from TPDL 2000-Aug-8, from NewsMax, by Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff:
Traficant Drops Treason Bombshell on Reno
Ohio congressman James Traficant accused Attorney General Janet Reno of treason Monday night, saying he has evidence that she was blackmailed not to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the Clinton-Gore administration on Chinagate charges.
Appearing on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes," the Ohio Democrat announced that he has five affidavits from individuals who charge that Reno was repeatedly arrested for drunk driving in Florida during the 1980s, had sex with a lesbian call girl and got her job as Miami's state attorney through mob connections.
Traficant, who predicted last month that Reno was about to indict him on corruption charges, suggested that Reno's encounter with the call girl had been captured on videotape.
The maverick congressman and frequent Clinton administration critic said the FBI learned about some of the damaging evidence on Reno during a 1993 background check prior to her appointment to attorney general. But he said he did not know whether the material was turned over to the Senate during her confirmation hearing.
TRAFICANT: I have received several affidavits, and here's what these affidavits allege. I have done some cursory investigation and will follow up further myself on a limited budget. What I received was that Janet Reno was first appointed to Dade County state attorney, they call them state attorneys there, as a favor and a thank-you to the mob.
Number two, she's a lesbian. And I really don't care about anybody's sexual preference ...
COLMES: Well, what are you saying that for ...
TRAFICANT: Hear me, hear me. This is an affidavit. This is an affidavit I'm speaking to and I want you to listen to me. 'Cause I don't really care about anybody's sexual preference.
COLMES: Then why bring it up?
TRAFICANT: Because it's in the affidavit, and listen to the salient points, Alan. I'm not talking about Democrat and Republican. And I want you to set Democrat aside tonight and set Republican aside tonight.
Janet Reno had a relationship with a call girl who was associated with organized crime figures. And they have videotapes of this woman. Now hear me. Also you had five police officers stop Janet Reno for substance abuse, namely DUI - under the influence - willing to testify, never testified.
Now, here's the point I'm making. Listen very carefully. I will be submitting FOIA requests. Because I believe Janet Reno in her failure to appoint an independent counsel, specifically on the threatening issue, the national security issue, China - she did so because of her blackmailability.
I want to know why, and how long it took for the FBI to investigate, if they gave this information to the Senate, if the Senate knew about compromises they had from outside the government. They knew about her past history of alcoholism, her association with call girls. And they did interview several of the affiants that have in fact given me these affidavits. Now hold on.
HANNITY: Hey, Congressman, well hold on one second. Let me ask a couple ... Let's clarify. You have just declared war tonight on Janet Reno.
TRAFICANT: Yes, I have.
HANNITY: You made some very severe allegations. You say you have affidavits. Who are these affidavits from?
TRAFICANT: These affiants wish to remain anonymous, but they will testify in an open court or a congressional hearing of appropriate nature.
HANNITY: You are saying she is associated, and that people will testify with evidence, that she was connected to the mob?
TRAFICANT: Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. And because of the fact - and I'm looking into this - I'm not throwing any darts at the president at this point or anybody. I want to know if the president got that information. I want to know the timespan from when the FBI went down and interviewed these affiants on these particular allegations, and how long it took for her to be confirmed.
Janet Reno was one of the exceptions. They waved that 72-hour period from the hearing to the confirmation. And in a lovefest she became the attorney general, and I'm accusing the attorney general of treason right here.
From PDL 1999-Mar-18, from the Chicago Sun-Times, by Robert Novak:
Burton turns up the heat on Reno
A seat at the Feb. 25 White House state dinner honoring the president of Ghana was filled by investment banker and civil rights pioneer Ernest F. Green, invited as a prominent African American by his good friend and fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton. Now, not even a month later, Chairman Dan Burton of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee has sent Attorney General Janet Reno a referral alleging that Green misled Congress about his contributions to the 1996 Democratic campaign.
Green, the Washington-based managing director of public finance at Lehman Brothers, contributed $50,000 to the party. He denied under oath for the first time two years ago that any of these funds were supplied by the notorious Charlie Trie. But Republican House investigators have found $2,000 in travelers checks given to Green by Trie, which they see as the tip of the iceberg.
Writing to Reno this week, Burton noted Green's intimacy with the president and added: "I hope that you can conduct this investigation with the vigor and impartiality that it deserves. . . . I hope that you will devote careful attention to this matter to determine whether Mr. Green should be prosecuted for his false statements." This poses a new test for Reno, who has refused to call special prosecutors for campaign scandal allegations while her Justice Department investigations have yielded little.
Green is the only close associate of Trie--the indicted restaurant- owner-turned-global-entrepreneur--to testify to Congress. Another 121 prospective witnesses either have fled the country or invoked the Fifth Amendment. Green denied being a "conduit contributor" for illegal money raised abroad by Trie. Indeed, he swore he never received "any money" from Trie.
Green, one of the Little Rock Nine who integrated Central High School in 1957, is a distinguished member of African-American society. His denials satisfied Senate probers early in 1997 and were repeated in a closed-door Burton committee deposition later that year.
But last July, it was discovered that $200,000, in $1,000 Visa travelers checks, was issued by Bank Central Asia in Jakarta, Indonesia, presumably in early 1996 shortly before a Feb. 19 Democratic National Committee event at Washington's Hay- Adams Hotel. This was the first DNC fund-raising event by John Huang, and he was having trouble meeting his money goal. But on Feb. 17, Trie associate Antonio Pan, a former executive of Indonesia's Lippo Group and friend of former Lippo employee Huang, entered the United States at New York's Kennedy Airport.
Was Pan carrying travelers checks to reimburse Democratic contributors? The evidence is that $50,000 worth of the checks went to the DNC, while other donors might have been paid indirectly. And Republican investigators found that Green had received two of the $1,000 travelers checks from Trie, contradicting his sworn testimony.
Subpoenaed by the Burton committee, Green in a second deposition last Sept. 25 asserted that Trie had given him the checks in payment of a "gentlemen's bet" on how much Michael Jordan would score in a basketball game Feb. 18. Unable to recall details of his financial transactions, the investment banker was precise about the details of that long-ago bet.
"When Green made his false statement to the Senate, it had the effect of concealing far more than the payment of $2,000 in travelers checks to him by Charlie Trie," Burton's referral said. "It effectively concealed a series of highly irregular banking transactions in which he posted over $38,000 in cash into his checking account, making 15 smaller cash deposits over a two- month period."
Green at worst is a pawn in a bigger game. Issuance of the $200,000 in travelers checks in Jakarta later controlled by Trie suggests a coordinated effort rather than a random collection of rogue operatives. Burton has been urging Reno to get the Indonesian government to disclose who bought the travelers checks in Jakarta, but the Justice Department has been unresponsive, most recently in a March 12 letter. Reno won't cooperate, and Burton won't go away.
from TPDL 1999-Feb-6, from Insight, by Paul M. Rodriguez and Timothy W. Maier:
Reno Thwarts FBI Chief's Probe of Campaign Money
Senior government and federal law-enforcement sources have told news alert! that FBI Director Louis Freeh has begun to dismantle his 100-strong campaign fund-raising task force in light of Attorney General Janet Reno's repeated refusals to appoint an independent counsel to probe the Clinton administration's alleged wrongdoing in the 1996 elections.
The sources, who asked not to be identified, said Freeh's decision was made in mid-January following word from Justice Department officials that Reno likely would not seek appointment of an independent counsel to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by former White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes. In fact, Reno on Feb. 2 did reject GOP calls for a special prosecutor, despite strong support within the Justice Department for one. Her decision followed similar rejections of previous requests from Freeh for other independent counsels to probe illegal fund-raising in 1996.
The task force, which still is expected to announce one or two indictments before the end of February -- possibly one against former DNC Chairman Donald Fowler -- already has begun winding down its operations and is starting to concentrate on upcoming trials involving a handful of individuals previously indicted. This will mean that scores of prosecutors, FBI and IRS agents and numerous lawyers will be returning to their previous posts in government, many of them outside of Washington.
"People are very demoralized by all this," said one of several sources familiar with the behind-the-scenes infighting about the federal fund-raising investigation. "Reno has no clue about what's going on," said one source, who added, "and she doesn't really care. She's made it plain that there's not going to be any IC [independent counsel] probes on fund-raising while she's AG [attorney general]."
Although the Freeh task force presented what it believed was strong evidence that Ickes not only engaged in improper fund- raising activities while at the White House, but that he also committed perjury in testimony before a Senate panel in 1997, Reno concluded on Feb. 2 that there was no substantial and credible evidence to warrant an independent counsel.
The sources, including people not in government but familiar with the task force's work, confirmed that Freeh had contemplated resigning as FBI director last year but decided to stay -- at least for now -- because he did not want to further demoralize his agents. "There's still much work to be done," one confidant of the director paraphrased Freeh as telling subordinates. "He wants to make sure these cases go forward without any further disruption.... Whether he'll stay past summer is unclear."
from TPDL 1999-Feb-1, from the Wall Street Journal:
Reno Cover-Up Continues
With impeachment proceedings under way on charges the President obstructed justice, Attorney General Janet Reno has again rejected an independent counsel for the campaign finance investigation, giving Harold Ickes her latest get-out-of-jail-free card on Friday. It becomes ever clearer that the ultimate outcome of the impeachment depends on whether the Congress finally steps up to the duty of oversight.
In the wake of Friday's ruling, Senators Hatch and Thompson and House Chairman Burton predicted the demise of the independent counsel statute. We've worried from the first that the existence of the statute has served as an excuse for the Justice Department and the Congress to duck their appointed duties. In particular, Chairman Burton had the rug pulled from under him on holding the Attorney General in contempt of Congress. Senator Thompson's Whitewater investigation foundered on the reef of bipartisanship. And Senator Hatch, who is supposed to exercise oversight of Justice, has looked the other way. So it might even be a good thing if the notion of independent counsel vanished. We only wish we were more confident that the Congress would in fact fill the void.
The campaign finance investigation is a leading case. What needs investigating is the possibility of a Presidentially-chartered conspiracy to raise illegal money to fund an early advertising blitz and win the 1996 election. We know that after a meeting including the President and James Riady, John Huang was dispatched to the Democratic National Committee and proceeded to collect illegal funds from Mr. Riady and others. We also know that some contributions came from close associates of the Chinese military.
The independent counsel statute remains the law of the land, but Ms. Reno has evaded it by chopping the broad issue into narrower and narrower bits to give passes to the President, the Vice President and now Mr. Ickes. Friday's ruling turned on the issue of what does "do" do. When asked what did the government "do" about a strike Mr. Ickes had discussed with Teamster officials who'd provided $2.4 million in campaign contributions, Mr. Ickes replied "nothing that I know of." In fact Mr. Ickes asked Trade Representative Mickey Kantor to intervene, and Mr. Kantor did call the management side of the strike. Not perjury, Ms. Reno decided. Laying aside whether the decision is tenable, the clear intent of the law is that it should be made by an independent counsel.
Surely it's time for Congress to call Ms. Reno and her political managers at Justice to account for these decisions. Congress needs to hear again from Charles La Bella, who urged an independent counsel when he headed Justice's own investigation. They should also call David Vicinanzo, who replaced Mr. La Bella and currently heads the investigation. And also Mary Jo White, U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, who may be able to convince them her on- going probe of the Teamsters and the Democratic campaign is a serious investigation and not part of the cover-up. AFL-CIO Treasurer Richard Trumka has twice taken the Fifth Amendment on these charges, but remains number-two man in organized labor.
Presuming that impeachment ends in the currently indicated hung jury, the need for oversight will increase, not dwindle. And not only on campaign finance. In a separate development. Jackie Judd of ABC reports that private investigator Jarrett Stern says he was hired by a lawyer for Democratic contributor Nathan Landow to conduct "a noisy" investigation of Kathleen Willey, who charged she was groped by the President. The end of the current impeachment will by no means "get it all behind us."
So we will be watching Senator Hatch, Senator Thompson, Chairman Burton, and Congressional Republicans generally. The ultimate outcome of impeachment will depend on whether they seize the opportunity for real oversight, or slink off the field in defeat.
from PDL 1999-Mar-13, from the Associated Press, by Laurie Kellman:
Reno says LaBella was not passed over for promotion
WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General Janet Reno is denying a GOP senator's charge that federal prosecutor Charles LaBella was punished for disagreeing with her on how to proceed with a campaign fund-raising probe.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Friday, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., told Reno that her plan to replace LaBella, who is interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, with a subordinate, creates the ''possible inference'' that LaBella was passed over as a punishment.
''The inference is plain wrong,'' Reno replied. ''Chuck LaBella's disagreement with me had nothing to do with who the U.S. attorney is for the Southern District of California.''
LaBella headed the Justice Department's campaign-finance task force until he left in July to become acting U.S. attorney in San Diego. He said he resigned last month after being told by Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder that the department will ask the San Diego federal judges to replace him with Gregory Vega, a subordinate federal prosecutor recommended for the job by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
Specter has said Reno's move ''has all the indications of retribution'' for LaBella's recommendation last July that an independent counsel investigate allegations of abuses, chiefly by Democrats, in fund raising for the 1996 elections. Reno has repeatedly refused to appoint an independent counsel for that probe.
''When I left I didn't even get a 'Thank you for your services,' '' LaBella told the San Diego Union-Tribune last month, describing what he considered fallout from the work of his campaign- financing task force. ''I think that crystallizes just how out of favor I was with the Justice Department.''
