Vince Foster's Last Weekend Spent With Nate Landow
Toni Howard
Vince Foster's Last Weekend Spent With Nate Landow
Strategic Weekly Briefings
20 March 1998 Craig Karpel
You're reading it here first, folks: Vincent Foster spent his final
weekend at the estate of Nathan Landow, who's accused of having
met with Kathleen Willey and having told her, "Don't say anything."
(Willey's meeting with Landow also took place at his estate, located on
exclusive Bailey's Neck Road in Easton, MD, near
Chesapeake Bay.)
The Fosters had made dinner plans with Webb and Suzy Hubbell for Friday,
July 16, 1993. They canceled with the Hubbells,
however, drove to Easton, MD and checked into the Tidewater Inn, a
downtown neo-Georgian landmark, for the weekend.
Who, however, should turn up in Foster's vicinity but Webster Hubbell
and spouse. The Hubbells stayed at the Landow estate, a few
miles from the inn.
Though Foster supposedly had been complaining to his wife of
sleeplessness and palpitations and had expressed an urgent need to
get away from what he was experiencing as the unbearable atmosphere of
Washington, for some reason the couple chose to dine that
Saturday evening at the home of consummate Washington insider Nate
Landow, in the company of fellow consummate insiders
Michael Cardozo and his wife Harolyn Landow Cardozo, along with the
Hubbells, who lived in one of Landow's apartment buildings.
(Michael Cardozo headed the Presidential Legal Expense Trust, which was
dissolved last December after failing to meet presidential
legal expenses. Cardozo, a former Justice Department official and deputy
White House counsel under Jimmy Carter, is a member of
G. William Miller & Co., a Washington merchant banking firm. Harolyn
Landow Cardozo is employed by her father's company and
has worked at the Clinton White House as a volunteer.)
According to Lisa Foster, Suzy Hubbell called the Fosters' room at the
inn and invited them to dinner at the Landow estate. The
Fosters not only accepted the invitation, but returned to the estate the
next morning and spent all day Sunday there. Foster's weekend
was such a refreshing getaway from the pressures of Washington that on
Monday he called his family physician and asked him to
immediately phone in a prescription for an antidepressant.
According to Webb Hubbell, while he and Foster were swimming in Landow's
pool on Sunday, Foster said: "Webb, we really need
to talk...Let's wait till next week...We'll go outside to a park
somewhere."
Two days later, Vince Foster's body was found in Fort Marcy Park.
The report of the first Whitewater independent counsel, Robert Fiske,
which came to the conclusion that Foster took his own life in
Fort Marcy Park, briefly described the Fosters' visit to the estate, but
referred to it, inaccurately, as "their [i.e., the Cardozos'] home."
Fiske's report does not mention Nate Landow.
Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's report on Foster's death reached the
same conclusion as Fiske's. The Starr report does not
refer to the Fosters' trip to Easton. Its sole comment on the weekend,
in its entirety: "Lisa Foster said that her husband cried while
talking to her on Friday night, July 16 and that Mr. Foster mentioned
resigning during the weekend of July 16-18." Starr's report does
not mention Nate Landow.
Nathan Landow is a wealthy Maryland-based real estate developer. He has
long been a big-time contributor to and fund-raiser for
Democrats. During the 1976 presidential campaign he was Maryland finance
director for the Carter-Mondale ticket. His
reward--appointment by President Carter as ambassador to the
Netherlands--was derailed by reports that he'd been involved in
hotel and casino projects with associates of organized-crime kingpin
Meyer Lansky and New York's Gambino mafia family. In 1988
Landow assembled a group of business people to contribute to Al Gore's
presidential bid.
Landow became chairman of Maryland's Democratic Party in February 1989.
His tenure was not an unalloyed success. Between the
beginning of his chairmanship until July 1992, the number of Democrats
registered in Maryland dropped by 98,900 to 1,335,780,
while the number of Republican registrants rose to 636,433, an increase
of 11,712.
In July 1992, after a public feud with DNC Chairman Ronald Brown and an
attempt led by Landow's former patron, the state's
governor, Democrat William Schaefer, to oust him, Landow quit. "The long
ordeal is over," commented a leading Maryland
Democrat. "He was the most destructive and negative and divisive state
party chairman in the last two decades."
Landow did not see it quite that way. "I would love someday to chair the
party," Landow said during the 1992 Democratic National
Convention. "I've learned just enough to be dangerous now."
FBI agents assigned to Kenneth Starr's office have obtained records from
a unit of a franchised chain of independently-owned
aviation fixed base operators, Million Air Richmond, which document that
on October 6, 1997, Landow & Company Builders Inc. of
Bethesda, MD chartered a plane at a cost of $1,050 to fly Kathleen
Willey from Richmond Regional Airport, VA, to Easton Airport,
MD, near Landow's estate. When Willey appeared before Kenneth Starr's
Washington grand jury last Wednesday, she said she was
Landow's houseguest for two days.
