A L S O+T O D A Y Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Starr By Gary Kamiya When the real Kenneth Starr finally stood up before the House, he turned out to have a split personality Starr Wars By Joan Walsh The Democrats strike back Nothing has changed Compiled by Lori Leibovich and Fiona Morgan The consensus of political experts is that no minds were changed by Starr's day in court Dear Ken The full text of ethics advisor Sam Dash's letter of resignation to Kenneth Starr Starr speaks The full text of independent counsel Kenneth Starr's House Judiciary Committee testimony A dozen questions Congress should ask Kenneth Starr By David Talbot, Murray Waas and Joan Walsh (11/18/98)   T A B L E+T A L K Discuss Ken Starr and his testimony in the Politics area of Table Talk   R E C E N T L Y Same Old Party By Joshua Micah Marshall New leadership can't mend the rifts among Republicans in Congress (11/19/98) Reply to C.D. Ellison By David Horowitz It's time for blacks to have a two-party system, too (11/19/98) Toppling Saddam By Frank Smyth Clinton wants a new government in Baghdad, but he and the Iraqi opposition are unlikely to be up to the task (11/18/98) Brother on brother By Murray Waas Whitewater witness David Hale attempted to suborn perjury by his own brother by asking him to falsely corroborate illegal acts by President Clinton (11/17/98) The mark of Cain: a tale of two brothers By Murray Waas Though they traveled the same path from the family dirt farm through law school, the Hale brothers turned out different as night and day (11/17/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.
		STARR SPEAKS | PAGE 1, 2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 , 21, 22 - - - - - - - - - - Let me now mention a few words about our personnel, our process and our reflections. The character and the conduct and the men and women of our office, largely career professionals who take their jobs and their oaths very seriously, have been badly distorted. Perhaps that is inevitable given the nature of the issues involved, given the fact that the president of the United States is the subject of a criminal investigation. But it is regrettable, so let me offer some truth about our office. I will start with our personnel. During the Lewinsky investigation, my staff has included skilled and experienced prosecutors from around the country. They have brought an enormous amount of experience and expertise to the office. My colleagues, during this past year, have included former United States attorney, several members of this committee are former United States attorneys; the chief of the Public Corruption Unit of the United States Attorney's Office in Los Angeles; the chief of the Public Corruption Unit of the United States Attorney's Office in Miami; the chief of the Bank Fraud Unit of the United States Attorney's Office in San Antonio; prosecutors with lengthy experience in the public integrity section of the Department of Justice; seasoned federal prosecutors from ten different states and the District of Columbia; and veteran state prosecutors from Maryland and Oregon. The office has also benefited from the assistance of Sam Dash, chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee, who has offered grade wisdom during my tenure. Professor Ronald Rotunda, constitutional law scholar from the University of Illinois, has likewise provided advice on a variety of issues. The office has received assistance from professors at the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, Notre Dame and George Washington. Moreover, former law clerks for six different Supreme Court justices have served on my staff during the past year. During the Lewinsky investigation, the office also relied on many talented investigators with extensive service in the FBI and law enforcement agencies. And the FBI laboratory yet again provided superb assistance to us, as it has throughout the Madison-Whitewater investigation, with the strong support of Judge Freeh. States Attorney's Office in San Antonio; prosecutors with lengthy experience in the public integrity section of the Department of Justice; seasoned federal prosecutors from ten different states and the District of Columbia; and veteran state prosecutors from Maryland and Oregon. The office has also benefited from the assistance of Sam Dash, chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee, who has offered grade wisdom during my tenure. Professor Ronald Rotunda, constitutional law scholar from the University of Illinois, has likewise provided advice on a variety of issues. The office has received assistance from professors at the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, Notre Dame and George Washington. Moreover, former law clerks for six different Supreme Court justices have served on my staff during the past year. During the Lewinsky investigation, the office also relied on many talented investigators with extensive service in the FBI and law enforcement agencies. And the FBI laboratory yet again provided superb assistance to us, as it has throughout the Madison-Whitewater investigation, with the strong support of Judge Freeh. In addition, let me express my appreciation -- and it is great -- for the grand jurors who