DHHS Sylvia Burwell (Vince Foster’s dumpster diver), tell us no worries over Ebola

Our gal and political hack from way back, HHS Sylvia Burwell tells us “These processes work.” She talks about the Ebola outbreak. When I saw her at the presser yesterday, all I could think was it is working as well as her dumpster diving into Vince Foster’s trash after he died for reasons still unknown by many, and before anyone could get to his office to investigate. All to protect the Clintons. And she is now the expert in Ebola processes? First she expressed her acumen then the back story.

Via Sharyl Attkisson: (A great read, and worth the time for the whole thing)

At a White House briefing today, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell declared, “These processes work.” She was referring to the systems in place since the Ebola outbreak in West Africa last March.

It’s hard to imagine a bigger disconnect between the optimistic tone of today’s news conference and the reality that some ordinary Americans see.

U.S. health officials actually seemed to portray the emergence of an Ebola case in Dallas as a success story.

But the evidence indicates otherwise.

After all, a patient infected with Ebola arrived undetected in the U.S.

He arrived despite screenings in the affected nations prior to passengers boarding flights and despite screenings after their arrival in the U.S. What’s more, the patient allegedly was not truthful on a form asking whether he’d been in contact with Ebola patients. And once ill in the U.S., he was initially sent home from the hospital despite processes set forth by CDC.

Instead of success, the case seems to represent a breakdown at nearly every step.

Still, Obama administration officials said that tracing who the patient was in contact with is what’s really important.

Keep reading…

Who is Burwell? From HHS Nominee Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Dumpster-Dived Dead Vince Foster’s Trash

May 9, 2014

According to the Free Beacon:

In July 1995, Burwell (then Sylvia Mathews) was one of several key aides questioned by the Senate Whitewater Committee regarding the death of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster.

Foster’s death was officially ruled a suicide. The Clinton White House eventually admitted to misleading investigators about how senior officials had seized and disposed of files relating to the first couple’s controversial investments in the Whitewater Development Corporation, a failed real estate venture.

Clinton spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers admitted that then-White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum, who had recovered documents relating to the Whitewater controversy from Foster’s office after his death, did not turn over the documents to the Clinton family’s personal attorney, contrary to what White House officials had claimed. Nussbaum had actually given the documents to Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, who placed them in a White House safe for five days before being turned over to the family attorney.

Under questioning, Sylvia Mathews and her colleagues denied impeding a police investigation into Foster’s death after his body was found in a northern Virginia park. According to the New York Times, Mathews testified “in laborious detail about what she had found in Mr. Foster’s garbage on the night he died.”

(snip) NY Times:

The committee today began what will be weeks of intensive questioning of White House aides about whether Mrs. Clinton, in advance of investigators, had told officials to remove papers from the office of Vincent W. Foster Jr., her close friend and former law partner who was the deputy White House counsel at the time he killed himself on July 20, 1993.

(snip)

The committee also focused today on Mr. Foster’s office trash. Members questioned Sylvia Mathews, a former White House aide, in laborious detail about what she had found in Mr. Foster’s garbage on the night he died. Other than a few routine documents, the garbage contained nothing that shed light on Mr. Foster’s thinking, said Ms. Mathews, who is now chief of staff at the Treasury Department.

Republicans on the committee found it significant, however, that Ms. Mathews had also managed to retrieve a special bag of garbage containing classified and sensitive papers that was usually destroyed by the Secret Service. The contents of that bag were never examined by anyone to see if Mr. Foster had left anything in it that might shed light on his state of mind.

Ms. Mathews said that she got the bag from the Secret Service and began looking briefly through it, when she discovered that it contained all of the classified garbage from the West Wing.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com …