Vince Foster, Deputy White House Counsel early
in Bill Clinton's first term, was found dead in Fort Marcy Park on July 20,
1993. Three investigations into Foster's death, including one by Independent
Counsel Kenneth Starr, have ruled the death a suicide. Patrick Knowlton,
referred to as "C2" in Starr's Report, entered Fort Marcy Park
approximately 70 minutes before Foster's body was discovered. Evidence shows
that Foster was already dead at that time. Knowlton saw two vehicles in the
parking lot, neither of which matched the description of Vince Foster's 1989
silver- gray Honda.
In the spring of 1994, FBI agent Lawrence
Monroe interviewed Knowlton for the Office of regulatory Independent Counsel
Robert Fiske.
Knowlton learned in October of 1995 that his statements to Monroe
were falsified in the FBI interview report. Shortly thereafter Knowlton
received a secret grand jury subpoena from Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr,
who was conducting the third investigation into Foster's death. That same day
several men began to harass Knowlton in the streets of Washington, D.C.
John Clarke, attorney for Knowlton, filed suit
in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., claiming the harassment was a
violation of Knowlton's civil rights [1]. The suit alleges the harassment was
part of a larger conspiracy to cover up the facts surrounding Vince Foster's
death.
On Wednesday of last week Clarke filed an
amended complaint in the suit, adding several new defendants [2]. The most
striking paragraph in the complaint states:
Facts
26. On
July 20th, 1993, between the time of 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m., Vincent Foster
died of a small-caliber gunshot wound to his head, at the hand of another. The
bullet entered his head from the upper portion of the right side of his neck,
under the jaw line, passed upward through the body of the tongue, pierced his
brain and struck the skull approximately three inches below the top of the
head, fracturing it. The bullet remained in his head. Blood drained from the
entrance wound in the neck onto his right collar and shoulder and was absorbed
down onto his right shirtsleeve. Blood also accumulated in his mouth.
This statement of facts, which runs counter to
the results of three official government investigations, is a very bold gambit
by Clarke. Under Rule 11 of Federal Civil Procedure, for an attorney to make
irresponsible assertions of fact before a court opens him to severe sanctions
by the judge. In the following interview, conducted on October 21, John Clarke
discusses with The Washington Weekly the compelling new evidence supporting his
statement of facts.
QUESTION: You filed an amended complaint today
on behalf of Patrick Knowlton, correct?
CLARKE: Yes, we have named some additional
defendants in the case. We also have more of the facts in the case.
QUESTION: Why was there a need to file an
amended complaint?
CLARKE: Amending the complaint is the usual
course of events in lawsuits. As a party learns more things the lawsuit gets
changed. That is particularly true in a conspiracy case. Conspiracies by their
very nature are secret. Our job is to try to unravel the conspiracy and that
means bringing new facts to light. We have done that, so it became necessary
for us to amend our complaint.
QUESTION: Who were the original defendants in
the case?
CLARKE: The original defendants were the people
who harassed Patrick, including two individuals whom we named. There were two
FBI agents named, one of whom falsified reports, and the other whom we believe
was involved and knew in advance of the intimidation that Patrick suffered.
QUESTION: Who falsified documents?
CLARKE: Larry Monroe, one of the FBI agents who
was assigned to Robert Fiske's office. He interviewed Patrick in the Foster
death investigation, and falsified Patrick's statements in his report. Later on
the truth surfaced in the London Sunday Telegraph. Foster died on July 20,
1993. Nine months later Monroe interviewed Patrick twice. Eighteen months after
that the 302's were public. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard was following the case, but
Patrick had never heard of Ambrose. Ambrose contacted Patrick and showed him
the 302's, that Patrick said lied about what he had told the FBI. So Ambrose
wrote an article that appeared in the October 22 edition of the London Sunday
Telegraph. That appeared on U.S. newsstands on October 24th, a Tuesday. That
same day the Office of Independent Counsel prepared a subpoena for Patrick to
testify before the Whitewater grand jury the following Wednesday. They typed it
up on a Tuesday for testimony a week from the following day. But they didn't
serve it right away. They waited until Thursday, October 27th to serve it. And
that was the beginning of the intimidation Patrick suffered.
