[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 155 (Saturday, December 19, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2362]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             THE STARR TRAP

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. PETER DEUTSCH

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, December 18, 1998

  Mr. DEUTSCH. Mr. Speaker, as we consider the gravity of the 
constitutional matters before the nation today, I commend my 
colleague's attention to an important column by Anthony Lewis which 
appeared in the Washington Post on December 1, 1998. I insert the full 
text of that column in the Record.

                             The Starr Trap

                           (By Anthony Lewis)

       Boston--At 1 P.M. on Friday, Jan. 16, Monica Lewinsky 
     arrived at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City to meet 
     Linda Tripp. What happened then is well known. But its 
     significance--its crucial significance--is not generally 
     understood.
       Ms. Lewinsky was confronted by F.B.I. agents and Kenneth 
     Starr's assistant prosecutors. She immediately told them, as 
     she testified later, that ``I wasn't speaking to them without 
     my attorney.''
       Her attorney was Francis D. Carter. When she was subpoenaed 
     by Paula Jones's lawyers, she told him that she had not had 
     ``sexual relations'' with President Clinton; Mr. Carter 
     prepared, and she signed, an affidavit to that effect.
       Mr. Starr's agents did everything they could, short of 
     physical force, to keep Ms. Lewinsky from calling Frank 
     Carter. They told her that he was a civil rather than a 
     criminal lawyer ``so he really couldn't help me.'' (That was 
     a lie; Mr. Carter is a highly regarded criminal lawyer who 
     for six years headed Washington's public defender service.) 
     They gave her the number of another lawyer and suggested she 
     call him.
       They told her she had signed a false affidavit and could go 
     to prison for 27 years. They offered to give her immunity if 
     she would ``cooperate'' but said there would be no deal if 
     Mr. Carter were called in. (A Federal regulation forbids 
     immunity negotiations in the absence of a suspect's lawyer.)
       Why were Mr. Starr's deputies so anxious that Ms. Lewinsky 
     not telephone Mr. Carter?
       On that Friday afternoon Mr. Carter had not yet filed Ms. 
     Lewinsky's affidavit. Until it was filed, it could be 
     changed--without legal consequences. Federal law makes it a 
     crime only to file a false affidavit in a civil case. You can 
     swear one, keep it, then change it or tear it up without 
     violating the law.
       Mr. Starr knew about the affidavit from Linda Tripp's last 
     taped conversation with Ms. Lewinsky, and knew from Paula 
     Jones's lawyers that it might not yet have been filed. That 
     is why his deputies worked so hard to keep Ms. Lewinsky from 
     calling Frank Carter. If he knew what was happening, they 
     realized, he would not file it. And they wanted a crime. They 
     wanted perjury to be committed: by Ms. Lewinsky so they would 
     have leverage over her, and by the President when he was 
     deposed in the Jones case the next day.
       If Ms. Lewinsky had called that afternoon, Mr. Carter told 
     me the affidavit ``would not have been sent.'' But there was 
     no call. At the end of the business day it was sent to the 
     court in Little Rock by Federal Express. Under the rules, 
     that was a filing.
       Mr. Carter had shown the affidavit to the Jones lawyers and 
     to Robert Bennett, President Clinton's lawyer. If he had not 
     filed it, he said, ``I would have told them.'' So Mr. Bennett 
     would have known of Mr. Starr's interest in Monica Lewinsky. 
     The President's deposition on Saturday would have taken 
     another course or been canceled. And the history of the last 
     10 months would have been very different.
       (Did the President or Ms. Lewinsky in fact commit perjury 
     when they swore they had not had ``sexual relations''? 
     Perjury, a complicated legal concept, requires among other 
     things proof of deliberate falsehood. In a conversation with 
     Linda Tripp unrelated to any threat of prosecution, Ms. 
     Lewinsky had said emphatically that ``having sex'' meant 
     ``having intercourse''--not oral sex.)
       The right to a lawyer is fundamental in our constitutional 
     system. A person accused of crime, the Supreme Court said in 
     the Scottsboro Case in 1932, ``requires the guiding hand of 
     counsel at every step.'' Without it, the innocent person may 
     be overborne by what she does not understand.
       Police officers occasionally break the rules. It is another 
     matter when prosecutors, who are officers of the court, 
     overbear a young woman to keep her from calling her lawyer. 
     The Starr deputies who were there on Jan. 16--Michael Emmick, 
     Jackie Bennett Jr. and Bruce Udolf--should surely face 
     questions by the appropriate legal authorities on their 
     fitness to practice law. And Mr. Starr condoned what they 
     did.
       None of this excuses President Clinton's moral folly. But 
     it makes powerfully clear that Kenneth Starr is a far more 
     serious menace to our constitutional order than Bill Clinton 
     is.

     

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