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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Agent Tells Whitewater Probers Files Were Removed From Office

Los Angeles Times

New inconsistencies have emerged in Clinton administration accounts of the night of the suicide of Vincent W. Foster Jr., a top White House lawyer and close personal friend of President Clinton’s and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s.

A Secret Service agent has told investigators for a special Senate committee conducting a Whitewater probe that he saw Hillary Clinton’s trusted chief of staff, Margaret Williams, remove documents from Foster’s office the night of his death, July 20, 1993, according to a source familiar with the inquiry.

The White House consistently has maintained that Williams and two other White House aides who entered Foster’s office that night disturbed no potential evidence and removed no documents.

But the testimony of Secret Service officer Henry O’Neill contradicts the White House and is expected to be a prominent feature of the Senate hearings, which will open July 18.

“A uniformed Secret Service agent has testified that he believes he saw Maggie (Williams) carry a box of files from Foster’s office,” said a source familiar with the Senate panel’s inquiry. “This is clearly an issue that will be raised.”

Investigators have been trying to determine whether the files containing records of the Clintons’ Whitewater land investment in Arkansas were removed from Foster’s office or somehow tampered with.

Among the central questions of the Whitewater affair is whether the Whitewater land project was used to launder Clinton political donations or was itself a vehicle for illegal gifts to the then-governor of Arkansas.

A copy of what the White House says is the complete Whitewater file from Foster’s office was reviewed by the Los Angeles Times on Sunday. It contains incomplete records of the land deal but does not support speculation that the project was a fraud or that Foster was excessively concerned about the matter. Amid all the speculation over the cause of Foster’s suicide - now widely attributed to depression - was the theory that he was disturbed by the Clintons’ land deal.

The White House is prepared to contest O’Neill’s allegation with testimony from the two other staff members who entered Foster’s office - then-White House counsel Bernard W. Nussbaum and White House aide Patsy Thomasson. Both say that none of them took anything from Foster’s office in the 59 minutes during which it was unsecured.

Williams had requested a polygraph examination to support her version of events. Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr administered the test last December, and it indicated that Williams was telling the truth, according to a source close to the investigation.

The Senate committee also is expected to highlight inconsistencies among the accounts of Williams, Nussbaum and Thomasson about who entered Foster’s office at what time and for what purpose. All contend they went to Foster’s office around 11 p.m. on July 20 to look for a suicide note, but they differ on several relatively minor details.