On Wednesday, Reno told Specter that LaBella served the department ''with distinction,'' and pointed out that senators recommend and confirm such nominations. The attorney general, however, gives the White House final approval for candidates before the president sends nominations to the Senate.
Reno said LaBella should not have expected the nomination.
''Nobody should have an expectation of being U.S. attorney,'' Reno said. ''I don't think anybody should anticipate that they're going to be 'it.'''
The exchange came during the Judiciary Committee's review of the agency's budget request, the third such congressional session Reno has attended this week. During the sessions, she has come under heavy criticism from Republicans for the department's problems handling immigration and border patrol issues.
Republicans on both the Senate panel and the House subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department's budget took issue with the fact that Reno has not requested money for more border patrol agents next year.
''It was not negligence, it was not sloppiness, it was not malice or evilness or badness or dumbness'' that led her to hold up on a request for more money, Reno told the House panel on Thursday. Rather, she said, the force is suffering from a flood of inexperienced border patrol agents and wants to wait until they are properly trained before hiring new ones.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service, said subcommittee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., has failed to correct case load, detention and other problems despite receiving increases federal money.
''It seems every year we are called upon to bail out some massive mistake that the INS has done, in spite of the fact that you have told us ... that you are going to personally oversee the problems at the INS,'' Rogers told Reno during a hearing Thursday before the House subcommittee on Commerce, Justice State and the Judiciary.
Reno said the INS - one of the government's fastest growing agencies - has taken steps to resolve problems. ''They have done a job that indicates that they can solve problems, just not fast enough,'' she said.
from TPDL 1999-Feb-4, from the Washington Times, by Jerry Seper:
Prosecutor quits over campaign inquiry
The handpicked federal prosecutor who headed the investigation of President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign and unsuccessfully urged Attorney General Janet Reno to seek an independent counsel in the probe quit yesterday as interim U.S. attorney in San Diego.
Charles G. LaBella, who said in a July report to Miss Reno that she was required under the Independent Counsel Statute to seek the appointment of an outside prosecutor in the case, was in line to become the next U.S. attorney but lost the job after his recommendation to Miss Reno became public.
"Obviously, I did not have the confidence of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general, and so I think it's time to move on," said Mr. LaBella, who has been a federal prosecutor for 16 years.
Last year, Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, angrily called for the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold hearings to determine whether Mr. LaBella lost the permanent appointment as U.S. attorney in San Diego because of his calls for an independent counsel in the department's campaign finance probe.
In a letter to the committee's chairman, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Mr. Specter questioned whether the decision to name another federal prosecutor, Gregory Vega, came as "retribution" because of Mr. LaBella's call for an independent counsel.
No hearing date has yet been set, although Mr. Specter has said he would raise the issue during confirmation hearings for Mr. Vega when they are scheduled. His spokesman, John Ullyot, yesterday said Mr. Specter continued to be concerned about the matter and would continue to press for hearings.
Mr. Specter argued that the decision to replace Mr. LaBella would have a "chilling effect" on others who stepped forward to voice their opinions if not challenged.
Mr. Vega was recommended by Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, after the LaBella report became public, although the White House has yet to submit his name to the Senate. It was not clear yesterday when Mr. LaBella would leave his post.
In his July 16 report, Mr. LaBella -- then head of the Justice Department's campaign finance task force -- urged Miss Reno to seek an independent counsel to investigate the Clinton-Gore re- election campaign, including Vice President Al Gore's fund-raising phone calls and the possibility that former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes gave perjured testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.
Mr. LaBella's recommendation coincided with an earlier memo from FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, also recommending that Miss Reno seek the appointment of an independent counsel to take over the department's campaign finance probe. Mr. Freeh said in the November 1997 memo that the attorney general had a conflict of interest involving an investigation of the fund-raising activities of Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore.
"I think given the covered status, but also some of the other associated individuals in that core group, there is a conflict which, in my judgment, can only be resolved under the statute by a discretionary referral," Mr. Freeh told the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee in explaining why an outside counsel was necessary.
Miss Reno has since rejected the recommendation, refusing to seek outside counsels to investigate the president, the vice president or Mr. Ickes.
from TPDL 1999-Jan-30, from the New York Post, by Deborah Orin:
RENO NIXES PROBE OF ICKES ON FUNNY $$
Attorney General Janet Reno yesterday turned thumbs down on an independent-counsel probe of ex-White House aide Harold Ickes for allegedly lying to Congress in an investigation of Democratic funny money.
It was the latest in a series of refusals by Reno to name special prosecutors to probe Clinton, Veep Al Gore and top aides - refusals that have infuriated Republicans.
"There is no reasonable basis to believe that any additional investigation would discover additional evidence sufficient to prove that Ickes' testimony was knowingly and intentionally false," Reno wrote in a filing with a federal court.
Naming a special prosecutor could have opened the door to a broad, independent funny-money investigation since Ickes played a key role in raising 1996 campaign cash for Clinton's re-election.
Ickes lawyer Bob Bennett - who also was Clinton's lawyer in the Paula Jones case - said he was "gratified" by Reno's decision.
Bennett praised Reno for "her courage to do the right thing in the face of intense political pressure" and said it would have been a "grave injustice" to name a special prosecutor.
At issue was whether Ickes, once a top adviser to ex-New York Mayor David Dinkins, lied to Congress about his role in helping the Teamsters when the union was a potential source of campaign cash.
Ickes testified under oath that there was "nothing that I know of" that the Clinton administration did to pressure Diamond Walnut Growers to settle a strike with the Teamsters.
But a House panel found Ickes took an active role in pushing to settle the strike and got Clinton's then-trade representative, Mickey Kantor, to call Diamond and say the strike should be settled since "it was interfering with international trade issues."
from TPDL 1998-Dec-15, from the Los Angeles Times, by David Rosenzweig, LA Times Staff Writer:
Reno, Democrats Criticized by Judge
Politics: At Chung sentencing, jurist urges wider probe, calls it 'very strange that the giver pleads guilty and the givee gets off.'
Los Angeles federal judge criticized Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and Democratic Party officials Monday as he sentenced Torrance businessman Johnny Chung to five years' probation for funneling illegal contributions into the 1996 election campaign.
Citing Chung's secret testimony before a federal grand jury in Washington, U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real said he was surprised that Reno continues to "eschew" the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the campaign funding scandal.
Real, a veteran jurist with a reputation for talking tough, had harsher words for former Democratic National Committee Chairman Donald Fowler and former finance director Richard Sullivan. Both had frequent contacts with Chung.
"If Mr. Fowler and Mr. Sullivan didn't know what was going on, they're two of the dumbest politicians I've ever seen," said Real. "It's very strange that the giver pleads guilty and the givee gets off free."
Democratic National Committee spokesman Rick Hess declined to comment on the judge's remarks.
Chung, an obscure Torrance businessman who almost went broke in 1992, contributed nearly $400,000 to Democratic causes from 1994 to 1996. He visited the White House nearly 50 times, often in the company of foreign businessmen who wanted their photos taken with President Clinton.
After the campaign finance scandal broke, the Democrats returned the money and tried to distance themselves from Chung, a Taiwanese-born U.S. citizen.
Faced with possible prosecution, Chung negotiated a deal with the Justice Department. He agreed to help in their investigation and was allowed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts involving the use of "straw donors" to contribute nearly $30,000 to the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign and to U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.)
Chung, 43, also pleaded guilty to two felony counts of tax evasion and fraudulently obtaining a $157,500 loan on his home. He could have been sentenced to 37 years in prison and fined $1.45 million.
Real delayed Chung's sentencing twice in the past two months after receiving an unsolicited letter from the Democratic National Committee, accusing Chung of funneling foreign money into the party's coffers.
Federal election law bars contributions from nonresident foreigners, from corporations and individual donations in excess of $2,000.
The judge demanded to know if the Justice Department had any evidence that Chung had operated as a conduit for foreign sources or if Democratic Party officials knew his contributions came from illegal sources.
As a result, arrangements were made for Real to examine transcripts of Chung's secret grand jury testimony.
In remarks from the bench Monday, the judge revealed nothing from the transcripts. But citing the document, he said he was "surprised that the attorney general has eschewed appointment of a special prosecutor."
He also questioned Reno's failure to follow the recommendations of FBI Director Louis Freeh and former task force chief Charles LaBella, both of whom recommended appointment of an independent counsel.
In a courtroom packed with family members and supporters from his church, Chung briefly addressed the judge before receiving his sentence, which includes 3,000 hours of community service.
"I'm truly sorry for what I've done," said Chung, flanked by his lawyer, Brian Sun.
Chung said the ordeal has "cost me a very high price not only financially but also emotionally," but he said he had "gone the extra mile" to redeem himself by cooperating with the Justice Department in its investigation.
"Your honor, I ask you to give me a second chance. I promise to be a good citizen and you will never see me in this court again."
Sun told the judge that "the man before you is a good man, a man who made mistakes, but has tried to make amends. He was caught up in a maelstrom not of his own making."
Justice Department lawyer Michael McCaul, endorsing a downward departure from federal sentencing guidelines, said Chung had given the campaign task force many useful leads. Chung is one of four people indicted so far and is the first to cooperate and plead guilty.
Here is a set of missives from Dan Burton to Janet Reno in which he urges her to stop stonewalling.
Janet Reno is Bill Clinton's choice for America's top law enforcement officer. There are two main reasons he chose Reno. First, she is suffering from Parkinson's disease, a progressive brain dysfunction which destroys the capacity of the basal ganglia to create and process intentional (decisive) information (leading in extreme cases to catatonia as depicted in the movie Awakenings). Second, she is widely reputed to be a lesbian who has been accosted by police in flagrante delicto with female prostitutes in public places such as, in one case, a parking lot in a Florida city. Thus, Reno's decision-making capacity is doubly handicapped, by a brain dysfunction which directly impairs her decision-making ability, and by a private life which is the stuff of blackmail. This is why she was appointed Attorney General of the United States.
from TPDL 1999-Jan-15, from Reuters via Nando Media, by James Vicini:
Reno ends review of former Gore aid Peter Knight
WASHINGTON (January 14, 1999 7:51 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - Attorney General Janet Reno noted Thursday that no further investigation was required of criminal allegations involving Peter Knight, a former top aide to Vice President Al Gore.
Refusing to move toward an independent counsel probe, Reno ended a 30-day review into whether Knight, who managed the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign, helped another Gore friend get favorable terms on a government lease and lied about it.
The allegations involving Knight, who is expected to play a key role in Gore's 2000 presidential bid, were sent to the Justice Department by a congressional committee last month.
Reno said in a statement that she concluded that she does not possess "specific and credible information" that Knight, who is covered by the independent counsel law, "may have violated federal criminal law."
She said there was "no basis" to begin a preliminary investigation into the allegations.
The House Commerce Committee alleged that Knight helped Tennessee businessman and real estate developer Franklin Haney get the favorable terms on the lease and that in return Haney contributed $280,000 to the Democrats.
The committee also alleged that Knight, a former chief of staff to Gore, lied to it about a $1 million fee Haney paid him.
Reno twice late last year refused to seek an independent counsel to investigate Gore on campaign-related questions.
In December, Reno decided against an independent counsel to investigate President Clinton and Gore over political ads financed by the Democratic Party during the 1996 election.
In late November, Reno decided not to seek an independent counsel to investigate whether Gore lied to FBI agents about telephone fund-raising calls from his office during the 1996 presidential election campaign.
Haney faces charges brought by a Justice Department task force investigating campaign finance abuses that he made nearly $80,000 in illegal contributions to Clinton's re-election effort and to two other candidates from Tennessee.
The House Commerce Committee investigated financial and political ties between Haney and top Democratic officials, including Knight, over the lease of the Portals building in Washington, D.C. It is scheduled to become the Federal Communications Commission's new headquarters.
The panel questioned whether $1 million payments to Knight and former Tennessee senator Jim Sasser were illegal contingency fees and whether they used their political influence to gain a government lease.
from TPDL 1998-Jul-23, from the New York Times, by David Johnston:
Campaign Investigator Urges Reno to Name Independent Prosecutor
WASHINGTON -- After a 10-month inquiry, the departing chief of the Justice Department's campaign finance unit has concluded in a confidential report to Attorney General Janet Reno that she has no alternative but to seek an independent prosecutor to investigate political fund-raising abuses during President Clinton's re-election campaign, government officials said Wednesday.
The prosecutor, Charles La Bella, delivered the report to Reno last Thursday as he prepared to return to San Diego this week to take over as interim U.S. attorney. In effect, after being chosen by Reno to revive an investigation that she had been criticized for neglecting, La Bella has marked his departure by challenging her to replace him with an outside counsel.
La Bella's report does not suggest that prosecutors are ready, or even close, to bringing a case against any top Democrats or administration officials, but contends only that their fund-raising activities warrant outside investigation. And in a legal analysis, La Bella concluded that Reno had misinterpretedthe law creating an artificially high standard to avoid invoking the independent counsel statute, officials said.
La Bella's conclusions, coming from a seasoned federal prosecutor with full access to all grand jury evidence in the case, represents a serious internal fracture within the Justice Department. And the report seemed certain to provide Republicans with considerable leverage to intensify their demands that Reno step aside and let an outside prosecutor take over.
