© Scott A. Miller/ZUMA Press/NewscomHillary Clinton in 1992
People familiar with the testimony of the employee, an in-house courier, said he had told the grand jury that he and a colleague had used a shredder in the firm's basement to destroy the papers. He testified that he had done so at the request of a clerk in the firm.
The firm's former partners include Hillary Rodham Clinton; Webster L. Hubbell, the Associate Attorney General; William H. Kennedy 3d, an associate White House counsel, and Mr. Foster, the deputy White House counsel who committed suicide in July. All left the firm to go to Washington last year.
The courier, a college student who is among several assigned to run messages and errands, told the grand jury on Feb. 16 that he did not know precisely what he had shredded but that he was certain the papers had come from Mr. Foster's files, those familiar with the account said. He testified that he had looked inside the box and saw that the papers were separated by binders marked with the initials "VWF," the firm's typical abbreviation for Mr. Foster. The box itself also bore Mr. Foster's initials, which no other employee at the Rose firm had.
In a brief statement, the Rose firm denied that any of Mr. Foster's documents had been shredded.
"No files of Vincent Foster's have been destroyed," the statement said. "In the process of a lawyer changing offices, a box of old files containing internal Rose firm materials, such as copies of notes of firm committee meetings, was destroyed earlier this year."
The firm's lawyers declined to answer specific questions.
What Rose Handled
Mr. Foster's files are potentially important to investigators. While he was at the Rose firm, he worked on a wide array of legal matters for the Clintons, including the sale of the Clintons' share of the Whitewater Development Company, a real estate venture in the Ozark Mountains. At the time of his suicide, Mr. Foster was working on various personal matters for the Clintons, including tax filings and the creation of the family's blind trust.
Comment: ...which is the origin of the Clinton Foundation, their political entity that would go on to take in over $3 billion worth of bribes.
Investigators have sought clues to the circumstances of Mr. Foster's death, as well as the Clintons' finances, in everything from Mr. Foster's internal memos and telephone logs to his personal diary and even some cryptic scribblings discovered among his White House papers.
Comment: What's pretty well established is that Vince Foster did not die where he was found. He was moved to a park bench after he died. Less clear is whether he pulled the trigger or someone else did. But the Clintons certainly didn't want it to be known, just a few months into their presidency, that he'd died in the White House, so they moved him.
The courier testified that he had seen no references to Whitewater in the papers he shredded.
The timing of the shredding is unclear. By the courier's account to the grand jury, he destroyed the papers about the time that Robert B. Fiske Jr., the independent counsel, was appointed on Jan. 20.
At the news conference called that day to announce his appointment, Mr. Fiske said he would investigate the circumstances of Mr. Foster's suicide and accusations that money had been improperly diverted from the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association in Arkansas to Mr. Clinton's business interests or his 1984 gubernatorial campaign. The savings institution failed in 1989, and its assets and accounts were taken over by the Government.
Comment: Whitewater Development became Madison Guaranty in the mid-80s; it's one and the same thing - a Clinton political slush fund.
Shortly after Mr. Fiske began his work, he issued a sweeping subpoena that, among other things, demanded all documents relating to Mr. Foster.
The date of that subpoena has not been disclosed publicly. If the shredding occurred after the firm was put on notice that Mr. Fiske wanted to review Mr. Foster's documents, such an action might have been improper, legal experts said.
Mr. Fiske's investigators are trying to determine when the shredding took place, what kinds of the documents were destroyed and whether any of them might have been relevant to the inquiry.
Republican Pressure
Mr. Fiske's appointment came after after weeks in which Congressional Republicans pressed for an investigation into Whitewater and into Mr. Foster's activities. The Republican demands followed reports that the White House counsel, Bernard W. Nussbaum, had removed records from Mr. Foster's office shortly after his death. Among the documents that were removed and sent to Clinton's personal lawyer, David Kendall, were records of Whitewater.
The Government's independent counsel, Mr. Fiske, said today that he could not comment on matters before the grand jury.
In complex inquiries, investigators conduct many interviews. But Mr. Fiske's decision to call the courier as one of the first witnesses indicates that the employee's account is being taken seriously.
The courier's lawyer, Dean Overstreet, said, "It's not something I can comment on because of the stage it's in."
What Law Says on Evidence
Many law firms, including Rose, say they routinely destroy documents for purposes of privacy and to save storage space. But legal experts said in interviews that the law prohibited people from intentionally impeding an investigation by destroying evidence they knew investigators wanted.
The firm has acknowledged that it received an order from Mr. Fiske in February demanding that it preserve all evidence. Mr. Fiske has never explained the reason for the order.
The courier was identified by people involved in the case as Jeremy Hedges, a college student who has worked part time at the Rose Law Firm for several years. He was said to have told the grand jury that he glanced at some of the documents as he fed them into the machine. By his account, he saw none that mentioned Whitewater Development.
Federal investigators have interviewed other Rose employees, including one who helped Mr. Hedges shred the box of Mr. Foster's documents, those familiar with the case said. That witness has not appeared before the grand jury.
Privacy of Clients
In interviews, lawyers and former employees of the Rose firm described how the firm set up a system for shredding documents in 1991, weeks after Mr. Clinton declared his Presidential candidacy.
The firm's managing partner, Ronald M. Clark, said last month that the firm had begun shredding out of concern that confidential information about would be compromised as reporters examined the firm's activities.
Comment: A word is missing in the above paragraph, right after "about"... Hmmm, was that someone's name redacted by the Times?
By Mr. Clark's account, each lawyer was given a separate garbage can to throw out material to be shredded. Other current and former employees said couriers picked up papers to be shredded daily from lawyers and their secretaries.
Questions about shredding arose on Feb. 9, when The Washington Times, quoting an unidentified Rose employee, reported that the firm had destroyed documents pertaining to Whitewater Development. The newspaper reported that the documents were shredded on Feb. 3.
The courier's testimony describes shredding that occurred in January and appears to be unrelated.
The law firm denied The Washington Times article, and there has been no independent confirmation of it. But the article prompted Mr. Fiske to announce that he would investigate any incidents of shredding. Soon afterward, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation began interviewing Rose employees.
Former employees said couriers were told of the firm's new policy on shredding in a meeting in the fall of 1991. By their accounts, their supervisor told them that the firm had caught reporters going through the trash behind the building. To safeguard the privacy of clients, the firm's senior partners decided that sensitive documents would be shredded daily, former employees quoted the supervisor as saying.
One former employee said in an interview that in the summer of 1992 he was twice sent to the Governor's mansion to deliver an envelope to Mrs. Clinton and to pick up a half-inch-thick sheaf of documents to be shredded. He said he was escorted by two Secret Service agents as he walked up a driveway and exchanged envelopes with Mrs. Clinton. The courier said he fed the material into the shredder without opening it.
Shredding After Election
Several former employees said in interviews that after the election the pace of shredding picked up. Christopher A. Cordero, a 22-year-old who worked as a courier until the summer of 1993, said he had collected and shredded several legal-sized boxes of documents from Mrs. Clinton's office at the law firm in late November or early December of 1992. He said he was shown the boxes by secretaries or file clerks.
Asked if she could shed any light on what the couriers said about shredding Mrs. Clinton's documents, Lisa Caputo, spokeswoman for the First Lady said, "I cannot say in stronger terms I know nothing about what you're talking about."
About that time, couriers were sent to the Rose firm's storage warehouse at a riverside complex near downtown Little Rock. Former employees said they collected at least eight full boxes of documents from the files of Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Hubbell and Mr. Foster. The former employees said they seldom looked at what they fed into the machine.
Reader Comments
to our Newsletter