Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [55]
Several years later, when missing Whitewater documents subpoenaed by Independent Counsel Ken Starr suddenly reappeared on a table in the First Family’s residence, questions would resurface about the shuttling around of documents in the aftermath of Foster’s death. These questions would continue to hang like a pall over the Clinton White House—or at least over those members of the original Clinton team who were still remaining.
THE funeral service for Vincent Foster, Jr., took place at St. Andrews Cathedral, the hub of the Catholic diocese in Little Rock. Although Vince had been raised a Presbyterian, Lisa was a devout Roman Catholic—she insisted on a proper Mass, suicide or not. Bill Kennedy, who flew home with the president on Air Force One, served as a pallbearer. He would never forget “stepping out in the sunshine” and helping to carry Foster’s coffin down the steps of the cathedral. Hundreds of lawyers and dignitaries and Arkansas mourners stared at the procession, asking themselves in silence, “What caused him to do this?” Kennedy had known for years that Foster had suffered from some form of depression. But why had it suddenly overpowered him? “No one ever knows why somebody does that,” Kennedy quietly reflected. “People get to a place where white is black and black is white. Somehow, they manage to convince themselves the world would be a better place if they’re not in it.” Once he moved away from home, the problem had apparently multiplied in Foster’s mind a hundredfold. “I think that here in Little Rock, Vince could deal with his sickness because he could get away and recoup and come back,” said Kennedy. “But there [in Washington] you couldn’t get away. It never stopped.”
A cortege of nearly a hundred cars followed the hearse and the presidential limousine as they transported the Fosters and the First Family to Hope, where Vince was to be buried in his family cemetery plot. The state police had blocked off Interstate 30 going south; onlookers lined bridges across the interstate wherever they could catch a glimpse of the somber procession. In Hope, the crowds swelled to the size of a huge athletic event. One journalist who was known to be particularly anti-Clinton elbowed his way to the front to capture footage of the distraught faces inside the presidential limousine. Joe Purvis, who had grown up in this town with both Vince and Bill Clinton, cursed aloud, “You hypocritical jerk.” He would later growl, “I’m kind of sorry I didn’t rip the camera out of his hand and punch him out.” Purvis and others close to the Fosters and Clintons were incensed that journalists and rubberneckers seemed to forget that the president and First Lady had just “lost one of their best friends in the entire world.”
While the media was stirring up stories and hypotheses about the strange death of his childhood friend, Purvis could not help but think about a poem he had memorized in junior high school: “Richard Cory,” published in 1897 by Edwin Arlington Robinson. It was about “the fellow who seemingly had everything in the world, was the leader in the town and lived in the biggest house, had everything in the world.” It ended with this final line: “And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head.”
Said Purvis: “Just as that poem ended with an unanswerable question, certainly Vince’s suicide left questions.”
ON the Monday after the funeral, a White House assistant paged Bernie Nussbaum to advise him of an unexpected development. As this assistant had packed up Foster’s personal items to ship to his family, scraps of paper had fallen out of Foster’s seemingly empty briefcase. In all, there were twenty-eight tiny scraps of yellow paper, containing handwriting that appeared to be Foster’s. Nussbaum hurried back to the office. When