Salon Newsreal | The Salon Report on Kenneth Starr

A L S O__T O D A Y
Now he belongs to the ages
By Steve Kettmann
The swing heard 'round the world: The meaning of Mark McGwire's feat
to news

Protected witness
By Murray Waas
How Ken Starr tried to prevent state prosecutors from charging his prime witness with defrauding poor black people of burial insurance
The cast of characters
Compiled by Daryl Lindsey
"Everyone will be punished"
Jonathan Broder
The embattled White House tries out a new strategy to fend off impeachment -- but if it doesn't work, stand by for total war

T A B L E+T A L K
To Ph.D. or not to Ph.D.: Is an advanced degree worth anything in today's job market? Join the discussion in the Education area of Table Talk

D A I L Y+Q U O T E
Exercising self-restraint, for the moment

R E C E N T L Y
True romance
By Jack Hitt
Why did President Clinton risk everything for a perky intern? Because he was in love
(09/09/98)
Naked man without a plan
By Jonathan Broder
The Clinton defense team's tortured, legalistic argument will only hasten impeachment
(09/09/98)
The year of reliving dangerously
By David Horowitz
The unbearable heaviness of not remembering correctly
(09/08/98)
What we really can't forgive Clinton for: He got caught
By Fred Branfman
Why Clinton's days are numbered
(09/04/98)
Field of pills
By Tom McNichol
Have steroids, will homer
(09/03/98)
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The Salon Report on Kenneth Starr
We now know more than we ever wanted to about the president's private life. Here's what the public should know about the prosecutor who may drive him from office.

BY DAVID TALBOT | There is much we now know about our 42nd president, William Jefferson Clinton. We know about his sexual proclivities and fantasies, his taste in women, his favorite erotic poetry, the size and topography of his reproductive organ and yes, his instinct to dissemble when his secret passions are revealed. Some of the endless stream of fact and rumor about the president's private life is of public relevance. Most, however, is not. And, as New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis observed on Tuesday, the urge to empty this president's -- or any president's -- inner life of all its contents is morbid and Orwellian. As Lewis noted, "Privacy is an essential ingredient of civilized human existence," a precious ingredient that has been steadily chipped away in modern American society.
Now Congress has been presented with an impeachment report on President Clinton that is apparently filled with a plethora of details about his once-private erotic life, and little else. (So much for the endless Whitewater probe, which started this entire national ordeal.) On the basis of this unprecedented inspection of the president's personal life, federal lawmakers will decide whether he may remain in office.
Ironically, while we are abundantly informed about the president's private life, we know very little about the man who may finally realize his long-sought goal of undoing the president's election -- independent counsel Kenneth Starr. His power to dominate the nation's attention and control its agenda seems untrammeled. And yet the media -- the voracious eyes and ears of the new era's Insatiable Curiosity -- shows scant interest in Starr. Perhaps this is because there is nothing sensational about the prosecutor's private life. But it is Starr's public life that should demand our attention. The front-page news about Starr is not his sexual fantasies -- we pray these remain forever locked away within the pious lawman -- but his political desires and intimacies. It's not his private lusts that should concern us, but the passionate fixations and excesses of his investigation.
The only criticism of Starr's performance that the elite media has been able to muster during the frenzy of the last several months is that the independent counsel is not PR-savvy, that he lacks the conniving political instincts of, say, President Clinton. (Even in this criticism there is buried the glow of approbation, a sense that there is something noble about Starr's naiveté.) And yet nothing could be further from the truth. Kenneth Starr is a consummately political being, and has been throughout his public life. And his goal from the moment he sought the independent counsel appointment was to hobble, if not destroy, a duly elected presidency that gave him and his conservative allies great offense.
