A Woman in Charge (57 page)

Barely anyone in Washington outside of the political right paid attention to the paper's editorial page, which was overtly biased in contrast to the rest of the paper's journalism. But Foster knew that members of Arkansas's professional community read the
Journal,
and its editorials, religiously. He believed the
Journal
's editors were trying to force an Arkansan to leave the White House. Foster also worried that its reporters or someone else's would again allege that he and Hillary had had an affair. Foster's sister, Sheila Anthony, and his colleagues at the White House tried to convince Foster that the editorials were “par for the course” in Washington politics.

 

T
HE
W
HITE
H
OUSE
released the internal Travel Office Management Review's findings on July 2. Watkins, Kennedy, Cornelius, and Jeff Eller, director of media affairs in the White House, received formal reprimands. Harry Thomason, Myers, Stephanopoulos, and the counsel's office were also criticized.

Podesta and Stern had allowed Maggie Williams to review a draft of the report before it was released, and, in the final version, barely mentioned Hillary's participation and the effect her interest had on the staff. Still, Hillary was furious at Podesta for dragging her through the investigation. She would hold a grudge and blacklist him the following November when he was considered for deputy chief of staff.

As the White House had hoped, the report lost some of its sting in the dead news cycle over the long July 4 weekend. Still the
New York Times
asked, “Why was notice sent to Hillary Rodham Clinton and not her husband the president?”

Back in May, Senators Bob Dole and Arlen Specter had called for a congressional investigation, but the Democrats who controlled the majority rejected hearings on the firings. On July 14, Dole made a speech from the Senate floor asking Attorney General Reno to appoint a special counsel. This was the first moment in the Clinton presidency when Republicans made a strong case for a criminal investigation of the Clintons and the people around them. A line was crossed psychologically for Hillary, and even more so for her chosen protector, Vince Foster.

Foster was beside himself. He believed that he had personally failed Hillary and the president on the Travel Office matter. He spoke to his wife about resigning. Foster told Hubbell he feared his office phone was being bugged by the Secret Service or Republican loyalists at the White House. Foster's wife suggested he put his frustrations on paper as a kind of therapy. “I made mistakes from ignorance, inexperience, and overwork,” he wrote. “I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport.” He wrote of the
Journal
editorials, “The WSJ editors lie without consequence.” The Travel Office fiasco appeared to be the greatest source of his anxiety. He wrote, “No one in the White House, to my knowledge, violated any law or standard of conduct, including any action in the Travel Office. There was no intent to benefit any individual or specific group.”

He urgently asked Susan Thomases to meet with him. He told her he feared Hillary would be blamed for the Travel Office firings and dragged through the mud. He also confided to Thomases that he was exhausted and that his marriage was strained. He and his wife were fighting about whether to go back to Arkansas. “I'm sure he wanted to go, but felt he couldn't,” Hubbell explained. “He also wanted to stay in Washington, but felt he couldn't. He couldn't do either because of that thing inside him that demanded he not fail—that he always march proudly forward toward excellence and never turn back in defeat.”

At the same time, it was increasingly hard for Foster to keep fighting tooth and nail for Hillary's interests when their relationship had degenerated, said Hubbell. “Vince had her heart, he did,” said a close friend of Foster. “In the end, I think they both were brokenhearted. He couldn't serve her, he couldn't do enough for her, once she became the first lady. And, she couldn't allow him to be her real friend, like he'd been, because she wasn't herself.” When he had left Arkansas for Washington, he had expected the relationship with Hillary to remain as deep as ever. The last thing he had expected is that it would turn upside down. Some days he was a flunky, some days he was a legal counselor, other days he was a fixer, but no longer was her intimate. “He was completely out of his game, and the work kept piling up,” Foster's friend recalled. “And Hillary does not like things not happening when she wants them to happen. And trails were leading back toward her.”

