THAT ’90S SHOW…. It’s been an odd couple of weeks for conservative political discourse. We’ve seen talk about Marc Rich, Elian Gonzales, welfare reform, and a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. What’s next? What else? Vince Foster.
Over at National Review‘s The Corner, Byron York noted this morning that today is Vincent Foster’s birthday, which apparently is a news peg.
I was looking over a daily almanac and saw that Vincent Foster would have been 64 years old today. In the 1990s, I spent a lot of time covering his death, beginning with trip to Fort Marcy Park the morning after his body was discovered. From the very beginning, I felt confident it was a suicide, something I think was conclusively proven by Kenneth Starr’s 1997 report.
Like most suicides, there were a lot of factors involved. But there’s no doubt that Foster was deeply distraught over the Travelgate scandal. He believed — correctly — that it would result in several investigations. He was worried about his reputation. He was under a lot of pressure from then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.
Soon after, Jonah Goldberg added that he “alwas [sic] agreed with Bill Safire and others that the handling of his ‘suicide note’ and all that was very, very suspicious.” Note, of course, that Goldberg put quotes around “suicide note,” for reasons that are unclear.
York replied to Goldberg that Foster’s death “was, in fact, a suicide,” though he added that “the Clintons did everything in their power to make it look suspicious.”
Vince Foster. Travelgate. “Suicide note.”
It’s 2009. Just thought I’d mention that.