The fact that Starr pursued this political goal during the first three years of his investigation with the key assistance of David Hale, a tainted witness who now stands accused of taking money and legal help from anti-Clinton activists with ties to Starr himself, is now the subject of another federal inquiry. But the media remains stubbornly indifferent to this startling story. Indeed, the New York Times appears to have issued Starr blanket immunity for any and all misdeeds committed in the course of his investigation. In a bland and unrevealing cover profile of Starr in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, staff writer Michael Winerip matter-of-factly asserted: "In the end Starr's motives no longer matter ... It no longer matters if malicious right-wingers consorted with [Starr's] office to lay a trap for the president ... Through Starr's doggedness, his relentless effort to amass every last fact, he has succeeded in making his investigation about Bill Clinton, not about Ken Starr." It may no longer matter (if it ever did) to the country's newspaper of record that a federal prosecutor with unlimited powers consorted "with malicious right-wingers" to overturn the results of the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. But Salon takes a different view.
Ever since Clinton's Aug. 17 confession, the media have been thrashing around the White House like sharks smelling blood in the water. Now that Starr has "got" Clinton on Lewinsky, it's become an article of faith among the opinion elite that the prosecutor's unlimited probe has been completely vindicated and that any attempt to impugn him is folly. The only question allowed for debate in the national Clinton deathwatch is when the president will walk the plank. At the risk of putting a damper on this orgy of prurience and moral pomposity, we would like to remind the country of two salient points: First, Starr's endless investigation apparently found nothing improper about Clinton's role in Whitewater -- the sole reason a special prosecutor was appointed in the first place. This is why, after years of interrogations and hearings, there is apparently nothing about Whitewater in Starr's report to Congress. (But don't count on the New York Times editors' writing a front-page mea culpa about its irresponsible Whitewater coverage, as the less magisterial San Jose Mercury did when it retracted its "Dark Alliance" report on alleged CIA/contra drug trafficking.) Second, Clinton's personal misdeeds, while reprehensible, are simply nowhere near the stature of Richard Nixon's high crimes or the Reagan administration's efforts to fund a rogue war. Covering up a sexual affair is not an offense against the state. As Carl Bernstein commented recently, Zippergate is no Watergate -- the country will look back on this strange and feverish episode years from now and shake its head in wonder at how it convulsed Washington.
As Congress prepares to review Starr's report on President Clinton, Salon herein presents its own findings on the independent prosecutor. In considering Clinton's possible impeachment, lawmakers and those who elected them must also examine the motives, tactics and alliances of Starr himself. For despite Michael Winerip's puzzling assertion, the investigation that has entangled Washington throughout the year is very much about Ken Starr, not just Bill 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. Below is a summary of our special reports on Starr, which are primarily the work of Salon's own dogged investigator, Murray Waas. Other key reporting for Salon has been provided by our Washington bureau chief, Jonathan Broder, and contributors Joe Conason, Gene Lyons and Mollie Dickenson.
What these carefully documented investigative stories underline is essentially this: In his zealous pursuit of the president, Kenneth Starr defiled "the temple of justice," to use his own righteous rhetoric. Lacking a fundamental sense of fairness and judicial proportion, Starr sought first to build his Whitewater real estate case against Clinton using irredeemably corrupt testimony, and then, when this failed, he latched onto Paula Jones' ill-fated civil suit, and then when that failed, he wired Linda Tripp and finally snared Clinton on adultery -- a crime that if aggressively pursued in Washington would depopulate our capital as thoroughly as the Khmer Rouge emptied Phnom Penh.
Below is a fact sheet of what every American citizen should know about Kenneth Starr and his probe.
N E X T+P A G E+| The talking points on Kenneth Starr