We believe this intimidation was a civil rights
violation, to intimidate a federal witness in order to dissuade him from
testifying fully, fairly, and truthfully. We filed suit based on that. We also
believe this civil rights violation was part of a conspiracy. Under the law of
civil conspiracy all members of the conspiracy are liable and answerable for
anything done in furtherance of the conspiracy. If the civil rights violation
was in furtherance of a conspiracy, even if the defendants did not know who
Patrick Knowlton was, they are all liable for what happened to Patrick. That is
what we call the theory of the case and it's what we are proceeding on. What we
did today was file an amended complaint to name additional defendants who were
members of the conspiracy. Even though these people did not know who Patrick
Knowlton was, and even though they did not personally harass him, they were a
part of this joint venture and that's why they are liable.
Two things very relevant in the prosecution of
Patrick's case are: (1) if there was a cover-up surrounding the death of
Vincent Foster; and (2) who covered it up. About 10,000 pages of documents have
been released regarding the Foster death. We just recently completed our review
of these documents and got our summary down on paper. It's not in its final
form. But we are now in a position to find out who did what, and what happened
in the Vince Foster case. We have unraveled a lot of it and that's why we added
defendants in our amended complaint.
The first defendant we added is U.S. Park
Police sergeant now retired, Robert Edwards. He was the third Park Police
officer to respond to the body site. As he was walking up to the body site the
first Park Police officer was leaving. Edwards ordered him to leave the park
and return to his duties. Edwards proceeded to the body site where Park Police
officer Franz Ferstl was photographing the body. Ferstl was the 'beat officer';
it was his beat. He took about 7 photographs before Edwards got there. Edwards
then took Ferstl's photographs and sent Ferstl to the parking lot. Then two
other Park Police officers walked up to the body site, Lt. Patrick Gavin and
Christine Hodakievic. They stayed for a few minutes and left.
That left Edwards alone at the body site for
about 10- 15 minutes, with the only photographs that had been taken. Edwards
then tampered with the crime scene by moving the head to the right. This
allowed blood that had accumulated in the mouth to drain down onto the right
shoulder. He then repositioned the head straight up, leaving a contact stain on
the right side of the chin. The contact stain occurred when the chin hit the
wet shoulder.
Edwards did that because he wanted to make it
appear that the blood -- which was already on the right shoulder, right side of
the shirt, and right side of the neck and collar -- had come from the mouth.
He
wanted to provide an excuse for that blood being there. You don't commit suicide
by shooting yourself in the neck, so they wanted to cover up the neck wound. So
the excuse for the blood on the right side, the OIC tells us, is blood had
accumulated in the mouth and an early observer turned the head to the right,
whereupon the blood drained out. Then this early observer turned the head back
up, leaving the contact stain on the chin. That's right. He wanted to leave a
sign of having moved the head, because that's the excuse for the blood. His
excuse for having moved the head to the right was to open up an airway,
although no one tried to resuscitate Mr. Foster.
We know Edwards moved the head because all of
the observers before Edwards said the blood was dry, and the witnesses after
Edwards said the blood was wet. The OIC never said who the early observer was,
but it was pretty obvious that they couldn't find anybody who said they did it
or saw it being done. So to the OIC this is an unknown person; they didn't know
who this person was, although it had to have been Edwards.
This is important because officially there was
no wound on the side of the neck. Foster supposedly shot himself in the mouth.
But he did not have an entrance wound in his mouth. The entrance wound was on
his neck. The blood had drained from the neck. In order to conceal the entrance
wound in the neck, you have to conceal where the blood came from. So Edwards
turned the head to right to let the blood drain out, to provide an explanation
for the blood that was already there. This is also what caused the two lateral
drain tracks that came from his nose and mouth going toward his ear. People say
those tracks show he was moved to the park. That's not really true. We believe
that occurred from Edwards' actions after the body was already at the park.
