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T A B L E+T A L K
Should prostitution be legalized? Join the debate in the Social Issues area of Table Talk

D A I L Y+Q U O T E
Book 'em, Kenneth -- we'll find a crime later

A L S O+T O D A Y
Prosecuting -- or persecuting? -- the prosecutors
By Jonathan Broder
Fierce opponents of Kenneth Starr are now taking the fight right into the independent counsel's own office

R E C E N T L Y
Finish the job? Not in our lifetime
By Jonathan Broder
The U.S. can't "go all the way" in Iraq because, beyond Saddam Hussein, there's nowhere to go. Besides, his neighbors need to keep him around
(02/23/98)
Uncle Sam regrets ...
By Dennis Bernstein
When U.S. officials warn of "regrettable civilian casualties" resulting from a renewed bombing of Iraq, they should talk to Rema al-Attar
(02/23/98)
Salon exclusive: The terror at home
By Jeff Stein
The arrest of two men in Las Vegas on charges of carrying stocks of the anthrax bacteria highlights how easy it is to make weapons of mass destruction
(02/20/98)
Bigger than the pope
By Andrew Jennings
When the Olympics president says, "Come unto me," the local Catholic priests say, "How fast?"
(02/19/98)
Not over the hill
By Eve Pell
While the TV cameras at Nagano focus on the young, athletes 40 and over -- including some in their 90s -- are a growing presence on tracks and fields everywhere
(02/18/98)
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STARR CHAMBER | PAGE 2 OF 3
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The story begins in March 1992, when the New York Times reported that Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton and wife Hillary had invested in rural development land with James McDougal, owner of a failed savings and loan. "Clinton joined S&L operator in an Ozark real-estate venture," said the headline, but the story obfuscated that McDougal didn't buy the S&L, Madison Guaranty, until four years later, nor that, by March 1992, Madison had already been investigated by three federal agencies. Furthermore, McDougal had already been tried and acquitted on criminal charges. Nevertheless, at the Resolution Trust Corporation, an official named L. Jean Lewis was assigned to reinvestigate Madison. Lewis' supervisor at the RTC, Richard Iorio, testified to Congress last year that her assignment was in response to the Times story. But that was a gross glossing over of why she was really chosen for this job.
Lewis was by no means impartial. According to a letter that surfaced later during the Senate hearings, she had written to a friend in February 1992 that Clinton was a "lying bastard." Although she had previously worked in a bank, Lewis was neither a civil servant nor a trained investigator. But the Bush administration had billions to spend on the S&L crisis, and it sought Republicans for as many jobs as possible, creating a huge political fiefdom with taxpayer money.
Lewis and Iorio proceeded to put Madison ahead of 10 other much larger failed Arkansas S&Ls that had never been investigated, much less prosecuted, as Madison had been, and Lewis went to work on Madison alone.
In late July, Clinton won the Democratic nomination and quickly pulled ahead of President Bush in the polls.
Lewis later told Sen. Alphonse D'Amato's Whitewater committee that she had set for herself a "self-imposed deadline" of Aug. 31, 1992, for her investigation. Little Rock FBI Agent Steve Irons said that Lewis, in a "very dramatic way," told him that she had "given up a job opportunity in D.C." so that she could "alter history" by completing a criminal referral prior to the presidential election. Irons said that Lewis' comments were clearly related to naming the Clintons in her criminal referral.
On Sept. 2, 1992, Lewis and Iorio sent a criminal referral to Charles Banks, the Republican-appointed U.S. attorney in Little Rock, in which she named Bill and Hillary Clinton as "possible witnesses" to and "potential beneficiaries" of criminal wrongdoing in the failure of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan. In violation of RTC policy, she began calling Banks and Irons. Irons testified that she left numerous messages asking "what the FBI was doing with the referral." Irons thought her calls were inappropriate and "refused to give her status reports." In further violation of RTC policy, Lewis responded by traveling from Kansas City to Little Rock on Sept. 18, 1992, and dropping in on Irons unannounced to press her case. Little Rock FBI agents said they were "concerned about Lewis' objectivity and overall professionalism." Lewis told the FBI that "her boss, Richard Iorio, kept asking her to try to find out what it [the FBI] was doing."