So far, she has refused to budge in her refusal to refer the case to outside counsel, and Wednesday. there was no indication that Reno seemed likely to reconsider her position. Last fall, La Bella had urged her to seek the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate fund-raising telephone calls by Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. But she rejected that recommendation.
Reno has said she carefully weighed the facts and the law before determining that the appointment of an independent prosecutor was not justified under the independent counsel law. She has defiantly blocked the appointment even in the face of a recommendation last fall from FBI Director Louis Freeh, who urged her to seek an independent counsel.
Her unwillingness to seek the appointment has exasperated Republicans in Congress who have accused the Justice Department of a politically motivated effort to subvert the independent counsel law to protect upper level Democratic Party and White House officials from searching scrutiny.
The report follows a tempestuous hearing last week, in which she faced withering questions by senators on the Judiciary Committee. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., who led Senate campaign finance hearings last year, confronted Reno by quoting a confidential memo that Freeh sent to Reno in November 1997. He quoted Freeh has concluded, "It is difficult to imagine a more compelling situation for appointing an independent counsel."
Justice Department officials said Wednesday that Reno and Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder had received the report and were reviewing it. But they would not discuss specifics. La Bella would not discuss the report.
Labella's report has been guarded closely. He produced only two copies, the officials said. He gave one copy to Reno and sent another to the home of Freeh, an ally whose top agent on the case, James Desarno, approved Labella's findings.
Tuesday, Reno assembled several of her top advisers to discuss the report, but they apparently reached no conclusions about how or whether to respond. She has already named a successor to La Bella. He is David Vicinanzo, a prosecutor from New Hampshire.
The report casts possible new light on La Bella's decision on leaving his job as the top campaign finance prosecutor, suggesting that he could be stepping down in the middle of the inquiry because he believed that the case should not be handled by the Justice Department but by an outside prosecutor.
So far, the campaign finance inquiry has produced only several low-level fund-raisers. But there has been no indication that the inquiry was likely to move up the chain of command at the Democratic National Committee or the White House.
In his report, the officials said, La Bella concluded that there was sufficient information to warrant the appointment based on the mandatory and discretionary provisions of the independent counsel statute, meaning that he found enough specific information to justify an outside investigation of high-level officials. Moreover, he found that the Justice Department could not objectively investigate them on its own, the officials said.
Still, it was not clear whether La Bella recommended whether an independent prosecutor should be named to investigate specific officials although he assessed the activities of several senior officials, including Clinton and Gore and others like Harold Ickes, a former deputy chief of staff, who playedan important role in supervising the campaign from the White House.
The report also suggests that an independent prosecutor should examine how the Democrats and Republicans used party funds to pay a massive blitz of television ads that were thinly veiled election messages for Clinton and Republican nominee Bob Dole.
from TPDL of 1998-Jul-17, this is an excerpt of the statement of Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concurring in the court's denial of a rehearing of the Justice Department's claim that Secret Service agents guarding President Clinton should not be compelled to testify to the Whitewater grand jury:
"[...] I am mindful of the terrible political pressures and strains of conscience that bear upon senior political appointees of the Justice Department when an Independent Counsel (or special prosecutor) is investigating the President of the United States. Those strains are surely exacerbated when the President's agents literally and figuratively "declare war" on the Independent Counsel (can it be said that the President of the United States has declared war on the United States?). [...]"
from TPDL 1999-May-7, from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, by Erica Werner:
FBI man: Starr didn't give agents leeway to nail more Arkansans
I.C. Smith, former head of the FBI in Arkansas, said this week that independent counsel Kenneth Starr did not let FBI agents investigating Whitewater in Arkansas do their jobs and that more people might have been indicted if he had.
"There was acute frustration on the part of the FBI agents," said Smith, who retired last July after three years as special agent in charge of Arkansas. "It certainly is contrary to the way investigations are conducted in the federal system."
Instead of directing interviews of witnesses and suspects, agents frequently sat like "furniture" while "inexperienced prosecutors" asked the questions, said Smith, whose tenure included most of the Whitewater investigation. Because of their different training, prosecutors might have missed things FBI investigators would have caught, he said.
"The prosecution is looking at it from the standpoint of that tidbit of information that's related to a specific crime that they've already maybe identified," Smith said. "But the FBI agent is going to sit there and listen to the total information that's available."
"There might have been" more indictments if Starr had given Smith's agents free rein, Smith said in two interviews this week. Asked if he knew of anyone specific who should have been indicted, Smith replied, "No, not that I'll say publicly."
Because prosecutors were "singularly focused," FBI investigators were not allowed to pursue all the leads they thought they should, Smith said.
"I had routine contact with virtually all of them, and this was a common theme they had," he said. "They were frustrated because they felt their talents weren't being exploited to the fullest extent."
Smith said he could not be certain what information would have been unearthed had investigators been given more leeway but he's certain the investigation would have moved faster.
Since setting up shop in Little Rock in 1994, the Office of the Independent Counsel has employed FBI agents on detail from the local FBI office.
At the investigation's peak, as when Smith assumed his job in Arkansas in 1995, there were about a dozen agents detailed to the counsel's office. Currently there are fewer than five agents working for Starr in Little Rock and in Washington combined, said Bob Bittman, who worked as one of Starr's top deputies for more than four years.
Rebutting Smith's criticism, Bittman, now a law partner at McGuire, Woods, Battle & Boothe in Washington, said the investigation was conducted just like any major federal investigation.
"In my view, there were no legitimate avenues of investigation that were not pursued," Bittman said in an interview, noting that Starr has been attacked for investigating too much.
"I had a very good relationship with the agents and they never complained to me," Bittman added. "We enjoyed a very good collaborative relationship."
Smith's criticism is misplaced, Bittman said, "because we were all working together."
"I guess their complaint is that normally they do it all and here we were doing it with them," he said. Prosecutors working for the Office of the Independent Counsel had uncommon quantities of time and resources that enabled them to take a more hands-on approach than prosecutors in other investigations might, he said.
A spokesman for Starr's office, Elizabeth Ray, did not respond to a phone message seeking comment.
Smith said that despite his criticism of aspects of Starr's investigation, he thinks that Starr has been good for Arkansas and that the state's residents should be "grateful." Starr himself said on national TV last month that his investigation "has been horrible for Arkansas."
Smith said Starr did some much-needed housecleaning that paved the way for the recent indictments of state Sen. Nick Wilson, D-Pocahontas, and others on fraud and racketeering charges.
"He changed the politics here," Smith said, "and probably changed it for the better."
Smith, who said he voted against Clinton in 1992 and 1996 but was apolitical as FBI chief in Arkansas, also dismissed the image of Starr as a Republican storm trooper out to get Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"Regardless of what people say, Starr does not have a mean streak," Smith said. Indeed, the independent counsel is "unfailingly gracious, not a wild-eyed zealot."
On Smith's first day on the job, when he "still had boxes scattered around the office," Starr dropped by to introduce himself and the two chatted at length, Smith said.
"That first meeting, I had a genuine like for the man," Smith said.
But Smith agreed that his critique of Starr's office could bolster the positions of avowed Starr haters like Susan McDougal and Steve Smith, a University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, communications professor.
McDougal's defense at her recent trial, which ended April 12 when a jury acquitted her of obstruction of justice and deadlocked on two criminal contempt charges, was that Starr's prosecutors were interested in damaging information about the Clintons to the exclusion of all else.
Already convicted of four felonies, she was indicted a year ago for twice refusing to testify before a Whitewater grand jury. She said she couldn't testify because she feared being charged with perjury unless she lied to oblige prosecutors' craving for anti-Clinton intelligence.
Steve Smith, a one-time Clinton aide who pleaded guilty in 1995 to a misdemeanor after an investigation by Starr's office, testified for McDougal at her trial. He, too, said Starr's prosecutors wanted him to lie to confirm their version of events.
"One of the things that became clear to me was that they had a story in mind, an idea of how things happened" and they weren't interested in hearing anything else, Smith said on the stand.
Did prosecutors ignore information that didn't fit in with the crimes they were investigating?
"I think that was the tendency of some of the prosecutors, and perhaps even some of the FBI agents after a while," I.C. Smith said. "I'm not trying to paint the prosecutors in this things as bad guys. It's just a difference in philosophy. There's no sinister motive on their part to do these things."
And I.C. Smith said he wants it publicly known that he is convinced that no FBI agent had ever failed to pursue -- or was asked not to pursue -- information favorable to the Clintons.
Starr has procured more than a dozen convictions in Arkansas, and criticisms of his zeal are legion, but Smith said the independent counsel should have moved more swiftly and aggressively.
For instance, Smith said Starr's prosecutors appeared to sit on their hands after their 1996 success in winning the felony convictions of Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, Susan McDougal and her ex-husband, James McDougal, who later died in prison.
"They waited two years there where they didn't put a pelt on the wall," Smith said. That allowed the tide of public perception to turn against the office, he said.
Smith also said Starr should have retried two Perryville bankers, Herby Branscum Jr. and Robert M. Hill, after a federal jury in Little Rock acquitted them of some charges in 1996 and deadlocked on others.
He said Starr should have indicted Deputy White House Counsel Bruce Lindsey, a Clinton confidant, instead of just naming Lindsey as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1996 trial -- though Smith did not specifically attribute the decision not to indict Lindsey to limitations on FBI investigators.
Smith said Starr's office should have moved more quickly to indict Susan McDougal for criminal contempt and obstruction of justice in the face of her refusal to cooperate with investigators despite court orders granting her immunity. (She served 18 months behind bars for civil contempt.)
And he said prosecutors should move now to retry Susan McDougal on the criminal contempt charges on which the jury deadlocked last month. Starr's prosecutors have not yet announced whether they will.
According to Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal evidence and ethics at New York University Law School, prosecutors always direct interviewing and fact-gathering in major federal investigations.
"The agent serves the prosecutor. That's critical. The prosecutor calls the shots," Gillers said. "So if the ultimate goal is the possibility of a courtroom presentation of evidence, then the prosecutor knows more than the agent, in general.
"I think [law enforcement investigators] contribute to the dialogue, but in the end the boss is the prosecutor."
from PDL 1999-Mar-18, from Newsday:
Justice Dept. To Probe Starr
Federal court clears way for Justice investigation of StarrWASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court cleared the way today for the Justice Department to investigate the official conduct of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.
The special court that names independent counsels dismissed a challenge by Landmark Legal Foundation, a conservative group that sought an order to block the Justice Department investigation. The court said it had limited jurisdiction and could not go beyond the powers set out in the Ethics In Government Act.
from PDL 1999-Mar-3, from NewsMax:
D'Amato: Starr Botched Whitewater, Blocked Bombshell Testimony
Al D'Amato, onetime head of the Senate Whitewater Committee, said on Tuesday that independent counsel Kenneth Starr botched his own probe into the Whitewater scandal.
"Starr, I just think he did a horrific job. That's my opinion," the former New York senator told NewsMax.com's Carl Limbacher.
D'Amato, whose previous criticisms of the independent counsel were spun in the press as an attack on the prosecutor's partisanship, indicated instead that his real gripe was the IC's reluctance to work with his Senate investigation.
D'Amato hit Starr hard when questioned about his own committee's attempts to learn if the late Vincent Foster had been tipped off about an impending FBI search of Judge David Hale's office just hours before Foster was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head.
"I have to say that Ken Starr didn't help us. Oh no, he went out of his way, because he got one of his great friends to represent Judge Hale and insisted on immunity from prosecution so we couldn't hear the story of what actually took place." Hale was a key Whitewater witness whose cooperation with Starr's predecessor, Robert Fiske, launched the Whitewater probe.
D'Amato added, "There was an absolute total fear on the part of the Democrats that Judge Hale, if permitted to testify, would have rocked the country," saying that Starr's insistence on immunity for Hale only kept the truth from coming out.
Just months after Foster's 1993 death, Hale fingered President Clinton in Whitewater wrongdoing. Foster, while deputy White House counsel, had doubled as the Clintons' Whitewater lawyer.
In what may be a harbinger of things to come should the first lady decide to make a bid for D'Amato's old job, the Senate veteran revisited Mrs. Clinton's own role in the Whitewater cover-up the night Foster died.
"We were able to pin down with some definiteness phone calls at a specific time from the first lady to her chief of staff, Maggie Williams. The initial phone call came while [Mrs. Clinton's] plane was in the air. And then another call followed, as soon as the plane landed, to Maggie Williams. And within a matter of 15 minutes of that second call, Maggie Williams was in Vince Foster's office."
In 1995, Williams testified that she returned to the White House after learning of Foster's death and entered his office in the hope that she'd find him there, still alive. D'Amato told Limbacher Williams' alibi was "absolutely ridiculous," adding that a Secret Service officer saw Williams removing files from Foster's office.
The senator's new candor included criticism of the Justice Department, which he said had "totally dropped the ball" and was "absolutely bullied" by the White House in the aftermath of Foster's death. Nearly six years later, Starr has yet to report his own conclusions on the Foster office phase of his Whitewater probe.
D'Amato responded to Limbacher's questions while filling in for the vacationing Bob Grant, whose nationally syndicated radio show is heard in New York on WOR.
from TPDL 1999-Feb-4, from NewsMax, by Jeremy Reynalds:
Starr's China Connection
WASHINGTON -- A Miami lawyer is seeking the removal of Kenneth Starr as independent counsel because Starr, at the same time he was investigating the Clintons, worked for a company wholly owned by the Chinese government.
