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."

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.	From page 250 of the Report, "Mr. Foster held his hands with the palms facing the revolver's cylinder --- consistent with his hands being in a defensive posture.

"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
and 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.

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