DATE: Friday, July 18, 1997                 TAG: 9707180031
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:   32 lines

VINCE FOSTER RESULTS ARE IN

Whitewater independent counsel Ken Starr has given the man in the street plenty of reason to question the value of his protracted pursuit of alleged wrongdoing by President Clinton and his coterie in Arkansas and afterward.

But now, by deciding that White House deputy counsel Vince Foster committed suicide, Starr has disappointed even the wilder fringes of conservatism. It is an article of faith among the loonies that Foster was at the center of a lurid plot - involved romantically with Hillary Clinton, murdered because he knew too much, and on and on.

Instead, Starr has shown only that he's a slow learner. Foster's death was ruled years ago by previous investigations to be the suicide of a man suffering from depression. Yet Starr insisted on plowing the same ground all over again to reach the same conclusion. How much did that cost taxpayers?

Lawrence Walsh's endless, tendentious and ultimately self-indulgent raking over of Iran-Contra was a flashing warning sign that open-ended fishing expeditions by independent counsels are a waste of taxpayer money and an invitation to abuse of power. Starr's increasingly egregious tenure that had investigators combing Arkansas for illegitimate children resembling Bill Clinton sends the same message even more blazingly.

Future independent counsels should be considerably more circumscribed. More focused marching orders and more limited funds would go some way toward controlling excess. Clearly, Starr's tenure has demonstrated that carte blanche doesn't work.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu