[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 23, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3833-S3836]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             AT WHAT COST?

  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, the Senate special Whitewater committee 
resumes its hearings tomorrow. The committee's tentative schedule is, 
as I understand--I am not on the committee--to have a hearing on every 
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of each week until the authorization 
of the committee expires on June 17, 1996. As I have said before, the 
time and money being spent by this special committee could be better 
spent on other issues of greater importance and magnitude to this 
country of ours.
  Mr. President, I will take just a moment to discuss, if I might, the 
amount of money and the time and the resources being spent on the 
Whitewater investigation, both here and in my home State of Arkansas. 
The Senate has called 121 witnesses during its 47 days of its special 
committee review. In an earlier statement, Mr. President, I mentioned 
the fact that in 1995 alone the Senate held 34 hearings on Whitewater, 
while we held only six hearings on Medicaid funding and only one 
hearing--only one hearing--on Medicare reform. After all the time we 
have already spent on Whitewater, these types of issues are far more 
deserving of our attention in the remainder of this session of the 
Congress.
  However, Mr. President, it is not just the amount of time and money 
that the Senate has spent on the Whitewater review that concerns me. 
There is another side of this discussion, and it is the amount of 
money, the amount of resources, that our Government has spent on the 
issue of Whitewater.
  The Senate has spent roughly $1.35 million on its Whitewater 
investigation in the 104th Congress. That is just the amount that the 
Senate has specifically appropriated to the Whitewater review panel. 
This does not include, Mr. President, the money spent by the Senate 
Banking Committee on its Whitewater efforts. It does not include the 
amount of money spent by the House of Representatives in its Whitewater 
review.
  Of course, it does not even begin to take into consideration the 
amount of money spent by our special counsels. In addition to the 
congressional efforts in this issue, I would also like to discuss the 
independent counsel review. According to the General Accounting Office, 
Robert Fiske, the special counsel originally named to investigate the 
Whitewater issue, spent $2,498,744 from January 22, 1994, through 
September 30, 1995, which was the latest date which the GAO had this 
information. I am sure more tallies will be coming in soon. On his 
investigation alone, almost $2.5 million was spent. Then he was fired 
from the case. The GAO also points out that Kenneth Starr, the 
independent counsel appointed to replace Mr. Fiske, has spent 
$4,512,065 from August 5, 1994, through September 30, of 1995. We have 
no more recent figures, Mr. President, since September 30 of last year.
  But today's Washington Post had an article, I must say, Mr. 
President, that caught my attention. It is an article which illustrates 
where some of this money is going. Sam Dash, the Watergate chief 
counsel, famed, well known, well respected, is now being paid $3,200 a 
week for his service as ethics adviser to Mr. Starr. I am going to 
repeat that, Mr. President. Sam Dash, the Watergate chief counsel, is 
now being paid $3,200 each week for his service as ethics adviser to 
Mr. Kenneth Starr.
  Mr. Starr is the first independent counsel in the history of our 
Republic to see the need to hire an independent counsel that advises 
him on ethics.
  I think I echo, Mr. President, the statement made by Stephen Gillers, 
a

[[Page S3834]]

legal ethics professor and scholar at New York University, who recently 
said in a Baltimore Sun article:

       When the public hears that the independent counsel--who is 
     there supposedly because of his distance from the traditional 
     prosecutorial office--needs an independent counsel for ethics 
     advice [at a substantial cost] it's almost impossible to 
     explain how that can be so. The perception is that 
     something's amiss.

