[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 26 (Thursday, March 12, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E370]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               KENNETH STARR'S CREDIBILITY AND INTEGRITY

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. MICHAEL G. OXLEY

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 12, 1998

  Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, for those who missed it, I would like to 
bring an opinion piece from the March 11th Wall Street Journal to the 
attention of my colleagues. As the piece makes clear, our sense of 
right and wrong and our commitment to the rule of law is being 
challenged by the attacks on Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's 
credibility and integrity. We would be wise to allow the investigation 
to proceed in an environment free of partisan bickering to allow the 
truth to be found.
  Mr. Speaker, I commend the following column to the attention of all 
interested parties.

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Mar. 11, 1998]

                          The Borking of Starr

       We blink every time talking heads discuss Kenneth Starr's 
     low approval ratings; we hope we aren't the only ones taken a 
     bit aback by the very idea of conducting opinion polls about 
     judicial officers. In the judicial branch, we thought, the 
     game was about statutes and precedents and scholarly 
     qualifications, not about popularity. But perhaps this useful 
     distinction too is being obliterated in the current climate.
       If so, the corner was turned with the campaign against 
     Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court. Precisely 
     because his scholarly attainments and intellect were the 
     cream of his generation, his opponents feared his views would 
     dominate a new crop of jurists. So they mounted a campaign to 
     drive down his poll ratings, and thereby frighten the 
     Senators weighing his nomination. They succeeded, but the 
     cost to American institutions becomes clearer and clearer 
     with the passage of time.
       We have arrived at a point where a James Carville goes on 
     television to declare ``war'' on Kenneth Starr. Mr. Starr is 
     an official of the U.S. government, duly appointed by a panel 
     of three judges pursuant to laws passed by the U.S. Congress 
     and signed by Bill Clinton. Presumably this means he is not 
     the local football coach, removable by mob sentiment. If Mr. 
     Starr is abusing his powers, that same law provides that the 
     Attorney General can remove him, and she should do so.
       Instead, Mr. Clinton's Attorney General has expanded the 
     scope of Mr. Starr's investigation at least three known 
     times. Four former attorney generals, including Griffin Bell 
     of the Carter Administration, have testified to Mr. Starr's 
     long-standing personal reputation for integrity and judicial 
     temperament. (Since their statement has not been widely 
     covered, we reprint it in its entirety nearby.)
       None of this matters in Mr. Carville's war, and we're 
     confident none of it is explained to people when the 
     pollsters put their questions.
       What we have here is a public relations offensive intended 
     to turn the public against a court official going about his 
     work and not in a position to reply to every criticism. In 
     the March 2 New York Times an obviously confident White House 
     aide casually describes ``our continuing campaign to destroy 
     Ken Starr.''
       This ``continuing campaign'' hasn't been restricted to Mr. 
     Starr, himself a former appeals court judge. Judge David 
     Sentelle of the three judge panel has been diminished by 
     Clinton operatives as merely a tool of Senator Helms. Other 
     troublesome judges can expect to be similarly targeted. This 
     is, in effect, an attack on the judicial branch if not indeed 
     the law itself.
       In this campaign, the President of the United States avails 
     himself of his own personal Praetorian Guard of dirt-diggers, 
     personified by Terry Lenzner's Investigative Group Inc. Back 
     in 1994, the President's private attorneys, Robert Bennett 
     and David Kendall, retained IGI's services in the Paula Jones 
     and Whitewater cases. Jack Palladino, hired in the first 
     Clinton Presidential run to help with Betsey Wright's ``bimbo 
     eruptions,'' has also appeared on the scene, bragging about 
     his success in avoiding subpoenas. Mike McCurry, spokesman 
     for the Presidency who's doubling inappropriately as flack 
     for Mr. Clinton's own lawyers, said the President was aware 
     that his private lawyers had hired outside investigators but 
     that the detectives weren't looking for ``personal derogatory 
     information.''
       Yet somehow derogatory information, some of it plainly 
     false, keeps popping up. Former prosecutor Joseph diGenova 
     said last month on ``Meet the Press'' that journalists told 
     him that both he and his wife were being probed after they'd 
     given interviews critical of Mr. Clinton in the Lewinsky 
     scandal. Mr. Starr's private life has also been investigated, 
     with all involved denying a White House connection. Mr. 
     Starr's perhaps impolitic subpoena of White House spinner 
     Sidney Blumenthal came after the IC's office started 
     receiving reporters' calls asking for comment on destructive 
     rumors about staff prosecutors. Wire stories, for example, 
     suggested that prosecutor Bruce Udolf has been fined 10 years 
     ago for violating a defendant's civil rights in Georgia. A 
     former federal judge defended Mr. Udolf against the 
     implication that he could be expected to abuse the law.
       Richard Nixon's Watergate ``plumbers'' offended mainly 
     because the President, who has authority over a powerful 
     national security apparatus, had created a private posse to 
     investigate his enemies, unchecked by professional pride and 
     the mores of an ongoing institution. It's now evident that 
     the Clintonities learned two things from Watergate: Burn the 
     tapes, and put your plumbers in your personal law firm to 
     acquire attorney-client privilege.
       No doubt the White House is proud of its success in Borking 
     Mr. Starr. Yet serious people would recognize the damage 
     being wrought to institutions developed over centuries to 
     uphold the idea that civilization means something more than 
     the sentiment of the passing moment. If poll ratings are all 
     that matter in the nation's capital, a President can perhaps 
     sustain them with a prosperous economy and a winning 
     television manner, or as the Romans said, bread and circuses. 
     Mr. Carville's war and Mr. Starr's polls give us a glimpse of 
     one possible evolution of our political system in an era of 
     instant communications. The issue is whether we will be 
     governed by men or by laws.

     

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