QUESTION: Do you think Edwards was in the know
about a need for cover-up when he moved the head?
CLARKE: You would think so, wouldn't you?
QUESTION: His job was to do something to help
cover this up? Is that what you think?
CLARKE: Yes, that's what I think. I don't think
he all of a sudden, sua sponte, did that on his own, with nobody telling him
to.
Anyway, the official version is that there was
a mouth entrance wound and an exit wound in the back of the head. But actually,
there was no entrance wound in the mouth, and there was no exit wound at the
top of the back of the head. There was only one visible wound from the outside,
and that was to the neck.
QUESTION: How do you know that there was no
entrance wound in the mouth?
CLARKE: Let's do the entrance and exit wounds
at the same time. Twenty-five witnesses saw the body before the autopsy. There
is a record of not one of them having seen an entrance wound.
QUESTION: Well, they would not have opened the
mouth, would they?
CLARKE: That's true, although two of those
persons were MD's whose job it was to inspect the body. But there is no record
of any of those 25 witnesses having seen either the mouth entrance wound or the
exit wound at the top of the head. The only reference is to officer Ferstl, who
allegedly saw an exit wound. Five Park Police officers all prepared reports and
in none of those reports was there a reference to an entrance wound, an exit
wound, or blood.
QUESTION: I thought Dr. Haut stated he saw
matted blood at the back of the head.
CLARKE: He did say matted blood at the top of
the head.
QUESTION: I thought he said the back of the
head.
CLARKE: Right, the top of the back of the head,
where you would expect this alleged exit wound to be. He did see blood there.
But the best evidence we have is the Park Police officer who gloved up and felt
there. That was Officer John Rolla. He said a big hole would be one he could
put his finger through. He said, "His head was not blown out. I probed his
head and there was no big hole there, there was no big blowout. There weren't
brains running all over the place. There was blood in there, there was a mushy
spot. I initially thought that the bullet might still be in his head." He
uses the word hole, but that's not what he described as what he felt. He said
if you could put your finger in it, that's a big hole. He says he couldn't put
his finger through any hole.
QUESTION: But he did mention a hole being
present, didn't he?
CLARKE: No, although he used the word hole in
general terms, he what he says found at the back of the head was a mushy spot.
A mushy spot is not a hole. There was blood back there. What we think happened
is the bullet, after it entered under the right jaw line, went straight up and
fractured the top of the back of the head. It remained in the head. John Rolla
does not describe an exit wound, and Richard Arthur said there was no exit
wound.
QUESTION: Who is Richard Arthur?
CLARKE: He was in the group of the 4th to 7th
people at the scene. First on the scene was the U.S. Park Police officer, then
one EMT and a paramedic, then minutes later came Richard Arthur accompanied by
3 others. Richard Arthur was the only paramedic in that group of four. He was
the second paramedic at the body site.
Arthur said that there was no exit wound. He
was asked if he could describe the exit wound. He said, "Was there one? I
didn't know there was one." That's the other record we have pertaining to
an exit wound. The only person we have not covered for whom there is a record
of being there is Dr. Haut. Haut said that there was a neck wound. He wrote in
his report "gunshot wound mouth-neck."
QUESTION: That's on the second page of his
report, isn't it?
CLARKE: Yes.
QUESTION: The first page of the report has a
spot where a word, presumably 'neck,' is evidently whited out, and another word
inserted -- 'head' is inserted instead. Is that correct?
CLARKE: That report has Dr. Haut's signature on
it. It is dated July 20, 1993. It is verified. It has an "I hereby certify
and affirm under the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia," and it goes on
and on. He says in effect "I swear that I undertook an investigation of
the circumstances surrounding the death and this is what I found." Under
"circumstances surrounding death," it says, "U.S. Park Police
found a gunshot victim, mouth to neck." That's not an error. If you are
the medical examiner you're not going to say there's a neck wound unless there
is. Haut's statement is the only record of an exterior wound that anyone of 25
witnesses saw.