Lewis' numerous phone calls to U.S Attorney Banks' office also struck him as "unusual. I saw no need for the sense of urgency except for who the witnesses were [the Clintons] ... so it caused me to be very circumspect about it." The calls "came between early September and Oct. 16," said Banks. Assistant U.S. Attorney Floyd Mac Dodson recalled that Lewis made these calls "between the first of September and probably November, around election time ... I got the impression she thought I was not moving fast enough."
Lewis later swore under oath that she hadn't contacted the FBI or Banks' office until after the election, in December 1992 -- a statement that was refuted by the testimony and contemporaneous notes of Irons, Banks and numerous other federal law enforcement officials.
Meanwhile, sworn testimony reveals that the Bush White House already knew about Lewis' criminal referral and that Lewis had failed to get Banks to act on it. Bush's attorney general, William Barr, testified that on Sept. 17, 1992, during a flight on Air Force One, White House Cabinet Secretary Edith Holiday asked him whether he "was aware of an S&L matter involving Bill Clinton pending before the Justice Department." Holiday was also, for the duration, chief liaison between the Bush White House and the Bush-Quayle reelection campaign, and had been a senior official in Bush's 1988 campaign.
When Barr returned to his Department of Justice office, he checked with the FBI on Holiday's assertion. The FBI responded that they "had no record of such a case." Barr testified that when he reported this to Holiday, "She seemed surprised to hear this," making him wonder "if she had better information" than he. So he checked again and learned this time "that an RTC criminal referral mentioning the Clintons did indeed exist."
Holiday, whose husband, Terence Adamson, is Starr's personal attorney, denied "any recollection" of the two contacts Attorney General Barr testified he had with her.
Barr testified that he was angry because he believed that Banks had "deliberately withheld" the referral. "Anything that involves a public personage, a celebrity [or] public officials," he testified, required "an urgent report" to the Justice Department.
On Oct. 8, Barr convened a joint FBI-Justice Department panel to examine the referral. But the panel concluded that the referral "failed to cite evidence of any federal criminal offense." The panel's comment about the referral ranged from "junky" and "half-baked" to that its allegations were "reckless, irresponsible" and "odd."
Nevertheless, Barr put a preliminary investigation into motion and ordered Banks to review it again and to report back by Oct. 16, two weeks before the Nov. 3 election.
But, in fact, Banks had already concluded, and the FBI in Little Rock had agreed, that "no action should be taken on the referral at that time." Banks had already prosecuted Jim McDougal in 1990 for alleged bank crimes, and McDougal had been acquitted. Banks said further that he believed "no prosecutable case existed against any of the witnesses," most notably the Clintons.
As Banks noted in his report to the Justice Department dated Oct. 16, Barr's desire to expedite the Whitewater investigation smacked of improper political use of the federal judicial system. "I know in investigations of this type," wrote Banks, "the first steps, such as issuance of ... subpoenas ... will lead to media and public inquiries of matters that are subject to absolute privacy. Even media questions about such an investigation all too often publicly purport to 'legitimize what can't be proven' ... I must opine that after such a lapse of time, the insistence for urgency in this case appears to suggest an intentional or unintentional attempt to intervene into the political process of the upcoming presidential election ... For me personally to participate in an investigation that I know will or could easily lead to the above scenario and to the possible denial of rights due to the targets, subjects, witnesses or defendants is inappropriate. I believe it amounts to prosecutorial misconduct and violates the most basic fundamental rule of Department of Justice policy. I cannot be a party to such actions and believe that such would be detrimental to the Department of Justice, FBI, this office and to the President of the United States [George Bush]."
