Vince Foster is like WTC 7 to truthers. It is their "more sane" CT that leads into their crazier ones. I remember many of the same people promoting the VF CT in the 90's were the same ones talking about black helicopters kidnapping children for Satanic sacrifices.
Newcomers to this thread and forum should understand that fullflavormenthol has been trying to discredit the Foster allegations in this fashion since the beginning of this thread … by linking it to other far less rational, discredited conspiracy theories. For example, in his first post on this thread (#29) he linked it to birthers, the evangelical right, and the nuts who claim there are black helicopters kidnapping children for Satanic purposes. But of course neither birthers, the evangelical right, or the black helicopter nuts had anything whatsoever to do with the facts I've offered in this thread. They didn't start the allegations of foul play in the Foster case nor are they the original source of any of the facts I've identified. They might have latched on to them at some point and said "see?", but they are totally irrelevant to whether the facts and the conclusions one can draw from them are valid. Thus, fullflavormenthol's argument is nothing more than a dishonest red herring.
By looking at this thread, one can also witness that fullflavormenthol's treatment of actual facts demonstrates little real skepticism and are good examples of Truther-like behavior. In post #44, for example, he took a carefully selected fact and drew a conclusion from it that fit his belief while ignoring numerous other facts that don't fit that belief. Specifically, he claimed that because gunpowder residue was found on Foster's hand, it can be concluded that Foster necessarily fired a gun. Thus it must be suicide.
It is true that residue was found on Foster's hand, but it doesn't necessarily follow that he fired the gun,
if one takes into consideration the rest of the facts related to the gun, residue, gunpowder and wounds. Indeed, as I will show below, the other facts that fullflavormenthol ignored actually rule out the possibility that Foster fired the gun.
I direct your attention to a document that fullflavormenthol and his friends have studiously avoided challenging (and my guess is that few of them have even bothered to read it):
http://www.fbicover-up.com/proof/index.htm
It is the report prepared by Patrick Knowlton (one of the witnesses in the Foster case) which was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Special Division for the Purpose of Appointing Independent Counsels,
In re: Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association (Whitewater) on June 23, 1999, under seal. In September of 1999, the three-judge panel of the Special Division of the Court ordered that the report be unsealed.
The report is 511 pages long and just full of credibly sourced facts about the Foster case, facts that in many cases the IOC simply left out of it's reports. Facts that people like fullflavormenthol are simply ignoring because they don't fit the theory that Foster committed suicide. And it's also filled with logical analyses, based on the full set of facts, that suggest the suicide theory is bogus.
For example, a portion of that document (
http://www.fbicover-up.com/report/ch7.pdf ) deals with facts and analysis related to the gun, residue, gunpowder, bullets and wound. Pages 245-254 of the report discusses the residue and gunpowder. It begins by noting that the official conclusion from day one is that since Foster's right thumb was found in the trigger guard, if Foster fired the gun, it would have been with his right thumb. But careful analysis of the pattern of gun residue on Foster's hand (see the report) rules out that conclusion:
Contrary to the official version, he did not pull the trigger of the official death weapon with his right thumb. The only possible way to have gunshot residue deposited on the right index finger and web area and left index finger, a sufficient distance from the barrel-cylinder gap to provide the five-inch length of the residue pattern, is if the weapon was fired by the hand of another. The residue patterns were made when Mr. Foster held his hands with the palms facing the revolver's cylinder, consistent with his hands being in a defensive posture.
The document also notes that the
FBI Lab had earlier concluded that "it cannot be concluded that the... revolver produced these gunshot residues".
The Knowlton report also notes that
There is no record of any of the investigators ever having considered the possibility of Mr. Foster having positioned his hands in a defensive posture.
In summary, the powder burns found on Foster's hands appear to have come from powder discharged from the front of the gun's cylinder. If he had been gripping the handle, with his thumb on the trigger finger, his hands would have had patterns consistent with powder discharged from the rear of the gun. It is therefore more reasonable to conclude that Foster got the residue on his hand while pushing the gun away from himself in a defensive posture (like that depicted in the Knowlton report) during an attack, than by pulling the trigger with his thumb while gripping the handle of the gun with the barrel in his mouth.
The Knowlton report also examines the gunpowder and notes that the IOC report identifies the type of gunpowder as being one that was never used by Remington in the .38 caliber high velocity ammunition found in the gun (one spent cartridge and one unspent cartridge).
OIC, p. 58:
"The FBI Laboratory found one piece of ball smokeless powder on the eyeglasses, and it was 'physically and chemically similar to the gunpowder identified in the cartridge case."
Therefore, for the official version to be true, the bullets would have to have been reloads. But the IOC report does not say whether the ammunition found in the gun were reloads.
