Foster Link Apparent in Tripp Filegate Bombshell - Gary Aldrich Confirms Possible White House Motive
Washington Weekly
7/26/98 By CARL LIMBACHER
OYSTER BAY -- As part of its $90 million Filegate lawsuit against the Clinton administration, Judicial Watch has obtained the names of hundreds of heretofore unidentified White House employees whose FBI files were gathered by Clinton dirt digger Craig Livingstone. And though Clintonites had denied that their collection of files was an attempt to gather damaging information on political opponents, the new list of White House Filegate targets includes the name of Linda Tripp, the most damaging witness yet to testify against President Clinton.
Though this startling development was reported last Monday by the Washington Times, most other news outlets have taken a pass. The press appears to consider the pulling of Tripp's FBI file as just the latest installment of the White House war against Sexgate witnesses.
Yet the timing of this particular Clinton intelligence operation suggests it had nothing to do with Tripp's current Monica-gate testimony. Nor was the requisition of Tripp's file prompted by her confirmation of reports last year that Clinton had groped White House volunteer Kathleen Willey. Tripp's FBI dossier turned up in the White House in June 1994, more than three years before either of those scandals erupted.
The chronology suggests that the early White House interest in Tripp had to do with her role in another White House scandal, one about which she had just been debriefed by FBI investigators. At the time Tripp's file was turned over to Livingstone, Special Prosecutor Robert Fiske was finishing up his investigation into the suspicious death of Vincent Foster. Fiske's Foster findings were released on June 30, 1994, just weeks after Tripp's file was handed off to Livingstone.
Tripp was a key Foster case witness. She was the last person known to have seen the deputy White House counsel alive. When counsel office aide Tom Castleton revealed that Foster had taken his briefcase when he left the White House for the last time (only to have it magically re-appear in his office after his death), it was Linda Tripp who assured investigators that Castleton had been mistaken. But other aspects of her account could threaten to expose a cover-up.
In Foster's final days, it was clear the White House had engaged in a full court press to keep him from wandering off the reservation. Meetings with Foster later described as spontaneous were engineered by Clinton damage controllers Webb Hubbell, Michael Cardozo and Marsha Scott. Scott told investigators she couldn't remember the details of her unusual closed door session with Foster on the day before his death, which she said lasted an hour or so. But Lucianne Goldberg told the Washington Weekly last April that, according to Linda Tripp, the Scott-Foster meeting consumed "most of the day".
Tripp, along with Foster's personal secretary Deborah Gorham, had a birdseye view of the chaos in the counsel's office when a plaintive note said to be written by Foster materialized in his briefcase; a development used by the White House to bolster the presumption that his death had been a suicide. When Patsy Thomasson and Bernard Nussbaum (Tripp's boss) had searched Foster's briefcase on July 20 and 22 respectively, the note wasn't there. Tripp and Gorham knew something was up when, on July 26, Nussbaum's assistant Cliff Sloan asked Tripp for a typewriter despite the fact that the counsel's office was chock full of computer wordprocessors. No typewriter was readily available, Tripp explained. On the morning of the 27th, Nussbaum questioned Gorham about whether she had noticed anything in Foster's briefcase. Gorham described Nussbaum's grilling as "very forceful and adamant," saying the meeting felt like an "interrogation."
Unbeknownst to Tripp and Gorham, 27 shreds of paper the White House would claim was Foster's suicide note had been "discovered" in the briefcase the day before. Nussbaum waited thirty hours before informing the Park Police on the 28th. It was a handwritten note with no traceable fingerprints. Investigators working for Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr have ruled the note was authentic. But three independent handwriting experts, one of worldwide renown, determined in 1995 that it was a forgery.
Gorham and Tripp kept in touch with each other through intra-office email as these events unfolded before them. On the morning of Nussbaum's interrogation Gorham emailed Tripp, saying the whole episode reminded her of "a slapstick comedy." For her part, Tripp was astonished at what looked to her at the time like investigative incompetence, commenting to Gorham via email - "And we're the support staff??????"
All this came out in 1995, when Tripp and Gorham testified before the Senate Whitewater Committee. But when Craig Livingstone procured Tripp's FBI file more than a year earlier, the White House had absolutely no idea what Tripp, who as a former Bush employee would have been considered a risk, had told the FBI about Foster's death.
