Vince Foster and Travelgate - 18 Years Later and Nothing Has Changed

Wed Jul 20, 2011 at 01:00 PM PDT

Vince Foster and Travelgate - 18 Years Later and Nothing Has Changed

Vince Foster died 18 years ago today, and the GOP is still employing the
same dirty tricks it used back then.

In his autobiography My Life, Bill Clinton wrote of his childhood friend

Vince Foster:

And I used to play in the backyard with a boy whose yard adjoined mine.

He lived with two beautiful sisters in a bigger, nicer house than ours.

We used to sit on the grass for hours, throwing his knife in the ground

and learning to make it stick. His name was Vince Foster. He was kind to

me and never lorded it over me the way so many older boys did with

younger ones. He grew up to be a tall, handsome, wise, good man. He

became a great lawyer, a strong supporter early in my career, and

Hillary's best friend at the Rose Law Firm. Our families socialized in

Little Rock, mostly at his house, where his wife, Lisa, taught Chelsea

to swim. He came to the White House with us, and was a voice of calm and

reason in those crazy early months.

Hillary Clinton recalls him as well in her autobiography, Living History:

Vince was one of the best lawyers I've ever known and one of the best

friends I've ever had.  If you remember Gregory Peck's performance as

Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, you can picture Vince. He

actually looked the part, and his manner was similar: steady, courtly,

sharp but understated, the sort of person you would want around in times

of trouble.

"Those crazy early months" is a bit of an understatement. Back in 1993,

David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times wrote "but perhaps never in our

nation's history--certainly not in its recent history--has a President so

early in his term been subjected to a greater barrage of negative media

coverage than Bill Clinton endured in his first 239 days in office" and

quotes an earlier Washington Post story: "The pundits have stuck a fork in

this Administration and decided it's very nearly done." In this time of

permanent Republican obstructionism and the Teabagger Days of Rage, it’s

easy to forget how relentless and unprecedented the assaults on the Clinton

administration were, and how they created the template for what’s happening

to the Obama administration.

One of the opening salvos was the Travelgate scandal, which seems pretty
small potatoes, and in retrospect astonishing in how much coverage this
story, which affected a whopping seven federal employees, received in the

press.

The White House Travel Office is responsible for making travel arrangements
for the members of the media who follow the President around, then bills the

media organizations accordingly. For years, it had been in a state of

disarray; as far back as the Reagan administration financial misdeeds were
alleged but nothing had been done. Vince Foster ordered an audit by the
firm KPMG Peat Marwick.  The firm investigated but was unable to actually
do an audit since the Travel Office barely had anything that you would
recognize as bookkeeping and piled a decade’s worth of records in the
closet. A KPMG representative called it an "ungodly mess". There was no

competitive bidding and the Office’s director, Billy Dale, relied on a

single charter company.  Office money was going in and out of his personal

bank account and some five figures were unaccounted for. The Clinton

administration asked the FBI to investigate. What happened next seems

perfectly obvious and reasonable.  New presidential administrations

typically clean house (the Obama administration is still trying to get

positions filled!) and any organization or business in any field would also

typically clean house when confronted with such mismanagement. So the seven

employees of the White House Travel Office were all fired.

Unfortunately, what should have been clear cut was muddied by the
involvement of two Clinton supporters in the travel business who agitated
for reorganization of the travel office: Catherine Cornelius, a distant
cousin of Bill Clinton whose World Wide Travel briefly took over the Travel
Office, and Harry Thomason, a Clinton friend and supporter who was a
partner in the air charter company TRM. This gave the GOP the opportunity
to create a scandal out of this, which they took with relish. But for this

to be a scandal you have to first insist that no person or business ever

lobby the government for personal gain. You might think that’s a positive

goal,but that goal certainly isn't what motivated the GOP, who expertly and

constantly indulge that practice. (One of many examples: John Boehner

handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists on the floor of the House of

