Court to hear Vincent Foster photos case
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Vincent Foster's death in 1993 was ruled a suicide, but conspiracy theories linger.
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LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Five government investigations concluded that White House attorney Vincent Foster's death in 1993 was a suicide. But Allan Favish, a Clinton antagonist from Southern California, suspects murder and is demanding to see 10 of the police photos.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether to release those photographs, in a potentially precedent-setting case pitting the public's right to know against the Foster family's privacy. The family does not want the pictures of the body released.
The case is more than a battle over sensational evidence in the death of a high-level Clinton administration official. It represents the first time the Supreme Court has agreed to rule directly on the privacy interests of the surviving family in a Freedom of Information Act case.
The outcome could increase the government's ability to withhold information from the public and the media, said Jane Kirtley, a media ethics and law professor at the University of Minnesota who filed a brief in support of Favish.
Several media-ethics organizations have filed court papers supporting Favish's position. On the other side, Teresa Earnhardt, the widow of race car driver Dale Earnhardt who fought to keep his autopsy photographs private, has filed papers in support of the government.
Foster, 48, was found dead of a gunshot to the head in a park in Virginia, outside the nation's capital. Foster, a longtime friend of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, was handling several personal legal matters for them at the time, including their investment in the Whitewater real estate venture. A file on Whitewater was in Foster's office at the time.
Independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr and other investigators concluded Foster shot himself. Foster's widow, Lisa, has said he was severely depressed and afraid that seeking treatment could jeopardize his career.
Despite those findings, conspiracy theories that he was murdered in a White House cover-up abound.
Favish believes 10 photographs taken when Foster's body was discovered could reveal evidence that points to murder. He already has reviewed about 100 other photographs, some of which are posted on his Web site.
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Allan Favish wants the U.S. Supreme Court to release police photos of former White House aide Vincent Foster after he was found dead in 1993.
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Favish, who worked for the conservative legal group Judicial Watch in the late 1990s, denies any political motivation for his quest and said the group did not fund his case. Judicial Watch filed numerous lawsuits against the Clinton administration.
"I'm just a citizen who's very concerned about the integrity of the nation's law enforcement agencies," said Favish, 48, adding that he spent $5,000 of his own money pursuing the photos. "The dominant media totally dropped the ball on this case."
The Santa Clarita insurance lawyer is specifically interested in seeing patterns of blood at the scene and a possible bullet hole in Foster's neck. That hole was reported by one of the first paramedics on scene, an observation that conflicts with official reports of a single shot fired into the mouth.
Favish said there were gaps in the investigation "that could only be the product of extreme negligence or an intentional cover-up."
Lower-court judges have ordered the release of only four or five of the photographs, saying the rest were too graphic. The selected photos were never made public because the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
The high court will have two questions before it: Does a provision in the 37-year-old Freedom of Information Act that allows the government to withhold materials that "constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" extend to family members of the subject? And if it does, does the public's right to know outweigh the family's pain?
In court filings, Bush administration Solicitor General Theodore Olson cited a 1991 federal appeals court ruling that said NASA did not have to release tapes of the final moments of the Challenger disaster to The New York Times because the material would cause the families grief. The Supreme Court declined to hear that case.
Foster's widow chose not to open his casket because she did not want to see his damaged body. Releasing the photographs would expose her to the sight merely because of the whims of a "curious member of the public," Olson wrote.
"FOIA's carefully crafted protection of personal privacy would be rendered an empty promise if it could be overcome by little more than an idiosyncratic distrust of government or the creative spawning of conspiracy theories by any one FOIA requester," he wrote.
James Hamilton, attorney for Foster's family, declined an interview.
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