devoted much time and energy to examining the witnesses and considering the evidence. Those 23 citizens of the District of Columbia have performed an invaluable service, and I publicly thank them. This is the rare case where grand jury transcripts become publicly scrutinized, and as the committee members now know, these grand jurors were active, they were knowledgeable, they were fair, and they were completely dedicated to uncovering and understanding the truth. In all of our investigations, difficult decisions have been taken through our office's deliberative process, and that's what we call it. That process calls upon each attorney, drawing upon his or her background and experience, to offer views on issues in question. This deliberative process is laborious, sometimes tedious. But it is an attempt to ensure that our office makes the best decisions it can. I have drawn upon a vast array of experienced prosecutors and investigators because I was sensitive to -- and am sensitive to -- the fact that an independent counsel exists outside the Justice Department and is an unusual entity within our constitutional system. Throughout this investigation, we have made every effort to follow Department of Justice policy and practice and to utilize time- honored law enforcement and investigative techniques. Of course, with their vast experience in the department and the FBI, our prosecutors and investigators embody such policy and practice. Nonetheless, it was often the case, at an all-attorneys' meeting, that we would repair to the United States Attorney's Manual to be sure we had it right. It is true -- Mr. Conyers comments raised the issue -- that some law enforcement procedures may not be entirely comfortable for some witnesses. But the procedures have been refined over decades of practice in which society's right to detect and prosecute crime has been balanced against individual liberty and a balance struck. It was not our place to reinvent the investigative wheel. Nor was it our place to discard law enforcement practices that are used every day by prosecutors and by police throughout the country. With that, let me be the first to say that the Lewinsky investigation, in particular, presented some of the most challenging issues that any lawyer or investigator could face. We had to make numerous decisions and to make them very quickly. Those included factual judgments. Is witness X or witness Y telling us the whole truth? As one of my prosecutors has frequently said, we can deal with the truth, but we cannot deal with lies. Only give us the truth. And we have to make that assessment. Strategic choices -- do we provide immunity to Ms. Lewinsky in order to obtain her testimony? Is it appropriate to subpoena the president? Legal decisions -- do we accept the assertion of executive privilege for Bruce Lindsey? Or do we go to District Court to challenge it? What about the Secret Service privilege and historic constitutional judgments? What is the meaning of Section 595(c) of this statute, the independent counsel statute? And how do we prepare a referral that satisfies its requirements? It had never been done before. Major decisions during the Lewinsky investigation have not been easy. And given the hurricane force winds swirling about us, we were well aware that no matter what decision we made, criticism would come from somewhere. As Attorney General Reno has said, in high-profile cases like these -- not referring to this case, but in high-profile cases -- you are, in her words, "damned if you do and damned if you don't. So you'd better just do what you think is the right and proper thing." We also attempted to be thorough. But we did not invent that approach, being thorough, with the Lewinsky case. To take just one previous example, in investigating matters relating to the death of Vincent Foster Jr., we were painstaking in examining evidence and questioning witnesses and in calling upon experts in homicide and suicide. We were criticized throughout that investigation for being too thorough, for taking too long. But time has proved the correctness of that approach. After an extensive investigation, the office produced a report that addressed the many questions that confronted the difficult issues, that laid out new evidence and that reached a definitive conclusion. Over time, the controversy over the Foster tragedy has dissipated because we insisted on being uncompromisingly thorough both in our investigation and in our report. After the attorney general and the Court of Appeals assigned us the Lewinsky investigation, the office again received criticism for being too thorough. But the Lewinsky investigation could not properly be conducted in a slap-dash manner. It was our duty to be meticulous, to be careful. We were. And in the process, we uncovered substantial and credible evidence of serious legal wrongdoing by the president. Some then suggested -- and it's been suggested this morning -- that the report we submitted to Congress was too thorough. But bear in mind, we submitted the referral, as we were required to do, to the House of Representatives and not to the public. And we must respectfully dispute the suggestion that a report to the House suggesting possible impeachable offenses