Could Vincent Foster have killed himself because he thought he was about to be involved in a scandal for owning stock in a company that was being accused in the theft of expensive banking software? When Foster, the deputy counsel to President Clinton, was found dead of a gunshot wound in a suburban Washington park on July 20, 1993, theories about his death abounded. But even more puzzling was why Foster -- young, bright and successful -- would have killed himself. He didn't leave a farewell note to his family nor do anything else people usually do when they're planning suicide. The best theory that anyone seemed to come up with was that Foster was bothered by a series of editorials in the Wall Street Journal criticizing his handling of the so-called Travelgate scandal. A few months ago, special Whitewater Prosecutor Kenneth Starr's office let it be known that it was again looking into Foster's death. Starr, it seems, wants a better explanation for Foster's suicide. So do I. And here might be one. Sources in Washington tell me that an interesting theory has been advanced that Foster might have been depressed about something called the Bua Report, which was released right before he died. Nicholas Bua is an ex-judge who was asked by the Justice Department to look into whether computer software called Promis, developed by a Washington company called Inslaw, Inc., had been stolen by the Justice Department and used without payment by the National Security Agency to track banking funds. Bua, who was hired by the Justice Department, absolved the department. Looking back on Foster's last days, people realized he'd been depressed for about a week. Friends and relatives tried to cheer him up. Foster and his wife went away for the weekend of July 16, 1993. President Clinton invited him to the White House for a movie on Monday, July 19, and Foster declined. So what started troubling Foster the week of July 12? Could it have been a 90-page document called the "Analysis and Rebuttal of the Bua Report," that was given by Inslaw to Foster's friend Webster Hubbell on July 12? Hubbell, who was associate attorney general before being forced out of office, would spend another year studying the Bua report and -- once again -- absolving his own agency in 1994. Why might Foster have become so agitated about the Bua report rebuttal? The Bua rebuttal said that Inslaw had 11 people who would swear under oath that the company's software had been stolen by the Justice Department -- if an investigation was done by someone outside of the Justice Department. The witnesses, Inslaw said, were willing to testify that the Justice Department and U.S. Intelligence agencies worked together on the secret use of Inslaw's software in the international banking system -- i.e., keeping track of money laundering. Since it put out the rebuttal, Inslaw has expanded its accusations. it now says that sources have told it that a company in Foster and Hubbell's home state of Arkansas was also selling the software. Worse -- and here's where we get to Foster's possible depression -- Foster and Hubbell not only owned a small amount of stock in that company but might also have done lots of lawyering for that firm and its sister concerns. Could Foster have figured out what was about to transpire? Might he have worried that Inslaw's secret witnesses were going to bring him down? Or could this all be just a preposterous theory caused by a coincidence fo the calendar? My guess is that Starr's office will look into this one closely. While it may get tossed out with a lot of other notions about Vince Foster's death, this one just might stick.

Excerpt From: SOFTWARE-THEFT PROBED IN CLINTON PAL'S SUICIDE - by John Crudele, February 20, 1995 - http://nick.assumption.edu/WebVAX/Colt/Crudele20Feb95.html