ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, November 20, 1996 TAG: 9611200023
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: CAL THOMAS
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
WHITEWATER independent counsel Kenneth Starr has mostly kept quiet in recent months, neither seeking indictments against higher-ups in the Clinton administration before the election nor responding to attempts to assassinate his character by functionaries in the White House and the Clintons' former business partners in the jailhouse.
Now, Starr is beginning to fire back. In a speech to the Economic Club of Detroit earlier this month, Starr spoke of the importance of civic virtue. Citing James Madison, Starr said civic virtue meant to the Founders ``that individuals, as they pursued their self-interested goals, would feel a commitment to justice, to civility and, above all, to truthfulness. Without these traits, the individual cannot be a true citizen. And without virtuous citizens, the framers believed, self-government will ultimately self-destruct.''
Starr succinctly and accurately summarized what the misdeeds collectively known as Whitewater are about. Not only do they concern events in Little Rock when Bill Clinton was governor, said Starr: ``It is also about questions - and I stress that they are only questions, which we are very far along in examining - about the integrity of the official processes of government in Washington. It is about whether participants in Washington later deceived federal investigators trying to reconstruct those processes of government.'' That is not third-rate stuff.
Clinton defenders, including the president himself, have tried to undermine Starr's credibility and integrity. He has been called a partisan who is out to get Clinton. Starr last week compared himself to Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, a Democrat, who was fired by Richard Nixon.
The Clinton people bristle when Whitewater is compared to Watergate, but Jerry Zeifman, former chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, thinks the linkage is apt. In his new book, ``Without Honor: The Impeachment of President Nixon and the Crimes of Camelot,'' Zeifman offers fascinating insights into two people who were principals in the impeachment efforts against Mr. Nixon, who are also key players in events under investigation by Starr's office.
Two names surface again and again in Zeifman's book. They are Bernard Nussbaum, former White House counsel who was one of 40 attorneys hired by then House Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino, and a 26-year-old Yale Law School graduate named Hillary Rodham, also on the committee staff.
Zeifman writes, ``I came to regard Doar [John Doar was a special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee], Nussbaum and Rodham as somewhat less than honorable lawyers, unworthy of either public or private trust.
``Week after week,'' writes Zeifman, ``flawed legal opinions and dubious procedural rules were being churned out by Nussbaum and Rodham. Each of them fostered delay. They had to be shot down one by one by a coalition of Republicans and Democrats led by Tip O'Neill and Minority Leader John Rhodes.''
Zeifman then writes about a legal position that could come back to haunt the Clintons: `` perhaps [the] most invidious rule, which was also espoused by Rodino, was the surprising notion that the president was not entitled to representation by counsel in the committee's impeachment proceedings. The staff lawyer who produced the flawed legal research that Rodino, Doar and Nussbaum relied on most to advocate that rule was Rodham.''
Zeifman writes that the public was being misled ``with the aid of flawed memoranda written by Rodham and endorsed by Doar.''
Another young lawyer associated with Zeifman was John Labovitz. Zeifman writes that Labovitz ``came to my office and apologized for having participated to some extent to conceal from me the work that was being done. Some months ago he and Hillary lied intentionally to me and told me that there were no drafts of proposed rules of procedure for the impeachment inquiry.''
Repeatedly, Zeifman refers to the ``ethical shortcomings'' and ``erroneous legal opinions'' of Nussbaum and Rodham. Those looking for an explanation as to how subpoenaed, but ``missing,'' documents materialized in the private living quarters of the Clinton White House may get a clue from Zeifman: ``It was not until months after my conference with Rodham that I learned that the supply of traditional rules that had been reserved for future use had been unaccountably removed from the committee's storeroom.''
Starr need not worry about attacks on his integrity. But Zeifman has compiled a formidable dossier on the ethical flaws and questionable character in several people now at the center of Starr's investigation. When the indictments roll in, the Clintons will be on very shaky ethical ground.
- Los Angeles Times Syndicate
LENGTH: Medium: 83 linesby CNB