Vince Foster

DALLAS -- Some people call them kooks. .....That doesn't bother Susan Pejovich, Mike McCullough and Hugh Sprunt. They have busy lives -- professional and personal. But their spare time is devoted to an unusual avocation: trying to uncover the cracks in the public accounts of former White House counsel Vincent Foster's death.Move over, Kennedy-assassination aficionados. Here come the Vince Foster conspiracy buffs.As we approach the sixth anniversary of Foster's July 20, 1993, death, officially ruled a suicide, this trio of local cybersleuths and 40 others around the country are keeping alive the idea that the Arkansas lawyer didn't die as government reports say he did.At the very least, they say, the investigations of his death were bungled, resulting in government cover-ups.

DALLAS -- Some people call them kooks. .....That doesn't bother Susan Pejovich, Mike McCullough and Hugh Sprunt. They have busy lives -- professional and personal. But their spare time is devoted to an unusual avocation: trying to uncover the cracks in the public accounts of former White House counsel Vincent Foster's death.Move over, Kennedy-assassination aficionados. Here come the Vince Foster conspiracy buffs.As we approach the sixth anniversary of Foster's July 20, 1993, death, officially ruled a suicide, this trio of local cybersleuths and 40 others around the country are keeping alive the idea that the Arkansas lawyer didn't die as government reports say he did.At the very least, they say, the investigations of his death were bungled, resulting in government cover-ups.

This will be a great country if the militia don't blow it up.Vince Foster was never so useful as after his death. Takes the rap for anything.VMI and Citadel had 15 years to become privately endowed. Their defense was all tactics and no strategy.A lot of games could use an All-Star break.Pub Date: 7/08/96

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON never promised to be a typical first lady -- if, indeed, there is any such thing. But in bringing sharp legal skills and zeal for issues to the White House, Mrs. Clinton couldn't help being a lightning rod for attention and, just as often, criticism.While many Americans were delighted to see a political spouse so competent, sure of herself and eager to contribute to her husband's administration, others have been scathing in their response to the causes she champions publicly and wary of the extent of her private influence.

Washington -- WHERE IS Oliver Stone now that the Senate's conspiracy buffs need him?Remember Mr. Stone's hokey, pseudo-historic movie "JFK" that fantasized John F. Kennedy was bumped off by shadowy agents of the military-industrial complex?Welcome to the Senate's summer re-run, titled "Vince: The Mystery That Will Not Die (If We Have Anything To Say About It.)."Sure, Oliver Stone would have gone bonkers with this plot: Vince Foster, White House lawyer and Bill Clinton's lifelong pal, found dead on a Potomac hillside with a .38 in his hand.

Washington. -- Vince Foster still comes to his friends in the shadows as they walk to their cars, or at night on the drive home after work, or unexpectedly, in the morning after they rise.They hear his distinctive chuckle or see his handsome, distracted face. But before they can ask, "Why, Vince?" he disappears, just as he did in life, into a fog of political intrigue and personal tragedy.To the police who found the body, the death July 20, 1993, of 48-year-old Vincent W. Foster Jr. was all too familiar.

THEY'RE SUPERACHIEVERS, shining stars in their hometowns, all-everything in college, rockets on the fast track. They come to Washington riding high, ready to flex their stardom for a new president.They don't know the Imperial City, beneath the pomp and glitz, has brutal claws.Once in the White House, they throw themselves into 7 a.m.-to-9 p.m. work, lunch at the desk, often Saturdays, too. No marathon is too tough, especially if the new president is a boyhood pal.But things go wrong: Foul-ups, media firestorms, broadsides at the president's staff.

WASHINGTON -- Having Al D'Amato probe your ethics is like having a blindfolded fortune teller read your palm: How much can you really trust the result?It is not known, for instance, whether Senator D'Amato, Republican from New York, would actually recognize an ethical lapse if he came across one.He certainly has never found one in his own oft-questioned behavior.But as chairman of something called the Senate Special Committee on Whitewater, D'Amato is now in charge of finding out, as he once put it, "What did the president know and when did Hillary tell him?"

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON never promised to be a typical first lady -- if, indeed, there is any such thing. But in bringing sharp legal skills and zeal for issues to the White House, Mrs. Clinton couldn't help being a lightning rod for attention and, just as often, criticism.While many Americans were delighted to see a political spouse so competent, sure of herself and eager to contribute to her husband's administration, others have been scathing in their response to the causes she champions publicly and wary of the extent of her private influence.

WASHINGTON -- We are being asked to believe that Bernie Nussbaum just didn't get it.He was from New York and he didn't understand Washington.Nussbaum, Bill Clinton's White House counsel, had been a very successful New York attorney known for vigorously defending his clients.But he did not understand that Washington is different from New York.That's what Bill Clinton said this week in announcing Nussbaum's successor, Lloyd Cutler, an old Washington hand."I think that the culture here and the whole procedures here are quite different than they are in most any other place in the country," Clinton said.

