My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol.3 #34, February 23, 1998

STARR CHAMBER

Perhaps you've seen the editorial cartoon by Rogers in which one of Saddam Hussein's minions tells him "The Americans say if you don't cooperate your punishment will be devastating and without mercy," and Saddam says "Another war?" To which the minion replies, "No, an investigation of you by Kenneth Starr."

This may explain why, when pundits ask why we are not outraged at Clinton's behavior, many of us will say, yes, we are outraged--at Kenneth Starr, and the whole independent counsel idea. Many of us think the special counsel law turns the justice process upside down. Where most prosecutors begin with a crime and try to prove a particular person committed it, this prosecutor seems to start from the assumption that the President is guilty of something, and will not stop investigating every single aspect of his life until he finds what that something might be.

Three years and $30 million later, having found nothing he can even charge Clinton with, he is going after Clinton's sex life. Oh, he doesn't say that's what he's going after. His justification for hounding Monica Lewinsky and her mother and the president's secretary and secret service agents is that Clinton might have suborned perjury by asking her to lie, which would be a federal offense.

In which case, Starr should waste no time arresting himself, prosecuting himself, and putting himself in prison. The person who appears to be suborning perjury is Kenneth Starr. His theory of Whitewater assumes Clinton knowingly took campaign funds from illegal sources, but, unable to find proof Clinton ever did anything but associate with morally flexible people, Starr must rely on testimony from the President's former cronies. And if what they tell him does not match his theory, he threatens them with jail for whatever offenses he can accuse them of--in Monica Lewinsky's case, perjury on an affidavit in a civil case, an offense virtually no prosecutor would take to court. But if they tell Starr what he believes to be the truth, that Clinton knowingly broke the law, he will strike deals with them.

Jim McDougall, the key figure in Whitewater, insisted all along that Clinton knew nothing about the games he was playing with money. Now, offered a way out of a long-term jail sentence, he is changing his story. His wife Susan refuses to testify, because she says Starr has no interest in the truth, only in testimony that confirms Clinton's guilt. Because she won't testify, she has been in jail for a year and a half, including a long stint in solitary confinement. (Drugdealers and wifebeaters have served less time than that.) She says Jim McDougall pleaded with her to tell Starr what he wanted to hear--that if she would only say she had an affair with Clinton, she could get off scot-free. And she said the only problem with that was that it wasn't true, which left Jim McDougall shaking his head in wonderment. Others called to testify tell the same story--Starr's men tried to coerce them into lying.

This bribed and coerced testimony is all Starr has to show for his 3 years of effort. Unable to prove Clinton has done anything wrong, Starr's office has continuously leaked information to the press, including grand jury testimony prosecutors are legally obliged to keep secret. His far from impartial office has worked hand in glove with Paula Jones' attorneys--how else did Starr know what Clinton said in a private affidavit in the Jones case about his relationship with Lewinsky? Now that Clinton's defense has at last asked for an investigation of the leaks coming from his office, Starr is professing to be shocked--shocked!--and determined to get to the bottom of it.

Starr's reckless and partisan pursuit of his concept of the truth has cost us a lot. Tax money, of course. The respect of other nations as well, as our scandal-hungry press makes our politics look hopelessly frivolous. (The editorials in the foreign press may be summed up with the phrase "Don't these people have anything SERIOUS to do?") It has cost us our power to focus on things that actually matter, as the press tells us everything about Monica and nothing about the free gift of our public airwaves to media conglomerates, and other important news. (It was embarrassing how fast the news anchors left Cuba where they'd been covering the Pope's visit to be back in place on the set discussing Monica Lewinsky.)

It has cost us thousands of bright and talented future public servants, who understand the Hatfield and McCoy dynamics of politics in Washington. The smearing and bankrupting of Clinton and everyone who works for him is a payoff for what was done to Bork and to John Tower and to Richard Nixon. If the Republicans get one of their own in there, what will the Democrats do to them? If the partisan game of gotcha never stops, will anybody want to work for a president, knowing they will spend all their salary on lawyers, and all their time testifying before congressional committees and grand juries? Will anybody be willing to have every aspect of their private lives incorporated into Leno's and Letterman's nightly routines?

It has cost us our respect for law. We've never had much respect for lawyers in this country, but we did once believe The Law was a means of determining truth and redressing injury. Now we see The Law used as a weapon to punish political offenses and inflict injury. Reputations that were years building have been lost forever.

What we need is a truce. We need to stand back and say enough, already, we are now even. From now on, let us have no more independent counsels, no more political sabotage of presidential appointments, no more criminalizing of political acts and minor offenses, no more peeking into bedrooms. Yes, I am outraged. This is no way for grownups to run a country.

NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

I'll write columns here whenever I really want to share an idea with you and can find time to write them . If you want to be notified when a new one is up, send me an e-mail and include "My Word's Worth" in the subject line.