  Mr. President, that was Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics scholar from 
New York University, who made that particular statement.
  Mr. President, I have other concerns as well. I have recently asked 
the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share with me the five top cases 
currently being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 
Mr. President, here are the top five cases. One is the Oklahoma City 
bombing. That makes sense. Second, the Unabomber. That makes sense. 
Thriftcon--a national bank fraud and embezzlement case. Fourth, Mr. 
President, is Whitewater. Fifth is the World Trade Center bombing.
  Now, this is based upon the number of personnel, the amount of 
resources, the number of dollars, and the establishment of priorities 
of our own Federal Bureau of Investigation. Whitewater, today, comes 
right after Thriftcon, Unabomber, Oklahoma City bombing, and before 
resources and dollars that the Federal Bureau of Investigation have 
used to investigate the World Trade Center bombing in the city of New 
York. Mr. President, I do not know how in the world we could go home 
and explain such a poor allocation of priorities as the one 
demonstrated by this particular chart.
  Mr. President, the money spent by the independent counsel does not 
tell the whole story. Those numbers do not even include the moneys 
spent by the FBI and other agencies to support the independent 
counsels.
  Under the statute authorizing the independent counsel, each 
independent counsel is able to request and receive assistance from 
Federal agencies. Mr. President, most of the independent counsels are 
using the talents of the Federal employees and the resources of the 
Federal Government available to them. According to the figures supplied 
by GAO, the IRS has spent over $1 million to support the Fiske-Starr 
Whitewater investigation. The Justice Department, apart from the FBI, 
has spent $86,000 on the investigation. However, Mr. President, the FBI 
has spent far and away the most money of any agency working for Mr. 
Fiske, the former independent counsel, and Mr. Starr, the present 
independent counsel.
  According to the numbers reported by the GAO, the FBI spent 
$3,473,000 in support of Mr. Fiske's investigation, and already has 
surpassed $8,064,000 supplying staff for Mr. Starr's investigation. To 
get a sense of what these figures mean, Mr. President, I asked the FBI 
how many people that number represents. They told me that the $11.5 
million represents 41 special agents and 81 support staff.
  Thus far, I know I have thrown around a lot of numbers and my time 
has expired. When we add everything together, the Whitewater 
independent counsels have spent $19,673,809, Mr. President, almost $20 
million, in less than a year and a half, has been spent on the 
Whitewater investigation. That, Mr. President, is why I continue to 
have grave concerns about appropriating any more money to start up the 
second phase of the Whitewater investigation.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
a story in this morning's Washington Post, dated April 23, 1996, and I 
ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article of April 
15, 1996, as published in the Baltimore Sun.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 23, 1996]

                           Say It Again, Sam

                            (By Lloyd Grove)

