THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 22, 1994 TAG: 9408200033
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
There's a grim joke going around Washington: ``F.O.B.'' (Friend of Bill) now means ``C.O.B.'' (Casualty of Bill). Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman, who, like the president, is a former Rhodes scholar and was widely seen as a future Treasury secretary, is the latest F.O.B. to discover that being too close to President Clinton can cause the wax on your wings to melt.
Altman announced his resignation on Wednesday. On Thursday came word that Treasury general counsel Jean Hanson had also departed. They both join former associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell and former White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum among those whose careers have taken unexpected detours thanks to varying degrees of involvement in the Whitewater affair.
If the White House is throwing bodies over the side in hopes that the investigation will just go away, it is mistaken. Indeed, the furious attempt to discredit newly appointed independent counsel Kenneth Starr over the past week indicates strongly that much remains to be investigated.
The White House and Clinton partisans were clearly crestfallen when the special division of the D.C. Court of Appeals refused to appoint Robert Fiske as the independent counsel two weeks ago. It's easy to see why. Fiske was strongly opposed to Congress holding any hearings on Whitewater, a position that dove-tailed nicely with the desire of the White House and Congress to keep Whitewater out of the papers. He also found no criminal conduct in Altman's behavior at Treasury, even though Altman was constantly revising and updating how much he knew about the investigation of Madison Savings and Loan while still not disclosing all the details.
North Carolina Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth was highly critical of Fiske's see-no-evil style. Now Clinton partisans have latched onto a meeting that was observed between Sen. Faircloth and Reagan-appointed Judge David Sentelle, who was part of the appeals court panel that ditched Fiske in favor of Starr. Even though no one overheard what the two men were saying, dark hints have been made that some form of partisan collusion took place.
As we have noted previously, Senate Democrats have already entrusted Starr with a very sensitive task. He vetted Oregon Republican Sen. Robert Packwood's diary to see what portions might be relevant to the Senate Ethics Committee's investigation of sexual harassment charges against the senator. Why agree to such an assignment if Starr were seen as a partisan robot?
Starr is not going to quit or be removed, but the controversy that was stirred by his opponents is clearly an effort to intimidate him. That seems unlikely, but the contretemps should point up once again that - far from removing politic considerations from an investigation - independent prosecutors simply intensify them.
The White House could save itself a lot of extended agony if only it would agree to a full, fair and exhaustive congressional investigation of Whitewater. Unlike Fiske, Kenneth Starr is unlikely to allow his position to be used to block full disclosure. Let all the facts come out, and let the American people make up their own minds. by CNB