This will be a great country if the militia don't blow it up.Vince Foster was never so useful as after his death. Takes the rap for anything.VMI and Citadel had 15 years to become privately endowed. Their defense was all tactics and no strategy.A lot of games could use an All-Star break.Pub Date: 7/08/96

Washington -- WHERE IS Oliver Stone now that the Senate's conspiracy buffs need him?Remember Mr. Stone's hokey, pseudo-historic movie "JFK" that fantasized John F. Kennedy was bumped off by shadowy agents of the military-industrial complex?Welcome to the Senate's summer re-run, titled "Vince: The Mystery That Will Not Die (If We Have Anything To Say About It.)."Sure, Oliver Stone would have gone bonkers with this plot: Vince Foster, White House lawyer and Bill Clinton's lifelong pal, found dead on a Potomac hillside with a .38 in his hand.

WASHINGTON -- Having Al D'Amato probe your ethics is like having a blindfolded fortune teller read your palm: How much can you really trust the result?It is not known, for instance, whether Senator D'Amato, Republican from New York, would actually recognize an ethical lapse if he came across one.He certainly has never found one in his own oft-questioned behavior.But as chairman of something called the Senate Special Committee on Whitewater, D'Amato is now in charge of finding out, as he once put it, "What did the president know and when did Hillary tell him?"

The man sits in front of a camera. He's wearing a red sweater and a down-home smile. He talks to us in soft, reassuring tones from a videotape produced by Jerry Falwell, the evangelist who would save America from itself, or at least from Bill Clinton.The man in the sweater does not seem like a nut case. At least, not immediately.His name is Larry Nichols. He's from Arkansas. He is, to put it in the nicest terms, Clinton's enemy. That's probably a fair description of someone who basically accuses you of murder.

Washington. -- Vince Foster still comes to his friends in the shadows as they walk to their cars, or at night on the drive home after work, or unexpectedly, in the morning after they rise.They hear his distinctive chuckle or see his handsome, distracted face. But before they can ask, "Why, Vince?" he disappears, just as he did in life, into a fog of political intrigue and personal tragedy.To the police who found the body, the death July 20, 1993, of 48-year-old Vincent W. Foster Jr. was all too familiar.

WASHINGTON -- We are being asked to believe that Bernie Nussbaum just didn't get it.He was from New York and he didn't understand Washington.Nussbaum, Bill Clinton's White House counsel, had been a very successful New York attorney known for vigorously defending his clients.But he did not understand that Washington is different from New York.That's what Bill Clinton said this week in announcing Nussbaum's successor, Lloyd Cutler, an old Washington hand."I think that the culture here and the whole procedures here are quite different than they are in most any other place in the country," Clinton said.

The man sits in front of a camera. He's wearing a red sweater and a down-home smile. He talks to us in soft, reassuring tones from a videotape produced by Jerry Falwell, the evangelist who would save America from itself, or at least from Bill Clinton.The man in the sweater does not seem like a nut case. At least, not immediately.His name is Larry Nichols. He's from Arkansas. He is, to put it in the nicest terms, Clinton's enemy. That's probably a fair description of someone who basically accuses you of murder.

WASHINGTON -- Vincent W. Foster Jr., acclaimed Arkansas lawyer, deputy White House counsel and lifelong friend of Bill Clinton, went to the Rose Garden Tuesday to watch the president appoint a new FBI director. Afterward, he dropped by the office of his boss, Bernard Nussbaum, chatted for bit and then ate lunch at his own desk alone. Shortly after noon, he told his colleagues he'd see them later.And then he drove off to die.At 6 p.m., Mr. Foster's body was found 200 yards from his car at Fort Marcy, a scenic park on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.

THEY'RE SUPERACHIEVERS, shining stars in their hometowns, all-everything in college, rockets on the fast track. They come to Washington riding high, ready to flex their stardom for a new president.They don't know the Imperial City, beneath the pomp and glitz, has brutal claws.Once in the White House, they throw themselves into 7 a.m.-to-9 p.m. work, lunch at the desk, often Saturdays, too. No marathon is too tough, especially if the new president is a boyhood pal.But things go wrong: Foul-ups, media firestorms, broadsides at the president's staff.

WASHINGTON -- Vincent W. Foster Jr., acclaimed Arkansas lawyer, deputy White House counsel and lifelong friend of Bill Clinton, went to the Rose Garden Tuesday to watch the president appoint a new FBI director. Afterward, he dropped by the office of his boss, Bernard Nussbaum, chatted for bit and then ate lunch at his own desk alone. Shortly after noon, he told his colleagues he'd see them later.And then he drove off to die.At 6 p.m., Mr. Foster's body was found 200 yards from his car at Fort Marcy, a scenic park on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.