Bar Opposes Independent Counsels washingtonpost.com
That's the ABA, of course, not Bob with the extra r. On the one good thing that might come out of this mess.
"Kenneth Starr is certainly the poster boy for reform of the independent counsel act," said Neal Sonnett, a Miami defense lawyer who spoke for the ABA's criminal justice section. He said Starr's probe showed "prosecutorial power and judgment at its worst instead of its best."
Opponents of the recommendation to bury the law rather than amend it, such as Robert Weinberg, who teaches criminal procedure at the University of Virginia, agreed that Starr's actions in transmitting thousands of pages of secret grand jury testimony to the House Judiciary Committee and the committee's action in releasing them without careful review alarmed many ABA members.
"I don't think the vote would ever have come out this way if you had held it before Starr became independent counsel," Weinberg said.
Anderson said he recognized the ABA action was packed with "political implications," coming as it did near the end of Clinton's impeachment trial, but he said it was the group's last chance to speak up before the law expires. "The calendar got us," he said.
The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee is planning to start hearings
in late February with its chairman, Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.), opposed to reauthorization. However, the Senate's chief Democratic expert on the statute, Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), said he remained in the "amend it, don't end it" category.
"The politicization of the independent counsel law and the prosecutorial excesses of recent independent counsels have turned some of the law's strongest supporters into its opponents," Levin said of the ABA vote. "I'm not ready to close the door on this process, however, because done right, it serves a very important public purpose."
Sam Dash, former chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee and an architect of the law, said the excesses attributed to independent counsels are actually standard procedure in U.S. attorneys' offices throughout the country. If complaints are to be made, he said, they should be directed "at federal prosecutorial practices generally."
"The statute was necessary after Watergate," said Dash, who quit as Starr's ethics adviser in November to protest his "aggressive advocacy" of Clinton's impeachment. "It's necessary today."
Dash's protests are a little weak at this point, as he sat and watched the year's worth of leaks. Oh, I forget, those leaks all came from the WH. At any rate, the Clinton-Capone get-him-anyway-you-can tactics may have a place against mob bosses and drug lords, though I'm no fan of the war on (some) drugs either. Against the President? In the context of the set-up Paula Jones civil case? With a partner in Starr's firm working behind the scenes on Jones since before the start of her suit? To repeat, this is Alan Brinkley, Columbia professor of history, from the Sunday NYT op-ed page. I apologize for leaving out the author's name previously.
Mr. Starr's investigation, like Kennedy's, has been unconstrained by the normal standards of criminal prosecution. The Office of Independent Counsel was created as a (theoretically) disinterested body, intended to absolve officials of wrongdoing as often as to convict them. Mr. Starr has transformed it into the equivalent of a Federal racketeering investigation against a mob leader -- the kind of investigation that the crusade against Hoffa helped legitimize. Even admirers of Kennedy, of whom I am one, have found his relentless assault on a single man troubling, even frightening.
In the end, however, Mr. Starr's place in history will largely depend on the results of his efforts. To justify his critics' placement of him on the roster of great and largely reviled inquisitors -- from Torquemada to the Salem witch trial judges to McCarthy -- Mr. Starr would have to succeed in driving Mr. Clinton from office, and in making his kind of crusade at least a temporary norm of American life.
But it is now all but certain that Mr. Clinton will survive Mr. Starr's assault. Moreover, it seems probable that Mr. Starr's unpopularity will doom the independent counsel statute to extinction.
Indeed, the Starr investigation's principal result may well be to persuade the nation to shun such heavyhanded uses of official power in the future. In that case, Kenneth Starr will be remembered by history -- to the limited degree he is remembered at all -- as a strange, aberrant and ultimately ineffectual figure, most notable for his repudiation by the American public. (full text at Message 7700910 )
A recent book coauthored by Brinkley is reviewed at nytimes.com . The reviewer is "stupid man" Anthony Lewis, so many of us stupid 2/3 might find something of interest there. I like the conclusion.
It is not possible to give more than a few examples of the themes in ''New Federalist Papers.'' Some of it examines particular issues of only passing interest. But there is much here that goes to the roots of our political system and its present illness.
The authors do not offer easy remedies, and I do not suppose there are any. But the more Americans read and understand this wise book, the healthier our political society will be. We might become less cynical about politics. We might be less susceptible to political quackery about the evil of the United States Government.
There's always a lot of quacking going on here, needless to say. The book is
NEW FEDERALIST PAPERS Essays in Defense of the Constitution.
By Alan Brinkley, Nelson W. Polsby and Kathleen M. Sullivan.
Think I'll go check it out of the library. |
