Starr to lay out case to Congress

Starr's motives and tactics, as much as the president's actions, will be the focus of the House Judiciary Committee hearing set for Thursday.

Democrats plan to portray the independent counsel as a right-wing prosecutor on a rampage against Clinton in concert with the president's political opponents. For Republicans, the hearing represents the best opportunity for Starr to make his case forcefully against Clinton.

In his impeachment report to the House, Starr accused the president of 11 offenses that he considers impeachable and alleged a pattern of lies by Clinton and his loyalists in the Monica Lewinsky case.

Former Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, a strong critic of Starr for pursuing the Lewinsky allegations, said, "I think his actions deserve all the scrutiny he's getting, but I'm not at all sure Starr won't do well.

"The sympathy of the public during a televised hearing is with the witness. ... I think of the appearance of Oliver North, who ran away with the congressional hearing in Iran-Contra."

Starr is no stranger to tough questions in a tense environment. As President Bush's solicitor general, he took them for years from Supreme Court justices. Nonetheless, he is vulnerable on several points:

n He aggressively investigated the Lewinsky matter before getting formal authorization from the Justice Department, having Lewinsky's friend, Linda Tripp, wear a body wire Jan. 13 to record a conversation with the former intern. Attorney General Janet Reno didn't approve an expansion of Starr's mandate until Jan. 16.

n When Starr's prosecutors confronted Lewinsky Jan. 16, she asked to speak to her lawyer. Fearful that targets of their probe might be tipped off, Starr's investigators told Lewinsky any deal for immunity from prosecution was null and void if she called her attorney. Justice Department regulations say a person's lawyer must be present for discussions involving an immunity deal.

n Tripp, the prosecutor's star witness who triggered the Lewinsky probe by secretly taping the former intern's admissions of a presidential affair, is herself under scrutiny.

Starr is probing whether her tapes were tampered with and whether Mrs. Tripp lied about them when she testified the tapes she turned over to prosecutors were originals. The FBI has concluded some of the tapes are in fact duplicates.

-After working with Starr's office, Mrs. Tripp provided specifics about Ms. Lewinsky's relationship with Clinton to Paula Jones' lawyers, who thenght the president off guard with detailed questions when he testified in the lawsuit Jan. 17. Democrats wonder why Starr's office didn't do as prosecutors frequently do in sensitive criminal investigations and stop Mrs. Tripp from talking to outsiders. Some Democratic critics have suggested Starr may have tried to entrap the president.

Problems loom on other fronts, too.

The president's lawyers persuaded a federal judge to launch a probe of leaks of secret grand jury information. Starr's office denies it broke grand jury secrecy rules, but U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson has concluded there's enough superficial evidence of possible leaks - 24 news stories in all - that she named a special master to investigate further.

If the judge finds that Starr's office violated grand jury secrecy rules, she could ask Reno to remove him from office, refer any leakers to the American Bar Association for discipline, or take other action.

There is a separate investigation of Starr's office by former Justice Department lawyer Michael Shaheen into whether money from foundations controlled by conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife found its way into the pocket of David Hale, a crucial Starr witness against Clinton in the original Whitewater inquiry.

The suspicion that Starr has a political agenda first arose in 1994.

Appeals court judge David Sentelle met with Republican Sens. Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth around the time that Sentelle and two other appeals court judges named Starr prosecutor. Faircloth had been outspoken in demanding that Starr's predecessor Robert Fiske be replaced. Sentelle said he, Faircloth and Helms did not discuss politics at their luncheon meeting.

Starr also had conversations with Paula Jones' lawyers before being named independent counsel. The two sides discussed the constitutional question of whether an incumbent president is immune to civil suit. Starr said he wasn't. The prosecutor didn't disclose the discussions to the Justice Department when he got permission to investigate possible crimes committed by the president in the Jones case. Starr says there was no conflict and therefore no need to disclose.

White House attacks against Starr began when he subpoenaed first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1996, but it wasn't until the Lewinsky scandal that public sentiment turned decisively against him.

Twenty months ago, 60 percent of the public didn't have an opinion about Starr. Last month, 56 percent of Americans had a negative view of him.

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