       He's the brilliant chief counsel of Senate Watergate 
     Committee fame and a drafter of the independent counsel 
     statute. He's an arbiter of professional conduct for the 
     American Bar Association and an oracle of criminal law, an 
     internationally acclaimed advocate for human rights and a 
     widely revered guru of legal ethics.
       But it seems to have come to this for the distinguished 
     Samuel Dash:
       ``I don't want to be in a situation where you're asking me 
     a lot of questions and I'm not commenting, and the story 
     makes me look like a Mafia figure who's pleading the Fifth 
     Amendment,'' says Dash, 71. He is beginning an interview 
     about his role as the highly paid ethics adviser to Kenneth 
     Starr, the Whitewater special prosecutor whose own legal 
     ethics come under searing attack.
       ``Mafia figure''?
       Surely Sam Dash not has not worked so hard, for so long, to 
     take a swift tumble from wise man to wiseguy. He has spent 
     much of his time in recent weeks mounting pained public 
     defenses of Starr's simultaneous work as a government 
     prosecutor--investigating President Clinton & Co.--and as a 
     private lawyer for an array of corporate clients opposed to 
     the president's policies. But Dash certainly hasn't 
     cultivated his envirable reputation to sell his birthright 
     for a mess of pottage--in this case, a consulting fee of 
     $3,200 a week.
       In his memo-strewn office at the Georgetown University Law 
     Center, where he has been a full professor for the last three 
     decades, Dash expresses himself in bursts of nervous energy, 
     interrupting his questioner--and frequently himself--to spray 
     fusillades of self-protective verbiage and twist his winding 
     sentences into word-pretzels.
       ``Once again, I do not want to do an interview,'' he 
     protests. ``It isn't that I haven't been available for 
     interviews. I have. I've helped set a policy now--not because 
     there's anything to hide. I think [Starr's] office has become 
     very visible as a result of these issues, and they have so 
     much important work to do, it's all distracting the work to 
     always--even when they to read about what I may be saying--it 
     distracts the work and calls for [phone] calls and things 
     like that, but I don't want, I really don't want to be 
     distracting anymore.''
       Dash, whose regular public statements about the work of the 
     special prosecutor have made him something of a de facto 
     spokesman for the press-averse Starr, is providing more than 
     his share of distractions. In the past few weeks, he has been 
     forced to justify his recently revealed consulting fee-
     astronomical by government standards. And he has been caught 
     defending Starr's behavior while, at the same time, appearing 
     to criticize it in publications ranging from the New York 
     Observer (with which he has tangled over the accuracy of 
     damaging quotes) to the New Yorker.
       He may have had enough of the hot seat. Dash says he'll 
     suspend his Starr consultancy as of May 23, to spend two 
     months on a long-planned teaching vacation in Europe. He 
     won't commit himself to returning to Starr's employ. ``If Ken 
     asks me, I'll consider it,'' is as far as he'll go.
       Dash presents himself as a man who wants, in so many words, 
     to have and eat his cake.
       He was cited by the New Yorker's Jane Mayer as giving his 
     seal of approval to Starr's pursuit of a million-dollar 
     private practice--even though he wished Starr wouldn't to it: 
     ``If I had my own preferences, I'd hope he'd be a full-time 
     independent counsel. . . . What he's doing is proper. . . . 
     But it does have an odor to it.''
       Dash explains that what he actually meant to say is that 
     others, but not he, might detect an ordor--as though recusing 
     his sense of smell. Trying to move away from another 
     published statement, he says, with an insistence on 
     precision: ``I didn't use the word `proper.' `Proper' is a 
     weasel word. I think what I tried to say--and maybe I 
     misstated--is everything he's doing is `legal' and `ethical' 
     and `lawful'--not `proper.' ''
       On the issue of whether he wants Starr to be a full-time 
     prosecutor, Dash is equally microscopic. ``I didn't say, `I 
     wish he would be.' I say: `I prefer he would be.' No, no, no: 
     `My preference is . . .' ''
       Why the hair-splitting? Isn't it all the same thing?
       ``It is essentially the same thing,'' he concedes with a 
     deep breath. ``I'm not trying to split hairs. All I'm saying 
     is, I am expressing myself as an independent person. I'm not 
     saying I would do the same thing he would do.'' Yet a moment 
     later Dash draws another fine distinction. ``I'm not passing 
     on his judgment. I don't think I have the right to. If I were 
     a private independent professor . . . I could speak freely my 
     mind. But--''
       Wait a minute. So he's not independent?
       ``I may be constrained, but I'm only constrained because 
     when I speak I can't speak as Sam Dash, private [citizen]. I 
     am speaking as Sam Dash in the role of ethics counsel to Ken 
     Starr and the office. Therefore, I don't have a right . .  to 
     express judgments which I could have as an independent 
     person. I don't even know why it's relevant.''
       Does Dash at least know the identity of all Starr's private 
     clients?
       ``I'm not sure,'' he says. ``The relationship isn't one in 
     which, like coming to Mommy, he has to tell me. `Can I do 
     this? Can I do that? . . . He has to bring to my attention 
     any situation that he feels could possibly be considered a 
     problem. I would think as a lawyer, and he's been a federal 
     judge, he's been a solicitor general, with his reputation for 
     integrity--and he does have it--that he doesn't have to come 
     to me initially. His first screen is himself.''
       In the New Yorker, Dash bemoaned the dismissal of Robert 
     Fiske, Starr's predecessor as Whitewater prosecutor. (Dash 
     went to work for Starr in the fall of 1994, initially for a 
     weekly fee of $1,600, long after Fiske was gone.) ``Should 
     Fiske have been reappointed? My answer is probably yes,'' 
     Dash mused to the magazine. ``It may have been a mistake'' to 
     remove him. ``But that's not Ken's fault.''
       A month after signing him up, Starr doubled Dash's 
     compensation (billed as eight

