Blood sport1996
the president and his adversaries
by James B. Stewart
In July 1993, White House official Vincent Foster wrote an anguished lament: "in Washington...ruining people is considered a sport.".
Nine days later, Foster was dead. Shock at the apparent suicide of one of President Clinton's top aides turned to mystery, then suspicion, as the White House became engulfed in an ever-widening net of unanswered questions. Among the confidential matters Foster was working on when he died was the Clintons' ill-fated investment in Whitewater, an Arkansas land development. Soon conspiracy theories were circulating, alleging that Foster was murdered because he knew too much.
And the Whitewater affair, a minor footnote to the 1992 presidential campaign, was suddenly resurrected in the national media. To a degree that left them stunned and at times depressed,...