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
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.
