Sylvia Matthews Burwell, nominated to replace Kathleen Sebelius, will do anything he bosses tell her. Up to and including rummaging through a dead man’s trash to seize anything that might embarrass her boss.  Andrew Stiles of the Free Beacon reports on her shocking actions following the still controversial death of White House counselor Vince Foster during the Clinton administration.  Foster’s body was discovered in Fort Marcy Park, which led to the investigation being led by the Park Police, hardly the most capable criminal investigators. In their hands, the death was ruled a suicide.

However he died, Foster’s personal papers were of great concern to Bill and Hillary Clinton. In order to assure that no impartial investigators got hold of them, they dispatched hatchet men and women. Stiles picks up the narrative:

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.”

For reasons known only to himself, Senator John McCain almost immediately pronounced on Twitter, “Sylvia Burwell is an excellent choice to be the next HHS Secretary.” Let’s hope that some other senators in her confirmation hearing are a bit less credulous.