There were three investigations, the Starr investigation was the last and took 3 years to complete.
So rather than dispute any of the specific facts I've already noted so far in my many posts, you're simply going to regurgitate the same argument by Aaronovitch that I just finished destroying? Well nothing at JREF surprises me anymore.
Now for those who don't know, the three investigations I think you refer to were the original FBI, Park Police and DOJ investigation, Special Prosecutor Fiske's investigation, and Special Prosecutor Starr's investigation. I'll let Starr's top investigator, Miquel Rodriquez, tell you one problem with your argument:
This whole notion of [Fiske and Starr] doing an honest investigation is laughable. … The FBI conducted the first investigation along with the Park Police. The FBI reinvestigated Foster's death under Independent Counsel Fiske, then, Kenneth Starr used the very same FBI agents in his investigation. … The American press misled the American public by reporting that there have been several independent investigations, when, in fact, all of the investigations were done by the FBI.
Now think about the reason there were three investigations anyway. The first obviously left enough doubts that Fiske was asked to take a look. But Fiske's also didn't satisfy, leading to yet another. And just like Fiske's, Starr's relied on the exact same material (from the Park Police and FBI) that the first one had, plus a few additions (like the green oven mitt) that Starr concocted (and I use that word intentionally) to beef up the same dubious conclusion.
Now you'd think that three times would be a charm.
But Starr's investigation was so questionable that for the first time in history, an independent panel of judges overseeing an IOC ruled that an addendum (Knowlton's),
alleging that the FBI intimidated witnesses and covered up evidence, be attached to the final report issued by Starr. This is not something the panel had to do or would have done lightly.
And imagine what that panel of judges might have done had they learned at the time that both Fiske and Starr failed to tell them (and the public) about an FBI memo to the Director of the FBI written two days after the death stating that the shot was fired into Foster's mouth
without leaving an exit wound, which directly contradicts Starr, Fiske and the official autopsy report?
In any case, all three investigations ignored the same massive body of facts that I spent post after post pointing out to you and your peers here at JREF, i.e., the facts you clearly want to avoid discussing directly. There weren't really three independent, separate investigations, but a string of investigations that all relied on the exact same incomplete set of data and outright lies or fabrications, to reach the same bogus conclusion. Not the honest investigation you pretend.
By the way, there were also some Congressional investigations but those occurred in a very political context and that alone makes their results questionable, since clearly most in the government at that time were seeking to sweep this matter under the rug by hook or crook, just as they were so many of the other scandals. And remember, Filegate (the collection of files, not the scandal itself) had already occurred by this time so maybe some of those Congressmen were given good reasons to find, see, hear nothing. And once again, these investigations also relied on the same questionable Park Police and FBI sources, and worked closely with Fiske's investigation to reach their conclusions. So it's no surprise they essentially backed up the other three's conclusions (although they did learn some of the discrepancies that I pointed out earlier ... and then promptly ignored them).
At no point was any evidence offered to counter the basic facts
LOL! I can only assume from that comment that you haven't bothered to even read what I've written since I've listed numerous facts (evidence) that completely contradict the claims (not facts) made by Fiske, Starr, Aaronovich, etc.
the bullet came from the gun found in Foster's hand.
Who says? The same FBI that let Starr get away with tampering with Lisa Foster's statement from the night of Foster's death? The same FBI and Park Police that let Starr concoct the green oven mitt *evidence*? The same FBI that harassed Patrick Knowlton? The same FBI that even Starr's top investigator slammed? The same FBI that we now know, thanks to the testimony of Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, who worked at FBI labs during this time, was routinely tampering with evidence (Whitehurst sued the FBI as a whistleblower regarding tampering and received a substantial cash settlement from the FBI, suggesting his allegations had merit.) Seriously, TW, why do you put so much faith in the FBI?
In any case, let's look at your so-called bullet evidence. We might as well look at some more of the gun evidence, too.
