At first glance, it all seemed to confirm the White House’s carefully crafted statements that Foster’s claims were nothing more than the “jottings” of a troubled man. But that explanation has failed to satisfy the press, and it has barely disguised a crucial fact about morale at the White House. Foster’s mistrust of the permanent staff-the maids, the guards, the Secret Service agents-and his hostility toward the FBI were far from an aberration. They differed only in degree from the views of numerous Clinton aides. “Vince had the sense that there were these permanent occupants, they were fat and lazy, and they hated the Clintons,” says a White House aide who, contradicting the official line, adds: “These are not the ravings of a madman.”

While Clinton officials attempted to put the tragedy of Vince Foster behind them, journalists seized on new questions raised by the release of the note and the Park Police’s report confirming that the death was a suicide. William Safire devoted an entire New York Times column to his queries. Who tore up the note? What happened to the 28th piece, the unrecovered triangular fragment where the signature and date could have been? Was a carton of documents removed from Foster’s office in the hours after the suicide, as Park Police Chief Robert Langston charged last week? Attorney General Janet Reno last week said there was no need for much further investigation, but a Times editorial called for a “special prosecutor-style inquiry” into the White House handling of Foster’s death.

Some tension with the White House support staff is to be expected in the first few weeks of any new administration. Clinton’s people were keenly aware that longtime White House workers are mostly Republican (and, many aides believe, are still loyal to Reagan and Bush). The wary mood quickly degenerated into outright hostility. Some White House sources believe the Secret Service and household staff gossiped about marital spats between the Clintons–perhaps even to George Bush himself. Health czar Ira Magaziner privately speculated that the guards at the Old Executive Office Building, who work for the Secret Service, provided a computer printout of the then secret members of the healthcare task force to The Wall Street Journal. The Secret Service says it investigated and found that no agents had talked.

In May the White House touched off a scandal by firing the seven staffers who make arrangements for the traveling White House press corps. At the time aides produced evidence of lax management, but some now say privately that officials were also eager to clear out holdover staffers. As far as the White House was concerned, the travel office had two strikes against it: its employees had helped, at least logistically, in the Bush effort to beat Clinton, and they were, as one internal memo put it, “overly pro-press.” In the initial White House investigation, Foster encouraged associate counsel and fellow Arkansan William H. Kennedy III to contact the FBI about possible problems in the travel office. In the White House follow-up report on Travelgate, Kennedy was reprimanded for improperly pressuring the FBI. Foster believed that the FBI agents “lied” about what Kennedy said to them.

The pervasive sense of mistrust also helps to explain Foster’s suspicions about the usher’s office. He believed that the household staff was “taking advantage” of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Kaki Hockersmith, the Little Rock decorator Clinton hired to renovate several White House rooms. Hockersmith and chief usher Gary Walters agreed in March that the work would cost $250,000. In early June Walters increased the estimate to $377,000, based on incoming receipts for over-time costs. Friends say that Foster “was livid” over the new figure because he believed it would make Clinton look bad. “It was sort of a setup to embarrass us,” says one Clinton confidant who agrees with Foster on the matter. These suspicions surely don’t offer a full explanation of Foster’s depression. To outsiders, they may sound like paranoia. But they do show how different things can look from inside the White House.