committed by the president of the United States should tell something less than the full story. The facts, the story are critical. They affect credibility. They are necessary to avoid a distorted picture, and they are ultimately the basis for a just conclusion. As a result, just as the jurors found the details of specific land deals critically important in our trial of Governor Jim Guy Tucker and of the McDougals, just as the Supreme Court of the United States includes the details of grisly murders in its death penalty cases, so too the details of the president's relationship with Ms. Lewinsky became relevant -- indeed, they became critical -- in determining whether and to the extent to which the president made false statements under oath and otherwise obstructed justice in Jones v. Clinton -- in both that case and then again in his grand jury testimony. As you know, by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, the House immediately disclosed our referral to the public. I want to be clear as a matter of fairness that the public disclosure or nondisclosure of the referral and the backup materials was a decision that our office did not make and lawfully could not make. We had no way of knowing in advance of submitting the referral. And we did not know whether the House would publicly release both the report and the backup materials; would release portions of one or both; would release redacted versions of the report and backup documents; would prepare and release a summary akin to Mr. Schippers' oral presentation; or would simply keep the referral and the backup materials under seal just as Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski's submission in 1974 remained under seal. As a result, we respectfully but we firmly reject the notion that our office was trying to inflame the public. We are professionals, and we were trying to get the relevant facts, the full story, to the House of Representatives. That was our task. And that is what we did. In fact, the referral has served a good purpose. There has been virtually no dispute about a good many of the factual conclusions in the report. In the wake of the referral, for example, few have ventured that the president told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in his civil case and before the grand jury. A key reason, we submit, is that we insisted -- as we have in our other investigations -- that we be exhaustive in the investigation and that we document the facts and conclusions in our report. I want to be absolutely clear on one point, however. Any suggestion that the men and women of our office with whom I am privileged to serve enjoyed or relished this investigation is wrong. It is nonsense. In at least three ways, the Lewinsky investigation caused all of us considerable dismay -- and continues to do so. First, none of us have any interest whatsoever in investigating the factual details underlying the allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice in this case. My staff and I agree with the sentiments expressed by the chairman in his November 9 hearing when he said: "I'd like to forget all of this. I mean, who needs it?" But the Constitution and the criminal law do not have exceptions for unseemly or unpleasant or difficult cases. The attorney general of the United States and the Court of Appeals Special Division assigned us a duty to pursue the facts. And we did so. Second, this investigation has proved difficult for us because it centered on legal wrongdoing by the president of the United States. The presidency is an office that we, like all Americans, revere and respect. No prosecutor is comfortable when he or she reports wrongdoing by the president. All of us want to believe that our president has at all times acted with integrity, and certainly that he has not violated the criminal law. Everyone in my office, therefore, envies the position ago -- years ago of Paul Curran. He was the distinguished council appointed by Attorney General Griffin Bell to investigate certain financial transactions involving President Carter. Mr. Curran, by his account, received complete cooperation from President Carter, found no wrongdoing by the president and promptly returned to private life. Mr. Chairman, I would like to do the same. Third, this investigation was unpleasant because our office new that some Americans, for a variety of reasons, would be opposed to our work. But we would not, could not, allow ourselves to be deterred from doing our work. As I have said, our office was assigned a specific duty by the attorney general and the special division to gather the facts, and then, if appropriate, to make decisions and to report the facts as quickly as we possibly could. In the end, we tried to adhere to the principle Congressman Graham discussed on October 5. Thirty years from now, not 30 days from now, we want to be able to say that we did the right thing. At the end of the day, I and no one else was responsible for our key decisions. And my background warrants a very brief note, if you will indulge me. The chairman was kind enough to indicate as much. I began my legal career in 1973 as a law clerk, first for a judge, Judge David Dyer, on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, who