But Banks' statement didn't end the Bush White House's attempt to use the federal bureaucracy to damage its opponent. Albert Casey, the director of the RTC, testified that he had also heard from the White House just before the election, in a phone call from C. Boyden Gray, Bush's White House counsel.
Gray, according to Casey's testimony in deposition to Sen. D'Amato's Whitewater committee, asked Casey if he "knew anything about an RTC matter involving the Clintons." Casey said he did not, but that he "would look into it and call Gray back." Casey immediately learned from RTC executive William Roelle, who had seen it, that "there was an RTC criminal referral involving the Clintons." He testified that Roelle told him he "should not provide the Bush White House with any information" about it. Casey said that before he could call Gray back, Gray called him again saying, "Al, forget my request. I don't want you to tell me a thing."
Gray, like Holiday, also swore under oath that he had no "memory of ever having spoken with Casey about an RTC criminal referral" involving the Clintons.
Also during that September, White House aides were using the State Department to get into Clinton's passport file to find any incriminating evidence that might be used in the campaign. Joseph DiGenova, Bush's U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, was appointed independent counsel to investigate the aides. His conclusion was, in effect, yes, they did it, and they shouldn't have. It was a one-day media story. (In recent days, DiGenova has taken the lead in publicly defending Starr's aggressive investigative techniques.)
On Nov. 3, 1992, William Jefferson Clinton was elected the 42nd president of the United States. In March 1993 U.S. Attorney Banks resigned to make way for a Clinton appointee, but Bush factions remained burrowed within the Justice Department, the RTC and in the other banking agencies. For a short seven months, Republican attempts to use banking allegations to smear Clinton seemed quiescent.
After Clinton's inauguration, the fraud division of the Justice Department concluded that the RTC's Whitewater referral didn't appear to "warrant any criminal investigation." Department of Justice trial attorney Mark McDougal wrote, "No factual claims can be found in the referral to support the designation of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton as witnesses to criminal conduct." In addition, a 1996 investigation by the San Francisco law firm Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro "found no evidence to support" even a charge of civil fraud against anyone named. To this day, Starr has brought no criminal charges based on Lewis' original referral.
In July 1993, the Clinton administration nominated Stanley Tate, a Miami Republican and real estate expert, to replace Albert Casey as head of the RTC. It would prove to be a fateful step. Tate was an East Coast RTC director and an outspoken critic of government abuses of thrift operators, as well as of the low prices the RTC was getting for valuable S&L properties. Bush factions within the RTC set out to destroy him. In retaliation for Tate's nomination, Lewis' criminal referral on Whitewater was unearthed and sent to the new acting U.S. attorney in Little Rock.
Before longtime RTC executive Lamar Kelly left the agency, he put Lewis and Iorio back to work on Madison Guaranty. By early October they had developed nine new referrals and sent them to the new acting U.S. attorney in Little Rock as well. Three named the Clintons as potential witnesses to and beneficiaries of criminal activities.
Tate's nomination had set off numerous negative news stories. For four months, Tate fought a losing public relations battle while RTC factions leaked inaccurate and damaging accounts about him to the press. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Don Riegle, already burned in the S&L scandal as one of the Keating Five, refused to meet with Tate about his nomination hearing. In November, Tate decided to bow out, saying, "I am not strong enough nor rich enough to fight the federal government."
By then, late October 1993, Lewis had already leaked the existence of her new criminal referrals to Washington Post reporter Susan Schmidt, causing the media uproar that culminated in Janet Reno's appointment of the first Whitewater independent counsel, Republican Robert Fiske, in January 1994.
Capitol Hill Republicans today claim that three of Lewis' nine new referrals listed financial transactions that figured in the l995 trial of Jim and Susan McDougal and Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, but, significantly, Lewis was not called to testify in that trial. Says Max Brantley, editor of the Arkansas Times: "I was shocked when Tucker was convicted. I followed the trial closely, and those loan papers looked just like ordinary loan papers. I thought Tucker was innocent, but the prosecutor managed to convince the jury that it was fraud." In 1989, U.S. Attorney Banks had reviewed the transactions since used by Starr to convict Tucker, and had rejected bringing any charges on them.