Richard Arthur was interviewed five times and
the best record we have of what it was he saw was in his deposition, with no
opportunity by the FBI to spin or edit his account. He is asked the following
question in the deposition, and I'm quoting: "Let me ask you this: if I
told you there was no gunshot wound in the neck, would that change your view as
to whether it was a suicide or not?" And he responded, "No . . . what
I saw is what I saw . . . I saw a small - what appeared to be a small gunshot
wound here near the jawline. Fine, whether the coroner's report says that or
not, fine. I know what I saw."
QUESTION: Let me make sure I understand. The
only reference to a head wound, other than a "mushy spot," would be
on the first page of Haut's report. Is that correct?
CLARKE: Yes, on the first page. The first page
says "Cause of death" in a small area. In there it says "gunshot
wound" on one line. Then "gunshot wound" with a dash and then
right under it some little black marks with no word there, and then to the
right of that it says "head." So it looks like it originally said
"gunshot wound mouth" then under it, centered properly, was the word
"neck." In order to falsify it they whited-out the word
"neck" and moved the paper a bit to the side, and then typed
"head." The reason they moved it over was because otherwise they
would have to type over the whited-out word, which would have been apparent on
the photocopies. If you type over white-out you can tell.
QUESTION: What did the autopsy report say about
the head wound?
CLARKE: We have just covered all the witnesses
up till you get to the autopsy. The body was found on Tuesday around 6:00 p.m.
The autopsy was originally scheduled to occur Thursday at 7:00 a.m. Dr. Beyer
claimed that he rescheduled the autopsy as soon as he heard about the case,
from 7:00 a.m. on Thursday to 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday. He rescheduled it for
just 16 hours after the discovery of the body. He said it was his idea, he didn't
talk to anyone about it, no one suggested it, he just decided to do it.
QUESTION: Where are the records of what he
said?
CLARKE: That comes from his Senate testimony.
Both of the Park Police investigators on the case, Rolla and Cheryl Braun, had
called the Office of the Medical Examiner for Northern Virginia, Dr. Beyer's
office, Wednesday morning as they were getting off work. Rolla testified that
he waited instead of leaving work at 6:00 a.m. He said he waited until about
6:30 before calling the Medical Examiner's Office. The reason he waited was he
wanted to call to make sure they weren't going to do the autopsy that day. They
told him over the phone, "Don't worry, it won't be done till the following
day." So he went home . . .
QUESTION: Why did he not want it done on
Wednesday?
CLARKE: There is a requirement that law
enforcement officers attend an autopsy. So he was calling to make sure he would
be available to be there, because he had just worked all night. So he went
home. Braun's story is pretty much the same. Then they both got a call about
8:30 or 9:00 saying, "We're going to have the autopsy at 10:00. Do you
want to go?" And they said "No." Four other Park Police officers
attended the autopsy instead. Normally Dr. Beyer would perform the autopsy or
Dr. Fields would. But in this case, an unknown person assisted Dr. Beyer in the
autopsy.
QUESTION: Have you found out who that person
was?
CLARKE: No, he's named as a "John Doe
pathologist" in our suit.
QUESTION: Isn't that strange?
CLARKE: It gets more strange. Four Park Police
officers, Robert Rule and three other personnel, go to the autopsy to witness
it. There is Dr. Beyer with his unknown, unusual assistant, whose identity is
never revealed in 10,000 pages of records. According to his deposition Robert
Rule asked Dr. Beyer who the assistant was, and Beyer refused to tell him. He
would not identify the guy who was helping him with the autopsy to the police
who were there!
The autopsy was scheduled for 10:00, but Dr.
Beyer began much earlier than that, before the police arrived. He stripped the
body, x-rayed it, and then of all things to do he took out the tongue and
portions of the soft palate. The reason he did that, we allege, is to hide the
fact that the bullet pierced the tongue from below, and the absence of an
entrance wound in the soft palate.
QUESTION: Is he then named as one of the new
defendants in the case?
CLARKE: Yes, Dr. James Beyer.
QUESTION: How about the mystery person?
CLARKE: Yes, we call him "John Doe
Pathologist."
QUESTION: When you name somebody like that in a
suit who is not previously identified in the records, will that person's
identity have to be disclosed? Will they be required by the court now to come
forward with this person's identity?
CLARKE: Not until discovery. We have to do
discovery.
QUESTION: You will get it through discovery?
CLARKE: Oh, yes.
QUESTION: You think you will?
CLARKE: Sure.
QUESTION: What if they say 'National Security'?
CLARKE: (Laughs). They won't be saying that.
This is the Medical Examiner for Northern Virginia, who covered up . . .
'national security'? They might say that but I don't think they will get away
with it. We'll find out a lot. But the astounding stuff is what we already
know. Let me continue on with the autopsy.
There is also testimony that Dr. Beyer did not
photograph the entrance wound -- that portion of the soft palate that allegedly
had the entrance wound. Why would he not photograph that? In addition, he
reported that on the soft palate there were very large amounts of what he
called "gunpowder debris." He said it was "grossly
present," meaning it could be seen with the naked eye. He described it as
"large quantities of powder debris." He sent his 5 slides containing
13 sections of the soft palate to the Virginia Department of Forensic Sciences.
They issued a report saying there was no ball-shaped gunpowder identified on
any of those tissue samples.
QUESTION: When did you learn of the existence
of this report?
CLARKE: Somebody told me about it nearly a year
ago. This is a very interesting thing. The finding of powder debris on the soft
palate by Dr. Beyer is the absolute cornerstone of the entire official
conclusion of suicide in the park.
QUESTION: That Vince Foster stuck a gun in his
mouth and pulled the trigger?
CLARKE: Right. That is the cornerstone of the
official conclusion. Now, this Virginia Department of Forensic Science report
said that no ball-shaped gunpowder -- and ball-shaped gunpowder is the type of
powder allegedly found by Beyer -- was found. The FBI laboratory issued a
report on May 9 or 10 of 1994, which said no ball-shaped gunpowder was
identified on the tissue samples when the Office of the Northern Virginia
Medical Examiner examined them. And they didn't really have an explanation. In
June, about a month later, they issued another lab report saying the tissue
samples had been prepared in such a way as not to be conducive to retaining
unconsumed gunpowder particles. In other words, it had been put in something --
formaldehyde or something - - which made it disappear.
That's a lie. That didn't happen. Depending on
the type of ball smokeless powder, the solvents, in order to destroy it, would
have to be either ether or nitroglycerin. People just don't use that to
preserve tissue samples. So Beyer was lying. And remember, that's the
cornerstone of the entire conclusion.
When we look at everything we've just talked
about, the only word we have about this entrance and exit wound is from Dr.
Beyer. You would think out of 25 witnesses before the autopsy -- an autopsy
which is screwy from the start -- there would be some record of the entrance or
exit wound other than the neck wound, if it existed. It did not exist until you
get to the autopsy, and Dr. Beyer falsified his autopsy.
QUESTION: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard claimed he
was shown a photograph of the neck wound, correct?
CLARKE: Correct. Ambrose told me that; I've
asked him.
QUESTION: Have you been able to track down this
photo?
CLARKE: No.
QUESTION: Where do you think the photo might
be?
CLARKE: I don't know.
QUESTION: Do you know who the last person would
have been to have it?
CLARKE: I have a couple of suspects. He was
shown the photograph, so you have to ask yourself who showed it to him.
QUESTION: Haut?
CLARKE: No, no. I think it was XXXXX [redacted
by request].
QUESTION: Who else have you added to your list
of defendants?