[[Page S3835]]

     hours of work a week at $400 per hour). And he broadened his 
     role from simply ethics to advising on prosecutorial strategy 
     and a host of other issues. The money is clearly a sore spot 
     for Dash.
       ``I'm putting in not eight hours, I'm putting in 20 to 30 
     hours,'' he says. ``If one were to take what I'm being paid 
     and divided it into the hours I'm working, I'm being paid at 
     what a paralegal earns in most law firms''--a debatable 
     claim, to be sure.
       Last Wednesday, Dash had the novel (for him) experience of 
     receiving a hard editorial slap from the New York Times. The 
     paper demanded that Starr give up the ``major national 
     responsibility'' of Whitewater prosecutor because of his 
     ``conspicuously fastpaced and politically freighted private 
     practice,'' and added sharply: ``Mr. Dash is right about the 
     odor, but wrong about the propriety.''
       ``I'll just say this to that,'' Dash says dismissively. ``I 
     testify all over the country as an expert [on legal ethics], 
     and judges ask me about the law and I answer. I don't recall 
     a single time when any judge of a federal court or a state 
     court ever asked me: `What does the New York Times think?' ''
       He displays less equanimity when it comes to other critics, 
     such as Democratic spinmeister James Carvell--the public 
     voice of the White House's energetic campaign to undermine 
     Starr's integrity as the Whitewater special prosecutor.
       ``If Sam Dash was my doctor, I'd be happy,'' Carville says. 
     ``If you wanna smoke, fine. High blood pressure? Fine. Eat a 
     lot of steaks and drink some whiskey! Go ahead, I'm not 
     worried. He's the Alfred E. Neuman of ethics counselors. he 
     doesn't worry about anything.''
       ``What does he know? '' Dash demands with a frown. ``He 
     doesn't know what I'm doing, he doesn't know who I am. Maybe 
     he does know who I am. But he actually should be very 
     grateful that I am in this position--that at least somebody 
     like me is doing this. . . . But by challenging my 
     independence and the professional role I play, he in effect 
     is harming his own partisan interests. And I'm not a partisan 
     and my role is not to protect anybody, but it certainly is to 
     see that this prosecution is conducted fairly and objectively 
     without any political overtones to it.''
       But that is quite impossible. The Starr matter has become 
     intensely political--for Rep. Martin Meehan (D-Mass.), a 
     harsh critic of Starr, the political overtones are all but 
     deafening. ``I thought it was a good political move by Starr 
     to pick Sam Dash, with his outstanding reputation. . . . 
     Clearly his role is to provide advice to Mr. Starr, and that 
     advice is interpreting technically the basis upon which Starr 
     can justify his representing a tobacco company and other 
     clients. And Mr. Dash makes statements giving technical, 
     legal interpretations on why it's okay.''
       New York University Law School Professor Stephen Gillers 
     agrees.
       ``I think Starr was wise, even brilliant, to choose Sam 
     Dash, because of Sam's prestige and credibility with the 
     media. That has given Starr some cover, which actually worked 
     for a while to stave off criticism. But Sam Dash has no 
     cover. Sam is exposed in ways that I don't think he fully 
     could have anticipated.''
       Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Tribe is also 
     concerned about Dash's exposure. ``I would not have agreed to 
     play that role,'' he says. ``I would feel ethically 
     compromised. Providing legal consultation and trying to make 
     legal arguments on behalf of the independent counsel is one 
     thing. But I wouldn't want in effect to be allowing my 
     reputation to be used as a shield for someone whose 
     circumstances, in the end, I don't have the ability to 
     influence. That would make me feel extremely uncomfortable.''
       Dash insists that such worries are misplaced.
       ``I'm not giving Ken Starr my reputation,'' he says. ``I'm 
     giving him my expertise.''
       He adds that Starr and others in the prosecutor's office 
     are following his advice. And Washington lawyer Abbe Lowell, 
     a longtime acquaintance, finds this claim persuasive.
       ``Sam Dash isn't a shrinking violet,'' Lowell says. ``He 
     wouldn't have gotten involved in this if he didn't think he 
     could have an important impact. To say he's a fig leaf for 
     Ken Starr does an injustice to Sam Dash.''
       For his part, Dash sees his current preoccupation as a 
     fitting capstone to a career in which he has been, by turns, 
     the district attorney in Philadelphia, a hero of Watergate, a 
     legal theoretician and international human rights activist, 
     the first American citizen to visit Nelson Mandela in a South 
     African jail.
       ``I'm not a stranger to controversy,'' Dash says. ``And I 
     don't want to look like I run away from it. I think Harry 
     Truman's statement was correct: If you can't stand the heat, 
     get out of the kitchen. I like being in the kitchen.''
       But the Cuisinart?
                                                                    ____


