
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, August 9, 1994                   TAG: 9408090083
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A PROBE POLITICIZED

BY UNCEREMONIOUSLY dumping Robert Fiske from the Whitewater case, a three-judge panel - led by a Jesse Helms protege who wrote the controversial appellate ruling that got Oliver North off the Iran-Contra hook - has done just what the special-counsel law is designed to avoid. It has given a partisan cast to the special counsel's probe into allegations of misconduct against the president and top administration officials.

Fiske, an experienced Republican prosecutor, had irritated conspiracy theorists on the right with his insistence on using evidence, rather than the wilder speculations of the radio talk-jocks, as the basis for his conclusions.

The special counsel thus concluded that former White House aide Vincent Foster committed suicide, just as earlier reports had said, and wasn't the victim of some sort of murder conspiracy. Neither had Fiske found anything illegal about the Treasury-White House contacts regarding regulators' probes of Whitewater. (The upshot, after all, was the White House conclusion that regulators' investigation of the failed Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association had to go forward.)

Indeed, Robert Altman should resign as deputy secretary of the treasury not because of the contacts themselves, but because his North-like deception of Congress regarding the matter amounted to an unfortunate disregard for constitutional checks and balances.

As for Fiske, the judges said that "[i]t is not our intent to impugn the integrity of the attorney general's appointee, but rather to reflect the intent of the act that the actor be protected against perceptions of conflict." But the panel's naming of Kenneth Starr, a more politically active Republican, to succeed Fiske raises questions about the judges' statement, as does the history of the Fiske appointment

True, Fiske was appointed special counsel in January by Attorney General Janet Reno, rather than by an independent authority. But that's because the special-counsel law had lapsed because of Republican opposition to its renewal. Bowing to GOP demands to appoint a special counsel nonetheless, Reno named Fiske, a New York lawyer who was acceptable to congressional Republicans in the investigation of President Clinton's real-estate investments while governor of Arkansas.

With Congress' passing and Clinton's signing of a new special-counsel law, the ball was back in the judiciary's court. Despite pressure from 10 right-wing Republicans in Congress - which in itself raises questions of propriety - and rabidly anti-Clinton activist Floyd Brown, the panel had been widely expected to renew Fiske's appointment. Instead, it appointed Kenneth Starr.

Starr, a former U.S. Court of Appeals judge and solicitor general in the Bush administration, is no hack. But he lacks Fiske's experience as a prosecutor, and in recent years has been active in Republican politics, including as a potential candidate for the U.S. Senate nomination in Virginia that North eventually won.

At the least, regardless of what Starr does or does not find, the change in special counsels will keep the Whitewater story perking longer than it otherwise would, which doubtless figured into the calculations of those urging Fiske's ouster. Fiske had hired an extensive and expert staff, and spent $2 million, to begin answering Whitewater questions. His removal raises new questions about partisanship in the probe, while setting back the search for answers to old questions about Whitewater itself.

Memo: ***CORRECTION***

by CNB