In February 1994, Lewis surreptitiously tape-recorded an RTC lawyer saying, "If they could say it honestly," RTC officials in Washington "would like to be able to say that Whitewater did not cause a loss to Madison (Guaranty)." Lewis leaked the tape to Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, who read an edited version of it on the House floor, and threw in some hyped allegations against the Clintons for good measure.
However, some of Lewis' RTC co-workers were at last emboldened to lodge complaints about her activities, and agency officials removed Lewis from the Madison probe.
On June 30, 1994, Whitewater independent counsel Fiske's first report deflated Republican hopes by concluding that Vincent Foster had committed suicide because he had been depressed over defamatory, "mean-spirited and factually baseless" editorials about him in the Wall Street Journal, and that he had mentioned Whitewater to no one. Fiske's report also exonerated the Treasury Department of charges that it had wrongly informed the Clinton White House of Lewis' new criminal referral naming the Clintons.
A far more serious threat to Republican plans occurred in July when the RTC finally drew up charges against Lewis and Iorio for an agency investigation, among them improper disclosure of confidential documents, secretly taping RTC employees (Lewis said the recorder "turned itself on"), keeping confidential documents at home and using government equipment for personal gain. Lewis admitted in a deposition to the investigators that she had used her office to market T-shirts and coffee mugs lettered "B.I.T.C.H -- Bubba, I'm Taking Charge, Hillary." Lewis said the use of the word "bitch" was "in no way intended to denigrate the first lady" and refused to admit that it was improper to market a product that disparaged a witness named in her criminal referral. Iorio, her superior, was charged with permitting Lewis to do all of the above.
Most importantly, an RTC investigation of Lewis would undoubtedly have uncovered President Bush's involvement in the original 1992 criminal referrals naming the Clintons.
Enter Kenneth W. Starr.
N E X T+P A G E+| The Washington Post and the inquisition: "In my book, Ken Starr can do no wrong"

T A B L E+T A L K Should prostitution be legalized? Join the debate in the Social Issues area of Table Talk D A I L Y+Q U O T E Book 'em, Kenneth -- we'll find a crime later A L S O+T O D A Y Prosecuting -- or persecuting? -- the prosecutors By Jonathan Broder Fierce opponents of Kenneth Starr are now taking the fight right into the independent counsel's own office R E C E N T L Y Finish the job? Not in our lifetime By Jonathan Broder The U.S. can't "go all the way" in Iraq because, beyond Saddam Hussein, there's nowhere to go. Besides, his neighbors need to keep him around (02/23/98) Uncle Sam regrets ... By Dennis Bernstein When U.S. officials warn of "regrettable civilian casualties" resulting from a renewed bombing of Iraq, they should talk to Rema al-Attar (02/23/98) Salon exclusive: The terror at home By Jeff Stein The arrest of two men in Las Vegas on charges of carrying stocks of the anthrax bacteria highlights how easy it is to make weapons of mass destruction (02/20/98) Bigger than the pope By Andrew Jennings When the Olympics president says, "Come unto me," the local Catholic priests say, "How fast?" (02/19/98) Not over the hill By Eve Pell While the TV cameras at Nagano focus on the young, athletes 40 and over -- including some in their 90s -- are a growing presence on tracks and fields everywhere (02/18/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		STARR CHAMBER \| PAGE 2 OF 3 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The story begins in March 1992, when the New York Times reported that Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton and wife Hillary had invested in rural development land with James McDougal, owner of a failed savings and loan. "Clinton joined S&L operator in an Ozark real-estate venture," said the headline, but the story obfuscated that McDougal didn't buy the S&L, Madison Guaranty, until four years later, nor that, by March 1992, Madison had already been investigated by three federal agencies. Furthermore, McDougal had already been tried and acquitted on criminal charges. Nevertheless, at the Resolution Trust Corporation, an official named L. Jean Lewis was assigned to reinvestigate Madison. Lewis' supervisor at the RTC, Richard Iorio, testified to Congress last year that her assignment was in response to the Times story. But that was a gross glossing over of why she was really chosen for this job. Lewis was by no means