                [From the Baltimore Sun, Apr. 15, 1996]

Ethics Insurance at $3,200 a week; Whitewater Counsel's Adviser Assumes 
                         a Larger Role in Probe

                            (By Susan Baer)

       Washington--Samuel Dash, the celebrated lawyer who was 
     hired by Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr in 
     1994 to advise him on ethics issues, is now playing a much 
     broader role in the investigation--and collecting a sizable 
     government-paid fee for his services.
       Mr. Dash said that while Mr. Starr hired him to work on 
     ethics questions, he is now weighing in on everything from 
     prosecutorial strategy to dealing with witnesses.
       ``He's asked me to go beyond ethics issues,'' said Mr. 
     Dash, a 71-year-old full-time law professor at Georgetown 
     University who gained fame as chief counsel to the Senate 
     Watergate Committee.
       For his part-time services--which include advising Mr. 
     Starr on how much of his $1 million-a-year private law 
     practice he may retain while leading the government's 
     Whitewater investigation--Mr. Dash is paid a flat fee of 
     $3,200 a week.
       The professor, whose pay was raised by Mr. Starr from 
     $1,600 a week in July, said he works an average of 20 hours a 
     week, sometimes up to 30 hours, for the Whitewater 
     prosecutor, but is charging Mr. Starr for only eight hours a 
     week, at his regular consulting rate of $400 an hour.
       ``This is pro bono,'' Mr. Dash said with a laugh, referring 
     to the public-interest work lawyers do for no pay.
       When it was suggested to him that only by superlawyer 
     standards would $3,200 a week be considered ``pro bono,'' he 
     said, with apologies for immodesty, ``People of my stature 
     charge way more than I do.''
       Mr. Dash, whose Whitewater pay was disclosed recently by 
     the Arkansas Times, was hired by Mr. Starr in October 1994, 
     two months after Mr. Starr was chosen to head the inquiry, 
     which reaches up to the Clinton presidency.
       A highly respected lawyer and a Democrat, Mr. Dash was 
     retained to calm concerns about Mr. Starr's impartiality, 
     given his background as an active and partisan Republican, 
     and his selection by judges with ties to conservative 
     Republicans.
       In the 1970s, Mr. Dash assisted Chief Justice Warren E. 
     Burger in devising the American Bar Association's ethical 
     standards for prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers.
       Mr. Dash, who also helped draft the law that established 
     the independent counsel's office, noted that he is the first 
     person to be an outside ethics adviser to an independent 
     counsel.
       ``This is somewhat unique,'' Mr. Dash said. ``Starr felt 
     when he was appointed, fairly or unfairly, there was quite a 
     bit of criticism because he was a partisan Republican. There 
     was some concern, at the White House and other places, that 
     he may not be objective.
       ``My personal belief is he didn't need me. But he was 
     thinking of perception problems. He thought it was proper, to 
     preserve public confidence, to bring someone like me in. He 
     felt he needed somebody to assure the public that his 
     decisions are being made on the basis of the right 
     judgments.''
       Mr. Dash's weekly fee would amount to an annual rate of 
     about $160,000 a year. But officials with Mr. Starr's office 
     have said he won't receive that much because they are 
     applying to Mr. Dash, an independent contractor, the same 
     salary cap of $115,700 that applies to employees of the 
     independent counsel's office. So far, Mr. Dash has been paid 
     $147,200 for the 16 months he has worked for Mr. Starr.
       Many lawyers believe the hiring of Mr. Dash was a masterful 
     strategic move by Mr. Starr, insulating him from political-
     bias charges by having a prominent Democrat look over his 
     shoulder each step of the way.
       But some have questioned the need for such a sizable 
     expense, given that an independent counsel is hired precisely 
     because of his or her ostensible impartiality.
       Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel in the Iran-
     contra case, said he thought it was ``regrettable'' that such 
     an expense must be incurred to ensure the perception of 
     objectivity.


