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The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070
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* Accuracy In Media * Column *
January 18, 1995
VINCENT FOSTER CASE REOPENED
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     Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr is having a grand jury
look into the death of White House lawyer Vincent Foster, which
was stamped "Case Closed" by his predecessor Robert Fiske last
June. We have called Starr's attention to a number of flaws in
Fiske's investigation that the grand jury should examine. Two of
them, which we helped expose, involve discrepancies in testimony
which the grand jury could resolve.
      We have suggested that it might be necessary to exhume
Foster's body to check the accuracy of the autopsy report by Dr.
James Beyer, deputy chief medical examiner for Northern Virginia.
According to the Park Police report, Dr. Beyer told Detective Jim
Morrissette that X-rays showed no bullet fragments in Foster's
head. Beyer also checked a box on the autopsy report form stating
that X-rays had been taken.
     However, Dr. Beyer subsequently told FBI agents that no X-
rays were taken because his machine was broken. Dr. Beyer told us
that he checked the box before the autopsy was made and that he
neglected to correct it when he found the X-ray machine was out
of order. We didn't ask him about his statement to Morrissette,
which we learned about later.
     Dr. Beyer was vague about when the machine was broken and
when it was repaired, so we located and interviewed Jesse Poor,
of Atlantic X-Ray, who had installed and serviced Dr. Beyer's X-
ray machine. Poor said the unit was installed new on June 15,
1993, and that the first service call was received on Oct. 29. We
were unable to get Dr. Beyer to explain this discrepancy, but he
repeated his story about the inoperable equipment when he
testified before the Senate Banking Committee last August.
      In our letter to Starr we said, "You probably know that in
at least two cases Dr. Beyer's suicide findings have been
seriously challenged. In one of them, the murderer
confessed....Perhaps there are bullet fragments in Foster's head
that could be compared to the other bullet found in the gun that
Foster supposedly used to kill himself. In view of the questions
raised about Beyer's honesty and competence, we would think that
another autopsy would be in order."
      The FBI search for the bullet that killed Foster was
premised on a Park Police report that Foster's body was found
lying feet down on a steep slope directly in front of what is
known as the second cannon in Ft. Marcy Park. However, paramedic
George Gonzalez and others who responded to the 911 call to look
for the body told Chris Ruddy, then of the New York Post, that
the body was found on a steep slope near what is known as the
first cannon, because it is much nearer the parking lot. After
Ruddy reported this, the Fairfax County Fire Department ordered
Gonzalez and other employees not to talk to the press. Gonzalez
later changed his story, adopting the Park Police version.
     However, Dr. Donald Haut, the medical examiner who was
called to the park to okay the removal of Foster's body, told us
that it was located just where Gonzalez had originally reported
it found, about 50 feet north of the first cannon. He sketched a
clear and precise map showing that the body was not directly in
front of a cannon in line with the barrel, as the Park Police
claimed.
     Dr. Haut had not followed the Foster story and he was
unaware of any controversy about the location of the body. He had
no axe to grind. No investigators had previously questioned him
about Foster. The grand jury should hear his testimony.
     It is admittedly difficult to think of a good reason why the
police would falsify the location of the body, but in view of the
conflicting testimony, the possibility should not be dismissed for
that reason alone. If there has been deception on this point, then
the questions of why and who become very important. If there has
been a conspiracy to falsify the location of Foster's body,
exposing it could unravel a possible coverup of how, where and why
he died.
      The fact that the witnesses who first appeared before the
grand jury included Kevin Fornshill, the police officer who claimed
to have discovered the body at the second cannon, and George
Gonzalez and other rescue personnel, suggests that Starr is tugging
at this thread to see if anything unravels. Fornshill, after having
been quizzed for much of an afternoon, was overheard telling a
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 þ QMPro 1.52 þ And another liberal bites the dust....
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