impartial. According to a letter that surfaced later during the Senate hearings, she had written to a friend in February 1992 that Clinton was a "lying bastard." Although she had previously worked in a bank, Lewis was neither a civil servant nor a trained investigator. But the Bush administration had billions to spend on the S&L crisis, and it sought Republicans for as many jobs as possible, creating a huge political fiefdom with taxpayer money. Lewis and Iorio proceeded to put Madison ahead of 10 other much larger failed Arkansas S&Ls that had never been investigated, much less prosecuted, as Madison had been, and Lewis went to work on Madison alone. In late July, Clinton won the Democratic nomination and quickly pulled ahead of President Bush in the polls. Lewis later told Sen. Alphonse D'Amato's Whitewater committee that she had set for herself a "self-imposed deadline" of Aug. 31, 1992, for her investigation. Little Rock FBI Agent Steve Irons said that Lewis, in a "very dramatic way," told him that she had "given up a job opportunity in D.C." so that she could "alter history" by completing a criminal referral prior to the presidential election. Irons said that Lewis' comments were clearly related to naming the Clintons in her criminal referral. On Sept. 2, 1992, Lewis and Iorio sent a criminal referral to Charles Banks, the Republican-appointed U.S. attorney in Little Rock, in which she named Bill and Hillary Clinton as "possible witnesses" to and "potential beneficiaries" of criminal wrongdoing in the failure of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan. In violation of RTC policy, she began calling Banks and Irons. Irons testified that she left numerous messages asking "what the FBI was doing with the referral." Irons thought her calls were inappropriate and "refused to give her status reports." In further violation of RTC policy, Lewis responded by traveling from Kansas City to Little Rock on Sept. 18, 1992, and dropping in on Irons unannounced to press her case. Little Rock FBI agents said they were "concerned about Lewis' objectivity and overall professionalism." Lewis told the FBI that "her boss, Richard Iorio, kept asking her to try to find out what it [the FBI] was doing." Lewis' numerous phone calls to U.S Attorney Banks' office also struck him as "unusual. I saw no need for the sense of urgency except for who the witnesses were [the Clintons] ... so it caused me to be very circumspect about it." The calls "came between early September and Oct. 16," said Banks. Assistant U.S. Attorney Floyd Mac Dodson recalled that Lewis made these calls "between the first of September and probably November, around election time ... I got the impression she thought I was not moving fast enough." Lewis later swore under oath that she hadn't contacted the FBI or Banks' office until after the election, in December 1992 -- a statement that was refuted by the testimony and contemporaneous notes of Irons, Banks and numerous other federal law enforcement officials. Meanwhile, sworn testimony reveals that the Bush White House already knew about Lewis' criminal referral and that Lewis had failed to get Banks to act on it. Bush's attorney general, William Barr, testified that on Sept. 17, 1992, during a flight on Air Force One, White House Cabinet Secretary Edith Holiday asked him whether he "was aware of an S&L matter involving Bill Clinton pending before the Justice Department." Holiday was also, for the duration, chief liaison between the Bush White House and the Bush-Quayle reelection campaign, and had been a senior official in Bush's 1988 campaign. When Barr returned to his Department of Justice office, he checked with the FBI on Holiday's assertion. The FBI responded that they "had no record of such a case." Barr testified that when he reported this to Holiday, "She seemed surprised to hear this," making him wonder "if she had better information" than he. So he checked again and learned this time "that an RTC criminal referral mentioning the Clintons did indeed exist." Holiday, whose husband, Terence Adamson, is Starr's personal attorney, denied "any recollection" of the two contacts Attorney General Barr testified he had with her. Barr testified that he was angry because he believed that Banks had "deliberately withheld" the referral. "Anything that involves a public personage, a celebrity [or] public officials," he testified, required "an urgent report" to the Justice Department. On Oct. 8, Barr convened a joint FBI-Justice Department panel to examine the referral. But the panel concluded that the referral "failed to cite evidence of any federal criminal offense." The panel's