[By the end of Ronald Reagan's first term, over 100 of his appointees were
forced to resign in scandal -- and Iran-Contra had yet to surface.
Investigations of the Clinton White House, by comparison, have resulted in a
handful of resignations, a few convictions, yet the Republicans maintain
that this is "the most corrupt administration in history." Perhaps they do
have a sense of humor, after all. ‹ AC]
NYDN
Sunday, June 27, 1999
Tales From the Dark Side
Good riddance to Starr
and the super-snoops
WASHINGTON
hen the FBI asked former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros how much money he
paid an ex-mistress each year, he seems to have replied in the hopeful
manner of comedian Don Adams: "Would you believe $10,000?"
The FBI would not. The FBI believed he paid Linda Jones $264,000 over four
years. For disguising this relationship, Cisneros, one of the better public
servants this nation has ever known, faces federal charges of felony
conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI.
Now, it comes out in pretrial maneuvering that Jones herself, the
prosecution's star witness, has been lying to everyone ‹ to the FBI, the
IRS, a judge, her own lawyers, the prosecutors who are pursuing Cisneros and
the media.
Under cross-examination by Brendan (I Am Not a Potted Plant) Sullivan,
Oliver North's old lawyer who now represents Cisneros, she admitted telling
lies because "I had gotten myself into a box and didn't know how to get
out."
Even worse, she acknowledged that the supposedly incriminating tapes she
turned over to the government to use against Cisneros are not originals, but
copies of their recorded phone conversations, and that five or six of them
had been doctored to eliminate her threats to Cisneros.
One lawyer she consulted told the court he had refused to help her because
it appeared she had been trying to subject Cisneros to a shakedown. Two
other lawyers told the court she was again lying on the stand this week when
she testified that they had instructed her to doctor the tapes.
We have here a lying witness and doctored evidence ‹ which the U.S.
government still plans to use to try to put Henry Cisneros, a good man, in
prison.
"This is unheard of," says veteran defense attorney Gerald Lefcourt, who has
seen prosecutors use all sorts of aggressive tactics to nail a suspect.
"Ordinarily, you can't even use a tape unless all the words are audible
enough so the court feels it has a product it can rely on. Here, the
prosecution is bringing in tapes that have been admittedly screwed around
with."
What kind of prosecutor does this? An independent counsel. This one is named
David Barrett, and like Kenneth Starr, he appears to be so obsessed with
convicting a target that he will disregard even basic rules of fairness in
his crusade.
Before Barrett, we had another obsessed independent counsel, Donald Smaltz,
who boasted after he lost his ludicrously thin case against former
Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy that he had really won because he had
indicted Espy. That's what an independent counsel sees as victory: making an
accusation that won't stand up before a jury but at least puts a target
through the torture and cost of a criminal trial before he is found not
guilty.
Starr remains the abuse champion of the independent counsel set. Even though
we think we know all his excesses ‹ jumping Monica Lewinsky without her
lawyer, subpoenaing her mother, repeatedly re-trying former Bill Clinton
crony Webb Hubbell ‹ we get new chilling details about him in Bob Woodward's
book "Shadow."
Woodward was able to do to Starr what Starr was never able to do to Clinton:
get close friends and colleagues to squeal. Two subordinates, Brett
Kavanaugh and William Kelley, objected to Starr that he should not include
all the sexual details in his report to Congress. They were trying to build
a legal case against Clinton, not an indictment of his immorality. But Starr
demanded every embrace, every moan, every pubic hair.
"We need to have an encyclopedia," Starr said, according to Woodward. "It
will show all the information. It will show how much work we did."
Kavanaugh suspected, again according to Woodward, that Starr thought
Clinton's sexual behavior, rather than his alleged crimes, provided the
basis for trying to impeach him.
As a last-ditch attempt to protect the nation's children from these seamy
details, Kavanaugh and two of Starr's most aggressive prosecutors, Robert
Bittman and Jackie Bennett, urged Starr at least to warn Congress against
releasing the sexual details to the public. Starr refused.
Kavanaugh also urged Starr not to proceed with the indictment of Julie Hiatt
Steele, a bit player in the case who had no relation to Starr's original
mandate. To prosecute her, Kavanaugh said, would win Starr the trifecta of
prosecutorial abuse: picking a trivial target, acting too late in the case
and bringing thin charges.
"I have a duty!" said Starr, and he prosecuted Steele. Her trial ended in a
hung jury, and Starr's office finally announced it would not seek to try her
again.
What an extraordinary coincidence this is: Three independent counsels ‹
Barrett, Smaltz and Starr ‹ and all of them going off the deep end, abusing
the vast powers of government to pursue the most minor or even nonexistent
offenses at great expense to their targets and the taxpayers.
Or maybe it is not a coincidence at all. Perhaps it is the Independent
Counsel Act itself that transforms normally sensible lawyers into
single-minded Ahabs who mistake the minnow they are chasing for Moby Dick.
Once a lawyer is assigned under the independent counsel statute, he or she
has a virtually unlimited budget, an unlimited time frame and a target on
whom to pin some crime or other, rather than a crime that must be solved to
determine who is guilty of what.