CLARKE: After "John Doe Pathologist,"
next is Robert F. Bryant. At the time of Mr. Foster's death, Bryant was Special
Agent in Charge of the FBI's Washington Metropolitan Field Office. He has since
been promoted to Deputy Director, FBI. On Friday, July 23, 1993, three days
after the death, he sent a Teletype to then Acting Director of the FBI, Floyd
Clark. Clark was the Acting Director because Sessions had been fired a week
before. Accuracy in Media got this Teletype, which is heavily redacted, through
a Freedom of Information lawsuit. What it shows is that Bryant was sending it
to confirm telephone conversations that took place on the 21st, the day after
the death. He says something like, "This is to confirm our conversation
wherein the preliminary results of the autopsy are that there was a .38 caliber
gunshot wound with no exit wound."
QUESTION: He said no exit wound?
CLARKE: He confirmed the conversation with
Floyd Clark in which he said there was no exit wound. On August 10th, about 17
days after he sent the Teletype, he appeared at a joint Park Police/FBI press
conference to announce the FBI's finding of suicide in the park. He told
everyone there a very thorough investigation showed it was a suicide in the
park. His having done that constitutes his participation in the conspiracy. He
is telling the American people, the press, that it was suicide in the park.
Seventeen days earlier he confirmed his guilty knowledge of no exit wound. And
this is the Special Agent in charge of the Washington D. C. Metropolitan Field
Office.
QUESTION: What did Dr. Beyer's report say about
an exit wound?
CLARKE: He said it was 1 x 1.5 inch, which is
about the size of a half-dollar. Remember, it wasn't there earlier; John Rolla
could have put his finger through something the size of a half-dollar. But
that's what Beyer said. He said he put a probe through the head, and there is a
record of one of the Park Police officers having seen the probe going in
through the mouth and coming out through the back of the head.
QUESTION: Did the Park Police officer sign a
statement that he saw that?
CLARKE: No, but I believe that he did see that.
But that Park Police officer didn't get there until after Beyer had done God
knows what to the body. He's reported as having removed the tongue and portions
of the soft palate before the officers got there. I think he inserted the probe
before the officers got there. They walked in and saw the probe, then he took
it out.
QUESTION: So you think he may have drilled a
hole in the back of the head to be able to put the probe through?
CLARKE: I think the bullet went up through Mr.
Foster's tongue into the top of his head, and fractured his head. So Rolla said
"I felt a mushy spot, I thought the head was fractured, and I thought the
bullet was still in the head." He's right on all three counts is what I
think.
QUESTION: OK, Bryant is also named because in
his memo to . . .
CLARKE: There is a record of his active
participation in the cover-up.
QUESTION: Who else besides Bryant are you
naming?
CLARKE: There's Scott Jeffrey Bickett. Scott
bashed Patrick's car in with a tire iron the night before his second FBI
interview. One of the appendices at the back of Evans-Pritchard's "The
Secret Life of Bill Clinton" is a computer printout of Scott Jeffrey
Bickett, showing that he was employed by the Department of Defense. [3] He
holds what is called an "active SCI" security clearance. SCI stands
for "Sensitive Compartmented Information." That's a top U.S.
government security clearance. So this malicious attack on Patrick's car, which
Bickett later confessed to . . .
QUESTION: He did? To whom did he confess?
CLARKE: Coincidentally, to the U.S. Park Police
who were handling the case. They said they couldn't trace the license plate
number. Luckily, there was a limousine driver not too far away who witnessed
the whole thing, who wrote it down.
QUESTION: Did he tell them why he bashed the
car?
CLARKE: No. So, the Park Police showed up and
the limo driver gave the license number to both the Park Police and to Patrick.
A week went by and they said they couldn't find the guy. So a private
investigator was hired on October 18, 1995, and he found Bickett in one day.
The Park Police then interviewed Bickett and he confessed. This incident was
pretty damned coincidental. It was the night before Patrick's second interview.
Patrick had two interviews. The first one was April 15, 1994, when FBI agent
Larry Monroe was leaning on him trying to get him to admit the car he saw in
the Fort Marcy Park parking lot was Vince Foster's car. Patrick had another
interview about 3 weeks later. The incident where his car was bashed in was the
night before the second interview. He actually had a confrontation with this
guy, Scott Bickett.