A L S O__T O D A Y Now he belongs to the ages By Steve Kettmann The swing heard 'round the world: The meaning of Mark McGwire's feat Protected witness By Murray Waas How Ken Starr tried to prevent state prosecutors from charging his prime witness with defrauding poor black people of burial insurance The cast of characters Compiled by Daryl Lindsey "Everyone will be punished" Jonathan Broder The embattled White House tries out a new strategy to fend off impeachment -- but if it doesn't work, stand by for total war T A B L E+T A L K To Ph.D. or not to Ph.D.: Is an advanced degree worth anything in today's job market? Join the discussion in the Education area of Table Talk D A I L Y+Q U O T E Exercising self-restraint, for the moment R E C E N T L Y True romance By Jack Hitt Why did President Clinton risk everything for a perky intern? Because he was in love (09/09/98) Naked man without a plan By Jonathan Broder The Clinton defense team's tortured, legalistic argument will only hasten impeachment (09/09/98) The year of reliving dangerously By David Horowitz The unbearable heaviness of not remembering correctly (09/08/98) What we really can't forgive Clinton for: He got caught By Fred Branfman Why Clinton's days are numbered (09/04/98) Field of pills By Tom McNichol Have steroids, will homer (09/03/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		C O M M E N T A R Y - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Salon Report on Kenneth Starr We now know more than we ever wanted to about the president's private life. Here's what the public should know about the prosecutor who may drive him from office. BY DAVID TALBOT \| There is much we now know about our 42nd president, William Jefferson Clinton. We know about his sexual proclivities and fantasies, his taste in women, his favorite erotic poetry, the size and topography of his reproductive organ and yes, his instinct to dissemble when his secret passions are revealed. Some of the endless stream of fact and rumor about the president's private life is of public relevance. Most, however, is not. And, as New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis observed on Tuesday, the urge to empty this president's -- or any president's -- inner life of all its contents is morbid and Orwellian. As Lewis noted, "Privacy is an essential ingredient of civilized human existence," a precious ingredient that has been steadily chipped away in modern American society. Now Congress has been presented with an impeachment report on President Clinton that is apparently filled with a plethora of details about his once-private erotic life, and little else. (So much for the endless Whitewater probe, which started this entire national ordeal.) On the basis of this unprecedented inspection of the president's personal life, federal lawmakers will decide whether he may remain in office. Ironically, while we are abundantly informed about the president's private life, we know very little about the man who may finally realize his long-sought goal of undoing the president's election -- independent counsel Kenneth Starr. His power to dominate the nation's attention and control its agenda seems untrammeled. And yet the media -- the voracious eyes and ears of the new era's Insatiable Curiosity -- shows scant interest in Starr. Perhaps this is because there is nothing sensational about the prosecutor's private life. But it is Starr's public life that should demand our attention. The front-page news about Starr is not his sexual fantasies -- we pray these remain forever locked away within the pious lawman -- but his political desires and intimacies. It's not his private lusts that should concern us, but the passionate fixations and excesses of his investigation. The only criticism of Starr's performance that the elite media has been able to muster during the frenzy of the last several months is that the independent counsel is not PR-savvy, that he lacks the conniving political instincts of, say, President Clinton. (Even in this criticism there is buried the glow of approbation, a sense that there is something noble about Starr's naiveté.) And yet nothing could be further from the truth. Kenneth Starr is a consummately political being, and has been throughout his public life. And his goal from the moment he sought the independent counsel appointment was to hobble, if not destroy, a duly elected presidency that gave him and his conservative allies great offense. The fact that Starr pursued this political goal during the first three years of his investigation with the key assistance of David Hale, a tainted witness who now stands accused of taking money and legal help from anti-Clinton activists with ties to Starr himself, is now the subject of another federal inquiry. But the media remains stubbornly indifferent to this startling story. Indeed, the New York Times appears to have issued Starr blanket immunity for any and all misdeeds committed in the course of his investigation. In a bland and unrevealing cover profile of Starr in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, staff writer Michael Winerip matter-of-factly asserted: "In the end Starr's motives no longer matter ... It no longer matters if malicious right-wingers consorted with [Starr's] office to lay a trap for the president ... Through Starr's doggedness, his relentless effort to amass every last fact, he has succeeded in making his investigation about Bill Clinton, not about Ken Starr." It may no longer matter (if it ever did) to the country's newspaper of record that a federal prosecutor with unlimited powers consorted "with malicious right-wingers" to overturn the results of the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. But Salon takes a different view. Ever since Clinton's Aug. 17 confession, the media have been thrashing around the White House like sharks smelling blood in the water. Now that Starr has "got" Clinton on Lewinsky, it's become an article of faith among the opinion elite that the prosecutor's unlimited probe has been completely vindicated and that any attempt to impugn him is folly. The only question allowed for debate in the national Clinton deathwatch is when the president will walk the plank. At the risk of putting a damper on this orgy of prurience and moral pomposity, we would like to remind the country of two salient points: First, Starr's endless investigation apparently found nothing improper about Clinton's role in Whitewater -- the sole reason a special prosecutor was appointed in the first place. This is why, after years of interrogations and hearings, there is apparently nothing about Whitewater in Starr's report to Congress. (But don't count on the New York Times editors' writing a front-page mea culpa about its irresponsible Whitewater coverage, as the less magisterial San Jose Mercury did when it retracted its "Dark Alliance" report on alleged CIA/contra drug trafficking.) Second, Clinton's personal misdeeds, while reprehensible, are simply nowhere near the stature of Richard Nixon's high crimes or the Reagan administration's efforts to fund a rogue war. Covering up a sexual affair is not an offense against the state. As Carl Bernstein commented recently, Zippergate is no Watergate -- the country will look back on this strange and feverish episode years from now and shake its head in wonder at how it convulsed Washington. As Congress prepares to review Starr's report on President Clinton, Salon herein presents its own findings on the independent prosecutor. In considering Clinton's possible impeachment, lawmakers and those who elected them must also examine the motives, tactics and alliances of Starr himself. For despite Michael Winerip's puzzling assertion, the investigation that has entangled Washington throughout the year is very much about Ken Starr, not just Bill 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. Below is a summary of our special reports on Starr, which are primarily the work of Salon's own dogged investigator, Murray Waas. Other key reporting for Salon has been provided by our Washington bureau chief, Jonathan Broder, and contributors Joe Conason, Gene Lyons and Mollie Dickenson. What these carefully documented investigative stories underline is essentially this: In his zealous pursuit of the president, Kenneth Starr defiled "the temple of justice," to use his own righteous rhetoric. Lacking a fundamental sense of fairness and judicial proportion, Starr sought first to build his Whitewater real estate case against Clinton using irredeemably corrupt testimony, and then, when this failed, he latched onto Paula Jones' ill-fated civil suit, and then when that failed, he wired Linda Tripp and finally snared Clinton on adultery -- a crime that if aggressively pursued in Washington would depopulate our capital as thoroughly as the Khmer Rouge emptied Phnom Penh. Below is a fact sheet of what every American citizen should know about Kenneth Starr and his probe. N E X T+P A G E+\| The talking points on Kenneth Starr