Each day he came back to his drab office. He had no pictures on the walls, just a few in a bookcase. There were still boxes everywhere. He couldn't really confide in his friends about much more than the workload. Still he got together once or twice a week for dinner with his old friends from Arkansas—Hubbell, Marsha Scott, Nancy Hernreich, Deb Coyle. They would go to Two Quail or other places open late. They wouldn't leave work until after 10
P.M.
The Arkansas crowd knew he was struggling, but they did not suspect the severity of the depression he was experiencing.

On July 16, Foster went to the White House medical unit to have his blood pressure taken. He called his sister and told her that he was depressed. She recommended three Washington psychiatrists.

The Wall Street Journal
tied Foster and Hillary to the Travel Office firings in yet another editorial on Monday, July 19. “The mores on display from the Rose alumni are far from confidence-building,” the editorial chided. “So the gang that pulled the great Travel Office caper is now hell-bent on firing the [outgoing] head of the FBI…. Mr. Hubbell and Mr. Kennedy are alumni of Little Rock's Rose Law Firm, as are Mrs. Clinton and Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, both of whom were also involved in the travel-office affair.”

The president was concerned about how Foster would react to the editorial, and called to invite him to a White House movie screening of
In the Line of Fire
(strangely, about a would-be presidential assassin and a heroic Secret Service agent) that night. Foster declined, saying that he was already home for the night and wanted to spend some time with his wife. Clinton tried to help him forget about the
Journal
's criticism, telling him the editorials had no influence except with conservatives already hostile to the administration, Clinton recalled many years later. Foster remained upset. As Clinton wrote in his memoir, he felt like “everyone had read the negative things about him and believed them.” Foster agreed to come see the president two days later.

Foster had received a prescription for antidepressants from his family doctor in Arkansas. That night, he took his first dose.

On Tuesday, July 20, Foster left the office around 1
P.M.
Five hours later, the United States Park Police found him shot dead at Fort Marcy Park in northern Virginia. A bullet had been fired into his mouth. A revolver was in his hand.

Hillary got the news from Mack McLarty, who called her between 8 and 9 that night. Hillary was stunned silent. She had taken the call in her mother's kitchen in Little Rock. She and Chelsea had flown there to visit her mother and some friends. From across the room, she appeared so stricken that Lisa Caputo worried that something had happened to the president.

“I can't believe it's true,” Hillary said. “It just can't be true.” She started to cry.

“Let's hope and pray that this is some terrible mistake,” McLarty said, giving her some of the details of how the body was discovered. “What about Bill, does he know?” she asked.

McLarty said he hadn't yet told the president, who was in the middle of being interviewed live by Larry King on CNN. He promised to call her back when there was more information.

McLarty entered the White House Library, where the president was being interviewed. The appearance was going so well that Clinton had agreed to continue for an extra thirty minutes. But McLarty told the producers the president could not stay, and he led Clinton out during a commercial break. They went upstairs to the residence, and McLarty relayed what had happened.

Does Hillary know? the president asked, his eyes filling with tears.

Clinton and McLarty went to Foster's house to comfort the family, where they were joined by Webb Hubbell and his wife, Suzy, Marsha Scott, David Gergen, Vernon Jordan, and other friends.

Hillary stayed up all night calling friends and crying. “I'm okay,” she told Hubbell over the phone. “How are you holding up?” They agreed to talk more in person when Hubbell came to Arkansas for Vince's funeral. “Take care of Lisa and the kids, Webb,” she said. “But hurry home.”

Hillary had already had the experience of her uncle's self-destructive death and the suicide of Bill's close friend Frank Aller, in 1971, the first year of the courtship, but she said she could never have made the assumption that Foster had hit his breaking point. “Of a thousand people, of those who
might
commit suicide, I would never pick Vince,” she said. She asked Nussbaum, How could he have done this? Why didn't he tell us? We could have helped him. We could have known. We should have known, she said.