                          a defensive measure

       ``It's really a defensive measure,'' said Mr. Walsh, a 
     Republican former federal judge. ``But the question is, why 
     do you get in a position where you have to defend yourself? 
     The real thing [an independent counsel] brings that nobody 
     else can bring is his independence. That's the excuse for 
     this very expensive procedure.''
       Mr. Walsh said that during the Iran-contra investigation, 
     he sought the help of Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law 
     professor, for ethics concerns about the publication of his 
     final report. But, he said, Mr. Tribe did not accept a fee.
       Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York 
     University who was critical of Mr. Starr's appointment 
     because of his history as an outspoken Republican, said he 
     thought such a six-figure expense could be damaging.
       ``When the public hears that the independent counsel--who 
     is there supposedly because of his distance from the 
     traditional prosecutorial office--needs an independent 
     counsel for ethics advice [at a substantial cost], it's 
     almost impossible to explain how that can be so,'' Mr. 
     Gillers said. ``The perception is that something's amiss.''
       Mr. Starr did not respond to questions, submitted to him in 
     writing, regarding Mr. Dash's role and pay.
       Terry Eastland, author of a book on independent counsels, 
     said he did not consider the expense for an ethics consultant 
     unreasonable. ``Lawyers are expensive,'' he said.
       And other ethics consultants say $400 an hour is reasonable 
     for top-level experts, although they also say they bill far 
     less--and occasionally, nothing--if the government is the 
     client.
       Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., a University of Pennsylvania law 
     professor and ethics consultant, called Mr. Dash's fee as a 
     part-time adviser ``pretty high pay.'' But, he added,

[[Page S3836]]

     ``The value of having somebody just a little bit more 
     credible is very high.''
       So far, the independent counsel's Whitewater inquiry has 
     cost about $26 million. Mr. Starr is spending about $1 
     million a month on the investigation.
       Mr. Dash said he may suspend has involvement this summer, 
     when he plans to serve as a visiting professor at the 
     University of Heidelberg Law School in Germany.
       For now, Mr. Dash said, his work for the Whitewater office 
     includes such activities as advising Mr. Starr on whether 
     there is enough evidence to sustain a charge, reviewing all 
     cases referred to the grand jury, and consulting on issues of 
     fairness.
       For example, when false reports surfaced that Gov. Jim Guy 
     Tucker of Arkansas had sought a plea bargain after being 
     indicted, Mr. Starr asked Mr. Dash for advice on whether the 
     usual policy of issuing a ``no comment'' to questions about 
     the case should be followed, according to Mr. Dash.
       The ethics counselor advised Mr. Starr that the more proper 
     response, in fairness to Mr. Tucker, was to issue a statement 
     denying the accuracy of the reports.
       Mr. Dash has also been advising Mr. Starr on the propriety 
     of the private work he has continued to do. Critics have 
     charged that Mr. Starr, who earned $1.1 million in private 
     practice in 1994, is spending too much time on lucrative 
     high-profile cases for his firm, some of which could 
     compromise--or appear to compromise--his independence as 
     special counsel.
       For instance, Mr. Starr has argued a federal appeals case 
     on behalf of the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., and has 
     represented Gov. Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin, a potential 
     Republican vice presidential nominee, in school-voucher case 
     before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.


