Vincent Foster’s Death Not Murder, Spouse Concludes She Says His Suicide In 1993 Was The Result Of Depression

Vincent Foster’s widow investigated his death and is certain he committed suicide out of depression - and Whitewater had nothing to do with it, she told The New Yorker.

In her first interview since the White House deputy counsel died on July 20, 1993, Lisa Foster said, “I never thought he’d been murdered. The worst possible thing had happened, but it was like everything came together.”

After reviewing her husband’s records and files, she determined that he had taken his own life because he was depressed and feared that seeing a psychiatrist would make it impossible to get another job.

“I knew he was down,” she says in the magazine’s Sept. 11 issue. “I just didn’t know people committed suicide. I’d never had any experience with this at all - I hated it when people said he was depressed, because I didn’t know what depression was.”

She knew her husband had been troubled by his work at the White House, taking personally the failed appointments of Kimba Wood and Zoe Baird as attorney general and Lani Guinier as head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

He even blamed himself for the Waco debacle and felt wronged by the White House stance during the scandal in the travel office.

A series of harsh editorials in The Wall Street Journal also distressed him, she said.

But Whitewater was not one of his pressing concerns.

Foster was used to taking his time making decisions, a luxury denied him at the White House. He also felt the glare of the spotlight focused on the new Clinton administration, his widow said.

“The intense scrutiny they were getting made you feel like no matter what you do, you’re going to get criticized, she said. “It was like some dog nippin’ at your ankles all the time.”

Foster told her shortly after she arrived in Washington in June of 1993 that he had made a mistake and wanted to resign. She talked him out of it.

In early July, he told her again he meant to resign and she suggested he write down some of the reasons why his difficulties weren’t his fault.

He listed the complaints on a yellow legal pad, a list that would be found torn into 27 pieces at the bottom of his briefcase after his death.

After his death, Lisa Foster went through an intense depression herself and had to cope with rumors that her husband had had an affair with Hillary Clinton, something she denies.