[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 99 (Wednesday, July 22, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1385]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            STARR NOW OBJECTS TO AN INVESTIGATION OF HIMSELF

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JOHN CONYERS

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 22, 1998

  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss the reported 
resistance by Independent Counsel Starr to Chief District Court Judge 
Johnson's decision to begin an investigation of whether Mr. Starr 
leaked grand jury materials to the press in violation of federal law. 
Rather than obey that judge's order, Mr. Starr apparently has filed an 
unusual motion to prevent her order from going into effect until such 
time as he can be heard before the D.C. Court of Appeals.
  The central issue appears to be whether Mr. Starr will be forced to 
comply with Judge Johnson's order that President Clinton's lawyers be 
allowed to participate in the questioning of members of the Independent 
Counsel's office concerning the alleged leaks. We have not yet been 
informed of exactly why Mr. Starr is so concerned about direct 
questioning of his staff by the President's lawyers concerning alleged 
violations of federal law.
  Judge Johnson's decision to permit such questioning is, however, 
fully justified by Mr. Starr's prior misleading statements on the issue 
of whether his office was the source of leaks. Mr. Starr has previously 
stated that leaks were ``prohibited'' in his office and that he had 
``no reason to suspect'' that anyone in his office may have been the 
source of reports about his investigation. Later, of course, as we all 
now know, Mr. Starr admitted that his office speaks frequently with 
reporters, but that these contacts do not fall within his narrow 
definition of a ``leak.''
  Mr. Starr's resistance to standard truth-seeking measures such as 
adversarial questioning is blatantly hypocritical in light of his 
numerous public statements suggesting that the White House and others 
are improperly obstructing his investigation simply because they ask 
courts to balance important private and governmental interests against 
Mr. Starr's apparently boundless interest in new investigative leads. 
Now that Mr. Starr has apparently found some interests of his own that 
he believes justify limiting an important part of a proposed criminal 
investigation, will Mr. Starr now concede that asking a court to 
evaluate a privilege is an appropriate response to a criminal 
investigation?
  Assuming that Mr. Starr is unwilling to make this concession, will he 
then ask himself the same question he asked during his recent speech to 
the bar association in North Carolina? In that memorably inappropriate 
attack on the President by the Independent Counsel, Mr. Starr self-
righteously posed the following question:

       At what point does a lawyer's manipulation of the legal 
     system become an obstruction of the truth?

  Witnessing Mr. Starr's own legal manipulations this week, I am forced 
to ask my own question: What does Mr. Starr have to hide? Mr. Starr 
should live up to his own rhetoric, stop resisting Judge Johnson's 
order and allow a credible investigation to proceed into these 
significant allegations of serious wrongdoing.

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