Vince Foster

A witness in the Vincent Foster case is suing the government for $1.5 million, alleging two FBI agents and 26 other people conspired to discourage him from testifying about what he saw on the day the deputy White House counsel died. Patrick Knowlton says the FBI falsified information he gave them and that he was harassed by people who followed him after his account in the Foster case became public. The lawsuit, filed Oct. 25 in U.S.

White House aides closely monitored congressional investigations into Whitewater-related matters and carefully planned strategy to counter the inquiries, according to 2,000 pages of internal memos and confidential notes made public Thursday by the White House. The documents show presidential aides fretted in particular over congressional scrutiny of the handling of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster's files after his suicide.

"No time to explain. This is a crisis. I'm in Little Rock completing my investigation of the murder of Vince Foster. I need your help." That scrawled note on Holiday Inn stationery two months ago was another reminder to 86-year-old Aileen West of McMinnville, Ore., that the intrepid Ronald Wilcox is still on the Foster case. Wilcox had written her earlier about death threats and a dramatic meeting with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

A short time before his suicide, Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster voiced concern that another presidential aide might accuse First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton of improprieties in the White House travel office fiasco, the Senate Whitewater Committee was told Tuesday. New York attorney Susan Thomases, a longtime confidante of Mrs. Clinton, said that Foster told her about his worries days before he took his life in July 1993.

Keeping the investigation of Vincent Foster's death open, Whitewater prosecutors are bringing in an assistant U.S. attorney, Steve Parker of Tennessee, to review the evidence. The protege of deputy Whitewater prosecutor Hickman Ewing will join the office that launched an investigation in the fall of 1994 into how the deputy White House counsel died. Two previous investigations concluded that Foster committed suicide, but independent counsel Kenneth W.

Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato (R-N.Y.), chairman of the Senate Whitewater investigating committee, declared Monday that he had found a "smoking gun" that demonstrates wrongdoing by advisors to President Clinton. But the White House quickly dismissed it as a "popgun."

The keening voices of doubt fill the nightly airwaves, bombard news organizations and echo through countless chat rooms along the information highway. Why was the fatal bullet never found? Why did the .38-caliber revolver dangling from the dead man's right hand bear no fingerprints--neither his nor anyone else's? Wasn't it odd, given the violent nature of his death, that both arms were extended neatly at his sides?

A passerby who was at the park where Vincent Foster's body was found has been subpoenaed to testify today before a federal grand jury as Whitewater prosecutors re-examine the deputy White House counsel's death. The witness, Patrick Knowlton, says that when he arrived at a Virginia park on the afternoon Foster died, he saw an empty parked car with Arkansas license plates--but a different car from the one Foster was driving that day.

The Republican-controlled Senate Whitewater Committee, with the grudging approval of Democrats, voted Thursday to issue 49 subpoenas for documents belonging to the White House, federal regulatory agencies and potential witnesses. Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato (R-N.Y.), chairman of the special committee, said that the materials would be used in the next phase of the panel's hearings, which begin early next month.

Shortly before his suicide, White House lawyer Vincent Foster told acquaintances that he believed he should have been reprimanded for the White House travel office fiasco and was considering resigning, according to a confidential Justice Department report. The report was written by the Justice Department's Office for Professional Responsibility, which in 1993 investigated an allegation contained in a torn note found in Foster's briefcase after his July 20 suicide.