The president gathered his staff the day after Foster's death to urge them to spend time away from the office with their loved ones. He eulogized Foster's “extraordinary sense of propriety and loyalty, and I hope that when we remember him and this, we'll be a little more anxious to talk to each other and a little less anxious to talk outside of our family.” Hillary had already consulted with Tipper Gore, who had suffered from depression, about bringing in grief counselors. She told her staff to take some time for themselves, to go on vacation.

When Clinton addressed reporters in the Rose Garden, he unintentionally made it sound—to those who wanted to listen for it—like he had something to cover up. “As I tried to explain, especially to the young people on the staff, there is really no way to know why these things happen,” Clinton had said, referring rather to the theory that the motivations for suicide were difficult to understand. Some right-wing groups and press immediately intimated that the president, the first lady, or surrogates had ordered Foster killed. It would become a familiar refrain.

Such outrageous accusations aside, there were eventually legitimate questions raised about whether the first lady and Nussbaum improperly interfered with the police and FBI investigations into Foster's death and the disposition of documents in Foster's office about the Clintons' personal finances and Hillary's work at the Rose Law Firm that she might have wanted suppressed.

Almost immediately after McLarty had conveyed news of Foster's death to Hillary, she called Maggie Williams in Washington, and then Harry Thomason in California. Later, Hillary and those who talked with her testified she called to share her grief.

The next day, Tuesday, July 21, Nussbaum prevented the Park Police from searching Foster's office, and told them to come back the following morning at ten. Just before eight on Wednesday morning, Hillary spoke over the phone with Susan Thomases, who was staying at a Washington hotel. Thomases promptly phoned Nussbaum. When the Park Police officers, FBI agents, and Justice Department lawyers arrived, Nussbaum again prevented a hands-on search. He told the investigators they could sit several feet away and watch as he sorted documents and other items from Foster's office into three piles. The first pile, he said, was for items that weren't subject to any privilege and could be examined. He designated the second pile for personal papers to be turned over to Foster's lawyers, who were also in the room. The third pile, he said, was for privileged material belonging to the White House and the Clintons, and was to be taken to the residence and then given to the Clintons' personal lawyers at the firm of Williams & Connolly. The disposition of matter in that third pile, including billing records of Hillary's work at the Rose Law Firm, would haunt the Clintons for years to come.

Hubbell went to see Hillary at her mother's house as soon as he got to Arkansas. They hugged and went to the bedroom Hillary was staying in.

“Webb, did you have any idea he was that depressed?” she asked, dabbing her tears. Hubbell answered no. He shared with Hillary some of his recent conversations with Foster.

“With health care and my dad's death, I didn't have time to see him on a personal basis as much as I should have,” Hillary told him.

Hubbell didn't tell her that Foster had complained to him about that.

Hillary asked about Foster's family, and about the group who had gone to be with them the night he died. She also asked if his face “was messed up” by the bullet.

“We shouldn't have asked him to come to Washington, Webb,” she said.

“It would've destroyed him if you
hadn't
asked,” Hubbell consoled her. He told her about how he and Foster had agreed that they would both go together to Washington if the Clintons asked them. He shared with Hillary how excited and proud Foster had been to be a part of the administration and how proud he was of her.

Hillary then changed the subject to ask Hubbell for some help regarding a rumor she had heard that before his death Foster had been investigating a group of assassins who worked for the Navy and made their victims look as though they'd committed suicide. She said that the president had already been approached by a reporter about it. Hubbell said he'd talk to the reporter if he called.

As they hugged goodbye, Hillary told him, “I know you're being a rock for everybody else right now. But don't hold it all in forever.”

“I could offer you the same advice,” Hubbell replied.

Hillary smiled sadly at him, promised to talk with him again in a few days.

The last time Hillary had seen or talked to Vince in person, according to Hubbell, was on June 17, the same day the
Journal
had published its “Who Is Vincent Foster?” editorial. His fury and hurt had been evident.