comment about the referral ranged from "junky" and "half-baked" to that its allegations were "reckless, irresponsible" and "odd." Nevertheless, Barr put a preliminary investigation into motion and ordered Banks to review it again and to report back by Oct. 16, two weeks before the Nov. 3 election. But, in fact, Banks had already concluded, and the FBI in Little Rock had agreed, that "no action should be taken on the referral at that time." Banks had already prosecuted Jim McDougal in 1990 for alleged bank crimes, and McDougal had been acquitted. Banks said further that he believed "no prosecutable case existed against any of the witnesses," most notably the Clintons. As Banks noted in his report to the Justice Department dated Oct. 16, Barr's desire to expedite the Whitewater investigation smacked of improper political use of the federal judicial system. "I know in investigations of this type," wrote Banks, "the first steps, such as issuance of ... subpoenas ... will lead to media and public inquiries of matters that are subject to absolute privacy. Even media questions about such an investigation all too often publicly purport to 'legitimize what can't be proven' ... I must opine that after such a lapse of time, the insistence for urgency in this case appears to suggest an intentional or unintentional attempt to intervene into the political process of the upcoming presidential election ... For me personally to participate in an investigation that I know will or could easily lead to the above scenario and to the possible denial of rights due to the targets, subjects, witnesses or defendants is inappropriate. I believe it amounts to prosecutorial misconduct and violates the most basic fundamental rule of Department of Justice policy. I cannot be a party to such actions and believe that such would be detrimental to the Department of Justice, FBI, this office and to the President of the United States [George Bush]." But Banks' statement didn't end the Bush White House's attempt to use the federal bureaucracy to damage its opponent. Albert Casey, the director of the RTC, testified that he had also heard from the White House just before the election, in a phone call from C. Boyden Gray, Bush's White House counsel. Gray, according to Casey's testimony in deposition to Sen. D'Amato's Whitewater committee, asked Casey if he "knew anything about an RTC matter involving the Clintons." Casey said he did not, but that he "would look into it and call Gray back." Casey immediately learned from RTC executive William Roelle, who had seen it, that "there was an RTC criminal referral involving the Clintons." He testified that Roelle told him he "should not provide the Bush White House with any information" about it. Casey said that before he could call Gray back, Gray called him again saying, "Al, forget my request. I don't want you to tell me a thing." Gray, like Holiday, also swore under oath that he had no "memory of ever having spoken with Casey about an RTC criminal referral" involving the Clintons. Also during that September, White House aides were using the State Department to get into Clinton's passport file to find any incriminating evidence that might be used in the campaign. Joseph DiGenova, Bush's U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, was appointed independent counsel to investigate the aides. His conclusion was, in effect, yes, they did it, and they shouldn't have. It was a one-day media story. (In recent days, DiGenova has taken the lead in publicly defending Starr's aggressive investigative techniques.) On Nov. 3, 1992, William Jefferson Clinton was elected the 42nd president of the United States. In March 1993 U.S. Attorney Banks resigned to make way for a Clinton appointee, but Bush factions remained burrowed within the Justice Department, the RTC and in the other banking agencies. For a short seven months, Republican attempts to use banking allegations to smear Clinton seemed quiescent. After Clinton's inauguration, the fraud division of the Justice Department concluded that the RTC's Whitewater referral didn't appear to "warrant any criminal investigation." Department of Justice trial attorney Mark McDougal wrote, "No factual claims can be found in the referral to support the designation of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton as witnesses to criminal conduct." In addition, a 1996 investigation by the San Francisco law firm Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro "found no evidence to support" even a charge of civil fraud against anyone named. To this day, Starr has brought no criminal charges based on Lewis' original referral. In