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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (14404)	4/22/1998 1:12:00 PM
From: LoLoLoLita	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 20981

Ta Da, News: ------------ Top Stories Updated 12:32 PM ET April 22, 1998 White House Seeks New Shield for Secret Service By Gene Gibbons WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Backed by George Bush, the Clinton administration is seeking a legal privilege to exempt Secret Service agents from testifying about what they learn while protecting the president, officials said Wednesday. The officials, who asked not to be identified, said Justice and Treasury Department lawyers had asked a U.S. District Court in Washington to recognize the new privilege of "protective function." The request was made in a sealed motion related to independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation of President Clinton's relationship with former intern Monica Lewinsky. Starr has asked a federal judge to order several uniformed Secret Service officers to testify about what they observed as part of his probe of allegations that Clinton had sex with Lewinsky and conspired to cover it up, obstructing justice in the now-defunct Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit. Bush sided with the administration's legal trailblazing effort in a private letter to Secret Service Director Lewis Merletti, sources close to the former president told Reuters. In the letter, Bush said he was deeply troubled by the White House sex scandal, but felt "very strongly that Secret Service agents should not be made to appear in court to discuss that which they might not have heard or seen." "What's at stake here ... is the confidence of the president and the discretion of the Secret Service. If that confidence evaporates, the agents (who are) denied proximity cannot properly protect the president," he wrote. Bush's office in Houston declined comment on the letter. Administration officials said that if the motion by the Justice and Treasury Departments is upheld, uniformed and plainclothes presidential bodyguards could refuse to testify in proceedings like Starr's about what they observe in their official duties. By their very nature, these duties sometimes intrude on a president's private life, and that of his family and friends. No agent has ever given evidence against a president, although Secret Service personnel have testified about agency activities such as setting up the White House taping system that wound up dooming President Richard Nixon in the 1972-74 Watergate scandal. Unlike executive privilege, a highly limited immunity from testimony for White House aides that must be invoked by the president, the proposed privilege for presidential bodyguards would be invoked by the Treasury Secretary, officials said. The Treasury is the parent agency of the Secret Service, which was originally established to fight counterfeiting of U.S. currency and still has that as its primary mission. White House spokesman James Kennedy said that the maneuvering for the new privilege was "separate and apart from the White House" and Clinton had no position on it. --------- "PROTECTIVE FUNCTION"? didja see that? does that mean they carry the condoms?