The Nunes Memo and Vince Foster

One of the quotations at the top of “The Press and the Death of Vincent Foster” is from Isikoff in the August 15, 1993, Washington Post:

Foster’s attempt to seek legal help is described in more than 200 pages of Park Police and FBI reports into his death that have not yet been publicly released. …those reports leave no doubt that Foster was suffering from a worsening depression….

In other words, the FBI had used Isikoff as a conduit for what they wanted the American people to believe was the cause of death, giving him the privilege of viewing the evidence, which they denied to the public. He duly delivered for them. It is very similar to how they used his work to hoodwink the FISA court. Here’s my description of Isikoff in the referenced article:

Michael Isikoff of first The Washington Post and then with the Post Corporation’s Newsweek magazine may be described as the lead mainstream reporter on the Foster case. Five days before this article appeared there had been the above-mentioned joint news conference [announcing the suicide conclusion]. The gathered journalists had not been told on what basis murder had been ruled out and no written substantiation for the suicide conclusion had been released. Furthermore, no indication was given of when or if any report would be released. Journalists were told simply that they could file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for any supporting documentation should they wish to see it.

America’s news organs demonstrated total satisfaction with this conclusion announced as though by imperial decree. They did not clamor for a report substantiating the conclusion. They did not even report the fact that the Park Police and the FBI offered no real substantiation for their suicide conclusion and that there was no public report or any prospects for one in the foreseeable future. Rather, here we have The Post in its first Sunday edition after the official announcement telling us that reports that neither they (ostensibly) nor we have been able to see leave “no doubt” about a key disputed question in the case. This is press dereliction of responsibility to the public of the highest order.

Isikoff was the reporter of the news on Wednesday, July 28, 1993, eight days after Foster’s body was discovered in Fort Marcy Park in McLean, Virginia, that a note had been found in Foster’s office with the names of some psychiatrists on it. Two days later, he was the co-writer with the late Ann Devroy of a much longer article that said that the note with the psychiatrists names on it had been found by police searching Foster’s car, and to this day neither Isikoff nor the The Post has given any explanation for why the change in the supposed discovery location. When you’re making a story up, I suppose it doesn’t really make any difference. But speaking of making things up, that Isikoff and Devroy article also had this big-time whopper:

Police who arrived at Foster’s house the night of the death were turned away after being told Lisa Foster and family members were too distraught to talk. Investigators were not allowed to interview her until yesterday. “That was a matter between her lawyers and the police,” [White House spokesman David] Gergen said, and the White House “had no role in it.”