Ruddy argues the forged note points to obstruction of justice at minimum, raising questions about what happened the night Foster died. He reveals that the Associated Press buried the story in two paragraphs at the end of an unrelated article, while British outlets like the Times of London and the London Telegraph gave it prominent coverage. Art Bell provides the AP's Washington bureau phone number and urges the audience to demand proper reporting.
The program opens with the legendary exploding whale story, as Art Bell tracks down Walt Amonhofer, whose brand-new Oldsmobile Regency was destroyed when the Oregon Highway Department used twenty cases of dynamite to dispose of a beached sperm whale in Florence, Oregon, twenty-five years earlier.
Key Moments
Walt Umenhofer's car gets hit by 500 lbs of falling whale blubber: Walt Umenhofer, the man whose car was destroyed in the 1970 Florence, Oregon exploding whale incident, describes the moment with the State Highway Division: 20 cases of dynamite buried on the inboard side of a 20-ton sperm whale, the blast yielding a red-black-white mushroom cloud and onshore wind, and a four-to-five-hundred-pound chunk straightening out high in the air and falling dead-center on his brand new gold Oldsmobile 98 Regency, exploding the glass and crushing the roof flat to the seat.
Three forensic handwriting experts declare Foster note a forgery: Chris Ruddy reports from a Washington press conference held that day by Strategic Investment that brought in three forensic handwriting experts - one formerly with NYPD, one with the Massachusetts Attorney General's criminal unit in Boston, and a third, Reginald Ernest Alton of Oxford University with 30 years of handwriting and forgery-detection lecturing - to examine the torn 28-piece note found in Vince Foster's briefcase a week after his death. All three concluded the note was a forgery.
Art reads the full text of the torn Foster note on air: At Bell's request Ruddy reads the entire text of the torn note aloud - 'I made mistakes from ignorance, inexperience, and overwork... The FBI lied in their report to the AG. The press is covering up the illegal benefits they received from the travel office... The public will never believe the innocence of the Clintons and their loyal staff... I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here, ruining people is considered sport.'
Why the experts called it a forgery: torn note, single comparison, B-stroke breaks: Ruddy walks through the forensic case: the FBI and Park Police certified the note against a single document instead of the standard minimum of ten; a question document that is torn, mutilated, or crumpled is itself a red flag; and large blow-ups showed Foster's continuous, easy writing style was replaced by stop-start three-stroke construction on letters like the lowercase B - a classic forger's tell.