"Fosterama! II"
Posted by V on Mar-28-01 at 01:31 PM (EST)

(Between my post and shesherre's, the last thread was already getting pretty long – already longer than the Unabomber manifesto -- so here's another . . .)

The idea seems to be that Foster tried to cover up his letters to Patsy and JARmeson, and has been quaking in his boots at the prospect of having his perfidy exposed by Jams. All of which would make great melodrama if we could persuade Foster to put on one of those Snideley Whiplash hats and grow a long moustache (the ends of which to wax and twirl).

In her reply to Nemesis, LovelyPigeon says:

"You forget that Thomas & the BPD didn't know about Foster's letter to Patsy and his emails to JAR/jameson until nearly a year after the fact . . . and only then because the DA had learned the contents of what Foster had written by way of jameson, when she contacted Smit . . . Foster did his analysis for the BPD and made his presentation to the DA staff and BPD in March of 1998 without ever telling law enforcement what he had done regarding Patsy and JAR . . . Foster didn't come clean to the BPD . . . The BPD was shocked and angry when they found out 'the deal.' And who can blame them?"

Okay. Foster wrote his letter to Patsy on June 18, 1997, and was contacted by Hunter somewhere between July 1 and 3, 1997 – thirteen to fifteen days later. In that first conversation, Foster told Hunter that he had written to Patsy and to [who-he-thought-was] John Andrew. As far as I know, Hunter was the only Boulder authority with whom Foster was in touch for the next six months, during which Foster completed roughly two-thirds of his analysis. So, Foster spilled the beans on himself to the main guy right at square one, and didn't deal with anyone else in the investigation until his research was nearing completion.

He may have made two naοve-in-retrospect assumptions: (1) that someone, presumably Hunter, was in charge; and (2) that the D.A.'s office and the Police Department were on the same planet.

When one is new at something, it is customary to follow the lead of experienced people. Foster was new at dealing with law enforcement; Hunter was a veteran. With the blessing of 20/20 hindsight, it's easy to see that Foster should have covered his ass by sending copies of the letters/e-mails to Hunter whether Hunter wanted them or not (this is what the lawyaz call "an abundance of caution").

Without that hindsight, it's easy to see how Foster might defer to Hunter's opinion: if Hunter signaled to Foster that it was no big deal ("Hunter saw no conflict"), Foster may well have thought that Hunter was right: if Hunter shrugged it off as unimportant, then why should Foster worry about it? After all, Hunter was the one with two dozen years' experience as a District Attorney, and he knows what he's doing, right?

. . . Right?

If Hunter didn't think it was worth mentioning to anyone else in the D.A.'s office, well, only he can offer an explanation of why.

What happened next might be one of those Cool Hand Luke "failure to communicate" moments. Hunter turned Foster over to Beckner. Evidently Hunter did not mention Foster's letter to Patsy (and JARmeson), perhaps either because he still considered it unimportant at that time, or because he saw the viability of witnesses as being in his purview and none of the police's beeswax. Or maybe he mentioned it to Beckner and Beckner kept it to himself. Whichever way, not Foster's fault.

Foster is a text analyst. His job is to analyze texts. At the time he was turned over to the BPD, that's what he had been doing in this case for the preceding six months. He filled notebook after notebook with exemplars and commentary. (Probably up to his eyeballs in exclamation points by that time). "Close reading" of a text is very tedious and very RAM-intensive – when you're doing such a thing it pretty much occupies all of your attention. Or should. Not much time left over for second-guessing whether people in other parts of the process are doing their jobs.

Hunter was a District Attorney. His job was to prosecute crimes in Boulder. Part of that was to be alert for possible defense challenges to the prosecution's case. From the moment Foster told Hunter in that first conversation that he had sent those letters, the ball was in Hunter's court. If Hunter considered the letters to be potentially important, it was Hunter's responsibility to find out what was in those letters, to tell anyone who needed to know about those letters, to decide the impact of the letters on the prosecution, and – if necessary – to tell Foster that sending the letters ruled out his working for the prosecution.

IMO, Foster fulfilled his ethical obligation to reveal a potential conflict of interest when he told Hunter, at the outset, that he had sent the letters. Remember that Hunter, as the county's principal official for the prosecution of crimes, was as close to a "leader" as this mess had.

Foster was not under any obligation to bring up the subject with anyone else in the investigation after he already told the main guy. (After you've confessed your sins to God, you don't have to confess them individually to all the saints). [First and last time I'll compare AH to God].

And what if the BPD had sent Foster to the FBI, and the FBI sent him to the NSA, and the NSA sent him to the Russian army? Would he have to tell people at each tier about those letters? To assume that that was necessary, it would require that Foster assume that either (1) Hunter was wrong in treating the letters as not-a-biggie, or (2) Hunter was too untrustworthy to tell the people with a genuine need-to-know.

Evidently, Hunter did not think the letters were a big deal; did not ask to see the letters; and did not tell anyone on his own staff or the BPD about the letters. Then, after Foster had worked on the case for the better part of a year, Hunter flip-flopped, decided the letters were a big deal after all, and decided that the letters ruled out Foster for the prosecution's case.

