to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. 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