Representatives.) The GOP generally claims to be in favor of eliminating

government waste and financial impropriety and for opening up government

operations to competitive bidding. All of which was achieved by the Clinton

administration in this case. Nothing was rigged as the winning bidder was

American Express Travel Services. So what was an outcome that should have

been pleasing to the GOP instead prompted them to move in for the kill. This

was aided and abetted by the press, who narcissistically over-covers any

story having to do with themselves. Some members of the press also had a

personal fondness for some of the fired employees (prominent ABC anchor Sam

Donaldson and other journalists even testified as character witnesses at

Billy Dale’s trial) and enjoyed perks provided by the Travel Office like

primo accommodations and how easy they made it to bring back stuff through

customs. David Shaw highlighted an example illustrating how obsessed the

press became with this story:

At one briefing, they asked 169 questions about the travel office firings.

Neither Bosnia nor the President's deficit-reduction package, both major

news stories at the time, received a fraction of that attention that day.

Out in front with knives drawn was the Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

Even before Rupert Murdoch bought the paper, the editorial pages of the WSJ

served as a prototype for Fox News-style character assassination. They

personally targeted Foster in a series of editorials in the summer of 1993,

starting with "Who is Vincent Foster?", a two column whine, long on

text but short on substance, which consisted of mostly sinister

insinuations and snide complaints that he didn't jump to attention every

time the newspaper called him on the phone.

Targeting lone individuals for character assassination is one of the most
distasteful aspects of what we call today, thanks to former right-wing
character assassin David Brock, the right-wing noise machine. There’s plenty
of examples: pro-lifers stalking and harassing (and occasionally quite

literally assassinating) doctors who provide abortions, twelve year old

Graeme Frost and the obsession with his parents’ counter tops, Bernard

Goldberg singling out some obscure teacher for an obscure book about

teaching children she wrote and holding her up as one of the 100 People Who

Are Screwing Up America in a bestselling polemic. These people don’t have

large media platforms and can’t fight back effectively. Even supposedly

powerful presidential appointees like Van Jones, hamstringed in what they

can say by their positions and lacking access to a 24-hour news channel, are

relatively powerless in the face of this. Vince Foster was a powerful

corporate lawyer with decades of experience, but even he was unprepared for

this relentless hate machine.  He was also suffering from depression and

anxiety; he started taking Trazadone, but too late for it to be effective.  

He wrote a letter, which was later found torn into 27 pieces in his

briefcase:

I made mistakes from ignorance, inexperience and overworkI did not knowingly violate any law or standard of conduct
No one in The White House, to my knowledge, violated any law or standard
of conduct, including any action in the travel office. There was no
intent to benefit any individual or specific group
The FBI lied in their report to the AG
The press is covering up the illegal benefits they received from the
travel staff
The GOP has lied and misrepresented its knowledge and role and covered
up a prior investigation
The Ushers Office plotted to have excessive costs incurred, taking
advantage of Kaki and HRC
The public will never believe the innocence of the Clintons and their
loyal staff
The WSJ editors lie without consequence
I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in
Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport.

On July 20, 1993, Vince Foster shot himself in Fort Marcy Park. Even after

his deaths the attacks continued, and hacks like Al D'Amato (once called

"The Worst Senator in America" by Playboy) and Dan Burton, who had no

concern for Foster as a person, claimed that his suicide was "suspicious"

and used it as a pretext to conduct bizarre investigations into the Clinton

administration. Burton even shot a pumpkin or watermelon in his backyard to

prove some kind of point about Foster's death.  ("It was nutty," Bill

Clinton later wrote.  "I could never figure out what Burton was trying to

prove.")   Investigations by the United States Park Police, the Department

of Justice, the FBI, the United States Congress, Independent Counsel Robert

B. Fiske, and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr (who obviously was not

inclined to be friendly to the Clinton administration) all concluded that

Foster committed suicide, but that didn't shut up anyone on the right. Even

today, conspiracy theorists who couldn't care less about Foster are

manipulating his tragic death for their own ends.

Originally posted to zagrobelny on Wed Jul 20, 2011 at 01:00 PM PDT.

Also republished by Community Spotlight.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/20/996687/-Vince-Foster-and-Travelgate-18-Years-Later-and-Nothing-Has-Changed