REVIEW
& OUTLOOK
HILLARY & US
Life is hectic, so we admire those dedicated readers marching through
all 562-pages of Hillary Rodham Clinton's new memoir, "Living History." We
stopped to do our own historical reliving when we saw what she had to say
about us.
Mrs. Clinton more or less blames this newspaper all over again for
killing Vincent Foster, the former White House aide who committed suicide
in 1993. This was also the spin from the Clinton White House at the time,
perhaps forgivable given its grief. But lately the theme has been
resurrected by Sidney Blumenthal, the Clintons' faithful Boswell, and his
new protege, David Brock. Allow us to fill in the missing facts.
The former first lady writes that Mr. Foster was under stress, and that
"Apparently the final blow came in a series of spiteful editorials
published in The Wall Street Journal, which attacked the integrity and
competence of all the Arkansas lawyers in the Clinton Administration." She
cites in particular an editorial ("Who Is Vince Foster?"), published a
month before the suicide, that "proclaimed that the most 'disturbing' thing
about the Administration was 'its carelessness about following the
law.' "
As history unfolded, we weren't the only ones who came to realize the
Clinton Administration's legal carelessness. But in regard to Vincent
Foster, his suicide was a tragedy that no one welcomed. The long
investigation into his death also showed there was much more troubling him
than newspaper editorials.
The state of Mr. Foster's mind was a focus of two independent counsel
probes. The first such counsel, Robert Fiske, wrote that a major Foster
worry was the White House Travel Office scandal, and that his wife Lisa
believed it "was the greatest cause of Foster's stress and anxiety in the
weeks prior to his death."
Ken Starr's later, and more exhaustive, probe concluded in 1997 that Mr.
Foster almost certainly suffered from depression. Mr. Starr's office
interviewed Mr. Foster's family, friends and colleagues, and even hired
Alan Berman, a noted expert on suicide.
Dr. Berman reported that "mistakes, real or perceived, posed a profound
threat to his [Foster's] "self-esteem/self-worth and represented evidence
for a lack of control over his environment. Feelings of unworthiness,
inferiority and guilt followed and were difficult for him to tolerate.
There are signs of an intense and profound anguish, harsh self-evaluation,
shame, and chronic fear. All these on top of an evident clinical depression
and his separation from the comforts and security of Little Rock."
The Starr report concludes that Mr. Foster "was involved in work related
to a number of important and difficult issues," including controversial
appointments and "litigation related to the Health Care Task Force; the
dismissal of White House Travel Office employees and the ensuing fallout
from that incident; the Clintons' tax returns (which involved an issue
regarding treatment of the Clintons' 1992 sale of their interest in
Whitewater); the Clintons' blind trust; liaison with the White House
Usher's office over issues related to the White House Residence; and issues
related to the Freedom of Information Act." Other living historians might
recall that most of those controversies involved Mrs. Clinton.
We'd just as soon move past the Clinton years, but if its partisans are
going to rewrite history, someone has to keep track of the billing records.
Now Senator Clinton has Presidential ambitions, and her memoir is being
portrayed as an attempt to clear away the 1990s for her White House run. If
she really wants to be trusted in the future, she could start by being more
honest about the past.
See POOR BABY for a summary of THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON WHITEWATER REPORT.