"This is one of the most egregious examples of conflict of interest and ethics violations I have seen," lawyer Jack Thompson said, explaining his motion seeking Starr's ouster. The motion was filed this week with Attorney General Janet Reno, a federal ethics official, and the three-judge panel that appointed Starr.
In his motion, Thompson claims that Starr violated the conflict of interest provisions of the Office of Independent Counsel law.
According to the 1994 independent counsel statute, only the attorney general can remove a court-appointed independent counsel.
Thompson said he also filed the motion with the three-judge panel that appointed Starr "because there is nothing in the law prohibiting them from finding Starr violated conflict of interest rules."
Thompson also has requested the panel use its power to order his motion appended to all reports Starr has filed or will file with the court.
Specifically, Thompson notes that at the same time Starr was independent counsel he served as a paid legal counsel to CitiSteel, a Delaware steel company wholly owned by CITIC. CITIC -- or the Chinese International Trust and Investment Company -- is considered the financial arm of China's People's Liberation Army and is chaired by Wang Jun.
According to court records, Starr represented CitiSteel in a case before a federal appellate court. Starr argued that the new Chinese owners were lawful when, after they bought the company, CITIC refused to recognize the company's union. The court agreed with Starr and the Chinese owners in a ruling issued in 1995.
Wang Jun is a shadowy, high-level communist official who also is chairman of Poly Group, another enterprise controlled by China's PLA. Poly Group was mired in controversy in 1996 when it was revealed that Wang Jun had met Bill Clinton at the White House. Days after the meeting, the administration moved to waive customs restrictions and allowed the company to import semiautomatic rifles into the United States.
Thompson said the Chinese connection raises so many questions about Starr's "independence" that Starr should be removed from office.
In his motion to Reno, Thompson wrote, "You should treat as a red flag the fact that Ken Starr, a man reputed to be highly sensitive to any appearance of improprieties by the OIC, did not even alert you to this Chinese connection. This is very troubling."
Thompson, a conservative Republican who once opposed Reno in an election for the post of Miami-Dade's prosecutor, reminded Reno that the independent counsel statute prohibits Starr from representing "in any matter any person involved in any investigation or prosecution under this chapter."
"It has been widely publicized that Wang Jun attended a White House fundraising 'coffee' for Clinton, that the Chinese government made efforts to help the Clinton-Gore '96 campaign. And it is also clear that Starr was on Wang Jun's payroll at the same time he was supposed to be prosecuting the Clintons," Thompson told NewsMax.com.
Press reports have indicated widespread attempts by the Chinese government to influence the American electoral process. The Washington Post has reported that the FBI concluded the Chinese funneled millions of dollars to Democratic National Committee coffers during the 1996 election.
"The Year of the Rat," a 1998 book authored by two former House investigators who examined campaign finance abuses, details close ties between the Chinese and Bill Clinton -- ties dating back to his days as governor of Arkansas.
Thompson's motion also notes that Starr's China connection raises another conflict in the person of Webster Hubbell.
"There is a Starr indictment pending against your former No. 3 person at Justice, Mr. Webster Hubbell, for alleged receipt of $600,000 in hush money and failure to pay federal income taxes thereon. It is alleged that much of this hush money to Mr. Hubbell was paid by the Indonesian Riady family. The Riadys have direct ties to the ... People's Liberation Army arms merchant, Wang Jun."
Thompson said that, while Starr may be willing to "inconvenience" Clinton by pushing the Lewinsky case, there's an even more important issue to consider. With an obvious conflict of interest, is he willing to "inconvenience" his client, Wang Jun?
"To be more direct, if the money trail leads from Hubbell to the Riadys to Wang Jun, the American people deserve, and the statute specifically mandates, an independent counsel unfettered and not compromised by loyalties to clients in following that money trail," Thompson wrote to Reno.
A spokesperson for the Office of the Independent Counsel said that Starr had no comment on Thompson's actions.
Thompson agrees that Starr has made a serious effort to prosecute the president on the Lewinsky matter, but added that the independent counsel's performance has been less than stellar.
"You have to remember, Starr never really received Monica's cooperation against the president. So his case that Clinton obstructed justice is a weak one. If the Senate doesn't convict, Starr may have put us on a wild, sexual goose chase.
"Starr has had many areas to investigate, from the death of Vincent Foster, the Whitewater matter, the Travelgate scandal, witness tampering, and the outrageous FBI Filegate case, and Starr claims he found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons in any of these matters.
"It's time he be removed and a new independent counsel be appointed to properly finish the job," Thompson said.
from TPDL 1999-Jan-19, from The American Spectator, by Ben Stein:
I'm Asking You
Now, here is a question. Why isn't Ken Starr indicting Larry Flynt for jury tampering? There are federal laws against tampering with a jury, attempting to influence the trier of fact or law, and also laws against extortion and blackmail. Larry Flynt has admitted that he is paying money to dig up dirt -- and we all have dirt in our lives -- to try to help Clinton in the Senate trial and before that in the House impeachment. The Senate trial is exactly analogous to a trial in court. Why isn't Flynt tampering with the trial when he blackmails the Senate or the House?
Of course, we all know he's working with the White House. So, why isn't Clinton indicted for jury tampering? A defendant in a trial is not allowed to blackmail the jurors and the judge. But that's exactly what Clinton is doing here, isn't it?
Why does he not get a new referral of impeachment for that? How can the Democrats in Congress stand still for it? Don't they know they're next if this gets to be the way business is done in DC?
And speaking of law, why don't we lawyers file a whistle blower lawsuit to collect back from Clinton the tens of millions of tax dollars he spent on defending the lie that he did not have sex with "that woman, Miss Lewinsky"? Why is what Clinton did any different from what a bureaucrat does when he embezzles money or throws a contract to his girlfriend? Why has Clinton gotten away with this kind of theft?
And why not a suit to recover the billion he spent bombing Iraq -- money that should have gone to military pay raises -- just to distract Congress from his lies? That was waste and embezzlement, too.
I am telling you, law has a lot of applications that could help send Clinton back to the home for aging would-be dictators. Let's use 'em.
Trial lawyers working for Paula Jones brought Clinton to this pass. Lawyers could do a lot more. Where are they when we need them?
from TPDL 1998-Dec-21, from Agence France Presse:
Ken Starr passed up chance to trap Clinton in devastating lie
WASHINGTON, Dec 20 (AFP) - Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr had, but declined, a chance to trap Bill Clinton in such a stark lie that it could have destroyed the president overnight, Time magazine reports this week.
In its annual "Man of the Year" issue -- this year presenting the honor to men of the year Starr and Clinton -- the prosecutor told the magazine he passed up the chance because it seemed like the "right thing to do."
Before Clinton testified to the grand jury, Starr had received the results of DNA tests on the infamous stains from Monica Lewinsky's blue dress but was not legally obligated to inform the president he had them.
The prosecutors had a choice: "keep secret the results of the DNA analysis until after the president's testimony, or ... tip off the president before he swore his oath," Time said.
Instead of setting the trap, which could have led Clinton to continue to deny his relationship with Monica Lewinsky under oath, Starr immediately asked the White House for a presidential blood sample, saying he had a "substantial" precise factual basis for the request, Time said.
Starr told the magazine in an interview that he tipped off the president to the test results because it was "in everyone's interest to get to the bottom of this."
In its men of the year story on Starr, Time contends that much of the criticism of Starr -- that he mistreated Lewinsky and colluded with Linda Tripp and Paula Jones' lawyers to entrap the president - - has "little basis in fact."
An official from the public integrity unit of the Justice Department monitored Starr's investigation.
He was there to say "watch out for this, or watch out for that," Starr told Time.
The prosecutor, whom Time Managing Editor Walter Issacson compared to "Captain Ahab in his relentless pursuit of Moby Dick," told the magazine he was not aware that Congress was going to publicly release the entire contents of his sexually explicit report.
In addition, Starr conceded to the magazine that his report should have directly quoted Lewinsky as saying no one at the White House had ever told her to lie about her relationship with Clinton.
"It cannot fairly be said we were trying to hide that, but it did give (the other side) a nice debating point," Starr said.
from PDL 1999-Mar-23, from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, by Erica Werner:
Starr team pressed him to lie in '95, witness says
A longtime critic of independent counsel Kenneth Starr testified in Little Rock federal court Monday that Starr's prosecutors pressured him to lie under oath to confirm their version of events.
On the stand despite heated behind-the-scenes efforts by Starr's team to keep him from testifying, Steve Smith described an experience at the hands of Starr's deputies that's much like the one Susan McDougal has said she feared.
McDougal is on trial for criminal contempt of court and obstruction of justice for refusing in September 1996 and April 1998 to answer questions before a grand jury investigating President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
McDougal wouldn't talk because Starr's team wanted her to lie so they could trap the Clintons, her lawyers argue. Starr's deputies contend that immunity and a judge's orders meant McDougal had to cooperate.
Jurors will almost certainly hear the story straight from McDougal today, her lawyer Mark Geragos promised Monday afternoon.
McDougal's testimony is what trial watchers have been waiting for. Geragos has pledged that "most things will be fair game" when his client takes the stand -- including the questions that she's on trial before U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr. for not answering.
Smith, a longtime Clinton supporter who after an investigation by Starr's office pleaded guilty in 1995 to a misdemeanor charge for misapplying a $65,000 loan, said Starr's deputies met with him before a July 1995 Whitewater grand jury appearance and gave him a "script" to read.
The script, said Smith, contained lies.
"They asked me to implicate others in a criminal conspiracy," Smith said, explaining after court that "others" referred to former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker. "It was one of the most intimidating things I've ever experienced."
Smith said he spent "hours" correcting the script so he could testify truthfully before the grand jury.
"One of the things that became clear to me was that they had a story in mind, an idea of how things happened," said Smith, now a communications professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. During his 10-12 meetings with independent counsel investigators, Smith realized that they weren't interested in information that didn't fit their narrative, he testified.
To any Whitewater watchers in the packed courtroom Monday, Smith's statements came as no surprise.
Smith is a former member of Clinton's staff while Clinton was attorney general and also worked during Clinton's first gubernatorial term. Smith gave similar testimony during the 1996 trial of McDougal, her late ex-husband James and Tucker, saying then, too, that he felt pressed to falsely implicate Tucker.
Smith has made no secret about his frosty feelings toward Starr and even assumed the pen name John Wilkes to self-publish a work of fiction lampooning the independent counsel: The Star Chamber: The Independent Counsel's Investigation of the President.
Smith also has accused Starr of deliberately misrepresenting his plea agreement during a news conference in front of the federal courthouse.
But associate independent counsels Mark Barrett and Julie Myers tried hard to keep jurors from getting to know Smith. They failed, just as they'd failed earlier in the day to bar testimony from Little Rock lawyer Richard Holiman.
"This is going to confuse the jury, turning this trial into a three-ring circus," Myers said to Howard of Holiman's planned testimony about two former clients whose testimony Starr's office sought. But Howard admitted both men as witnesses, instructing jurors not to take what they said as factual, but as evidence of the independent counsel's motives and modus operandi.
The judge's ruling was a victory for McDougal because it allowed Geragos to press forward with his strategy of making Starr's office look bad.
Holiman testified that he represented Sarah Hawkins, a Little Rock woman who rose to a top administrative position at Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association, the McDougals' failed S&L. Hawkins was subpoenaed to testify for the McDougals in their 1996 trial, but backed out, Holiman said, after Starr's office reopened an investigation of her that they had closed just weeks earlier.
Tucker and the McDougals were convicted of felonies in the 1996 trial.
Holiman also briefly represented David Henley, one of Susan McDougal's brothers, when he was subpoenaed to appear before the Whitewater grand jury in 1996, shortly after McDougal's convictions.
The subpoena, coming after McDougal's convictions but before sentencing, seemed like "harassment," Holiman said.
Cross-examining Holiman, Myers tried to counter the impact of his testimony. She focused on whether Hawkins was prepared to testify if granted immunity in 1996 -- Holiman said he couldn't address that.
And Myers noted that Henley and Bill Henley, another McDougal brother, testified before the grand jury under the same grants of immunity given McDougal, without ever being prosecuted because of their testimony.
Smith will take the stand for cross-examination today.
After court, Barrett downplayed his side's failure to keep Holiman and Smith out of court.
"The defense case has begun," Barrett said matter-of-factly. As for the judge's ruling opening the door to other witnesses with anti- Starr tales to tell, "We'll deal with it," he said.
In his comments after court, Geragos said happily, "So far, everything we said we were going to elicit in opening statements came in today."
Also Monday, Geragos tried to get Howard to dismiss a juror, 61- year-old Charles C. Adams of Hazen, because Geragos had learned through a circuitous route -- ending with a Pulaski County jail chaplain leaving a message on McDougal's father's answering machine -- that Adams might be predisposed against McDougal and the Clintons. Adams gave no sign of that during jury selection.
Howard expressed frustration with the third-hand hearsay, but nonetheless authorized a subpoena for Adams' sister and neighbor Evelyn Gentry, the original source of the information.
Court officials brought Gentry in from Hazen after lunch, and she said she'd frequently heard her brother say Clinton should be impeached.
But Adams had never expressed an opinion of McDougal, she said.
Howard ruled that given Adams' claims that he could be fair, Gentry's information was not grounds to dismiss the juror. Earlier in the trial, an alternate juror was dismissed because it was found that she had a passing acquaintance with the daughter of a witness and a roundabout connection to one of McDougal's brothers.