An interesting area in itself: at the time, Foster was regularly receiving 40 or 50 requests for assistance every week – and as LovelyPigeon pointed out, his fee was $250 / hour. We know that he offered to work for Patsy for free, but I don't believe we have established whether Foster was being paid for his work on the Ramsey case by the Boulder authorities. If, in fact, he did do his work for the Boulder authorities for free, or at a substantially reduced fee, he forfeited the chance to make a not-inconsiderable amount of money for his services during that time, a time in which his services were particularly in demand.

Which would mean: he turned away a chance to make a lot of money for the chance to work on this case for its own sake. After he put in months of effort, the D.A.'s office decided not to use his work, then tried to ruin his professional reputation – on the basis of a supposed "conflict of interest" that Hunter knew about, but did not even bother to check out, from the beginning.

LovelyPigeon:

"Foster didn't come clean to the BPD. The BPD was shocked and angry when they found out 'the deal.' And who can blame them?"

From Thomas' book it appears that the police were "shocked and angry" that Hunter hadn't bothered to mention this to them earlier – at the time he hired Foster, or, at the very latest, at the time he "turned Foster over." One more example of bad blood between the D.A.'s office and the police.

"Foster did his analysis for the BPD . . . without ever telling law enforcement what he had done regarding Patsy and JAR . . ." [emphasis added]

Silly professor! He thought Alex Hunter was law enforcement! Or was at least vaguely sympathetic to it.

"You forget that Thomas & the BPD didn't know about Foster's letter to Patsy and his emails to JAR/jameson until nearly a year after the fact . . . and only then because the DA had learned the contents of what Foster had written by way of jameson, when she contacted Smit . . ."

I'm having a diagram-this-sentence moment. Well, not exactly diagramming, but let's rearrange the content a little:

When Jameson contacted Smit, She [told or showed] Smit the contents of what Foster had written to Patsy and JARmeson, Whereupon Smit [told or showed] Hunter the contents, Following which Thomas and the BPD eventually found out.

Is that more or less correct?

Okay. First, I'd like to reiterate that Foster told Hunter about these documents in their very first telephone conversation. Hunter could have had copies of the documents any time just by asking. He could even have made it a condition: -"Don, I can't even think about bringing you into the investigation until you show me those letters you wrote."-

My question is, when did Jameson copy the Foster-docs to Smit?

If she forwarded the documents to Smit in or around July of 1997, and Hunter didn't see them until a year later, that would mean either that Smit sat on them for a year without telling Hunter, or that Smit tried to show Hunter the letters, and Hunter said, go away, kid, you bother me. In either event, it seems unlikely that Smit showed the documents to the police.

If Jameson didn't forward the documents to Smit until the spring or summer of 1998, that would mean that she knew for a year that the investigation was relying on a "discredited expert" and didn't warn anyone in the D.A.'s office or the BPD, not even Smit.

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Table of Contents

Actually...., jameson, 01:41 PM, Mar-28-01
Clearing something up..., jameson, 01:46 PM, Mar-28-01
One more thing - - , jameson, 01:53 PM, Mar-28-01
V, jameson, 02:11 PM, Mar-28-01

Messages in this discussion

1 . "Actually...."
Posted by jameson on Mar-28-01 at 01:41 PM (EST)
The full Foster file has never EVER been sought by the BPD or DA. If they have a copy of all the emails that went between Foster and jameson, they got it from Foster, not jameson.

I have NEVER been asked by the authorities for a full disclosure of that situation.

For the record - some stuff V writes here is wrong. I am not inclined to clear up those errors here. I would only point out that I have not shared the entire Foster story and files with ANYONE. The emails were shown to Tracey, Mills and CBS - they do not have a copy of them - that was agreed early on - - they would not keep anything after the 48 Hours program was completed.

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2 . "Clearing something up..."
Posted by jameson on Mar-28-01 at 01:46 PM (EST)
I sent some representative emails and a statement to Armistead - I believe he brought that to the authorities and that is the package referred to in the book.

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3 . "One more thing - - "
Posted by jameson on Mar-28-01 at 01:53 PM (EST)
I did NOT have access to the letter Foster wrote to Patsy until late in 1998. I knew he had been in touch with the Ramseys, they told me that, but I had no idea what was involved. Not until it came out in the news. Then I gained access to the letter (not through the Ramseys or their attorneys) and added that to my files.

Hunter, as far as I know, was unaware of my involvement for a very, VERY long time. He doesn't deserve to be dissed here - - you have the story wrong.

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4 . "V"
Posted by jameson on Mar-28-01 at 02:11 PM (EST)
You wrote, "Okay. First, I'd like to reiterate that Foster told Hunter about these documents in their very first telephone conversation. Hunter could have had copies of the documents any time just by asking. He could even have made it a condition: -"Don, I can't even think about bringing you into the investigation until you show me those letters you wrote."-"

Boy, wouldn't you just love to hear how Foster described those "documents" when he first spoke to Hunter? I would. I don't think HUNTER minimized the documents - - I think he probably never had any idea what they were.

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