                      conflict of interest alleged

       Rep. Martin Meehan, a Massachusetts Democrat, wrote to Mr. 
     Starr last week, imploring him to end his representation of 
     the tobacco company on the ground that it created a conflict 
     of interest because President Clinton has been an opponent of 
     big tobacco.
       A potential problem area--cited by those who believe Mr. 
     Starr should have taken a leave from his law firm, the 
     Chicago-based Kirkland & Ellis--is a lawsuit filed against 
     the firm by the Resolution Trust Corp., a federal agency that 
     figures prominently in the Whitewater affair.
       Defending his private work, Mr. Starr, in an address last 
     week in San Antonio, said: ``My ethics counselor is Professor 
     Sam Dash of Georgetown University, legend of Watergate fame, 
     and he has affirmed that it's completely appropriate.''
       Mr. Dash said that while he has advised Mr. Starr that 
     there is nothing wrong, legally or ethically, with his 
     outside work, his own ``preference''--``because of questions 
     reasonable people ask'' about conflicts--is that Mr. Starr 
     not take on as much.
       ``I have discussed with him that he should take heed, and I 
     think he will take heed,'' Mr. Dash said. ``He is concerned. 
     But he doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. I tell him 
     he's not doing anything wrong.''
       Richard Ben-Veniste, the Democratic counsel for the Senate 
     Whitewater Committee who was an assistant to the Watergate 
     special prosecutor, said Mr. Starr's full plate of outside 
     work illustrates the need for Mr. Dash's services.
       ``Given the list of things Mr. Starr is engaged in outside 
     of his job as independent counsel, he's kept Mr. Dash pretty 
     busy,'' Mr. Ben-Veniste said.
       ``I think Sam's earning his money.''

  Mr. LEAHY. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. PRYOR. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I heard the distinguished Senator from 
Arkansas say something that struck me. All this money that is being 
spent is taxpayers' money?
  Mr. PRYOR. Every bit is taxpayers' money.
  Mr. LEAHY. I have been reading a number of articles in the national 
press raising some very serious questions about the appearance of 
conflict of interest on the part of Mr. Starr, the special prosecutor. 
As a former prosecutor myself, I feel strongly that there is at the 
very least an appearance of a conflict of interest. But notwithstanding 
what appears to be conflict of interest, are you telling me that he is 
paying somebody out of tax money, on a part-time basis, the equivalent 
of about $160,000 a year to give him ethical advice?
  Mr. PRYOR. This is the first time, I answer my friend from Vermont, 
in the history of all of the legal independent counsels that we have 
had, that an independent counsel has felt the necessity of retaining an 
ethics attorney or an ethics adviser. In this one, the taxpayers are 
paying $3,200 each week. I imagine that is more than a member--I do not 
know what a member of the Supreme Court gets.
  Mr. LEAHY. A member of a Supreme Court who works full time is paid 
less. The attorney retained as the ethics adviser is, I realize, a 
wonderful man and a good friend of mine, but this is extraordinary--
this ethics adviser is paid on a part-time basis with taxpayer money?
  Mr. PRYOR. That is correct. He is a fine law professor. Mr. Starr 
gave him this job in order to advise Mr. Starr on ethics. I do not know 
one time yet that Mr. Dash has not told Mr. Starr what he was doing was 
OK, including making $1.3 million last year.

                          ____________________