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Starr report expected 'this week or next'; new criticism from
WASHINGTON (AP) - The independent counsel's report on President Clinton should reach
Congress ''this week or next,'' Senate Republican leader Trent Lott said Tuesday as anticipation
rose on Capitol Hill. Democrats kept blistering Clinton with criticism as harsh as the Republicans'.
Lott made his comments on the likely arrival of Kenneth Starr's investigative report after discussing
the matter with House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is to go over the logistics of possible hearings
with Democratic leaders on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, new criticism came from Democratic senators considered vulnerable in the fall elections.
''We're fed up,'' said Sen. Ernest ''Fritz'' Hollings of South Carolina. ''The behavior, the dishonesty
of the president is unacceptable and we'll see with the report what course the Congress will take.''
Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat whose daughter married Hillary Rodham Clinton's
younger brother at the White House in 1994, called the president's behavior ''wrong,''
''indefensible'' and ''immoral'' in her most extensive comments on the Lewinsky matter since
Clinton's Aug. 17 admission of an inappropriate relationship with the former intern.
''He should have taken responsibility earlier,'' she said on the Senate floor. However, she went on to
praise Clinton's agenda and accomplishments.
Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle urged Clinton to elaborate on his recent apology, saying, ''I
think that it's important that he continue to find appropriate forums in which to add to the comment
that he's already made.''
Daschle, of South Dakota, commented after a meeting with fellow Democrats.
Lott said Starr had opened no channel of communication with GOP leaders or advised them of the
report's arrival time. ''We don't know for sure,'' he said.
But a White House official and a senior House Democratic aide - both of whom asked not to be
named - said they, too, expected the report by the end of next week.
What happens after the report arrives is murky. House Republican leaders are still discussing
procedural issues, including how much subpoena and other authority the House should grant the
Judiciary Committee if senior members decide enough evidence of impeachable offenses exists for a
full-blown inquiry.
House leaders also returned from their summer recess to a series of bipartisan meetings Wednesday
on how much of Starr's report to make public.
''There is some feeling that, look, it's going to get out anyway,'' Lott told reporters.
Daschle had some supportive words for the president, saying it ''would be helpful'' to grant the
request from Clinton's lawyer, David Kendall, to review the report a week earlier than Congress.
Clinton's attorneys are concerned Starr's report will be one-sided and include extensive conclusions
and legal analysis instead of simply a listing of facts gathered in the seven-month investigation.
''Elemental fairness dictates that we be allowed to respond to any 'report' you send to the House
simultaneously with its transmission,'' Kendall wrote Starr on Monday.
Lott shrugged off the request, suggesting it was just a new attempt to delay action on Clinton's
behavior.
''I wouldn't be surprised if they go to court to try to block it,'' Lott said.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch agreed.
''If I were Judge Starr, I would comply with the statute,'' which requires only that the independent
counsel give the report to the House, Hatch said.
''Frankly he doesn't owe Mr. Kendall much,'' Hatch added, referring to White House delays in
handing over documents for various investigations ''over the past few years.''
On the House side of the Capitol, tensions are mounting over how much of the report is to be made
public and whether Democrats will have a say in the distribution and investigation of the evidence it
contains.
Gingrich and Minority Leader Richard Gephardt are scheduled to talk for the first time Wednesday
about the logistics of a congressional investigation. Joining them will be Majority Leader Dick
Armey, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, who would head any inquiry into
Clinton's conduct and John Conyers of Michigan, the panel's ranking Democrat.
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