First of all, you can't honestly claim that "the bullet came from Foster's gun" with ANY degree of certainty
because no bullet was ever found. They don't really know the caliber of the bullet that caused the wound, even if you believe the government's fiction (can you imagine, folks, that not one of the 26 witnesses who saw Foster's body at the scene or on the way to the autopsy table said they saw the official inch diameter exit wound at the back of his head?). Fact is, they looked multiple times for a bullet, even with metal detectors and never found one. Nor did they find any skull fragments where Foster's body was found, even though there definitely should have been skull fragments from that kind of a wound. How strange.
Second, the claimed suicide weapon is a .38 revolver built from parts taken from two guns and it has no serial number. In ALL documents and witness statements in the weeks and months following Foster's death, the gun was described as black. The photos published by the IOC showed it to be black. Yet Lisa Foster testified that the only gun in their house was a chrome plated, "silver" colored one. A little odd, don't you think?
And speaking of trusting the FBI, on which all three (or five) investigations rest, isn't it curious that months after Foster's death, Lisa Foster was shown a silver gun by FBI agents and told that it was the gun found with her husband's body. But the gun seen in the so-called crime scene photo in Foster's hand is black. The gun is described as black in Starr's report. So why was the gun shown to Lisa Foster by the FBI a silver one? In fact, the agents wrote down in their notes that "LISA FOSTER believes that the gun found at Fort Marcy Park may be the
silver gun which she brought up with her other belongings when she permanently moved to Washington." You'd think that the agents would have known the gun found at Fort Marcy Park was black and corrected her? A little odd, isn't it?
And there are many other *discrepancies* here, TW.
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's 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.
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. Hmmmmm.
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?
A portion of Knowlton's report (
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 Knowlton report also notes that the
FBI Lab had earlier concluded that "it cannot be concluded that the... revolver produced these gunshot residues".
and 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.
and notes that
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 and finds that the type of gunpowder was never used by Remington in the .38 caliber high velocity ammunition found in the gun (one spent cartridge and one unspent cartridge). 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 irrelevant. All I can say is that's a mighty sloppy way to run a forensics lab and an investigation into a high official's death.
And do you know that in the rush to deliver a suicide verdict, Park Police did not test the gun to see if it would actually fire? Six days after the investigation was closed, they finally asked the BATF to test the gun. Yes, it did fire, but again, isn't this a rather sloppy way to run an investigation? Or was that just the result of their looking only for the answer they set out to prove … that it was a suicide … and ignoring anything else?
There was no evidence of a struggle
Who said Foster had to be killed at the park? In fact, blood evidence, or rather the lack of it, suggests that Foster was killed somewhere else and taken to the park to be dumped. How else do you explain that Fairfax County emergency medical workers Cory Ashford and Roger Harrison both told the FBI that they saw little or no blood, didn't need gloves, didn't get blood on their white uniforms, and didn't see blood on the ground underneath the body after it was moved? The lack of blood evidence at the claimed location of the suicide makes a suicide (especially one with an inch diameter hole in the back of the head) highly unlikely. Don't you think?
Which isn't inconsistent with a murder explanation.
But on the subject of drugs, note that lab work done as a part of the autopsy of Foster immediately after his death included specific tests for the presence of antidepressants. The tests all came back negative. Starr never mentioned this in his report. Dr. Anh Hyunh, who did the blood toxicology, stated in the official report that no Trazodone or Valium-derivatives were found. It was not until a re-test of the blood months later by the FBI Lab that the presence of both Trazodone and Valium was reported - just before Fiske issued his June 30, 1994 report claiming Foster was clinically depressed. What a coincidence. Isn't it obvious by now, folks, that they lied here as well to help confirm Fiske's claim?
Everything else is just smoke and mirrors.
LOL! You go on claiming that TW.
The irony, of course, is that the identifiable conspiracy in the situation was dedicated to framing Clinton for the murder:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Project
Oh, so you did read the Aaronovitch book. Because that was a central part of his theme in trying to discredit the Foster allegation, too.
