Next to the telling suppression of the Knowlton/Clarke addendum, the withholding of the supporting documents, and the long delay in producing the summary report itself, the fundamental weakness of the Starr effort is demonstrated by heavy dependence on the wholly-unsupported assertion that this "Rock-of- Gibraltar," this tough court-room litigator, this responsible family man who was "always on top of things" as a lifelong friend of Vince's from Hope, Arkansas, and fellow Davidson College graduate put it to me, was so depressed as to slink off to a hidden corner of an obscure Virginia park in the middle of a work day and blow his brains out (though, strangely, the brains had apparently not been blown out). Ruddy's failure to slay the depression dragon once and for all by failing to use the best evidence available made Starr's task here somewhat easier. What we have here is much more than the "suicidologist" Berman's "100% degree of medical certainty," too. The third paragraph of the introduction reads as follows:

The police later learned that Mr. Foster had called a family doctor for antidepressant medication the day before his death. He had told his sister four days before his death that he was depressed, and she had given him the names of three psychiatrists. He had written in the days or weeks before his death that he "was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here, ruining people is considered sport."

As this writer has made clear, and the reporter Ruddy inexplicably fails to do in his book, though he had previously reviewed a draft of my work, virtually every word of this statement is unsupported by the evidence. No telephone records have ever been produced to support the claim of the drug prescription, and the doctor did not come forward when White House spokesperson, Dee Dee Myers was issuing statements saying "the family says with certainty that he had not been treated (for depression). (Washington Times, Saturday, July 24, 1993). The sister's husband, Beryl Anthony, angrily denied the story about their being consulted about psychiatrists when it was first mentioned to him (same Washington Times issue as above), but radically changed his story nine days later, and there are numerous irregularities in the story about the list of psychiatrists such as where it was found, how many names were on the list, who wrote the names, and why the handwriting of the person who wrote the first name is so different from that of whoever wrote the other two names. Ruddy notes only that the level of dosage of the antidepressant, even in the doctor's own words, was enough only for insomnia, not for depression, and that the pitiful "not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington" line was in all likelihood forged.

Ah yes, the forgery. The authenticity of the torn-up note belatedly "found" in Foster's previously emptied out and inventoried briefcase is, as we see from the passage above, essential to the depression conclusion. Starr does not even attempt an explanation as to how Foster might have torn it into 28 pieces and left no fingerprints, but he does make quite an effort to prove to us that the note was written by Foster. In so doing he illustrates why the work of the three respected handwriting experts who declared the note a forgery back on October 25, 1995, were never much of a threat to him. Here, one more time, the precedent of the Dreyfus Affair is instructive. The revelation that parts of the Panizzardi telegram were forged, the reader will recall, was not the work of handwriting experts. No judgment was required as to whether the letter strokes were characteristic of Captain Dreyfus or not. The discovery was made that the document was made up of two separate documents because the lines of the paper did not match one another throughout. For their part, the work of official "handwriting experts" was uniformly dismal throughout the Dreyfus Affair. The government was able to find such experts to assert unanimously at the Dreyfus trial that he had, indeed, written, the bordereau, the crucial list containing artillery information bound for the Germans, and at the Walsin-Esterhazy trial experts who said that the true author, Walsin-Esterhazy, had not written it. In this case, furthermore, no forgery of Dreyfus' style had even been attempted. In each case, the experts backed up their conclusions with elaborate explanations. We need to keep this history lesson in mind as we read:

Mr. Lesnevich concluded that the written text on the note "contained normal, natural and spontaneous writing variations. These normal, natural and spontaneous writing variations could be found in the letter formations, beginning strokes, ending strokes, connecting strokes, etc." Lesnevich Report at 2. He further concluded that "examination and comparison of the questioned written text appearing on the note with the known writing on the (known) documents has revealed that the author of the known documents wrote the note." Id. (reference numbers omitted). Mr. Lesnevich prepared a thorough 51-page comparison chart "that points out and illustrates a number of the normal, natural and spontaneous writing habits that were found common between the written text appearing on the questioned note and the known handwriting of Vincent Foster found on the (submitted known) documents." Id. at 3.

---

The number of examinations, the experience and expertise of the many different examiners, the variety and quantity of known-sample documents, the fact that the examinations commissioned by the OIC and Mr. Fiske's Office were conducted with original documents (as opposed to photocopies), and the unanimity of the examiners in their conclusions together lead clearly to the conclusion that Mr. Foster wrote the note.

Was there ever any doubt that Starr would be able to find his Gus Lesnevich? Does anyone really believe that we are so much better than the French were a hundred years ago? Anyone familiar with the mercenary class of "expert witnesses" in our system of jurisprudence would certainly not believe it for a minute. Notice, too, the Catch 22 in Starr's statement. His expert used originals and not photocopies like the unmentioned three others did, which makes his conclusions more believable (though he won't show us the man's "thorough 51-page comparison chart"). But no truly independent "expert" is permitted to see the original, and apparently even the photocopy got out only by accident, so the deck has been stacked in this game so that it is impossible for Starr and the government to lose.

Speaking of the ever-flexible "expert witness" breed, though Dr. Lee certainly did yeoman's work for the legal team representing O.J. Simpson, no group has demonstrated a greater readiness to please a well-heeled or powerful client than have the members of the psychology profession. It is never very hard to find one ready to defy common sense with jargon and references to the psychology literature, the modern version of the soothsayer's incantations. It is altogether fitting then that Starr should vest so much importance in the work of the "suicidologist" Berman, letting him bat last, or "cleanup," as it were, in his report. Berman does not disappoint. He dismisses the fact that the "suicidally depressed" Foster ate a hearty final meal by telling us that "there is no study in the professional literature that has examined eating behavior prior to suicide" and that "even death row inmates, knowing they are to die within a short time, eat a last meal." So much for gumption and introspection. The absence of a study--upon which we are forced to take Dr. Berman's word--is here glibly equated with the absence of the phenomenon itself, and impending execution of a psychologically normal person is equated with a bout of clinical depression so acute that it results in suicide. It must be nice to be an expert.