In Starr's case, the latitude was especially broad. Under the independent
counsel statute, he could pursue "any" information that "may" constitute
grounds for impeachment. It needn't be a crime; it need merely be conduct,
public or private, that a majority of the House of Representatives might
deem to be impeachable.
Starr is also a special case in that he is an ambitious partisan Republican,
rather than a true independent. His own definition of independent, he said
in a speech, was merely that he be independent of his target, not
independent of the partisan political struggles in this country.
One solution to these governmental excesses appears to be at hand. The
Independent Counsel Act is due to expire at the end of the month, and there
is little sentiment to renew it. Its practitioners have given it a bad name.
That does not solve the problem for the citizen at large who finds himself
in the sights of an aggressive prosecutor, however. While critical of
independent counsels, Gerald Lefcourt notes that other federal prosecutors
can be just as aggressive and just as abusive to a target.
"Name me one thing that Ken Starr did that Rudy Giuliani didn't do when he
was a federal prosecutor," Lefcourt said.
To pressure Lewinsky, Starr pursued her mother, Marcia Lewis. Giuliani used
Sukhreet Gable to testify against her mother, Hortense. Starr aggressively
prosecuted Hubbell; Giuliani went after Wall Street brokers, putting two in
handcuffs in front of their colleagues before the charges were dropped.
So apart from ending the independent counsel law, we need more protection
from deranged prosecutors. One useful improvement would fix the grand jury
process so witnesses could bring a lawyer with them when they face
interrogation. Prosecutors could be required to tell the grand jurors of
exculpatory evidence against a target, not just the accusations.
The balance is now skewed toward the prosecutor, who can indict anyone he
targets ‹ a power that tempts even innocent people like former White House
travel expediter Billy Dale to plead guilty rather than go bankrupt by
defending themselves. A defense lawyer in the grand jury room might persuade
the grand jurors not to indict.
For the moment, say goodbye to the Independent Counsel Act. But even when it
is gone, Starr and Barrett will remain in business for as long as they like.
----------------------
NYDN
Friday, April 07, 2000
Bill's Cabinet Corrupt?
Lay That Lie to Rest
WASHINGTON
or two years, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman suffered through an independent
counsel's investigation into corruption charges so convoluted that they defy
description.
Fortunately, we need not describe them. They were false. This week, after
spending nearly $4 million, independent counsel
Ralph Lancaster cleared Herman, and she can now get on with her life.
She is the sixth member of the Clinton administration, including the
President himself, to have been put through an independent counsel
investigation.
The results: Clinton was impeached but not convicted. Agriculture Secretary
Mike Espy was indicted but acquitted. Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros
pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's case was
closed when he was killed in a plane crash. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt
was cleared.
Republicans keep calling this the most corrupt administration in history.
The only thing missing is convictions.
Despite the most aggressive and prolonged investigations, no presidential or
cabinet-level crimes have been found in Whitewater, the White House's
possession of FBI files, the Vince Foster suicide, the firing of White House
Travel Office employees or even fund-raising abuses.
What we have, after six years and $95.3 million worth of independent counsel
investigations, is the discovery of two lies related to sex. Clinton lied
about Monica Lewinsky. Cisneros concealed a relationship with a mistress.
Attorney General Janet Reno has subjected six of her cabinet colleagues to
these pointless inquisitions ‹ yet she is constantly accused of covering up
for the administration.
Now to her rescue comes the unlikeliest of saviors: Charles La Bella, a
hard-nosed career prosecutor who recommended that an independent counsel be
appointed to investigate Vice President Gore's fund-raising activities.
Reno refused, bringing renewed charges of a coverup. But in an appearance on
NBC's "Meet the Press," La Bella defended Reno against the accusation that
her decision was a politically motivated attempt to protect the
administration.
"It wasn't politics," he said. "It was never politics. ... I really don't
believe that the attorney general in any way, shape or form was protecting
anybody, or anybody else at the Justice Department was politically
protecting anybody."
La Bella also drew a crucial distinction that seems to have eluded Clinton's
many critics: There is a difference between an investigation and a charge of
wrongdoing.
The fact that La Bella called for an investigation does not mean he thought
Gore had committed any crimes. "There's sufficient information from credible
sources to trigger an investigation, not suggesting in any way, shape or
form that charges were going to be brought or that charges were even
appropriate," he said.
This is a basic legal point, but the distinction has not survived in
superheated Washington politics or the screaming matches on cable
television: An accusation is not a conviction. An investigation does not
presume guilt. To be under investigation does not warrant being labeled
corrupt.
La Bella's call for an independent counsel, he explained, was
self-protection. He felt an outside counsel who decided not to prosecute
would have more credibility than the Justice Department. Fair enough. But it
has not been interpreted that way; it has been cited as indicating his
knowledge of high-level crimes. In fact, he knows of none.
With this explanation, he clears the good name of a seventh member of the
Clinton cabinet who has been subjected to endless political accusations:
Reno. According to La Bella, she has played it straight.
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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