Either they were trying to give Patrick a hint,
or they were trying to shake him up. His car was a 1974 refurbished Peugeot. It
was just beautiful. It was Patrick's only possession. They bashed the shit out
of it right in front of the Vietnam Memorial. Patrick and his girlfriend were
showing another couple the memorial.
QUESTION: When did you learn of Bickett?
CLARKE: When Evans-Pritchard's book came out.
QUESTION: Why did you not name Bickett as a
defendant to begin with?
CLARKE: Because we filed suit a year before
that book came out. The next new defendant I call "John Doe FBI Laboratory
Technician." I'll tell you briefly some of the things they hid. Remember,
Beyer supposedly found ball shaped smokeless powder on the body. Well,
Remington manufactured the cartridges found in the official death gun. They
were .38 HVL, which stands for high velocity ammunition. Remington has never
used ball smokeless powder in the manufacture of that ammunition.
QUESTION: So the supposed finding of the ball
shaped powder on the soft palate by Beyer is impossible in any event?
CLARKE: I think Foster had ball powder on him,
but none of it was in the mouth.
QUESTION: Does the presence of this particular
type of powder give you any indication what the murder weapon actually was?
CLARKE: Yes. It's used by Winchester .22's, a
small caliber gun.
QUESTION: Whoa!!
CLARKE: Yes, it's consistent with reloads also.
QUESTION: Professional hit men are known to
reload their ammunition.
CLARKE: That category is included.
QUESTION: Although it seems unlikely to me that
anyone would want to reload .22 cartridges, unless they wanted very special
properties. But a professional might.
CLARKE: Right, for up close work. The FBI lab
also hid the length of the powder burns on Mr. Foster's hands. They did not
describe the length of those powder burns.
QUESTION: Is the official story that he had one
hand over the cylinder of the gun as he pulled the trigger?
CLARKE: Right. And you would get a blast from
the front cylinder gap.
QUESTION: Well, on a revolver there are gaps
between the cylinder and the frame at both the front and the back of the
cylinder, where some blast might escape.
CLARKE: You could get a little bit from the
back, but these powder burns on his hands were definitely from the front
cylinder gap, and they are huge. As the blast escapes from the cylinder gap, it
is blocked at the top and the bottom by the frame of the gun. So it comes out
in a triangular shape on both sides from the front cylinder gap, which is at the
back of the barrel. As the blast flees from the gun, it expands, so the
triangle gets larger the farther it is from the point of the blast.
If your hand is over the cylinder when you pull
the trigger, you won't get gunshot residue on the part of your hand that is
above the gun, or the part that is below the gun. The top and bottom of the gun
frame will protect those parts of your hand. Now, if you wrap your hand around
the gun at the front of the cylinder, according to our measurements, you will
have two 2-inch burns on your hand, one on each side of the cylinder.
QUESTION: Exactly right.
CLARKE: Let's suppose you got somebody else to
pull the trigger. You take both hands and wrap them around the gun, but not
touching the gun. With your hands out like that, instead of 2 inches long the
burns are going to be 6 to 7 inches long. The gunshot residue deposit is
shortened by closeness of your hand to the gun and lengthened by its distance.
Now, we calculate that Mr. Foster had a 3-inch burn on the left-hand side, so
he was not touching the gun there.
QUESTION: OK.
CLARKE: On the right hand side he had over a
5-inch burn.
QUESTION: So his hands were not touching the
gun?
CLARKE: On neither side. He was not holding
that gun.
QUESTION: What's he doing with his hands around
but not touching a gun that goes off?
CLARKE: Think about it. He's in a defensive
posture. The gun went off when his hand was two inches from it on the right
hand side and on the left side maybe a half an inch. He was grabbing for the
gun when it went off!
QUESTION: How do you know how long the burns
were on each hand?
CLARKE: We can approximate the size of his
hand. He was 6 feet 4, and he could palm a basketball palm down in each hand.