Moreover, the Knowlton document reveals that the FBI actually found two other types of gunpowder on Foster's clothing and his glasses, powders that were dissimilar to that on his fingers. The Fiske Report excused the finding by blaming it on contamination from the Park Police station and the FBI concluded it was irrevant. All I can say is that's a sloppy way to run a forensics lab or an investigation into a high public official's death.
But the parade of evidence doesn't end there. There are other problems with the gun evidence that detractors like fullflavormenthol simply ignore. For example:
- the Knowlton Report points out that the OIC claimed "the descriptions provided by the first two persons to observe the gun, as well as numerous others, are consistent with the gun retrieved from the scene" and that this is not true. Firefighter Todd Hall was one of the first two people to observe a gun and he's on record stating that he couldn't tell what kind of gun it was, nor could he say whether a hand was gripping the gun. Paramedic George Gonzalez is the other of the "first two persons to observe the gun". The Knowlton report proves that he "testified in the summer of 1994 that the position of the gun he saw at the park, before Sergeant Edwards had been alone with the body, was different than the position of the gun as it was photographed in Mr. Foster's hand at the park." He also stated he "didn't know the size of the gun nor the type of gun". Yet the IOC claimed that their "description … [is] consistent with the gun retrieved from the scene." It says this right after first stating that "There are discrepancies in the descriptions of the color and kind of gun seen in Mr. Foster's hand." In other words, the IOC relies on these two witnesses to claim that the description of witnesses matched the gun retrieved at the scene, when in fact neither witness actually said that.
- Park Police Office Franz Ferstl photographed the body site with a polaroid camera. The FBI report claimed that during an interview with them in May 1994 he said he saw a gun in the right hand. That's curious given that the Incident Report that Ferstl himself filed after photographing the body did not mention seeing any gun.
- Paramedic Richard Arthur, who wasn't interviewed by the FBI in the immediate aftermath of the death, even though he was only 2 to 3 feet from Foster's body, was interviewed four times over the next couple years. He not only testified that he saw an neck wound (contrary to the official version), he described the gun as being a .45 automatic. In interview after interview he stated his conviction that the gun had the shape of an automatic, not a revolver. He even went so far as to draw the shape of the gun he saw. It didn't match the gun the government claimed was the suicide weapon.
- Even more damning is the testimony of the Confidential Witness (identified as Dale in the Knowlton report), who I've talked about at length in this thread and who first found Foster's body. He is absolutely adamant that Foster did NOT have a gun in either hand and, moreover, that the position of the hands/arms was different than that reported in the IOC report and shown in the photo published by the IOC. He has sworn to this under oath before US Congressmen. And the IOC report completely ignores his testimony.
- Then there is the fact that while the "official" gun was black, over and over Foster family members recall the gun that Foster had as being silver. For example, Lisa Foster described it repeatedly as being silver. The son of Foster's sister, Sharon, told the FBI that his grandfather owned a revolver that "might" have been a .38 caliber, but he didn't remember the black handle and the dark color of the metal. And a gun was found in Foster's home, but it was never described in any government report. Perhaps because it was silver?
And there are still more facts that just don't fit the government scenario:
- Besides the bullets in the gun, they didn't find any .38 caliber ammunition on Foster, in his car or in his home in Washington. Foster sister, Sharon, found four .38 caliber cartridges at the family home in Arkansas, but they were manufactured at a different time than those in Foster's gun (
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19971011&slug=2565470 ).
- It is unusual for a .38 caliber gun like the one the IOC claims was the suicide weapon to remain in the hand after discharge. An article in the American Journal of Forensic Medicin and Pathology from 1999 (
http://journals.lww.com/amjforensic...tion_Following_Suicidal_Gunshot_Wounds.1.aspx ) states "The location of the gun following suicidal gunshot wound was studied by reviewing 574 such deaths in which the scene was investigated by a medical examiner investigator and the body was examined at the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office in San Antonio, Texas. The position of the gun could not be established in 76 cases. In the remaining 498 cases, the gun remained in the deceased's hand in 24% of the cases. In 69% of the cases, the gun was on or near the body but not in the hand (i.e., touching the body or within 30 cm of the body)." In fact, is seems there was a fairly recent case in Brooklyn where a man (Walter Jones) and his girlfriend were found dead from gunshot. His body was found holding a .38 caliber weapon (same as what the IOC claims Foster used) and it was originally deemed a murder-suicide. But evidence surfaced that turned that into a double homicide in which the gun was planted.
