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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Lacelle who wrote (16431)	12/1/1998 11:16:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

The Starr Trap nytimes.com John, as I've posted before, I don't particularly like Clinton. I have posted more specific criticism also. But I don't think impeachment is a good idea, for his particular offenses. I also don't think it's politically wise to keep pushing it, but given that I don't agree with the politics of those who are pushing it, it's fine with me that they continue the current course. Then, there's the Grand Inquisitor. This is a cute little op-ed piece, a bit of analysis you wouldn't find from local hero Drudge, or the Washington Times. Quoted in whole. At 1 P.M. on Friday, Jan. 16, Monica Lewinsky arrived at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City to meet Linda Tripp. What happened then is well known. But its significance -- its crucial significance -- is not generally understood. Ms. Lewinsky was confronted by F.B.I. agents and Kenneth Starr's assistant prosecutors. She immediately told them, as she testified later, that "I wasn't speaking to them without my attorney." Her attorney was Francis D. Carter. When she was subpoenaed by Paula Jones's lawyers, she told him that she had not had "sexual relations" with President Clinton; Mr. Carter prepared, and she signed, an affidavit to that effect. Mr. Starr's agents did everything they could, short of physical force, to keep Ms. Lewinsky from calling Frank Carter. They told her that he was a civil rather than a criminal lawyer "so he really couldn't help me." (That was a lie; Mr. Carter is a highly regarded criminal lawyer who for six years headed Washington's public defender service.) They gave her the number of another lawyer and suggested she call him. They told her she had signed a false affidavit and could go to prison for 27 years. They offered to give her immunity if she would "cooperate" -- but said there would be no deal if Mr. Carter were called in. (A Federal regulation forbids immunity negotiations in the absence of a suspect's lawyer.) Why were Mr. Starr's deputies so anxious that Ms. Lewinsky not telephone Mr. Carter? On that Friday afternoon Mr. Carter had not yet filed Ms. Lewinsky's affidavit. Until it was filed, it could be changed -- without legal consequences. Federal law makes it a crime only to file a false affidavit in a civil case. You can swear one, keep it, then change it or tear it up without violating the law. Mr. Starr knew about the affidavit from Linda Tripp's last taped conversation with Ms. Lewinsky, and knew from Paula Jones's lawyers that it might not yet have been filed. That is why his deputies worked so hard to keep Ms. Lewinsky from calling Frank Carter. If he knew what was happening, they realized, he would not file it. And they wanted a crime. They wanted perjury to be committed: by Ms. Lewinsky so they would have leverage over her, and by the President when he was deposed in the Jones case the next day. If Ms. Lewinsky had called that afternoon, Mr. Carter told me, the affidavit "would not have been sent." But there was no call. At the end of the business day it was sent to the court in Little Rock by Federal Express. Under the rules, that was a filing. Mr. Carter had shown the affidavit to the Jones lawyers and to Robert Bennett, President Clinton's lawyer. If he had not filed it, he said, "I would have told them." So Mr. Bennett would have known of Mr. Starr's interest in Monica Lewinsky. The President's deposition on Saturday would have taken another course or been canceled. And the history of the last 10 months would have been very different. (Did the President or Ms. Lewinsky in fact commit perjury when they swore they had not had "sexual relations"? Perjury, a complicated legal concept, requires among other things proof of deliberate falsehood. In a conversation with Linda Tripp unrelated to any threat of prosecution, Ms. Lewinsky had said emphatically that "having sex" meant "having intercourse" -- not oral sex.) The right to a lawyer is fundamental in our constitutional system. A person accused of crime, the Supreme Court said in the Scottsboro Case in 1932, "requires the guiding hand of counsel at every step." Without it, the innocent person may be overborne by what she does not understand. Police officers occasionally break the rules. It is another matter when prosecutors, who are officers of the court, overbear a young woman to keep her from calling her lawyer. The Starr deputies who were there on Jan. 16 -- Michael Emmick, Jackie Bennett Jr. and Bruce Udolf -- should surely face questions by the appropriate legal authorities on their fitness to practice law. And Mr. Starr condoned what they did. None of this excuses President Clinton's moral folly. But it makes powerfully clear that Kenneth Starr is a far more serious menace to our constitutional order than Bill Clinton is. Even all the cop shows on tv make a big play of the Miranda rights, it's ingrained in our culture. The Grand Inquisitor couldn't be bothered with that stuff, though. It's all of a piece, where failing to fall on your knees and tell Starr what he wants to hear is "obstruction of justice". It's all politics, if you think the Grand Inquisitor should be a fixture for all future Presidents, that's fine. I think the whole thing is stupid. Many seem to agree at this point, but maybe a bunch more impeachment politics will turn them around. Then again, maybe not.