Taped Exchange Exposes
ÒPit BullÓ Dan Burton as Yapping Lap Dog
When
he was a backbench member of the minority Republican Party, Rep. Dan Burton of
Indiana made more noise than any member of Congress about the flawed
ÒinvestigationsÓ of the death by gunshot of Bill ClintonÕs deputy White House
counsel, Vincent W. Foster, Jr. He claimed that his approach to politics
was, according to the March 19, 1997, Washington Post, that of a pit bull. The
Post also described Burton as Òextraordinarily tenaciousÓ and called him a
Òconservative firebrand.Ó Concerning the Foster case in particular, The
Post had this to say:
In
1994, Burton engaged in what many consider his most outrageous crusade. In
lengthy speeches on the House floor, he challenged the official finding that
the death of deputy White House counsel Foster was a suicide. There were dark
if unspoken suggestions in Burton's insistence that Foster's body had been
moved and that he did not die in Virginia's Fort Marcy Park, where the body was
found.
At
one point during his personal investigation, Burton fired a gun at a
"head-like thing" (which he still won't identify) in his back yard to
prove, he says, that the sound of a gunshot in the park would have been heard
by security guards at the nearby residence of the Saudi Arabian ambassador.
"I
do not recant on any of it," Burton said. "I still believe that his
body was moved but I'm not going to beat on that." If Whitewater
independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr concludes, as have other prosecutors, that
Foster's death was a suicide, and there are no new revelations, "I'm not
going to reopen that investigation," Burton said.
When
the Republicans had gained control of the House of Representatives the previous
November and Burton had unexpectedly been elevated to the chairmanship of the
Government Reform and Oversight Committee, critics of the government in the
Foster case had good reason to believe that, at last, a
truly independent inquiry would be made. A leader among that group was a
man who had already done quite a bit of investigation of his own, Reed Irvine,
the head of the conservative media watchdog organization, Accuracy in
Media. His most notable discovery known at the time to those of us who
had also looked into the Foster death was that the X-ray technician responsible
for maintenance of the X-ray machine that was to have been used in the Foster
autopsy reported that the machine had been installed only a little more than a
month before the autopsy, and no problems with it had been reported. This
contradicted autopsy doctor James BeyerÕs report that no X-rays were available
because of a faulty machine with which he said they had had Ònumerous problems.Ó
(See Part 3 of my ÒAmericaÕs Dreyfus Affair, the
Case of the Death of Vincent Foster.Ó)
The
position that Burton announced to The Post in March, that is, that now
that he could actually do something, he was, in effect, folding his tent, had
to be a huge disappointment to Irvine. Though a disappointment, it was
hardly a surprise. The surprise, and the greatest disappointment, had
come earlier, back in December when the telephone conversation had taken place
that you can now hear on YouTube, ÒCongressman Dan Burton & Vincent Foster.Ó
When
the conversation begins, Burton is still the stand-up fellow conservative critic
of the Clinton administration, ÒIf I tell you something,Ó he
says to Irvine confidently, ÒitÕll be the straight scoop.Ó But as the
conversation nears its end, we have this from a clearly flustered Burton, ÒIf
you donÕt trust meÉif you donÕt want to give me the information, then donÕt do
it.Ó
In
between is this pivotal exchange:
Irvine:
ÒBe courageousÉDonÕt be a wimp.Ó
Burton:
ÒJesus Christ! IÕm not going to be a wimp with anybody, and that includes
you.Ó
But
he was.
Intentionally Barking Up
the Wrong Tree
Irvine
should have known that when Burton was making all that noise from his back bench in the Congress he was never serious about seeing
justice done in the Foster case. All along, it would seem, he was like
the little dog behind the fence sounding off at the big dog being walked by his
safely enclosed yard. The gate was opened when he became committee
chairman, and he shut up and went slinking away.
But
the comparison is not perfect. Upon closer attention to his noisy
criticism of the authorities, what we see is that he was engaging in deception
all along. He was no more the one American congressman interested in the
truth about FosterÕs death than the ostensibly Richard Mellon Scaife-financed Christopher Ruddy was the one honest
American journalist. Consider my observations back in 1998 in Part
5 of ÒAmericaÕs Dreyfus Affair.Ó IÕm talking about the
cover-up book by Dan E. Moldea, A Washington Tragedy: How the Death of Vincent Foster
Ignited a Political Firestorm:
Let's
dive right into the heart of this phony wrestling match. Look at how they both
[Moldea and Ruddy] treat Indiana Republican
Representative Dan Burton. To both, Burton is the great skeptic on Capitol
Hill. Neither seems to have noticed the fact that now that he is Oversight
Committee chairman, and in an ideal place to put up on the Foster case, he has
shut up. Moldea gives us long passages from Burton's
floor speech of July 13, 1994, when he was not even the ranking committee
member of the minority party. Take a critical look at the snake oil he was
selling:
I
believe there is a real possibility that Vince Foster committed suicide. I do
not believe, after reading that (Fiske) report in some detail with about seven
other people, that he committed suicide at Fort Marcy Park. I believe that his
body was moved to that location....
