No Clues Found in Clinton Aide’s Death : White House: A search of Vince Foster’s office fails to shed light on his apparent suicide, officials say. The President will attend funeral today.

WASHINGTON —  As President Clinton prepared to attend today’s funeral of lifelong friend Vince Foster, investigators completed their preliminary search of the former deputy counsel’s White House office without turning up any clues that would help solve the mystery of his apparent suicide.

Investigators pored over the personal and official documents in Foster’s West Wing office and interviewed White House officials about the death, which was discovered Tuesday when U.S. Park Police found Foster’s body--with a gunshot wound to the head--in a secluded Virginia park along the Potomac.

But the search of the office turned up “no suicide note or other document bearing on his death,” the White House said.

Also still unexplained is how Foster obtained the 1913 .38-caliber Colt revolver that was found in his hand and apparently caused the fatal wound.

Questions about Foster’s mental health remained unanswered. Asked whether he had been under psychiatric care, White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers replied: “Not that we know of.”

Some White House colleagues had speculated that he may have blamed himself for some of the early problems experienced by the Administration. But they said that they had not been alarmed by his comments or behavior.

Even as the investigation continued, there were confusing signals on how far it would go.

White House officials, starting with the President and Hillary Rodham Clinton, were concerned about easing the grief of Foster’s wife, three college-age children and other family members and had hoped for a speedy and brief investigation.

At a morning briefing Myers said that there were “no plans” to continue the investigation if the Park Police confirmed the widely held belief that the death was a suicide.

And Clinton seemed to voice a similar view that there would be no purpose in continuing such an investigation.

“I don’t think there is anything more to know,” he told reporters. “His family, his friends, his co-workers, we’ve been up real late two nights in a row now, remembering, crying, laughing, talking about him. I don’t think there is anything else.”

But Justice Department spokesman Dean St. Dennis said that the department intends to continue its search for the motive behind Foster’s death, even if it is judged a suicide.

“He was a high-ranking White House official in a very sensitive position, and it is simply part of good police investigative work that if someone in a high position in government dies under circumstances of apparent suicide, that the government make efforts to find out why,” he said.

“You can imagine the criticism of the Justice Department if it failed to take every necessary step to determine the cause of his death.”

Some other officials and outside lawyers also shared the view that prudence requires the government to determine whether Foster’s apparent suicide had anything to do with his official duties. Authorities need to rule out the possibility that blackmail or any personal vice was involved that might have led to the disclosure of government secrets, they said.

“Clearly, steps should be taken to the extent possible to assure there’s no government nexus,” a federal law enforcement official said.

Paul Rothstein, professor of law at Georgetown University, noted that such investigations are begun “routinely” when the deceased is a military official with access to secrets.

An investigation would be appropriate “if there was reason to suspect that he was subject to any kind of improper pressures or blackmail in connection with his official duties,” Rothstein said. But if such an investigation found only that the cause might have been an “unstable episode, or family problems . . . then it should be dropped,” he said.

The search of Foster’s office was conducted by U.S. Park Police investigators, accompanied by FBI agents, Department of Justice attorneys and White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum, who was Foster’s boss.

Authorities plan to continue their search through Foster’s personal papers.

Clinton will speak at Foster’s funeral at St. Andrews Catholic Cathedral in Little Rock, Ark. He also will attend a burial service later in Hope, Ark., where both the President and Foster were born.