The courtroom was more crowded Monday than it has been since the trial started March 8. Among the crowd were Cindy and Fred Mann from Wichita, Kan., with their 31/2 year-old son Elliott. Elliott was wearing an "I was subpoenaed by Ken Starr" T-shirt.
If found guilty, McDougal faces fines of up to $750,000 and a prison term that Howard would determine. She has already served 31/2 months in prison for the four felony convictions, on top of 18 months for civil contempt because of her 1996 refusal to testify before the grand jury.
from TPDL 1998-Dec-31, from Insight, by Paul M. Rodriguez:
Honey Pot of Info Causes a Swarm
The White House has launched an investigation and rumors are flying at the president's compound following an exclusive report in news alert! ("Looking for Information in All the Wrong Places," and "Computer Glitch Leads to Trove of 'Lost' E-Mails at White House," Dec. 28) exposing the existence of detailed telephone records never turned over under subpoena and discovery of "lost" e-mails that include private chit-chats between Monica Lewinsky and friends. Justice Department and congressional investigators now are working quietly, as one federal law-enforcement source tells news alert!, and "rapidly before the files disappear," to track down the records long sought by investigators.
White House insiders and government lawyers familiar with the flurry of activity say that beepers and phones have been buzzing to determine who spilled the beans and to get control of the records before federal agents swarm in. "They're in a panic over this," a West Wing source tells news alert!
Although a White House spokesman sought to minimize the importance of Insight's disclosure of the e-mails, of which there are between 50,000 and 100,000, by claiming some involving Lewinsky appear to have been duplicates, another White House aide confirms that nobody knows for sure how many others are originals that should have been turned over to investigators upon discovery in midsummer 1998. "It's a legal headache," a White House lawyer says.
The telephone records are a completely different matter. "We were told they did not exist," one federal law-enforcement source says. "If we can find them they will prove to be invaluable." Indeed, the details of these records, which go back years, would show who was called and when, by dates and times -- information that, to date, federal and congressional investigators have failed to secure.
Curiously, Justice Department officials do not appear eager to secure the records, according to several federal law-enforcement sources. "It's as though they don't care you've discovered this gold mine."
With Attorney General Janet Reno dousing an FBI-led task force probing campaign-finance wrongdoings, some agents and prosecutors believe they would not get support to force the White House to turn over the gold mine of records uncovered by news alert!. "I must confess I don't understand why nobody's acted on your tip," a dejected federal law-enforcement source says. Some folks at FBI headquarters are wondering the same thing. Stay tuned.
from TPDL 1998-Dec-17, from NewsMax 1998-Dec-12, by Carl Limbacher:
Starr Withholding Impeachable Evidence
David Schippers, chief Republican counsel for the House committee that is poised to vote out four articles of impeachment against President Clinton, revealed late on Thursday that Attorney General Janet Reno and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr are withholding key evidence of impeachable crimes from Congress.
With next week's impeachment vote in the full House expected to be decided by a razor thin margin, Schippers revelation means that the president could survive in office despite clear and compelling evidence that he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors beyond those developed in the Monica Lewinsky investigation.
In his closing arguments on Thursday, Schippers explained:
"We have received and reviewed additional information and evidence from the Independent Counsel, and have developed additional information from diverse sources.
Unfortunately, because of the extremely strict time limits placed upon us, a number of very promising leads had to be abandoned. We just ran out of time. In addition, many other allegations of possible serious wrongdoing cannot be presented publicly at this time by virtue of circumstances totally beyond our control.
For example, we uncovered more incidents involving probable direct and deliberate obstruction of justice, witness tampering, perjury and abuse of power. We were, however, informed both by the Department of Justice and by the Office of the Independent Counsel that to bring forth publicly that evidence at this time would seriously compromise pending criminal investigations that are nearing completion. We have bowed to their suggestion."
Attorney General Reno's reluctance to turn over the goods is unsurprising. Only last Monday she declined to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the White House fundraising scandal after two years of stonewalling on that issue. The New York Times, once an admirer of Reno's, has recently described her tenure as the most compromised of any attorney generals since Watergate's John Mitchell.
Mr. Starr's decision, on the other hand, is as inexplicable as it is shocking. His reluctance to turn over the full dossier on Clinton while Congress considers the President's impeachment defies logic. What other "pending criminal investigations" could possible take precedence over one now weighing Clinton's fitness to continue in office?
Mr. Schippers noted that he has been told that those other investigations are "nearing completion". But it is widely believed that Starr regards a sitting president as unindictable. Should his completed investigations reveal new evidence of perjury, obstruction and witness tampering against Clinton after the House votes down impeachment - what then? And even if the House votes to impeach, will the Senate be able to consider new allegations not ruled on by the House?
Should impeachment based on Monicagate fail, the likelihood that the House would commence a second impeachment inquiry based on new evidence is beyond remote. Americans could be saddled with a president faced with broad based and credible allegations of criminality that render him unfit to serve. But because of Ken Starr's proprietary foot-dragging, the only recourse would be post- presidential prosecution.
But this year's impeachment is the World Series. Why is Mr. Starr saving his power hitters for next season's spring training? And even in this less than satisfying scenario, one well placed presidential pardon could leave the independent counsel scoreless, albeit with the bases loaded.
In truth, Starr's latest decision to withhold evidence at this key moment in history is part of his long pattern of less than aggressive prosecution. Only two days before Mr. Schippers revealed that the OIC was withholding evidence, Judge Royce Lamberth reversed a previous decision barring Judicial Watch from deposing Linda Tripp about Filegate. Tripp's Judicial Watch deposition had been scheduled for September, only to be blocked at the last minute when Starr's deputies complained that their own Filegate investigation was at an extremely sensitive stage and that any questioning of Tripp could torpedo the probe.
Two months later Ken Starr announced that he had found no evidence whatsoever implicating President Clinton in Filegate. Moreover, the OIC had determined that the scandal went no higher than two junior White House employees, D. Craig Livingstone and Anthony Marceca. And even after implicating Livingstone and Marceca, Starr offered no explanation as to why even they have not been indicted. Whatever happened to the "extremely sensitive" evidence Starr claimed would be compromised by Tripp's Judicial Watch testimony?
Only one explanation is possible. Starr and his investigators have rubber stamped that White House alibi that Filegate was just "a bureaucratic snafu", where even Livingstone and Marceca were mere victims of a giant misunderstanding.
Secret Service testimony contradicting the White House's Filegate alibi, the six month gap in Livingstone's Filegate log, the stacks of FBI files in William Kennedy's White House office as well as Linda Tripp's report that FBI files were being uploaded into White House computers - all that, you see, means nothing. And when William Clinger's Oversight Committee handed the OIC several Filegate criminal referrals in Sept. 1996, including one for chief of staff Mack McLarty, they were simply mistaken - bureaucratic snafu-wise.
Starr has evidently taken a pass on a long list of leads. Remember the debriefing notes taken by White House lawyers Jane Sherburne and Miriam Nemetz after Hillary Clinton's Jan. 26, 1996 appearance before Starr's grand jury? The White House fought tooth and nail to keep that evidence out of Starr's hands, eventually losing the protracted battle they waged all the way to the Supreme Court.
The night of that decision, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff predicted that if the Hillary notes were innocuous or only slightly damaging, the White House would promptly release the evidence themselves to minimize the damage. They didn't - and neither did Starr. And that's the last we've ever heard about the issue.
The mystery Whitewater check made out to Bill Clinton found in an abandoned car, the second set of Mrs. Clinton's billing records discovered by Lisa Foster in her attic, the memos by David Watkins and other White House aides pointing to Mrs. Clinton's Travelgate perjury, Mrs. Clinton's confession to RTC investigators that she shredded Castle Grande records one jump ahead of the sheriff, Jim McDougal's allegation that he had the President's promised to pardon him on tape (The NY Daily News, April 27, 1997) and even ominous evidence emerging in recent months that McDougal's death was perhaps less than accidental - all of this has apparently disappeared down the black hole of Ken Starr's never ending investigation.
Consider this: Insight Magazine (Dec. 28) now reports that a treasure trove of White House telephone records have materialized at the Old Executive Office Building - right next door to the White House. Investigators have been stonewalled for years on these records by Clinton lawyers who claimed they didn't exist. Of particular interest would be the record of Helen Dickey's phone call to Gov. Jim Guy Tucker on the day Vince Foster died. Dickey testified she made the call at 10:30pm.
But Arkansas trooper Roger Perry, who answered the phone and says he was told by Dickey that Foster had shot himself in the White House parking lot, signed a sworn affidavit stating that their conversation took place as early as 6:00pm Washington time - 15 minutes before Foster's body was discovered in Ft. Marcy Park. Perry's timeline is corroborated by fellow trooper Larry Patterson and Federal Marshal Lynn Davis, both of whom say Perry told them of Foster's death immediately after the Dickey call.
In Starr's final report on Foster's death, he reports that records for Dickey's call were simply "not available". Well, now they apparently are available. If Mr. Starr is interested - he isn't letting on.
We can sympathize with Mr. Schippers as he explains that his case against the President has been limited to Monica-related crimes because Ken Starr is saving his best material for a rainy day. But we can only hope the rains come before the full House decides that Monicagate just isn't enough to impeach Bill Clinton.
from TPDL 1998-Oct-5, from The Washington Times, by Bill Sammon:
Testimony on affairs wasn't pursued
Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's decision not to pursue a Secret Service officer's testimony that President Clinton might have had half a dozen affairs in the White House appears to undercut the Democratic argument that the case is "just about sex."
There is no indication that Mr. Starr's office interviewed the six women whose names were mentioned by the Secret Service uniformed officer, Brent Chinery, to the grand jury July 23. Although the House Judiciary Committee blacked out the names from transcripts of Mr. Chinery's testimony, the unedited portions of his testimony indicate at least some of the women are White House staffers, including one who possibly "used to work for George Stephanopoulos," a former top Clinton adviser.
Although some Republicans and constitutional scholars have argued that such misconduct in and of itself might be sufficient grounds for impeachment, Mr. Starr made no mention of the women in his 445-page report to Congress that lists potentially impeachable offenses by the president. He also did not pursue Monica Lewinsky's testimony that Mr. Clinton had confessed to having affairs with "hundreds" of women before he was 40.
Instead, Mr. Starr concentrated on accusing the president of crimes committed in the effort to conceal his affair with Miss Lewinsky, who had obliquely threatened to expose the relationship if Mr. Clinton did not secure a satisfactory job for her. These charges are perjury, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, attempted obstruction of justice and abuse of constitutional authority -- each of which the president, through his attorneys, has denied.
The charges do not include the affair itself, which the president has acknowledged. Nonetheless, Mr. Clinton's attorneys last month criticized Mr. Starr's initial report -- which did not include the Chinery testimony and other evidence that Congress made public last week -- as "little more than an unreliable, one-sided account of sexual behavior" designed to "embarrass the president and titillate the public."
Since then, the attack on the report's salaciousness has become a familiar theme of the president's defenders. It is not clear whether the House Judiciary Committee, which is expected to vote as early as today on whether to initiate an impeachment inquiry, will be as reluctant as Mr. Starr to pursue reports of additional presidential affairs.
It is possible that Congress would consider such behavior by a president reckless and morally repugnant -- and therefore worthy of consideration as an impeachable offense. Mr. Chinery said his conclusion about the affairs, which was evidently shared by other Secret Service officers, was based partly on observation and partly on rumor or speculation. As evidence that one of the women had an unusually close relationship with the president, Mr. Chinery said if she "had a problem, she didn't go to ... her boss. She went directly to the president with it. She had a very -- I mean a very close relationship with the president."
The Judiciary Committee did not black out the name of Eleanor Mondale, a CBS News reporter whose visits with the president raised suspicions among the Secret Service, according to Mr. Chinery. Miss Mondale, daughter of former Vice President Walter Mondale, has denied any impropriety, although one of her visits late last year so infuriated Miss Lewinsky that she made a scene outside the White House.
Rumors of multiple affairs by the president have been a concern among White House officials for years, according to evidence made public last week. Mr. Clinton's secretary, Betty Currie, testified that in 1994, she and presidential assistant Nancy Hernreich discussed women who were linked to their boss.
"We had a conversation about women who had been rumored to have been associated with the president and she gave me a list of names that she had throughout her knowledge of the president," Mrs. Currie testified. "And some of the names have resurfaced again. Some I've never heard of."
According to former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, Miss Lewinsky was not the only employee whose closeness to the president caught the disapproving eye of former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Evelyn S. Lieberman. "Evelyn would express concern" about another female friend of the president's, Mr. Panetta testified. Although the woman's name was redacted from his testimony, Mr. Panetta described her as a White House employee who "moved around in terms of her responsibilities. I think she was at one point kind of the principal liaison to the gay community." "I think she worked in the Democratic Convention, Harold Ickes," added Mr. Panetta, referring to the former White House deputy chief of staff.
According to Miss Lewinsky, Mr. Clinton found it so difficult to resist other women that he "kept a calendar on how long he had been good." This is consistent with the testimony of longtime Clinton adviser Dick Morris, who told the grand jury of a conversation he had with the president after the Lewinsky story broke in January. "I said, `It occurred to me that I may be the only sex addict you know and maybe I can help you,'" said Mr. Morris, whose relationship with a prostitute prompted his ouster from the president's inner circle in 1996. "He said, 'You know, ever since the election, I've tried to shut myself down. I've tried to shut my body down, sexually, I mean. But sometimes I slipped up and with this girl I just slipped up.'"
from WorldNetDaily, from Joseph Farah's Between the Lines of 1998-Nov-20:
Kenneth Starr's false dichotomy
Kenneth Starr was pretty persuasive in his opening remarks to the House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing yesterday -- especially if you didn't know anything about how he has really carried out his duties as independent counsel for the last four years.
