Many frequently asked questions concerning the cover-up appear below, along with our answers.
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The Foster family appears to have accepted the official suicide conclusion. So, isn't pursuing this case thoughtless of the feelings of Mr. Foster's family? Isn't it time to let Mr. Foster rest in peace?
The Foster family has been denied the closure that any family would expect. That said, those who make this point are not authorized to speak for the Foster family. But even if this argument were made by someone authorized to make it, and even if the entire Foster family would rather believe the suicide conclusion rather than Mr. Foster's death being at the hand of another, there are other considerations. Crimes are not committed solely against the victim or his family. They are committed against society, and society has an interest in seeing to it that justice is done. That is particularly true in a case such as this – where the crime has been covered up for decades by the highest level of government, and where the American public has been repeatedly lied to.
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None of you are experts in homicide investigation. The government has employed many experts over the years to review various aspects of the case. Why should I believe you over them?
We employed not a single expert to prove the case because you simply don't need experts to prove this cover-up. You don't need an expert to tell you whether the crime scene had been tampered with – you need only the accounts of the witnesses. You don't need an expert to opine whether the FBI covered up that Mr. Foster didn't own the gun recovered from his hand -- or that the gunshot residue on his hands proves that he couldn't have fired it -- or that the manufacturer of the ammunition found from the recovered gun has never used the type of gunpowder found on the body. You don't need an expert to opine whether Mr. Foster drove to the park in a car he didn't own without any car keys. These are just a few examples of the proof on this site. You shouldn't believe us over the government's experts. You should simply look at the facts – drawn from the federal government's own investigative record in the case – proving cover-up in every aspect of the case.
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Wasn't Mr. Foster suffering from severe depression?
No, but we devote very little time to that issue in the filing because, in light of the physical evidence in the case, the depression issue is irrelevant.
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If Mr. Foster was murdered, what was the motive?
Motive is generally used to tie a particular defendant to a particular crime, not to determine whether a crime was committed. In this case, we have proved that a crime was committed, and covered up, but we are not in a position to prove who committed the initial crime or why. In the Watergate cover-up, there was no official conclusion about who ordered the Watergate break-in or why.
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Why was it necessary to prove the cover-up to prosecute Patrick's civil rights case?
Under the law of conspiracy liability, all participants in the cover-up are responsible for the civil rights violation that Patrick suffered. Therefore, the question of the existence of the conspiracy, as well as its participants, are issues in the lawsuit.
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If there is a conspiracy, wouldn't the press have reported it?
There is overwhelming proof of the media's keeping the facts from public view. For example, in September of 1997, the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered Mr. Starr, over his objection, to attach evidence of five separate aspects of the cover-up to his office's report on Mr. Foster's death. Despite its obvious historical significance, the news media reported the contents of Mr. Starr's report, but not the existence or contents of its court-ordered appendix. Many people, including journalists, dismiss the existence of a cover-up in the case based on the absence of its being reported in the news. But this reasoning is based the premise that the American press would report evidence of a cover-up. A review of the facts and developments in the case proves that this premise is false.
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If there is a cover-up, why wouldn't Mr. Starr's office have exposed it?
Mr. Starr used the FBI to investigate this case. It was the third FBI probe into the death. By turning his office into a "microcosm of the justice department" (Mr. Starr's description), he has undermined the independent counsel law. The term "independent counsel" is short for "independent from the Justice Department counsel." Mr. Starr testified before Congress that he "loves" the Justice Department. Apparently, he is not the type of person to "pull the rug out" from under the DOJ. Mr. Starr allowed the cover-up to continue. Many people dismiss the existence of a cover-up in the case based on Mr. Starr's having failed to expose it. But that too is reasoning based on a false premise that Mr. Starr would not fail to expose evidence of a cover-up. Again, the starting point is a review of the facts of the case.
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Didn't Congress investigate this case, and wouldn't it have exposed any cover-up?
Congress did not investigate Mr. Foster's death. The 1994 Senate Banking Committee's jurisdiction was limited to investigating whether the White House improperly influenced the "Park Service" probe into the death. You wouldn't know this from the media's coverage of the hearings – it broadcast remarks from Senator Orrin Hatch's opening statement of the one-day hearing, where the Senator announced that there was "no reliable evidence" to contradict the Fiske Report's conclusions. Senator D'Amato's 1995 Hearings had the requisite jurisdiction, but declined to probe the death. The facts of the case prove that we cannot trust Congress to expose the wrongdoing.
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If there is a cover-up, why hasn't someone come forward to tell the truth?
Several people did including Associate Independent Counsel MIguel Rodriguez. Several witnesses who were at Fort Marcy Park reported that Mr. Foster's car was not in the Fort Marcy lot when Mr. Foster was already dead. Others, when showed the photographs of Mr. Foster's body at the park, reported that the crime scene had been tampered with. We don't know how many witnesses, besides Patrick Knowlton and those whose accounts appear in the public record, may have come forward. Additionally, put yourself in the position of a witness who has some information regarding the crime or its cover-up. To whom would you go? The FBI? The news media? The Congress? There is just no one to come forward to.
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Why should I care how or where Mr. Foster died over 20 years ago, and why should I help get the facts out?
Look at the bigger picture. Proof of foul play and cover-up in this case is proof that our constitutional system of checks and balances failed in this case – the executive branch failed, the legislative branch failed, and the news media failed. Proof of cover-up is proof that we cannot rely on our separate democratic institutions to protect us from government corruption, as our Founding Fathers envisioned. Perhaps most importantly, proof of cover-up is proof that we cannot rely on the news media to keep government honest. The American public can demand better, but not without the proof of what it is we have been getting. The court filing on this site provides that proof. We can't rely on the very democratic institutions that have failed us to tell us of their failures. Public knowledge of this state of affairs would give us the ammunition we need to improve the health of our democracy. We cannot fix what we don't know is broken. So, the existence of the cover-up in this case being widely known is important to us all. It's essential that the American people learn the truth.