At this point, Starr weighs in with brand, spanking new, never before seen evidence from Dr. Watkins in Little Rock (somewhat like the new evidence that Vince actually cried over dinner on the Friday before his death, which would have had to be at the Tidewater Inn on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a fact of which Starr does not remind us). First we had silence from Watkins. Then we had the prescription of trazadone (brand name Desyrel) for insomnia, not depression, as reported in the Fiske Report. Now, out of the blue, we are told he typed up notes on July 21 (which he inexplicably kept to himself for who knows how long) and they say this:

I talked to Vince on 7/19/93, at which time he complained of anorexia and insomnia. He had no GI (gastrointestinal) symptoms. We discussed the possibility of taking Axid or Zantac to help with any ulcer symptoms as he was under a lot of stress. He was concerned about the criticism they were getting and the long hours he was working at the White House. He did feel that he had some mild depression. I started him on Desyrel, 50 mg. He was to start with one at bedtime and move up to three....I receive word at 10:20 p.m. on 7/20/93 that he had committed suicide.

Isn't it curious that Dr. Watkins would go to the trouble to write this down the day after he heard of Foster's death and two days after he supposedly made the prescription, but apparently would not bother to tell key officials about it? We have been told on the record that he was brought into the case more than a week later when a note was found in Foster's office mentioning a return of a Foster call by Watkins. This is almost as curious as the list of psychiatrists appearing in Park Police records for the first time on July 27, though the contents of Foster's car and wallet were gone through thoroughly and inventoried on the night of July 20.

But forget about such skepticism for the moment. Let's return to the world of shrink talk, where a rock-solid, highly successful lawyer can be unrecognizably transformed to suit the client:

Dr. Berman reported that "[m]istakes, real or perceived, posed a profound threat to his self- esteem/self/worth and represented evidence for a lack of control over his environment. Feelings of unworthiness, inferiority, and guilt followed and were difficult for him to tolerate. There are signs of an intense and profound anguish, harsh self-evaluation, shame, and chronic fear. All these on top of an evident clinical depression and his separation from the comforts and security of Little Rock. He, furthermore, faced a feared humiliation should he resign and return to Little Rock." The torn note "highlights his preoccupation with themes of guilt, anger, and his need to protect others." (by killing himself? ed.)

If that doesn't convince you try this:

In his report, Dr. Berman first noted that "[d]escriptors used by interviewees with regard to Vincent Foster's basic personality were extraordinarily consistent in describing a controlled, private, perfectionistic character whose public persona as a man of integrity, honesty, and unimpeachable reputation was of utmost importance."

What he does not tell us is that interviewees, on the record, were also quite consistent in describing a man who seemed perfectly normal in every way, but what does such an apparently admirable "basic personality" have to do with suicide, anyway? Well, at this point we have a footnote:

Dr. Berman noted that "[r]ecent studies...have documented a significant relationship between perfectionism and both depression and suicidality, particularly when mediated by stress."

It is a real shame that the Berman Report has not been made publicly available, because there is a very high probability that what we have here is a classic case of circular reasoning:

1. Vince Foster killed himself because he was a perfectionist.

2. Perfectionists tend to kill themselves.

3. We know perfectionists tend to kill themselves because the perfectionist, Vince Foster, killed himself.

Actually, it's probably even worse than circular reasoning because Dr. Berman seems to have made a bit of a leap to make a warped Felix Ungar-type out of a man who simply exhibited high standards. The likely circular reasoning is explained by a letter that I sent to the student newspaper of Yale University on February 8, 1996, with an information copy to the psychologist whose work is the subject of the letter. It was not printed, but I did get a response from the psychologist who simply thanked me for the information. I reproduce the letter to the editor here almost in its entirety. As you read it, bear in mind as well the opening quote from Edward Zehr. It is not just the propagandistic press that concerns him, but the "decay of our basic institutions."

I might also note that while this long essay began with comparisons between current developments in the United States and those in France a century ago, comparisons to our late lamented cold war superpower rival can hardly be avoided.

David Martin

All Rights Reserved

November 23, 1997

Recommended reading on both the original Dreyfus Affair and the current American version, in addition to sources mentioned in previous "Dreyfus" installments:

1. David Levering Lewis, Prisoners of Honor, the Dreyfus Affair (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1973).

Professor Lewis holds the Martin Luther King Chair of History at Rutgers University. A Pulitzer Prize winner for his biography of W.E.B. Dubois, his rendering of the Dreyfus Affair is one of the most readable and interesting available. He does a very good job of conveying to us the reasons why and the extent to which emotions in France still run surprisingly high over the drawn-out episode.

2. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton (Washington, DC, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1997).

Evans-Pritchard, formerly Washington correspondent for London's Sunday Telegraph who was mentioned in the two previous installments of this article, writes thoroughly and well about the Foster case, but his book has a good deal more in it to dismay the concerned citizen. My opening quote from the funeral oration for Glenn Wilburn is from page 107 of this book. Glenn Wilburn was the grandfather of two small children killed in the bomb blast that destroyed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. He had led an independent investigation to discover who was behind the entire operation, something that the federal government has seemed determined not to do. He died on July 15, 1997, of cancer of the pancreas. He was 46.