GOP CRITICS CLEAR WHITE HOUSE OF SUICIDE SCANDAL

Republicans publicly acknowledged that White House counsel Vincent Foster's death was a suicide, and not a murder orchestrated by Clinton Administration officials, as had been rumored by White House opponents. The first day of hearings in the Senate focused on the death, with some Republicans claiming the White House had interfered in the police investigation. New York's Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, one of the chief critics of the Administration, charged that it had "disguised and distorted the truth, all in the service of politics and the president's self-preservation." Park police officials testified that no one in the White House tried to influence their decisions.