Anybody who can do that has a 6-inch index finger.
QUESTION: How do you know the length of the
burns?
CLARKE: We have sources in the record that tell
us the burn began at the last phalange, which is about an inch long. It
extended down into the web area of his hand. From the beginning of the last
phalange to the web area would have been 5 inches. If the burn extended into
the web area, that means it was more than 5 inches. One of the reports --
Simonello's -- says it is also to the thumb. Simonello removed the weapon from
Mr. Foster's right hand. He said there was gunpowder on the thumb. That means
the hand could not have been in contact with the weapon when it went off.
QUESTION: Was his stain also the ball shaped
powder?
CLARKE: We don't know because it is residue.
QUESTION: Is it possible that someone put the
.38 in his hand and shot the gun to make it look like he shot it?
CLARKE: No.
QUESTION: But the .38 had been fired, had it
not? It had a spent casing in it didn't it?
CLARKE: One spent casing and one unspent casing.
QUESTION: Did they do a test of the gun to see
if it had been fired recently?
CLARKE: I don't know. I do know that they
didn't test it until after they closed the investigation. Did you know that?
QUESTION: No. Good grief.
CLARKE: In fact the letter requesting testing
was not written until the 11th, but the case was officially closed on the 5th.
A week later they decided to send it out for testing. That was the official
FBI/Park Police investigation, which was 16 days long.
QUESTION: Why have you added "John Doe FBI
lab Technician" to your suit?
CLARKE: Because of the FBI report. He says the
gunpowder residues are consistent with Foster having fired the weapon. We made
a model of the weapon. You cannot pull the trigger with your hands in the
position relative the gun that Foster's must have been. His right hand was 2
inches away from it, and the left hand about one half inch". The only way
he could have been holding it would be with his hands around it and away from it.
You can't pull the trigger like that. Even if he could reach the trigger, he
couldn't have pulled it -- it was too far away.
QUESTION: Was he supposed to have pulled the
trigger with his thumb?
CLARKE: Yes.
QUESTION: So you name the FBI lab technician
because he falsified the documents, in your opinion?
CLARKE: Yes.
QUESTION: What you are talking about here --
you've said it yourself more than once -- is a conspiracy that involves many,
many people.
CLARKE: Many people, but less than some might
imagine.
QUESTION: It's hard for the average person to
contemplate that all of these disparate people would be involved to falsify the
record. Why would they do that?
CLARKE: They were evidently covering up an
apparent homicide. I don't know why they did it, why he was killed, or who
killed him.
QUESTION: What's the next step in your suit?
CLARKE: The judge still has not ruled on the
defendants' motion to dismiss. The two FBI agents and one other named defendant
who was served in the case earlier filed a motion to dismiss. We argued that in
January. The judge has not ruled on it. It's a good thing, too, because we have
been going through thousands of pages of records pulling all of this stuff out.
QUESTION: I won't ask you if you trust the
judge.
CLARKE: You can say that I trust him because I
do.
QUESTION: What is his name?
CLARKE: John Garrett Penn.
QUESTION: Which court is the case in?
CLARKE: U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia.
QUESTION: Has he been there for a while?
CLARKE: He's been there for a long time. I
tried a case before him in 1989.
QUESTION: I suppose the next step is he will
make a ruling about whether to dismiss. And if he does not dismiss, he will
then look at your amended complaint. Is that right?
CLARKE: He really has to look at the amended
complaint before ruling. Part of the argument of the motion to dismiss is our
supposed failure to particularize the allegation of conspiracy. Our amended
complaint is a lot more particular. So he would not want to dismiss the suit
without looking at this.
QUESTION: You think at this point with the
evidence you have presented you have overcome that objection?
CLARKE: Yes, I thought I overcame it back then,
but even more so now.
QUESTION: How is Patrick Knowlton doing?
CLARKE: He's doing very well.
QUESTION: Is he getting on with his life?
CLARKE: We are both involved in this up to our
armpits, so this is his life for the time being.
