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

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (30389)	1/27/1999 8:08:00 PM
From: JBL	Respond to of 67261

Now Daniel, I would really like to get to the bottom of the following story. My opinion is that the WH was responsible for these media leaks. What is your opinion ? Washington Post 1/27/99 5:07 pm EST Pete Yost WASHINGTON (AP) -- In newly unsealed court papers in the Monica Lewinsky investigation, Kenneth Starr says the White House and defense lawyers -- not the prosecutor's office -- were the prime suspects in a flood of leaks to the news media. Starr's court papers focus on the sharing of sensitive information between attorneys for key witnesses and the Clinton White House starting in the initial stages of the Lewinsky scandal. Clinton's attorneys scoffed at the suggestion the White House was the source of the leaks, accusing the prosecutor's office of ''trying to deflect attention from itself.'' Early in the inquiry, Clinton lawyer David Kendall kicked off a behind-the-scenes court battle by accusing Starr's office of leaking damaging information about the president to the news media. The result is an investigation in which an appointee of U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson is trying to determine whether Starr's office fed grand jury information to reporters in 24 different news stories. After Kendall publicly suggested Feb. 6 that the source for a New York Times story was Starr's office, prosecutor Robert Bittman responded with a two-page document filed in federal court pointing to the White House and the lawyer for presidential secretary Betty Currie as the likely sources. Mrs. Currie's lawyer, Lawrence Wechsler, says he wasn't the source of the story. The newspaper revealed Clinton's Jan. 18 discussion with Mrs. Currie about Ms. Lewinsky, a central piece of the perjury and obstruction impeachment charges against Clinton. In the Jan. 18 discussion and a second conversation a few days later, the president made comments to his secretary such as ''Monica came on to me, and I never touched her, right?'' and ''We were never really alone.'' Bittman's newly unsealed declaration from last February says that ''Lawrence H. Wechsler, private counsel to Ms. Currie, told me'' he is ''a longtime friend of Charles F.C. Ruff, White House counsel'' and that ''Mr. Ruff referred Ms. Currie to Mr. Wechsler when she ''consulted with Mr. Ruff about getting an attorney.'' Bittman said Wechsler ''confirmed to me that the president's defense attorneys had been provided the substance of Ms. Currie's information in advance of the publication'' of the Times article. In the newly unsealed court papers, Starr asserted that ''this White House previously has employed a concentrated strategy of leaking harmful material to the media at an early stage to reduce long-term damage. ... There is a strong prima facie case that the president and his agents ... are responsible for many of the alleged 'leaks.''' ''Starr has this habit of pointing fingers at other people to masquerade his own wrongdoing, and this is just another example of that sleight of hand,'' White House spokesman Jim Kennedy said Wednesday. In some of the newly unsealed court papers, Kendall stated that ''assuming only for the present that the White House was privy to the Currie information in the (New York Times) article, the White House had no interest in early disclosure of the information.''