Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [51]
On the other end of the phone, the president could hear that Vince “tried to laugh about it.” But he could tell that his friend “just didn’t believe it.”
Now, as the president sat with Mack McLarty in the living quarters of the White House digesting the news, his mind raced over these facts. “And so I really was kicking myself for not knowing about it sooner and not picking it up sooner and not reaching out to him [Vince] sooner,” Clinton later said. “Wondering if he’d still be alive if he had come to the movies that night with me. You know the whole thing. It was awful.”
“And I was thinking about us being little kids together.”
BERNIE Nussbaum, who had received a call from the White House communications director, raced over to his office in the West Wing. He was present when President Clinton emerged from the residence, trying to pull himself together. “When he came down, he was in shock,” recalled Nussbaum. “He was functioning, but in shock.”
The president set out with Secret Service agents in a secure Chevy Suburban van and two unmarked cars, headed for the Foster home in Georgetown. Lisa Foster and her family needed support from friends on this night, he insisted. They were in a foreign place, so far removed from Little Rock. The vehicles raced through sleeping traffic lights, traversing the northwest quadrant of the district.
At the Foster home, a rented three-story town house, Lisa Foster already had been notified of her husband’s death by park police. She was being questioned by criminal investigators, who were asking whether Vince owned guns. Lisa was becoming increasingly agitated and distraught. On the living room couch, she was being consoled by Vince’s two sisters and their close friends from Arkansas—Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell and his wife, Suzy.
As this was occurring, Bill Kennedy undertook the grim task of visiting the Fairfax County hospital to identify Foster’s body. A number of Arkansas friends had called to insist that “somebody that knew him and cared ought to go see.” Somebody needed to “make absolutely certain” it was Vince. So Kennedy “took that upon myself.” Speaking for the first time about this trip to the medical examiner’s office, Kennedy would say years later that it was like moving, step by step, in slow motion, through a frightening movie.
Kennedy arrived at the facility in Virginia and produced his White House identification badge. The medical examiner’s personnel exchanged a few words, then politely told him that the body had been declared off-limits. Federal investigators were swarming all over the scene; they had issued instructions to keep all visitors out. Kennedy pushed the staffers in white coats aside. He announced in a loud voice with an unmistakable Arkansas accent that he was going to view Vince Foster’s body, permission or no permission.
The facility, Kennedy recalled, was “not what you would normally see in the movies as a morgue.” It was clean, almost homey, even at this late hour. The decor was “very tasteful.” The doctors were considerate of Kennedy’s situation. They could tell he was more than just a big shot with a White House badge; it was obvious he was a close friend of the decedent. They arranged to move Foster’s body from the room in which they had been conducting the autopsy to “a place where they could pull a curtain back” so that Kennedy “could look through a window” in a setting of privacy.
Through the glass, Kennedy inspected his friend’s body, forcing back an urge to gag. Foster was still dressed in his work clothes. The gunshot wound, Kennedy observed, was clearly evident in his friend’s head, where the bullet had exited. Kennedy stared through the window, “absolutely devastated.” He later recalled, “I went to the hospital hoping they were wrong. The rational part of me knew that the chance of that was infinitesimal.” Now, as he stared at the body of his Arkansas friend, “I was almost reduced to a basket case.”
Police and federal investigators were gathering in every corner of the facility. The medical examiner