To: MikeyB who wrote (509 ) 9/22/1998 3:13:00 PM From: Daniel Schuh Respond to
Ok, I know I said I'd go away, but that last one was a long piece, and maybe you missed this. I also have to note that I seem to have found my honest Republican on the subject, no thanks to you guys. He chooses to remain anonymous here, of course, I didn't say he was stupid. From the NYT story:"I thought from day one, as I think today, that this was bad for the country," said one of Starr's defenders who now questions his tactics. "Sometimes you have to exercise prosecutorial discretion." Even though this defender of Starr said he believed the president was guilty of significant misconduct, he said, "the cost to the country far outweighs the value of proving it." 2. At the time of his appointment as Whitewater independent counsel, Starr, a $1 million-a-year Washington attorney with the high-powered firm of Kirkland & Ellis, was advising the Paula Jones camp on her sexual harassment suit against Clinton and offered to write a friend-of-the-court brief on her behalf. He was also representing the tobacco industry, an ardent foe of the Clinton administration. Later, Iran-contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh would comment that, considering Starr's conflicts of interest, he should have felt obligated to turn down the job of investigating Clinton. Over the past seven months, Salon has published a massive amount of information about Starr, his investigation and the conflicts of interest between his probe and the Arkansas Project, a secret $2.4 million project to undermine Clinton financed by Starr's former patron, Richard Mellon Scaife. Carville, one of Clinton's closest political associates, says in the book that he met Starr in October 1993, in the USAir executive lounge at Washington National Airport, although at the time he had no idea who Starr was. Carville recalled that a stranger walked up to him and "started spouting an unsolicited and shameful tirade against the president."
