[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 37 (Friday, March 27, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2696-S2698]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        SPECIAL PROSECUTOR STARR

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, every week I wonder just what new step the 
special prosecutor, Mr. Starr, will find himself carrying out, and each 
week it seems he does not disappoint.
  One week, we will recall, a citizen had the temerity to ask why 
Prosecutor Starr was using the results of an illegal wiretap, something 
that had been reported in the press that, without a doubt, he was using 
an illegal--illegal--wiretap. This citizen had the audacity to question 
Mr. Starr. Of course,

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he got slapped with a subpoena, had to spend as much money on a lawyer 
as he saved for a year's college tuition for one of his children and 
was brought into the star chamber, the grand jury, and had to say why 
he dared question the man behind the curtain.
  This was probably as outrageous an abuse of prosecutorial discretion 
as anything I have seen in a while, but unlike prosecutors who are 
elected or Senators who are elected or people who are elected, Mr. 
Starr, the Republican prosecutor, does not have to respond to anybody, 
and he has an unlimited budget. He sent a very clear signal: ``If you 
dare question my use of illegal tactics, I'll stop you from questioning 
me, I'll make you spend so much money that you can't do it.'' And, of 
course, he has an unlimited amount of money himself so he can do that.
  He then topped that outrageous activity by bringing Monica Lewinsky's 
mother before him and for day after day grilled her on things that her 
daughter may have told her in confidence. So he set the precedent that 
a prosecutor will have a mother in there for something that has nothing 
to do with violent crime or crime against the country or anything else 
and say, ``You have to tell us what your daughter told you.'' If your 
daughter dares to confide in you, if your child dares to come to a 
parent and ask advice or confide in a parent, then Prosecutor Starr 
will want to know what you said to your parent. This is in between 
giving paid speeches to groups to talk about family values.
  I was outraged as were many others. I have introduced a measure to 
lead to our reviewing the law on this point. On March 6, I introduced 
S.1721 to develop Federal prosecutorial guidelines to protect familial 
privacy and parent-child communications in matters that do not involve 
allegations of violent conduct or drug trafficking. In addition, the 
legislation would direct the Judicial Conference to undertake a study 
and then report whether the Federal Rules of Evidence should be amended 
explicitly to recognize a parent-child privilege.
  Then what was this week's latest outrage? As I said, I keep wondering 
how he is going to top himself. He did this time by going to a 
bookstore and saying I want to know what books somebody was buying and 
reading. Now, the bookstore knows that this is an outrageous request, 
and the bookstore knows that people ought to be able to come into a 
bookstore, read anything they want, look at anything they want, buy 
anything they want without having Prosecutor Starr and his henchmen 
come right in behind them and see what they read.
  The bookstore had it made very clear to them by Prosecutor Starr and 
his henchmen that ``If you want to fight this, you are going to have to 
sell one heck of a lot of books to pay the lawyers. You probably won't 
sell enough books this year to pay what we will cost you for defending 
the rights of your customers.''
  Prosecutor Starr doesn't have to worry because he has already spent 
$40 million of what we, the taxpayers, have given him, with no end in 
sight. So he can tell that bookstore, ``Go ahead, make my day, you go 
on in and try to fight this. I'll bankrupt you. I'll just grind you 
down into the ground.''
  So now there is this idea, Mr. President, that everyone has to think 
if they go into a bookstore, ``Am I going to have a subpoena in there 
to see what I read or don't read?''
  I remember when Judge Bork was before the U.S. Senate for 
confirmation. Somebody came into the Senate Judiciary Committee and 
said, ``We have a list of what Robert Bork has been renting from video 
stores.'' I was so incensed that anybody would do that, I introduced 
legislation to make it illegal to give out the lists of what people 
rented in a video store. To make it bipartisan, my good friend Alan 
Simpson, the distinguished Republican whip and a conservative 
Republican, joined me on that, and we passed the Leahy-Simpson bill. 
What we said in the Leahy-Simpson bill is that it is nobody's business 
what you rent for videos, and I think the American people agreed with 
us.

  The difference is we had Democrats standing up for the rights of a 
Republican nominee in that instance and all Americans. Now, of course, 
we have a Republican prosecutor who says it doesn't make any difference 
to him, ``I want to know what you are reading.'' Are we going to start 
with people following us through a video store now and say, ``Well, we 
can't tell you what he rented, but we know he glanced over at one of 
the R-rated videos.''
  Or are they going to follow us into the library and say, ``He read 
Chaucer's `Canterbury Tales,' and you know what they say.'' Actually 
most people don't, because they never bothered to read it in an English 
class--but they think something unseemly may be in there.
  Or, ``He read `Catcher in the Rye.' '' Woo-wee, there is going to be 
a field day.
  If Prosecutor Starr followed me through a bookstore, he is going to 
find me reading everything from ``Angela's Ashes'' to ``Batman.'' He 
can have a lot of fun with this. ``Angela's Ashes'' talks about Frank 
McCourt going into the library and reading dictionaries, where he 
looked up words that his parents wouldn't tell him the meaning of. Of 
course, ``Batman'' is a guy who runs around in a suit with a mask on. 
Now, that is going to kind of raise some questions.
  What about the person who goes into a magazine store to buy Time or 
Newsweek magazine, but they may have slowed down by the magazines that 
had pictures of unclothed people or certain sports magazines with their 
swimsuit editions?
  Or what about this--here is something for Prosecutor Starr to look 
at--check the person who has an average income who goes into the 
magazine store and picks up the magazine with expensive sports cars 
that they couldn't possibly afford. They are reading about Ferraris, 
Maseratis and Porsches. Maybe we better subpoena that person's bank 
accounts; maybe we better check him out. Why would they be reading 
about a Maserati and a Ferrari if they only make $40,000 a year? 
Something is going on here.
  New Englanders have asked during witch hunts whether there is any 
sense of decency. Let's get a grip.
  If, as Mr. Starr has indicated in his activities with the Paula Jones 
attorneys and with other groups, that he wants to get rid of the 
President of the United States who was elected twice--fine, let him 
just come forward and say so. Just say, ``Look, I want him out of 
office; I will do anything possible to get him out of office,'' and 
maybe people will understand. But let us at least realize the damaging 
precedents that are being set.
  Are we going to have thought control? Are we really going to go to 
the point where we ask people what they read, what they see? Are we 
going to next ask, ``Well, what newspapers do you read?'' It is not 
enough to ask what newspaper do you read, ``What sections of the 
newspaper do you read? I mean, do you read the sports section or the 
business section? Do you read the comic page or the gossip page? Do you 
read the front page or the obituaries, and why those obituaries, what 
were you looking for?''
  We Americans have a sense of privacy. We ought to be able to read 
anything we want. We ought to be able to look at what we want. We 
shouldn't have to worry that a prosecutor is going to come in and, 
basically, threaten a bookstore with bankruptcy if they don't tell you 
what their customers read or buy.
  Just as Senator Simpson and I passed a law so people couldn't ask 
Judge Bork or any other nominee what videos they rent, we ought to be 
protecting what people read. This is America. This is not some 
totalitarian, thought-controlled country.
  So let us have a sense of right and wrong. Frankly, this Vermonter 
finds the idea of asking bookstores what books their patrons read or 
buy, wrong. I find it chilling, I find it frightening, and I hope that 
the press and everybody else will consider it. I hope they will, 
because if they can ask what books you read, they can ask what 
newspapers you read, what television news programs you watch or radio 
stations you listen to. It is all one in the same.

  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ashcroft). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.

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  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Alabama is recognized.

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