Toward the end of his statement, Starr told the nation what a great job he did on his previous referral to Congress -- his report on the death of White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster.
"We were painstaking in examining evidence, questioning witnesses, and calling upon experts in homicide and suicide," he said. "We were criticized during that investigation for being too thorough, taking too long. But time has proved the correctness of our approach. After an extensive investigation, the office produced a report that addressed the many questions, confronted the difficult issues, laid out new evidence, and reached a definitive conclusion. Over time, the controversy over the Foster tragedy has dissipated because we insisted on being uncompromisingly thorough both in the investigation and in our report."
As a key participant in a parallel investigation of Foster's death, let me state unequivocally that Starr is dead wrong about both the thoroughness of his own probe and the accuracy of its conclusion that the Clinton friend and top aide died by his own hand in Fort Marcy Park in July 1993.
The evidence -- physical and circumstantial -- simply doesn't add up to such a verdict.
Starr's report on Foster doesn't even deal with some of the thorniest issues raised by Foster's death -- the second wound, the inability to find the bullet, the eyewitness testimony insisting Foster's car was not in the parking lot an hour before his body was found, the lack of fingerprints, the confusion over the identification of the gun and more.
Starr's own words seem to betray his real agenda with the Foster case. He's pleased that the controversy has dissipated. That, he believes, justifies his findings. It does not. He also seems to raise the Foster report in an effort to show how fair and even-handed he is with respect to Clinton.
A false dichotomy is emerging from these hearings: Either you support Starr, or you support Clinton and his Democratic Party sycophant cronies on the committee. That is a bad choice. That is no choice. And Americans do not have to accept such bogus alternatives. They should, instead, demand the truth -- wherever it may lead and no matter how much controversy it stirs.
Starr found no evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton in the Filegate and Travelgate scandals. Do you know why? Because he didn't investigate them.
Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch points out that in deposition after deposition, his organization has asked key Filegate witnesses if they have ever talked to Starr's staff. The answer is almost always no.
"Even Mack McLarty, the president's closest friend and the White House chief of staff when the FBI files were illegally obtained, was not questioned," he says. "Nor was Terry Good, the keeper of the FBI files. And, Hillary Clinton, who Dick Morris has called the mastermind of Filegate, and who hired Craig Livingstone -- a bar bouncer -- was questioned for only nine minutes, and then over tea and coffee."
Judicial Watch, which has interviewed Linda Tripp, indicates she will testify she witnessed FBI files being misused in the White House Counsel's Office. When Klayman deposed William Kennedy, Livingstone's supervisor, he literally choked when asked if he had Republican FBI files in his office. When asked specifically if he reviewed James Baker's file, he went silent, then asked which James Baker he was being asked about.
This White House has a pattern of maintaining files on its enemies -- both real and perceived. I can testify from first-hand experience that the White House Counsel's Office began keeping files on me beginning in 1994. Yet it has refused to yield those dossiers claiming a bogus exemption under the Freedom of Information Act.
Could it be that Starr, who touted his own string of court victories in his remarks yesterday, will only advance cases that are, well, slam dunks?
Even Clinton's own FBI director, Louis Freeh, has admitted that the release of the FBI files to the White House was an "egregious violation of privacy ... without justification."
"Ken Starr -- who may become known as the next Gil Garcetti, after Judicial Watch wins its Filegate lawsuit -- disagrees," says Klayman. "Let's hope that Starr's lack of competence is not intentional and that he will, at a minimum, be remembered as a modern-day Inspector Clouseau, rather than the pliant pawn of a Congress that wants to dump impeachment."
Agreed. Now how do we go about getting an investigation of the investigator?
read The Starr Referral or download it as a zip file (this document is, of course, basically a waste of time)
from WorldNetDaily's E-mail to the Editor section, Monday 1998-Oct-5, by "GARLAND":
The Trouble with Starr report
There is so much media disinformation and fact suppression about the Starr "independent" prosecutor report, that I felt obligated to send you this information to express four very key, diverse points.
FIRST, the Starr report presented five grounds for impeachment on perjury and essentially six grounds for impeachment on obstruction of justice. The precedent of impeachment for lying under oath was set just 10 years ago when a judge named Walter Nixon was impeached in the southern district of Mississippi for issuing false statements to a grand jury. The precedent of impeachment for obstruction of justice was set in the 1974 Nixon impeachment inquiry, which was co-authored by Hillary Rodham and Bernard Nussbaum (the White House counsel who many of us believe was involved in a cover-up of the Vince Foster death).
SECOND, the Starr report is much more intriguing for what it DOES NOT contain rather than what it does contain. Media organizations have repeated over and over that Starr is a biased, prosecutor who is out to get the President. In reality, this is an incredibly gigantic lie, because the Starr report is missing all of the serious crimes that President has committed. For example, we know that:
THIRD, the following brief historical facts about the "independent" Whitewater prosecution team illustrates a cover-up that has been unreported by most media organizations:
- Clinton assisted James McDougal in bilking millions of dollars from Madison Guaranty;
- Clinton used the FBI, IRS, INS and Treasury to persecute his political adversaries;
- Clinton accepted millions of dollars from the Communist Chinese Gov't, some of which was within the scope of Starr's investigation;
FOURTH, in all likelihood, Starr agreed to cover up Clinton crimes because he too, has taken money from the Communist Gov't of China. Starr was retained by Citisteel, a Chinese government owned company, and personally argued and won their case during the time that Vince Foster's murder was covered-up. Starr's employer, Kirkland and Ellis, contributed 86 percent of its PAC money during that time in 1993-94 to Democrats and Starr contributed to the PAC. The Communist Chinese Gov't. influence is particularly significant, since it now appears that they financed the entire 1992 Clinton presidential campaign.
- Janet Reno initially appointed Whitewater prosecutor, Robert Fiske, a lawyer for International Paper, the company that sold Clinton and McDougal the Whitewater land in the first place;
- When Fiske was exposed, he was replaced by Starr who was already on the original Reno short list;
- Starr then hired more Democrats, like Sam Dash and Mark Tuohey, who had a party for Janet Reno in his house and later corrupted the investigation of Vince Foster's murder;
- When Miquel Rodriquez, an honest liberal democrat prosecutor who tried repeatedly to get the facts, went to Starr to complain that Tuohey was interfering with the investigation, Starr did nothing and Rodriquez then resigned the investigation and stated later to investigative reporter Chris Ruddy that "As an ethical person, I don't believe I could be involved with what they were doing";
- In the FBI file case, Starr has not even interviewed key witnesses such as Mack McLarty, White House chief of staff when the FBI file scandal occurred and Terry Good ,director of Records Management. (We know this from the Judicial Watch lawsuit conducted by the real independent prosecutor, Larry Klayman, who deposed John Huang and exposed Communist Chinese Gov't influence).
- Before the recent Clinton testimony, Starr withdrew his subpoena so that Bill Clinton would be able to find out what the questions were and not be forced to answer them during the testimony;
- Starr's office leaked the fact that the impeachment report would only contain the sex and lies scandal to many news agencies, thus proving that his office has been conspiring with the media.
IN CONCLUSION, over a year ago, many civic groups banded together to seek the impeachment of Bill Clinton on clearly defined issues of treason, bribery, obstructions of justice and Arkansas criminal activity. Within two months, the major media organizations, who could no longer continue covering up all of these facts, began attacking Bill Clinton for his immoral sex life so that they would appear to be unbiased. As a result, we have known for over a year that they would seek his resignation on the issue of sex. While we knew that the Starr investigation was corrupted enough to cover-up the murder of Vince Foster, we did not know whether or not Starr was also corrupted enough to be an accomplice to this scheme. Since Starr has thrown our nation into a soap opera of moral debate rather than expose the devastating evidence and get an immediate consensus from all Americans, we now know what happened since. Starr obviously got Janet Reno to expand his investigation to include Monica Lewinsky so that he could use it to cover-up the real crimes of Bill Clinton. That is why he concluded the sex scandal investigation so quickly and the other real criminal investigations have dragged on for four years.
Bill Clinton now has the opportunity to resign with reasonable assurance that Starr will continue the cover-up, Clinton will never be indicted and the American people will never know the truth. However, if Bill and Hillary Clinton decide to stay and fight there is still one last chance of exposure. The House Judiciary committee has the option to include additional incriminating evidence from all other investigations in the Articles of Impeachment. If Clinton does not resign and the majority Republican Judiciary Committee does not include evidence in those articles, then we will have proof of collusion between Republican and Democrat parties to cover-up criminal activity and we will have witnessed first-hand, the total corruption of the American political system.
from TPDL 1998-Nov-16, from NewsMax, by Christopher Ruddy:
If Monica Made Love to Webster Hubbell ...
Washington--If only Monica Lewinsky had made love to Webster Hubbell, the scandal known as "Whitewater" may have long been settled.
Last week, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr indicted Webster Hubbell for the third time on charges of 15 felonies, alleging that he was a key player in efforts to defraud a federally insured savings and loan.
Still, Hubbell has yet to spill the beans on his First Friends, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Starr made the announcement of the Hubbell indictment last Friday. Friday is the best day to make sure a story is buried in Saturday's newspapers, and old news by Monday. Presumably, Starr wanted to make little fanfare of his prosecution of Hubbell and the Whitewater scandal.
Compare Starr's inquiry of the Whitewater/Hubbell matters and the Lewinsky scandal.
Starr was advised of the Linda Tripp tapes of Monica Lewinsky in mid-January. Within days he was hauling key figures in the case before his grand jury.
By September, the ninth month of his investigation, Starr issued a voluminous and scathing report, and thousands of pages of ancillary documents to Congress detailing a sordid sexual relationship between Clinton and the intern, and an abuse of power so serious it warranted impeachment proceedings.
The sex-related scandal investigation was signed, sealed and delivered to Congress in nine months.
Starr took over the investigation of Webster Hubbell when he was appointed Independent Counsel in August, 1994.
Hubbell, the former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton and deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster, had served as associate attorney general before he resigned under a cloud in 1994.
Starr had inherited an sure-fire case of fraud by Hubbell, who had been double billing clients and pocketing money at the Rose Law Firm.
As part of the Clinton's Arkansas inner circle, Hubbell was in a unique position to connect the dots for Whitewater prosecutors. Hubbell not only knew about Whitewater matters from Clinton's days as Governor of Arkansas, he could link these events to administration efforts to obstruct justice after Clinton became president.
For instance, Hubbell, who spent the weekend with Vincent Foster before his untimely death in 1993, could have shed new light on administration efforts to interfere with investigators in Foster's death, as well as the efforts by the administration to impede the RTC (Resolution Trust Corporation)inquiry of Madison Guaranty bank.
Hubbell's cooperation with prosecutors could have deciphered the rosetta stone for most of the Clinton scandals, Vince Foster's death.
A cooperating Hubbell could have explained, why on the night of Foster's death, he indicated to another Rose Law firm partner, Philip Carroll, that Foster had been murdered and his death was not a suicide.
Hubbell might also have buttressed claims by Linda Tripp. Tripp testified before the Lewinsky grand jury that she "had reason to believe the Vince Foster tragedy was not depicted accurately under oath by members of the administration."
Starr missed the golden opportunity Hubbell offered. Instead of "hammering" Hubbell into telling all, Starr foolishly agreed in December of 1994 to a plea agreement with Hubbell on mail fraud and tax evasion charges before Hubbell delivered the goods on the Clintons.
Hubbell reneged on his agreement. Starr has acknowledged that. In 1995 Hubbell received a relatively light sentence of 19 months in federal prison, while Starr's cooperating witnesses, David Hale and Jim McDougal, were sentenced to much harsher terms.
Though Starr violated Justice Department practice in not de- briefing Hale before signing the plea agreement, his mistake was further compounded by a failure to immediately re-indict Hubbell on new charges, legal experts familiar with the case have stated.
Starr eventually did re-indict Hubbell this past spring, almost three- and-half-years later. This indictment on tax evasion charges was quickly dismissed by a federal judge.
Today, almost four years after Hubbell promised to assist Starr, he has yet to open his mouth and Starr has yet to force Hubbell to do so. Starr's Hubbell prosecution has been lackadaisical, and the delays have only benefited the Clinton administration.
With Starr dawdling, Clinton and his wife sailed through a first term, and have comfortably ensconced himself in a second one, unshaken by the sex-related allegations Starr dished out after a record-setting time for the procrastinating prosecutor.
from TPDL 1998-Nov-6, from WorldNetDaily, by David M. Bresnahan:
Is Starr holding out? Judiciary Committee member warns him to deliver it all
Reports of a strategy to indict both President Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton on criminal charges rather than give all evidence to Congress has angered at least one member of the House Judiciary Committee.
Recent reports from sources close to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's investigative team claim he is preparing to dump more evidence on the committee any day. They also claim that Starr does not wish to give everything to the House, because he would like to indict both Clintons once they are out of the White House.
It was also reported that Starr is fearful he will lose that opportunity if a pardon is granted to the Clintons. Turning over all evidence now might make a future indictment impossible. The same source reported that Starr does not wish to deal with the debatable question as to whether a sitting president can be indicted.