---
There was blonde hair, not Mr. Foster's, on his T-shirt and other parts
of his garments. Whose hair was it? It was not his. There were carpet and other
wool fibers found on the body. Where did they come from?
I
do not like to talk about this, but there was semen found on his underwear,
which would indicate there might have been a sexual experience that afternoon
between one and five."
---
Why did the man who found Foster's body say there was no gun in either
hand, not once, not twice, but three times when he talked to Gordon Liddy, and that is the man the FBI investigated.
My
concern is for the facts and the truth. When people say I am down here trying
to bring this body to a low ebb, I resent it." (pp.
249-251)
One
cannot help wondering where the great concern for facts and truth went when
Burton became committee chairman. But was it really ever there? Even in the
"courageous" floor speech there are the earmarks of fake-right
misdirection, the same emphasis on the curious, difficult-to-believe witness
who comes to us through the dubious auspices of G. Gordon Liddy
and Robert Novak and the promotion of what looks for all the world like a safe fall-back position, the suggestion that Foster killed
himself in some embarrassing place or manner and some folks then took it upon
themselves to protect the family, the White House, and the American people from
the embarrassment by dumping the body in the out-of-the-way park. Even the fact
that there is apparently "hard" evidence for such a scenario such as
the unknown hair and the semen in the shorts might well be doubted. It
originates, after all, with the dubious FBI lab, whose probity has recently
been called into question in a number of other cases and which claimed to have
detected the anti-depressant Trazadone in Foster's
blood when it was missed by the autopsy toxicologist.
The
ÒVincent FosterÓ section of the current Wikipedia page, while trying to tell us
what we are supposed to believe also manages to impart some pertinent
information:
Burton
was one of the most ardent opponents of President Bill Clinton. In 1998, he
said, "If I could prove 10 percent of what I believe happened, he'd
[Clinton] be gone. This guy's a scumbag. That's why I'm after him." Rep.
Burton led the House inquiry into the death of Vincent Foster; he was convinced
that Foster was murdered and urged extensive investigation into the possible
involvement of the Clintons. Burton gained attention for re-enacting the
alleged crime in his backyard with his own pistol and a pumpkin standing in for
Foster's head. After hearings into Democratic fundraising (see section below)
began, a Democratic National Committee staffer appeared in
a pumpkin suit with a button that read, "Don't shoot." Burton's
information during the Whitewater controversy was based on opposition
research conducted by Floyd Brown, who founded Citizens
United in 1988, which created the well-known Willie
Horton attack ad against Michael Dukakis. Because of the problems with
the quality of Brown's research and testimony, the investigation was closed.
And
what investigation might that be? What the clumsy writer means to say, we
suppose, is that he never conducted any investigation because all he ever had
was supplied to him by highly dubious sources. If Citizens United was his
only information source, then the Òdubious
sourcesÓ part is certainly true, but as Reed Irvine and anyone who
had looked into the matter with any seriousness knew, there was a lot more
damning information to be had.
Actually,
as it turns out, Irvine, along with a lot of American journalists, knew a lot
more incriminating stuff than any of us. He had been talking at length on
the telephone to U.S. attorney, Miguel Rodriguez, who resigned
in disgust in January of 1995 from his position of Kenneth StarrÕs
lead investigator. ThatÕs IrvineÕs taped conversation with Rodriguez that
you can listen to here. Irvine was still alive—he
died in 2004—when the Rodriguez tapes were made public and his end of the
conversation was edited out.
Rodriquez,
we learn from the tape, had talked to a lot of journalists while he was on the
job, trying to get the story of the cover-up out, but to no avail. ÒI
have talked to a number of people that – you know, from Time Magazine,
Newsweek, Nightline, The New York Times, Boston
Globe, the Atlanta whatever, um, you know there have been well over
a hundred, and this – this matter is so sealed tightÉ.Ó
And the lid stayed on, as it does to this day. We also learn from
Rodriguez, among a great number of other important things, that FosterÕs body
had indeed been moved, but not from some Òsafe houseÓ to Fort Marcy Park as
Burton and Ruddy would want us to think, but from one position to another, in a
fashion that would make his death look more consistent with suicide. Here
is how the narrator of the Rodriquez-Irvine
tape sums it up:
Miquel Rodriguez explains that the body was moved in
the presence of Park Police Officer John Rolla, with the knowledge of the
medical examiner Dr. Donald Haut, and others. Rescue worker Corey Ashford
arrived at FosterÕs body after it had already been moved. Crime scene photos of
the body as it had originally been observed apparently vanished.
At
this point I shall stop leading the witness (thatÕs you) and simply invite him
to go listen again to Miguel Rodriguez and to the Irvine-Burton exchange and make up his own
mind. If Rep. Burton should complain about his private telephone
conversation being made public (In DC itÕs legal to tape phone conversations
without notifying the party at the other end that you are doing so.), it will
just be a case of the guilty dog barking.
February
3, 2012
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