Meanwhile, Craig Livingstone had his own Foster case exposure to worry about. He was the first official at the White House to be notified by Secret Service after Foster's body had been discovered. Livingstone was dispatched to I.D. the body at the morgue, after which Foster's car keys mysteriously appeared in one of the deceased's previously searched pants pockets. And Livingstone was seen removing files from Foster's office the day after the death. Just two months after Livingstone obtained Tripp's file, she was transferred out of the White House.
Would the White House have sought Tripp's FBI file as a way to find out exactly what she told Fiske's investigators concerning Foster? Was Tripp's transfer prompted by a White House worried about what she knew - as revealed in FBI 302 witness statements kept secret from even congressional investigators? One man who might know is Gary Aldrich, author of the runaway 1996 best seller, "Unlimited Access." Not only had Aldrich worked closely with Livingstone while at the White House, the retired FBI agent was named along with Tripp on the same newly discovered Filegate list.
On Tuesday we asked Aldrich about the new Filegate-Foster connection while he was on Boston's Howie Carr radio show.
QUESTION: Yesterday you were quoted in the Washington Times saying that it was outrageous that both you and Linda Tripp had your FBI files turned over to Craig Livingstone. Their story made it clear that her file was pulled in June of '94. At that point Robert Fiske was just wrapping up his investigation into Vince Foster's death and Tripp was a key witness in that case. Would information about Foster have been in Tripp's FBI file -- information that the White House couldn't have gotten anywhere else -- for instance, like Tripp's unredacted FBI 302 witness statements?
ALDRICH: If you're asking if this is a possibility - I can confirm that it is. And I'll add to that: this was the very same time (after Foster's death) that a deep paranoia had set in at the White House. And they were searching around to find out who might be leaking to the Congress and the media. Now, I had never spoken to a reporter in my entire FBI career without authorization. So it wasn't me talking to the press. But they suspected it might be. And that's why I think they called for my FBI file as well as my partner, Dennis Sculimbrene's.
There's no doubt that the White House suspected that Linda Tripp was leaking about Foster as well. Earlier this year, in one of the only post-Monicagate reports to touch on Tripp's Foster connection, The Wall Street Journal shared this vignette:
Linda Tripp was almost done with a 1995 deposition about Vincent Foster's suicide when a Democratic attorney dropped a bomb and all but accused her of leaking information to a conservative group that publishes Clinton scandal news. "So you don't know if anyone has ever referred to you as 'Deepwater'?", the attorney asked. "Good Lord. You are serious? This is a question?, Ms. Tripp sputtered. "It's a serious question, yes." "Absolutely not. And, I guess, I'm shocked," Ms. Tripp said.
That exchange, overlooked by the media, provides evidence of how early and deeply the Clinton White House had come to mistrust the former White House secretary whose explosive accusations of sex and cover-up are now forcing a confrontation that could reach constitutional proportions. (Wall Street Journal - 2/18/98)
As the Journal explained, "Deepwater" was an inside White House source who supplied information about the cover-up of Foster's death for a 1994 booklet entitled, "Why Did Vincent Foster Die?" Some of "Deepwater's" information was inadvertently corroborated by White House witnesses in subsequent testimony before the Senate Whitewater Committee.
It's not likely that the Democrat attorney who tried to pin Foster leaks on Linda Tripp did so without guidance from the administration. And it's difficult to believe that the White House had merely picked Tripp at random. Yet, while Tripp's account of Foster's death raises serious questions, her public testimony at the time was hardly that of a John Dean. But what about her confidential testimony? Nearly one third of Tripp's FBI account was redacted before it reached congressional investigators.
If the White House sought knowledge of Tripp's secret testimony in an effort to plug their Foster leak -- and used confidential FBI files to do so -- that, in and of itself, is a scandal every bit as serious as Watergate.
[The Washington Weekly gratefully acknowledges the help of Hugh Sprunt, who supplied records of Linda Tripp's testimony and email for this article.]
Published in the July 27, 1998 issue of The Washington Weekly. Copyright c 1998 The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com). Reposting permitted with this message intact.
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