passed away earlier this year, and then for two years for Chief Justice Burger. Following clerkships, I was in private law practice in Las Angeles and Washington. After William French Smith took office as attorney general in January, 1981, I served as counselor to the attorney general from '81 to 1983. In that capacity, I experienced first hand the varied and difficult judgment calls that the attorney general faces everyday, whether it was dealing with the aftermath of the attempted assassination of the president or selecting a Supreme Court nominee -- in that case Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. I took away from that experience an admiration that has continued to this day for the career Justice Department lawyers and prosecutors and the law enforcement officials who toil without fanfare and for whom the guiding principles are fairness and a respect for the law. In 1983, President Reagan nominated me and the Senate was kind enough to confirm me as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for this (ph) circuit. I became a colleague on a court with truly great judges -- from J. Skelley Wright to Antonin Scalia, from Ruth Ginsberg to Robert Bork -- and tackled the issues that come before the D.C. Circuit. This included issues as diverse as the constitutional right of a military serviceman to wear a yarmulke, a right I supported in vane, and the right of a newspaper to be free under the First Amendment from the threat of liability under the liable laws. In 1989, I accepted appointment as solicitor general of the United States and was confirmed by the Senate. The solicitor general, as you know and have pointed out, is the lawyer who represents the United States in arguments before the Supreme Court. A distinguished predecessor before whom I was privileged to argue, Justice Thurgood Marshall, often stated that being solicitor general was the greatest job a lawyer could have, bar none. And Justice Marshall was right. As solicitor general, I had the privilege of arguing 25 cases before the Supreme Court on behalf of the United States. The arguments covered the spectrum of our law -- whether flag burning is a protected right under the Constitution, other issues -- and whether the Senate's decision to convict and remove an impeached judge is subject to judicial review. While I was solicitor general, my overarching goal was to run an office faithful to the law and not to political or ideological opinion. And I think the record shows that I did just that. In 1993, I left my second tour of duty in the Justice Department and returned to private practice and teaching constitutional law. In the period before I was named independent counsel in August 1994, I was not, however, completely absent from public service. In late 1993, I was asked by the Senate Ethics Committee, chaired at the time by Nevada Senator Richard Bryan, to review Senator Packwood's diaries as part of the Ethics Committee's investigation and to resolve various issues pertaining to those diaries. Every person is, of course, deeply affected by his or her experiences. For my part, my experience is in the law and in the courts. I am not a man of politics, of public relations or of polls, which I suppose is patently obvious by now. I am not experienced in political campaigns. Rather, as a product of the law and of the courts, I have come to an unyielding faith in our court system: our system of judicial review, the independence of our judges, our jury system, the integrity of the oath, and the sanctity -- yes, the sanctity -- of the judicial process. The phrase on the facade of the Supreme Court "Equal Justice Under Law"; the inscription inside the Justice Department's corridors, in the attorney general's own chambers, "The United States wins its point when justice is done its citizens in the courts" -- those are more than slogans. They are not slogans. They are principles that the courts in this country apply every day. Our office saw that firsthand in the trial of Governor Jim Guy Tucker, of Jim McDougal and Susan McDougal. A juror said afterwards that they fought hard for the individual's liberty, but they were overwhelmed by the evidence. It is our judicial process that helps make this country distinct. And my background, my instincts, my beliefs have instilled in me a deep respect for the legal process that is at the foundation of our republic. President Lincoln asked that, in his words, "Reverence for the laws, reverence for the laws be proclaimed in legislative halls and enforced in courts of justice." Mr. Chairman, members, I revere the law. I'm proud of what we have accomplished. We were assigned a difficult job. We have done it to the very best of our abilities. We've tried to be both fair and thorough. I thank the chairman, I thank the committee and the American people for their attention. HYDE: Thank you very much, Mr. Starr. HYDE: The committee will come to order. I would appreciate it if we could get the doors closed. The chair now recognizes minority counsel, Mr. Lowell, to question the witness for 30 minutes. N E X T+P A G E+| "Obviously this body is entirely at liberty to reject this referral as not being substantial or credible" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.