Rep. Chris Cannon, R-UT, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, expressed anger regarding the strategies reportedly being considered by Starr in an exclusive interview with WorldNetDaily yesterday. He is dismayed that Starr's priority may be to pursue indictments rather than to use everything he has to support impeachment.
"That is an arrogant statement of one of the things that I think might be going on in Ken Starr's mind. He is a smart enough man that he's weighed all those issues. I think that is absolutely bad, wrong and inappropriate," stated Cannon emphatically. "We don't want a weak president, because then our enemies are emboldened," he warned. "We don't want a president who hurts our national interests, because that's bad. It is clear that many things have happened that are deeply hurting our national interests. Some of those appear to be tied pretty closely to illegal campaign contributions. I don't care about this man going to jail for those things. I want him out of the position in which he can continue to do damage to the nation! I mean, golly, you can't stop the next president from pardoning the guy. You can't stop that. But if the pardon is done in the context that the American people don't support, it can be set aside."
"My message to anyone who's thinking and whispering those things to Kenneth Starr is: Stop it! That is un-American. That is not the way we do business in America. If you want to take on the president while he's a sitting president, hey there's an argument you can do that. I don't think that's appropriate. There's an argument. On the other hand, don't hold back while we have a problem in the White House because you want to have a shot at indicting the guy. That's just wrong."
The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing with Starr for Nov. 19.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT, has expressed concerns that even if the House votes favorably for articles of impeachment, the Senate may not have enough votes to convict. He has said previously that unless additional evidence is brought forward by Starr, there is little chance Senate Democrats will vote to remove Clinton.
Cannon disagrees. He said he believes that in the end Republicans and Democrats alike will vote according to their sense of duty and their conscience.
"This is historic," explained Cannon. "We have a couple hundred years behind us, a little more than that. We're looking forward, I hope, to more than a couple hundred years. People are going to look back at this impeachment process they way we look back at Andrew Johnson's impeachment process. That one had some silly elements to it. This one is serious. If we have a decay in American society because people decide it's OK to lie in court, that will be tagged not just to this president who did it, but to those people who voted to not remove him from office and make him an example. Prior votes to now have all been votes in the context of posturing and procedure. The vote on impeachment is going to be a vote for history. You've got to be pretty brazen against your conscience in an environment like that."
Additional evidence on charges not related to the White House sex scandal have been presented to the House Judiciary Committee, but not by Starr. The evidence was turned over by Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch, an organization that has filed a number of lawsuits against Clinton. Klayman says he was recently offered $2 million by Clinton's legal staff if he would drop his efforts. He turned the offer down.
Once the hearings begin, Cannon, along with all committee members, will be able to question Starr when he appears to testify on Nov. 19. Will Cannon ask Starr why the House has not been presented with evidence regarding the other scandals Starr has investigated for over four years?
"I guarantee that question is going to be asked," said Cannon. "If nobody asks before it comes to me -- if I don't get it in the first time -- I'll get it the second round. I am sure he will answer that question. Now he may be evasive," he assured. "Historically we've been very careful to avoid getting Congress involved in criminal investigations, but the only office in the land that carries with it a distinction as to criminal law is the office of the presidency. It is not clear that you cannot prosecute a president for a crime while he is in office. But it is clear from the nature of the Constitution that the remedy is to cleanse the political process first. Get the man out. Solve it politically. Get him gone. And then proceed with the criminal activity," explained Cannon.
In a news conference to outline plans to try to complete the hearing process by the end of the year, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde said he believes committee members will ultimately put partisanship aside and vote their conscience.
Contrary to the fears of Hatch, Cannon and Hyde both believe that conscience will bring many Democrats to a point where they will ultimately vote for impeachment -- and removal.
"I can be an optimist," said Cannon. "I believe when confronted with the opportunity to vote conscience, people will tend to vote their conscience. So I think it doesn't make a lot of sense to say that the votes aren't there, and it wouldn't make sense for the president especially, to say that the votes aren't there.
"Now Hatch has always said he doesn't know people in the context of the big 'if'. 'If' there is not more information. But he's also said recently that he's been approached by at least one senator saying 'please understand that there are people who may well vote against this president for reasons of conscience.' So I say, go through the process and let people vote. Let them vote their conscience," declared Cannon.
"If Starr comes forward (with more evidence), I don't think he's going to surprise anybody with his information. There's some interesting information out there. And frankly I think that now is the time for Starr to come forward and say, 'This is what I have.' In those areas where he hasn't wrapped it up and put a bow on it, he ought to say, 'I have something that is not clean and clear, but this is what I have. We'll turn it over to you (Congress), and we're going to continue our investigation, but you can take it and use it for your political purposes.' This is, in the end, the way we clean our political system. So yeah, I'd like to see Starr come forward," said Cannon.
from PDL 1999-Mar-19, from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, by Erica Werner:
Testimony: Indictment of first lady drafted in '96
Independent counsel Kenneth Starr's prosecutors had an indictment of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton drafted by September 1996, Starr's top Little Rock deputy testified in federal court Thursday.
Called by Susan McDougal's lawyers as a witness in her criminal contempt and obstruction of justice trial, W. Hickman Ewing Jr. also said he told colleagues he thought President Clinton and his wife weren't telling the truth about aspects of their Arkansas business dealings.
"I don't know if I used the 'L' word or not," Ewing said. "But I certainly expressed internally that I had a problem with some of the answers we got from the president and the first lady."
At various points throughout the wide-ranging Whitewater investigation, Mrs. Clinton's indictment was said to be imminent. But Ewing's testimony was the first proof, and the news sent rows of reporters scurrying out into the hallway to flip open their cellular telephones and call their editors.
The revelation, which emerged during aggressive questioning by McDougal's lawyer Mark Geragos, scored a point for the defense. It fit McDougal's claim that she refused to answer questions before a Whitewater grand jury because Starr's prosecutors were only interested in dirt on the Clintons and would charge her with perjury if she didn't give them some.
Those refusals, in September 1996 and April 1998, landed McDougal in U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr.'s courtroom, where Geragos began Thursday to present her defense. Ewing was her first witness.
The position of Starr's team is that McDougal had no legal choice but to testify, since she had immunity and a federal judge had ordered her to answer questions.
Since the trial began March 8, Ewing, who is not directly involved in presenting the prosecution's case, has been the one to oblige reporters with statements during court recesses.
But because he spent all Thursday afternoon on the witness stand and did not want to field questions about his own testimony, associate independent counsel Mark Barrett smiled for the cameras after court.
Questioned about the draft indictment, Barrett said, "We're concerned about that because it is coming out in the context of a criminal trial. Mrs. Clinton, of course, is not the defendant in this case, and we have a problem seeing the relevance as to Susan McDougal."
The Clintons' personal lawyer, David E. Kendall, faxed reporters a two-sentence statement: "The [Office of the Independent Counsel] leaked this information a long time ago. The mere fact that this prosecutor's office drafted a frivolous indictment three years ago has no significance whatsoever, except as a possible violation of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995."
Ewing also testified Thursday that over dinner with Starr staff members one evening he graded the Clintons for their performances in July 1995 depositions. The president got about a C and the first lady about an F, Ewing said, as jurors listened more attentively than they have to any previous witness.
Ewing said Mrs. Clinton's dismal showing came after she said "I don't recall" about 50 times during her deposition. The questions she responded to were "not on Arkansas topics," he said.
It wasn't unusual for his office to draft indictments never shown to a grand jury, Ewing said. Mrs. Clinton's was prepared by September 1996, the same year the long-sought billing records from her years as an attorney at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock mysteriously appeared atop a file cabinet in the White House, stirring heated speculation about where they came from and what they said.
The records showed that Mrs. Clinton worked on the failed land development McDougal's late ex-husband, James, was trying to use to prop up his failed savings and loan, Madison Guaranty. The first lady had never revealed that fact.
Ewing's revelations put Mrs. Clinton center stage for the second time during Susan McDougal's trial even as the first lady publicly considers a run for the U.S. Senate from New York. On Tuesday, portions of a previously secret taped deposition she gave in the White House last April were shown in court.
Geragos also tried to use Ewing's testimony to show Starr's prosecutors weren't interested in whether cooperating witnesses told the truth, as long as their testimony implicated the Clintons.
Geragos grilled the deputy independent counsel at length about James McDougal and about former Pulaski County Municipal Judge David Hale, both of whom provided information to Starr's investigators that Starr's team has admitted to taking with a grain of salt.
Outside court, Geragos said all this proved his point about Starr's deputies: "They had a culprit; they were looking for a crime."
But cross-examining his boss, Barrett emphasized that if Starr's investigators welcomed testimony from questionable sources, it was because they wanted to collect all the input they could to reach an informed conclusion.
His final question to Ewing: If McDougal provided exculpatory information about the president, would you be glad to hear it?
"Yes," Ewing replied.
Court resumes again Monday. Geragos wouldn't say Thursday when he plans to put McDougal on the stand -- only that she's "on the horizon."
The Camden native has already served 18 months in prison for civil contempt after her first refusal to testify, plus 31/2 months for four 1996 fraud convictions.
Testimony was scheduled Thursday from Little Rock attorney Richard Holiman, who represents Walter Kaye, the Whitewater grand jury witness and Clinton contributor who recommended Monica Lewinsky for her job as a White House intern. Kaye also contributed money to a legal defense fund for Susan McDougal.
Holiman's clients also include Sarah Hawkins, a Little Rock woman who rose to a top administrative position at Madison Guaranty.
Hawkins was going to testify on the McDougals' behalf in their 1996 trial, but Holiman advised her not to after learning Starr's office wouldn't grant her immunity. Holiman said then that Hawkins feared the power of Starr's office.
Holiman was at the federal courts building Thursday, but there was not time for him to take the stand.
DRUDGE REPORT FRI OCT 23, 1998 01:02:58 UTC XXXXX KEY WITNESS: 'KEN STARR HUNG ME OUT TO DRY'**World Exclusive**
"I was misled, Ken Starr hung me out to dry."
That's what a key Whitewater witness now says about the Office of the Independent Counsel and the man that is running the operation.
The witness, who has talked to several reporters on the condition that the insider's identity not be revealed, may soon go public with the stunning charges.
"[One Starr deputy] told me that there were 50 indictments ready to go against Hillary Clinton," the witness claims. "And that was more than a year ago! But nothing has happened."
The key witness has approached at least one Sunday morning talkshow, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. Any national media interview with the Whitewater player could shift the debate now raging in Washington over the Clintons and their role in the far-
away land deal that started a political nightmare. The Arkansas insider describes how Starr's office promised things that were never delivered.
"I was told that I just needed to hold tight and wait... the truth would come out. But the Little Rock grand jury shut down and it's been nothing but Monica Lewinsky.
"The real story behind Whitewater has not been told. And I've come to believe that Starr and his men will never tell it."
The witness believes that there is a split inside of Starr's office on the Whitewater case. While some investigators push for action, Starr himself continues to take a cautious approach.
Meanwhile, a second witness that provided Starr's office with evidence and testimony, that proved to be invaluable, has also become disillusioned with the OIC, it has been learned.
This witness may even be planning to take the criticism to court!
from TPDL 1998-Oct-25:
DRUDGE REPORT SUN OCT 25, 1998 05:42:55 UTC TRIPP-STARR SHOWDOWN OVER TAPES **EXCLUSIVE** A SPLIT BETWEEN INDEPENDENT COUNSEL KEN STARR AND HIS KEY LEWINSKY WITNESS LINDA TRIPP IS DEVELOPING, THE DRUDGE REPORT HAS LEARNED. MORE...Federal whistleblower Linda Tripp has repeatedly asked the Office of the Independent Counsel for her tapes back. And Starr's office has repeatedly said "No!"
Totally frustrated with the OIC's unwillingness to return the tapes, after the office promised in writing to give them back anytime she requested, lawyers for Tripp may soon petition the court, it has been learned.
According to sources close to the investigation, a complete showdown over the possession of the original Lewinsky tapes has been building for months.
Resentment is growing and growing in and around the Tripp camp.
The OIC is still investigating whether the original Lewinsky/Tripp tapes were edited or somehow tampered with. The WALL STREET JOURNAL reported on Friday that "investigators suspect nine tapes of talks with Monica Lewinsky are copies, raising authenticity questions."
"It looks like Judge Johnson is going to have to settle this one," says one source in Washington.
"The tapes are clearly Linda Tripp's property. She was promised in the very beginning that she could have them back... She even has it in writing from Starr's office."
The development comes just days after it was learned that another key witness to Starr's office has grown disillusioned.
As reported in this space, a Whitewater witness that provided key evidence and testimony to the OIC has turned sour.
"The real story behind Whitewater has not been told, and I've come to believe that Starr and his men will never tell it," the Arkansas witness has told several reporters. "I was misled..."
Starr and his office are getting hit from all sides:
The White House campaign to destroy creditability is consistently echoed and adopted in the major media. Now witnesses, disillusioned with pacing and promises, are turning restless.
Developing...
from TPDL 1998-Dec-14, from the Chicago Sun-Times, by Robert Novak:
A dirty trick overlooked by Starr
White House Counsel Charles Ruff was winding up his defense of President Clinton before the House Judiciary Committee last Wednesday when Republican Rep. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina propounded a theory that momentarily caused pandemonium at the hearings. For undecided members of Congress who read the transcript, what happened could sway their vote toward impeachment on the House floor this week.