July 1993, the Clinton administration nominated Stanley Tate, a Miami Republican and real estate expert, to replace Albert Casey as head of the RTC. It would prove to be a fateful step. Tate was an East Coast RTC director and an outspoken critic of government abuses of thrift operators, as well as of the low prices the RTC was getting for valuable S&L properties. Bush factions within the RTC set out to destroy him. In retaliation for Tate's nomination, Lewis' criminal referral on Whitewater was unearthed and sent to the new acting U.S. attorney in Little Rock. Before longtime RTC executive Lamar Kelly left the agency, he put Lewis and Iorio back to work on Madison Guaranty. By early October they had developed nine new referrals and sent them to the new acting U.S. attorney in Little Rock as well. Three named the Clintons as potential witnesses to and beneficiaries of criminal activities. Tate's nomination had set off numerous negative news stories. For four months, Tate fought a losing public relations battle while RTC factions leaked inaccurate and damaging accounts about him to the press. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Don Riegle, already burned in the S&L scandal as one of the Keating Five, refused to meet with Tate about his nomination hearing. In November, Tate decided to bow out, saying, "I am not strong enough nor rich enough to fight the federal government." By then, late October 1993, Lewis had already leaked the existence of her new criminal referrals to Washington Post reporter Susan Schmidt, causing the media uproar that culminated in Janet Reno's appointment of the first Whitewater independent counsel, Republican Robert Fiske, in January 1994. Capitol Hill Republicans today claim that three of Lewis' nine new referrals listed financial transactions that figured in the l995 trial of Jim and Susan McDougal and Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, but, significantly, Lewis was not called to testify in that trial. Says Max Brantley, editor of the Arkansas Times: "I was shocked when Tucker was convicted. I followed the trial closely, and those loan papers looked just like ordinary loan papers. I thought Tucker was innocent, but the prosecutor managed to convince the jury that it was fraud." In 1989, U.S. Attorney Banks had reviewed the transactions since used by Starr to convict Tucker, and had rejected bringing any charges on them. In February 1994, Lewis surreptitiously tape-recorded an RTC lawyer saying, "If they could say it honestly," RTC officials in Washington "would like to be able to say that Whitewater did not cause a loss to Madison (Guaranty)." Lewis leaked the tape to Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, who read an edited version of it on the House floor, and threw in some hyped allegations against the Clintons for good measure. However, some of Lewis' RTC co-workers were at last emboldened to lodge complaints about her activities, and agency officials removed Lewis from the Madison probe. On June 30, 1994, Whitewater independent counsel Fiske's first report deflated Republican hopes by concluding that Vincent Foster had committed suicide because he had been depressed over defamatory, "mean-spirited and factually baseless" editorials about him in the Wall Street Journal, and that he had mentioned Whitewater to no one. Fiske's report also exonerated the Treasury Department of charges that it had wrongly informed the Clinton White House of Lewis' new criminal referral naming the Clintons. A far more serious threat to Republican plans occurred in July when the RTC finally drew up charges against Lewis and Iorio for an agency investigation, among them improper disclosure of confidential documents, secretly taping RTC employees (Lewis said the recorder "turned itself on"), keeping confidential documents at home and using government equipment for personal gain. Lewis admitted in a deposition to the investigators that she had used her office to market T-shirts and coffee mugs lettered "B.I.T.C.H -- Bubba, I'm Taking Charge, Hillary." Lewis said the use of the word "bitch" was "in no way intended to denigrate the first lady" and refused to admit that it was improper to market a product that disparaged a witness named in her criminal referral. Iorio, her superior, was charged with permitting Lewis to do all of the above. Most importantly, an RTC investigation of Lewis would undoubtedly have uncovered President Bush's involvement in the original 1992 criminal referrals naming the Clintons. Enter Kenneth W. Starr. N E X T+P A G E+\| The Washington Post and the inquisition: "In my book, Ken Starr can do no wrong"