- There was no blood or tissue on the gun. Normally, the force of such a powerful explosion within the mouth (remember, this was high velocity ammunition) blows back a large amount of blood and tissue which is bound to get on the gun. In the recent Phil Spector trial, for instance, the Medical Examiner testified (
http://thedarwinexception.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/ca-vs-spector-the-forensic-evidence-begins/ ) that Ms Clarkson was murdered, in part based on the lack of blow-back on the gun. "He said that the gun had been “wiped” and used the analogy of the ice cream cone to explain why he believes this. If you go to Baskin Robbins and get an ice cream cone, and it melts down your hand, the ice cream gets into the crevices of your fingers. The same with the blood on a gun – the “blowback” or “spatter” will blow back and get into the crevices of the gun. The gun in this case had no blood in the crevices, leading Pena to believe that it had been wiped clean after the shooting." Why should we treat the Spector case different than the Foster case, folks?
- There were no fingerprints on the exterior of the gun. The FBI claimed this was due to a lack of sweat on Foster's hands. But the temperature that afternoon was over 95 degrees and the temperature-humidity index was 103 (making it very muggy), making that hard to believe, especially considering the mental state that Foster was likely to have been in if he was preparing to kill himself.
- And then there is the oven mitt.
Perhaps because the "lack of sweat" explanation wasn't all that believable, Starr added this claim. He claimed for the first time since the death that a large oven mitt was found in the glove compartment of Foster's car at Fort Marcy Park and suggested that Foster had used it to carry the gun around, thus keeping his fingerprints off it. Of course, that still wouldn't explain how he transported the gun from the car to where he supposedly did the deed but in any case, the real problem is what Starr provides as proof of this oven mitt's existence. A photo which shows a big green oven mitt occupying most of the space in the glove compartment (see the photo in post #173). And in that photo, the floor of the car below the glove compartment is clean ... sans debris of any kind. But other photos from that day (again see post #173), taken while the car was still at Fort Marcy Park, show debris on the floor. And according to Park Police records, Detective Braun emptied the glove box of all items PRIOR to detective Smith removing the debris from the passenger seat floor. Also, records show Braun emptied the glove box at 6:35 AM July 21st while Detective Smith's paperwork indicates he cleaned off the passenger side floor after noon on July 21st. So a photograph showing the glove box with items in it over a clean passenger floor directly contradicts the Park Police records. Such an after the fact photo can only have been staged by Starr and his people. Furthermore, Detective Braun's inventory of the glove compartment did NOT record an oven mitt ... something that would be very hard to miss and unusual enough to have surely been listed had they found one. So face it, folks ... Starr tampered with the evidence. And fullflavormenthol simply ignores these facts and the obvious conclusion because it doesn't fit in with his Truther-like convictions about the innocence of the Clinton Administration. And given such obvious tampering and ignoring of facts, how can anyone possibly believe anything claimed by Ken Starr or those using him to *debunk* the Foster allegations?
And let me close this post by pointing out another Truther-like claim that fullflavormenthol made in post #44, his first and ONLY attempt to debunk any of the facts in this case. He claimed Foster "was prescribed Trazodone by his doctor shortly before his death, and in fact there is evidence of years of struggling with clinical depression." This statement is not only very misleading, part of it is absolutely untrue.
First, while Foster was indeed prescribed Trazondone (Desyrel) by the doctor before his death, it is totally misleading to suggest he was prescribed this to fight clinical depression. In fact, he was prescribed it in order that he could (in the doctor's own words) "start sleeping better". The doctor's notes said Foster came into the office complaining about not being able to sleep. Not about depression. To help people with insomnia was a common use of the medication in those days because unlike sleeping pills, Trazondone is not addictive. And Foster had told his wife that he was worried about getting addicted to the prescription sleeping pills he'd previously been given to help him sleep. In fact, the handwritten interview notes from the night of Foster's date record Lisa Foster telling investigators that he was "fighting PRESCRIPTION". (As I noted earlier, the FBI or IOC changed this to "fighting depression" in the official report.) And the dosage of Trazondone that Foster was prescribed was that commonly used to help one sleep, not the much higher dosage used to fight depression. These facts had been thoroughly discussed in previous Foster threads so there is no excuse for fullflavormenthol making his claim in this thread. It was Truther-like behavior.
And so was his claiming Foster was "clinically" depressed. Foster was NOT "clinically" depressed at the time he visited the doctor nor had he any history of clinical depression. In fact, the doctor stated in his notes from the visit that whatever depression Foster was experiencing at the time was "mild". That's not how one describes "clinical" depression since by definition that is "MAJOR" depression requiring immediate intervention. Indeed, numerous medical sources advise against treating mild depression with anti-depressants. Also, ALL the family members and acquaintances interviewed the night of Foster's death stated they saw NO signs of depression in Vince Foster. All of them. (In fact, it wasn't until a week later, after a meeting with some of these people in the Whitehouse, that anyone first claimed Foster was depressed.)
And note that after I corrected his misstatements about this in post #132 of this thread, fullflavormenthol had no response. He just disappeared like Truthers always do when confronted with actual facts. Didn't show up again until posts #284 and #331 … with further Truther-like comments.