Graham, a former prosecutor, pieced together grand jury testimony and news clippings to construct his scenario. Last January, after Clinton told aide Sidney Blumenthal that Monica Lewinsky had made sexual demands on him and threatened him, White House staffers immediately initiated media leaks denigrating her as a stalker who imagined trysts with the president. Not until the former intern's semen-stained dress turned up months later to corroborate her story did the Lewinsky trashing end.
What was done to Lewinsky reflects the brutish side of the Clinton White House. But should it tip the balance for impeachment? While not the ``smoking gun'' that undid Richard Nixon in 1974, Graham's theory shows a president who not only lies under oath about sexual transgressions but conspires to conceal his conduct.
Graham, a 43-year-old second-term conservative, was a leader of the aborted 1997 coup attempt against Speaker Newt Gingrich and is not viewed by his elders as a team player. After first hinting he might vote against impeachment, he has researched the case against Clinton on his own. In pursuing that endeavor, Graham found what he called ``an elephant'' missed by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.
The elephant was the grand jury appearance of Blumenthal, which was forced by court order. He testified that when the Lewinsky story broke last January, the president denied everything and told him: ``Monica Lewinsky came at me and made a sexual demand on me.'' Clinton said he ``rebuffed'' her, Blumenthal related. Suggesting that past sexual liaisons had ``caused pain for a lot of people,'' the president said, ``I'm not going to do that again.'' Clinton was quoted as charging that ``she threatened me'' and predicting Lewinsky would claim an affair with him to erase her image in the West Wing of the White House as ``the stalker.''
The news search instituted by Graham found a rapid echo of these accusations. While Clinton aides publicly disavowed assailing Lewinsky, the Associated Press on Jan. 26 reported that the White House ``began a whispering campaign that Lewinsky was `unstable.' '' That week, Time magazine wrote that Lewinsky was known as ``the stalker.'' The Baltimore Sun of Jan. 28 said that ``staffers remember her mooning about the Roosevelt Room hoping for a chance encounter with the commander in chief.''
Graham triggered a volcanic reaction from Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California (``wild allegations,'' ``a wild spin'') when he read aloud a January quote by Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York: ``She's fantasizing, and I haven't heard that she played with a full deck in other experiences.'' Even assuming Rangel's statement was based on media reports rather than White House sources, what he said reflected the falsehoods passed by Clinton to Blumenthal and distributed to news outlets.
Ruff was clearly rattled by Graham's unexpected foray, resorting to lawyerly word parsing when he took issue with the congressman's apt description of Blumenthal as an ``operative.'' When Graham asked Ruff whether there was an ``organized effort'' at the White House to depict Lewinsky as a sexual predator, he replied: ``There was no authorized effort.''
Surely, Ruff and the president's private lawyers were not authorized. But operatives at the White House may well have interpreted Bill Clinton's wink to Sidney Blumenthal as authorizing them to test with reporters what the press last January labeled ``the troubled-girl defense''--falsely describing Lewinsky as a liar.
from TPDL 1998-Dec-18, from the Associated Press, by Larry Margasak, Associated Press Writer:
Investigators Backed off Willey
WASHINGTON (AP) -- After strong objections by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, House investigators scrapped a plan for presidential accuser Kathleen Willey to testify at impeachment hearings about possible witness intimidation, congressional officials report.
The chief Republican investigator on the House Judiciary Committee, David Schippers, interviewed Mrs. Willey in preparation for possible testimony, according to some of the sources, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.
Mrs. Willey and her lawyer had told investigators she endured several threatening encounters, including finding an animal skull on her porch the day after she gave testimony in the Paula Jones case, according to committee officials and other sources familiar with her testimony.
The investigators also learned that Clinton lawyer Robert Bennett had carried a message from a federal judge to Mrs. Willey's attorney saying that she should either testify in the Jones case or assert her privilege against self-incrimination.
Committee officials said their plans were scrapped after Starr's office raised concerns that calling Mrs. Willey could jeopardize his grand jury investigation of witness tampering in the Jones case.
Prosecutors were also concerned that the president's lawyers could gain access to investigative materials submitted by the prosecutor. If Mrs. Willey had testified, Clinton's lawyers would have been granted access to evidence as part of their right to cross-examine impeachment witnesses.
Prosecutors learned of congressional investigators' interest in Mrs. Willey's becoming a witness through one of her lawyers, officials said. Starr spokesman Charles Bakaly had no comment.
Mrs. Willey, a former White House volunteer, alleges Clinton made an unwanted sexual advance during a 1993 Oval Office encounter. The president denies the allegation, which became an issue in the Jones case.
Congressional investigators and prosecutors have both been investigating whether several threatening incidents that occurred at Mrs. Willey's house after her story became public were part of an effort to intimidate her. Presidential supporters deny any such effort.
Schippers met with Mrs. Willey and her attorney, Daniel Gecker, for several hours several weeks ago -- not to discuss her allegations of a sexual advance but rather her concerns she may have been intimidated, officials said.
Gecker also related to investigators that at one point while his client was resisting giving testimony in the Jones case, Bennett carried a message from a federal judge that Mrs. Willey should not delay further and should either testify or invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, the sources said.
Gecker told that investigators that he did not believe Bennett, Clinton's lead attorney in the case, was trying to intimidate Mrs. Willey and that he was simply relaying the sentiments of the judge who was overseeing the dispute, the sources said.
Bennett declined comment Tuesday. Former U.S. District Judge Robert Merhige Jr., now retired, said he had entered an order instructing Mrs. Willey to testify in the Jones case, and added that he wanted Gecker either to ``get her in here or, if she had a privilege, she ought to take it.'' But he denied suggesting that Mrs. Willey assert her Fifth Amendment rights.
``I can unequivocally say I never suggested to Bennett that he tell Gecker to have her take the Fifth,'' Merhige said.
Mrs. Willey relayed to the investigators several episodes that raised concerns that someone was trying to intimidate her.
She said the day after she gave testimony in the Jones case, she found an animal skull on her porch. She also alleged that:
--Her cat disappeared.
--A stranger confronted her while walking her dog, asking about her cat and her children.
--Her car tires were slashed.
The sources said that Mrs. Willey was willing to testify about these incidents at impeachment hearings.
from TPDL 1998-Nov-15, from the Associated Press:
Mrs. Clinton's role eyed in Hubbell case
WASHINGTON - After years of investigating Hillary Rodham Clinton, Whitewater prosecutors laid out their case in an indictment that never used her name and charged her with no wrongdoing, but accused her former law partner of 15 felonies.
Weaved through independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's latest case, however, is a story line that places the first lady in the middle of efforts that enabled friend Webster Hubbell's father-in-law, businessman Seth Ward, to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from a savings and loan that was headed for collapse.
Hillary Clinton, who is referred to three-dozen times in the 40- page indictment of Hubbell, has said she remembers almost nothing about her work in the mid-1980s relating to a failed real estate project called Castle Grande, run by her Whitewater business partner James McDougal.
The 15-count indictment, issued Friday, said Hubbell concealed his and Clinton's roles in the transactions starting in 1989 and ending on Dec. 27, 1995. That was nine days before the first lady's long-sought billing records, revealing her work on Ward's behalf, were turned over belatedly to Starr, who had subpoenaed them two years earlier.
Legal experts said the new Hubbell case holds potential peril for the first lady. ''It seems to me that there is some risk to Hillary here, that Starr hopes to open up some doors that lead more directly to her,'' Georgetown University law professor Paul Rothstein said. The new case, he said, seems designed ''to put the squeeze on Hubbell.''
Never identified by name in the indictment, Clinton is referred to as ''the billing partner.''
''It is conceivable that Hubbell could be guilty of a coverup and that the `billing partner' would not have knowledge of the wrongdoing,'' Rothstein said. ''But there is considerable risk that in the course of prosecuting this case, something might be uncovered that points directly to the `billing partner.'''
The indictment alleged that Mrs. Clinton:
Spoke to an S&L executive who had prepared loan documents helpful to Ward.
Drafted a real estate document for Ward and a subsidiary of the S&L that ''deceived'' bank examiners about loans that Ward obtained at the S&L.
Met with Ward around the time the S&L released him from personal liability on $470,000 in loans from the institution.
The first lady has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing as a private lawyer in Arkansas.
But even a frequent Starr critic said focusing on Hillary Clinton may be justified even though she is not charged in the Hubbell indictment.
If evidence regarding her ''is relevant and material'' to charges against Hubbell, said former Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, ''I don't see any problem with'' the indictment's emphasis on the first lady. Walsh has blasted Starr for his pursuit of another aspect of his investigation, the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.
According to regulators, Ward was a straw buyer of part of Castle Grande, a development south of Little Rock. Financed by McDougal's financial institution, Castle Grande was rife with ''insider dealing, fictitious sales and land flips'' and eventually cost taxpayers almost $4 million, regulators concluded.
Ward has said he did nothing wrong and was entitled to the money he received from the S&L.
Clinton's law firm billing records that revealed her work on Castle Grande turned up in the White House family residence under circumstances that have never been explained. Hubbell, the indictment notes, reviewed the records in 1992. They dropped from sight after the election.
Hubbell has been charged with fraud, false statements, perjury, and corruptly impeding the functions of two federal regulatory agencies.
from PDL 1999-Mar-19, from the Associated Press:
Judge Dismisses Count Vs. Hubbell
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a criminal count against presidential friend Webster Hubbell in a fraud indictment that makes references to Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The count accused Hubbell of scheming to conceal work done by him and Mrs. Clinton, his former law partner, on a failed Arkansas land deal.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson agreed with Hubbell that the allegations in the count were too vague.
"The charging language ... alleges no specific act or acts of concealment by 'trick, scheme or device' and no specific 'false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or representations," the judge said, citing specific language of federal law. "It is non-specific."
Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr had obtained a 15-count indictment of Hubbell last November in connection with a land deal known as Castle Grande. Federal regulators said the deal was riddled with "insider dealing, fictitious sales and land flips."
Robertson dismissed Hubbell's motions to throw out other counts in the case.
Mrs. Clinton was referred to 36 times in the original indictment against Hubbell, signifying that her name could be brought up repeatedly in the trial set to begin June 14. She could be called to testify.
Starr's witness list is not due until April 14, lawyers said.
The Clintons' Whitewater partner, the late James McDougal, tried to sell off pieces of Castle Grande to prop up his collapsing savings and loan.
The dismissed count charged that from March 1989 through December 1995, Hubbell tried to cover up the true nature of his and Mrs. Clinton's relationships with Hubbell's father-in-law, Seth Ward; with McDougal's Madison Guaranty bank and the land deal.
Hubbell also was accused of making "false and fraudulent" statements and representations to two U.S. banking regulatory agencies.
"Hubbell argues that Count 1 is a 'catch all' count that fails to inform him clearly of the precise offense of which he is accused so that he may prepare his defense," Robertson wrote in 18-page opinion.
"He points out reasonably that a jury might convict if it unanimously accepted the generality of the charge of 'scheming,' although split on which (if any) of the many acts alleged ... (that) Hubbell actually committed."
Starr's office maintained that the count was "sufficiently specific" and that it was not necessary for that count "to set forth precisely the false statements and acts of concealment upon which it depends ...," the opinion said. The independent counsel contended the concealment scheme was the offense, rather than any specific act.
from TPDL 1999-May-22, from the Associated Press, by Pete Yost:
Starr's office wants reinstatement of charge against Hubbell
WASHINGTON (May 21, 1999 2:19 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - Pushing for reinstatement of a criminal charge against Webster Hubbell, lawyers working for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr argued in federal appeals court Friday that the indictment details dozens of alleged lies by the presidential friend.
In throwing out one of 15 charges against Hubbell, a judge had declared that some language in the indictment was too vague. Hubbell is accused of concealing from federal banking regulators work that he and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had done for a fraudulent Arkansas land development when both were attorneys in Little Rock.
Prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig argued to a three-judge panel that Hubbell repeatedly lied over a six-year span to federal regulators, and that amounted to a "scheme, a pattern of conduct" that is spelled out in the first 85 paragraphs of the indictment against Clinton's former law partner.
Defense lawyer Peter Romatowski said the language in the dismissed charge is so broadly worded that Hubbell doesn't know what the specific allegations are.
"How is a jury to be instructed? ... Are they to be turned loose on 85 paragraphs?" asked Romatowski.
Appeals judge Stephen Williams, a Republican appointee to the court, suggested the dropped count may be so lengthy because of extensive evidence of wrongdoing by Hubbell.
"Why is it the government's fault if evidence suggests 1,000" acts "by which the scheme has been carried out?" asked Williams.
Challenged to counter the argument that the indictment was too vague, Rosenzweig pointed to language that details 50 separate alleged lies by Hubbell to the Resolution Trust Corp. and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Williams heard the arguments along with appeals court judges Laurence Silberman, a Republican appointee, and David Tatel, a Clinton appointee.
Hubbell is scheduled to go on trial Aug. 9.
In a related case, Hubbell pleaded guilty in 1994 to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his law firm and its clients. He served a year and a half in prison.
Clinton has testified repeatedly that she remembers almost nothing of her work on the Castle Grande development, which was owned by her Whitewater partner Jim McDougal and Hubbell's father-in- law, Seth Ward.
Regulators said the development was riddled with insider dealing and fictitious sales.