Supreme Court Revives Clintons' Vince Foster Scandal
Monday, May 5, 2003
Are Bill and Hillary Clinton sweating now that the Supreme Court today revived the controversy over Vince Foster's death?
Urged by the Bush administration, the court said it would decide in autumn whether the government must release post-mortem pictures of the Clinton White House attorney's "suicide."
At stake is "the privacy interest of millions of individuals, about whom personal and sensitive information is stored in government files," Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the court.
Olson insisted that five investigations had showed Foster killed himself and that a sixth inquiry "by an unsatisfied private citizen" seemed unnecessary. But for the whole story, see Christopher Ruddy's "The Strange Death of Vincent Foster."
Accuracy in Media, a public interest group that maintained Foster's suicide note was a forgery, filed a request with Park Police seeking autopsy photographs and photos of Foster's body at Fort Marcy Park in McLean, Va.
The government refused, and a federal appeals court in Washington agreed. The court claimed the pictures were exempted from the mandatory disclosure provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.
AIM said it wanted the photos to uncover "government foul play," but unless the group had compelling evidence there was not enough reason to justify an invasion of privacy, the appeals court said.
Attorney Allan J. Favish, who represented AIM, then filed his own FOIA request with the independent counsel's office to obtain the photos. When the office refused, Favish filed suit in federal court in Los Angeles.
Though a federal judge again said that there was no evidence justifying the invasion of privacy, a divided appeals court panel reversed and said evidence was not necessary.
When the case was sent back to trial court, the judge, under the appeals court's guidance, ordered the release of five of the 10 photographs of Foster's body, including one that had been published in Time magazine.
The government, joined by members of Foster's family, appealed. This time, an appeals court panel ordered the release of nine of the 10 photos. When the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, with headquarters in San Francisco, refused to hear the case, the government asked the Supreme Court for review. |
