Fifth Investigation Finds That Vince Foster Killed Himself

WASHINGTON - In an intensive re-investigation of Vincent Foster's 1993 death, Whitewater prosecutors turned up new evidence, a changed account from his widow and poignant details of his depression but reached the same conclusion: He killed himself.

"He cried at dinner with his wife four days before his death; he told his mother a day or two before his death that he was unhappy because work was `a grind,' " wrote Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr in a 114-page final report made public yesterday.

Starr's report is the fifth investigation to rule the White House lawyer killed himself with a single shot to his head from an antique revolver.

The report mixed technical forensic evidence with detail about the depth of Foster's depression in the final days of his White House job, engulfed in the controversy surrounding his kindergarten pal Bill Clinton and former law partner Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Among the report's disclosures:

-- In November 1995, Mrs. Foster said the revolver found in Foster's hand "was the gun she unpacked in Washington but had not subsequently found" when she looked for it the night of her husband's death. She did say she seemed to remember the front of the gun looking lighter in color when she saw it during the move to Washington. In 1994, she said the gun found in Foster's hand "may be a gun" she had seen in Arkansas, while in 1993 she had been unable to identify the gun from a photograph.

-- Foster's sister, Sharon Bowman, found at the family home in Hope, Ark., four .38-caliber cartridges of the same manufacture as in the revolver found in Foster's hand, although the cartridges found in Hope were manufactured at a different time from the cartridge and casing recovered from Foster's gun.

-- Most of the carpet fibers obtained from Foster's clothing were consistent with samples obtained from carpet at his home. Others were consistent with samples obtained from the White House or Foster's car, and some could not be identified.

Foster's July 20, 1993, death at a Civil War-era park outside Washington spurred a cottage industry of conspiracy theories that he was murdered in a White House cover-up - endlessly promoted in books, videotapes and on conservative talk shows.

While agreeing with Starr's conclusions, Foster's sister, Sheila Foster Anthony, criticized the Whitewater prosecutor for taking so long.

"I believe that the investigation could have been completed and the report issued months, if not years, sooner," she said. "It was unconscionable for Mr. Starr for so long to allow the American people to entertain any thought that the president of the United States somehow had complicity in Vince's death."

The release of Starr's report showed no sign of silencing critics.

"This is worse than the Fiske report because Starr's people have deliberately misrepresented the evidence," said Reed Irvine, head of the conservative Accuracy in Media, referring to Starr's predecessor, Robert Fiske, who also concluded that Foster killed himself.

"Starr's people know that the gun that was brought from Arkansas was a store-bought silver revolver, but the gun found in Foster's hand was a black 1913 composite of two different guns," Irvine said.

While Starr's report depicts Foster as a depressed man close to being overwhelmed by his White House job, prosecutors said they "cannot set forth a particular reason or set of reasons why Mr. Foster committed suicide."

The issues facing Foster, the report noted, related to presidential appointments, health-care reform, the dismissal of White House travel-office employees and the Clintons' tax returns "which involved an issue regarding treatment of the Clintons' 1992 sale of their interest in Whitewater."

Starr brought in a psychiatrist, Dr. Alan Berman, who concluded that "there is little doubt that Foster was clinically depressed . . . in early 1993 and, perhaps, sub-clinically even before this."

The report quoted from a letter Foster wrote a friend in March 1993 that said, "I have never worked so hard for so long in my life. The legal issues are mind-boggling and the time pressures are immense.

"The pressure, financial sacrifice and family disruption are the price of public service at this level. As they say, `The wind blows hardest at the top of the mountain.' "