Review & Outlook
Starr Struck
In terms of sheer tactical skill, you have to admire the
Clinton scandal squad. On the Sunday before the
State of the Union address, James Carville goes on TV to declare "war"
on Mr. Starr, on Tuesday morning Hillary Clinton waves the "vast
right-wing conspiracy." By the weekend, they managed to change the
subject from whether the President suborned perjury to whether
Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr stepped on a crack in the pavement.
Bravo and yuck.
This week the Beltway media professed shock
when Mr. Starr struck back by subpoenaing
White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, who
"monitors" media coverage of the scandals, to ask
about his press contacts. There is of course a
legitimate issue about prosecutors probing into
journalistic sources, but Mr. Starr also has a
legitimate interest here. He complained yesterday
that his office "has been subjected to an avalanche
of lies."
For example, his office received some 30 phone
calls pursuing a plant that one of his deputies was
fired from a university job--which turned out to be untrue. And 18 U.S.C.
Section 1503 makes it a crime to try "to influence, intimidate, or impede"
any officer of the court through "any threatening letter or communication."
Journalists owe little to sources who tell them lies, and it would help if they
started to report such incidents. As Mr. Starr said yesterday, "the First
Amendment is interested in the truth."
And after all, it was Clinton lawyer David Kendall who demanded that
Mr. Starr start investigating leaks. Mr. Kendall's purpose was to suggest
all leaks come from Mr. Starr, but that is by no means the case. The
Washington Times noticed, for example, that the White House sent out
aide Ann Lewis on "Good Morning America" to blame Mr. Starr for leaks
to Newsweek about the testimony of Ashley Raines, Ms. Lewinsky's
fellow intern. But at the same hour, Newsweek writer Michael Isikoff
pointed out on the "Today" show that he had attributed his account to
"sources close to the President's defense." In short, the White House
leaked the bad news so it could blame Mr. Starr.
Then there's the little matter of dirt diggers, especially since George
Stephanopoulos warned/threatened that Clinton defenders would expose
sexual sins by others. Last Sunday, the White House issued a blanket
denial that anyone had been hired "to look into the background of . . .
investigators, prosecutors or reporters." But that statement proved
"inoperative" within 48 hours as it was revealed that the President's
lawyers have been paying investigator Terry Lenzner to dig up background
information on Whitewater and Paula Jones since 1994. White House
spokesman Mike McCurry explained the discrepancy by saying there is a
difference between "the kind of legwork" investigators do for lawyers and
"looking up dirt on prosecutors and reporters."
Mr. Lenzner was also called before the grand jury this week, quite
possibly to flesh out that distinction. Once a Democratic Congressional
staffer who investigated the Watergate scandal, he now runs a firm,
Investigative Group Inc., that has done opposition research for many
liberal politicians as well as business figures such as Michael Milken.
Former IGI investigator Michael Moroney says some of its research while
he was there "went into sexual peccadilloes." Mr. Moroney told the
Washington Times that IGI could unearth damaging information. "They can
now target all the Congressmen on the Judiciary Committee and how
many of them have had affairs," Mr. Moroney said. "I mean, this is ripe for
that kind of arm-twisting."
Reporters have also uncovered clues that Jack Palladino, the private
investigator who quelled numerous "bimbo eruptions" for the 1992 Clinton
campaign, is back on the job. A former '60s radical, he did investigative
work for lawyers for the Black Panthers. He boasted recently of how he
has avoided subpoenas from Paula Jones's attorneys. Sandra Sutherland,
his wife and partner, describes their approach as "the honest con." This
means, according to the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, "they believe that it is
acceptable to use subterfuge and outright lies in the service of a larger truth
about a client's case."
This week, a House committee subpoenaed the Teamsters Union for
information on the $130,000 of work Mr. Palladino did for them in 1994
at the behest of Charles Ruff, then the union's lawyer. Mr. Ruff is now
White House Counsel and the Teamsters are in the middle of the 1996
campaign fund-raising scandal. Joe DiGenova, who is working for the
committee, complained eloquently on Sunday about the investigation of
himself and his wife.
The outrage here is not Mr. Starr's tactics, but Mr. Clinton's. As White
House aides keep saying, we should get back to the important business of
the nation, which emphatically includes Mr. Starr's mandate--inquiring
whether the President has upheld his Constitutional duty to see that the
laws are faithfully executed.
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