THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 12, 1994 TAG: 9408120032
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington dropped a bomb on a White House that was starting to breathe easier last week. Robert Fiske - who had been appointed by and was responsible to Attorney General Janet Reno - would not be appointed independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation. Under the terms of the renewed special prosecutor law, which President Clinton signed, the panel nominated Kenneth Starr, a former federal judge and the Bush administration's solicitor-general.
The president's lawyer, aides and supporters collectively groaned and then howled. Robert Bennett, the superlawyer retained by the president to fend off Paula Corbin Jones' sexual harassment suit, charged that Starr had considered filing a friend of the court brief in the Jones case opposing Bennett's contention that the president should be immune from civil lawsuits. (Starr never filed the brief, however.)
To his credit, Starr refuses to be intimidated and says he will proceed. It is true that Starr is a Republican. But then, so is Fiske, whom the administration clearly wished would be retained in his post. Watergate special prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski were both Democrats. Senate Democrats also trusted Starr to decide what parts of Oregon Republican Sen. Bob Packwood's diary should be given to the Senate Ethics Committee.
There are good reasons to be opposed to independent counsels, of course. Lawrence Walsh, unhindered by such nuisances as a budget or other prosecutorial priorities, strung out Iran-Contra for more than half a decade and still came up virtually empty. The political process, such as the damaging Senate hearings on Whitewater, remains the best forum for letting the public decide the character of its leaders.
But special prosecutors are the rules by which the White House decided to play when it supported renewal of the law that authorizes such prosecutors. And under those rules, the court acted properly in removing Fiske. While the court was careful to say it was casting no aspersions on Fiske, it is hard to believe the judges took no account of the increased criticism being leveled at him.
For instance, Fiske says he found no criminality or ethics violations in the contacts between White House aides and supposedly independent savings-and-loan investigators. The Senate Banking Committee hearings last week, however, revealed a lot of backing, filling, evading and failed memories on the part of those same aides. They hardly looked like people with nothing to hide.
Fiske also closed his investigation of Vince Foster's suicide without determining what happened to the papers that were removed from Foster's office immediately after his death. After first denying that any papers were removed, then-White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum said he had sent the papers to the Clinton's personal lawyer.
White House aide Margaret Williams, however, testified last week she first took them to the White House family quarters, at the personal direction of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, where they stayed for five days. Mrs. Clinton had used lawyerly evasions on several occasions in the past to avoid letting this important tidbit get out. As Time magazine noted in reporting these facts, ``Slick Willie, meet Slippery Hillary.''
All of these revelations came from the congressional hearings that the White House and most Democrats sought to block and then, when that was no longer possible, tried to make as uninformative and boring as possible. Indeed, confusion seems to have been a deliberate tactic by the White House to tamp down interest.
Whitewater might indeed not be competition for O.J. in terms of public fascination, but that hardly means it is unimportant or deserves to be swept under the carpet. The central issue remains: Did the White House attempt to exert influence to steer the Resolution Trust Corp. and the Justice Department away from any possible criminal investigation involving the president and first lady and Madison Savings and Loan?
Kenneth Starr appears to be well-qualified to look for criminal violations by members of the Clinton administration. But putting people in jail should not be the point. Understanding how the White House does business is critical for the public's understanding of the credibility of White House policies. If evasions and half-truths surround Whitewater, how seriously can the public take White House pronouncements about other things, such as health care for instance?
So let Starr's investigation go forward. But Starr power should not be an excuse for Congress to get off the case. If Congress, particularly the House, holds more substantive hearings and investigations of its own, perhaps it will help redeem the reputation of one of the elected branches of government. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
MR. STARR
KEYWORDS: WHITEWATER SCANDAL
by CNB