Landow has told reporters that "in no way did I ever attempt to persuade
or influence Ms. Willey to lie in her testimony or to avoid
testifying. She was distraught and in pain. She told me she did not want
to testify. My only comment to her about that was that she
should do what she felt was best for her."
However, sources have confirmed to me reports that Willey told the grand
jury Landow repeatedly pressured her to keep her mouth
shut, emphasizing that if her position was that "nothing happened"
between the president and herself, no one could contradict her.
Landow's advice: "Don't say anything."
Would it have been in character for Nate Landow to have tried to educate
Kathleen Willeyľor Vince Fosterľto the virtues of
silence?
For the answer to this question, we need to look, strange to say, at the
relationship between the head of a sports anti-discrimination
group and the Cheyenne and Arapaho (C/A) Indian tribes, an impoverished
group of Indians in Oklahoma.
Michael Copperthite heads the National Coalition for Athletics Equity
(NCAE). NCAE's mission is to "bring about...safeguards that
would prevent males from being deprived of athletic opportunities
because of the application of a gender standard that links the
percentage of participants with overall institutional enrollment," which
rule is being applied as an unintended consequence of the
federal Education Amendments of 1972.
Copperthite, who was a wrestler at the University of Tennessee in the
1980's, has a background as a political consultant to
Democrats--e.g., the unsuccessful 1994 US Senate race of Hillary
Clinton's younger brother, Hugh Rodham, a resident of Florida
whom the state's Republicans called "Billy Carter with a law degree";
the successful 1996 House race of Marion Berry of Arkansas.
After the C/A Indians pledged $100,000 to the Democratic National
Committee (DNC), tribal representatives were granted a lunch
meeting with President Clinton at the White House on June 17, 1996 to
ask for an executive order returning lands the government
took from them by executive order in 1883 to build Fort Reno. Clinton's
response was noncommittal, but gave the C/A hope. The
C/A wired $87,671.74 to the DNC on June 26, 1996 and six weeks later
delivered a check for $20,000.
The money--the entire tribal treasury--got them nowhere. They did win
the booby prize of becoming the largest Oklahoma
contributor to the DNC. (Maybe the subtext was: "What kind of losers
would overpay their pledge by $7,671.74? Such wretches
don't need to be taken seriously inside the Beltway. Next time you want
a fort back, suckers, pay half down and half on delivery.")
C/A representatives, frustrated by their lack of headway and impressed
by the victory of Berry, a former Clinton administration
official they'd met while lobbying for return of Fort Reno, contacted
Copperthite. Copperthite first took the C/A representatives to
meet Landow on November 24, 1996. He described Landow as someone close
to Al Gore who might be able to help them recover
Fort Reno.
Landow told the Indians that in order to get Fort Reno back, they'd need
a good lawyer. He recommended retaining Peter Knight,
Gore's principal fund raiser and the Clinton-Gore campaign manager in
1996. Landow told the C/A they also needed a real estate
man to develop the recovered Fort Reno lands--himself. For this he would
expect fees based on revenues earned by the tribes from
the lands. As the negotiations proceeded, Copperthite tried to arrange a
50-50 fee-splitting arrangement with Landow. Landow
refused.
The talks dragged on. At a meeting on February 4, 1997, Landow allegedly
launched into a profanity-strewn tirade against the tribe's
lawyer and Copperthite. According to both the lawyer and Copperthite,
Landow said Knight's firm would have to receive $100,000
in front and $10,000 a month. Landow demanded a percentage of any
proceeds from developing the lands.
That was the good news. The bad news was that if the C/A didn't agree to
these terms, he would make sure the tribes never got Fort
Reno back. According to the lawyer and Copperthite, Landow said
"something like, 'If you don't do this deal, I will fuck you.'"
The negotiation broke down the following month. On March 13, 1997, the
DNC returned the tribes' money. Copperthite continued
to work, without compensation, on the tribes' behalf, even arranging for
a bill to be introduced in the House that would return Fort
Reno to the Indians.
This week the Washington Times' Bill Sammon reported that Copperthite
told him on Tuesday that Landow did "the exact same thing
to me" that he is said to have done to Willey.
Copperthite told Sammon, "[Landow] said, and I quote exactly: 'You're
going to be contacted by Justice Department people
probably and/or law enforcement people and I want to go over with you
what the truth is, so that you can tell the truth.' So then he
does this whole story that doesn't even match up to anything that
happened and then says, 'Now that's the truth isn't it? You're going
to tell the truth.'"
Copperthite said that in return for telling Landow's version of the
truth, he was promised a job on Al Gore's 2000 campaign. He told
Sammon that Landow said, "We're all going to be part of the big happy
Gore family some day and this all will pass over." Said
Copperthite: "He was clearly telling me to keep my mouth shut, play
along and I would be taken care of--or un-taken care of."
Copperthite was indeed contacted by the FBI, but he says he's been
telling them the actual truth--not Landow's version.
Can't win 'em all, Nate.
Sure, Kathleen Willey is singing like a canary. But Vince Foster is
pushing up daisies. Did you tell him to keep his mouth shut and play
along?
Did Foster not get the message?
Was he un-taken care of?
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