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The latest figures, for the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 1998, bring the total cost of Starr's 4 1/2-year inquiry of the president and Hillary Rodham Clinton to nearly $40 million. Starr replaced Robert Fiske, who spent $6 million.
The most expensive independent counsel investigation to date was Lawrence Walsh's $48.5 million, six-year probe of the Reagan administration regarding its arms-for-hostages deals with Iran and its secret war against the government of Nicaragua.
Reports by the General Accounting Office, Congress' auditing and investigative arm, show that the cost of investigating top administration officials during the Clinton era now tops $76 million.
"The monumental effort required to conduct the investigation of Monica Lewinsky and others required unusual commitments of resources," said Elizabeth Ray, a spokesperson for Starr's office.
"Our concerns about the exorbitant expense of the Independent Counsel's investigation are well known, but we'll let this latest report speak for itself," said White House spokesperson Jim Kennedy.
Starr's expenditures totaled $6.2 million in the six months through last Sept. 30, up nearly 60 percent from the $3.9 million in the previous six months, said the GAO.
The latest GAO report does not cover costs for the first 2 1/2 months of Starr's investigation into the presidential affair and cover-up. Starr opened the Lewinsky investigation in mid-January 1998. The latest GAO figures start on April 1, 1998.
The GAO totals do not break out Starr's costs for other aspects of his investigation, such as the prosecutions of Clinton friend Webster Hubbell and Whitewater partner Susan McDougal. But those investigations pale in size and intensity to the Lewinsky case, which involved a massive grand jury inquiry that lasted seven months.
Starr wrapped up the Lewinsky investigation on Sept. 9, 1998, with a repoto Congress detailing 11 possible grounds for impeaching the president for lying and obstruction.
The trial of Mrs. McDougal in Arkansas on contempt and obstruction charges is in its fourth week. Mrs. McDougal was investigated and indicted last May, a cost that would be included in the latest financial figures for Starr's operation.
Starr has two court cases pending against Hubbell, one for income tax evasion, the other for obstructing federal regulators looking into the failure of the savings and loan owned by the Clintons' Whitewater partners. Both those cases were in the investigative stage in the months covered by the latest expenditures.
Walsh, the former Iran-Contra prosecutor, said that Starr's costs will jump suddenly by many millions of dollars when he concludes his investigation. The reason: legal costs for witnesses drawn into Starr's investigation.
"I'm sure that Starr that will exceed me" in costs "before he's through," Walsh said.
Walsh pointed out that under the Independent Counsel Act, people who were subjects of Starr's investigation but who were never indicted are entitled to reimbursement from the government for legal costs.
Among the many people who may fit into that category are the president - who was impeached, not indicted - and Mrs. Clinton.
Independent counsels during the Clinton administration have investigated former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Labor Secretary Alexis Herman.
For half a century, it's been known as the second full moon in a month, like the one that appeared yesterday. But that's wrong, and the editors of Sky & Telescope say it's their fault: The magazine incorrectly defined the term 53 years ago.
"I hate to admit it," said Roger Sinnott, associate editor of Sky & Telescope.
Sinnott blamed the goof on an amateur astronomer.
James Hugh Pruett wrote a 1946 piece for the magazine after apparently misinterpreting a complex 1937 article in the Maine Farmer's Almanac that essentially, but not clearly, said a blue moon occurs when a season has four full moons, rather than the usual three. Pruett mistakenly thought that meant a blue moon is the second full moon within the same month.
Pruett's mistake went unnoticed for decades. A 1980 National Public Radio story about blue moons used the wrong definition. In 1986, the board game Trivial Pursuit repeated the error. When two full moons appeared in May 1988, "radio stations and newspapers everywhere carried an item on this bit of 'old folklore,'" folklorist Philip Hiscock wrote in the magazine's March issue.
Sky & Telescope, based in Cambridge, discovered the error when it was working on an article about how January and March of this year featured what would have been two blue moons by Pruett's definition.
Although Sky & Telescope's editors think Pruett's mistake led to the popular modern mis-definition of "blue moon," it's unclear where the Maine Farmer's Almanac came up with the rule. The almanac is defunct.
Although the term "blue moon" has existed for centuries, Sinnott said his research of almanacs dating to the early 1800s found no precise definitions until 1937.
By either definition - Pruett's or the almanac's - blue moons occur about every two or three years, Sinnott said. The last blue moon as defined by the almanac was in June 1997. The next will be in February 2000.
Although purists may subscribe to the almanac's point of view, Sinnott thinks Pruett's error will prevail. Pruett died in 1955.
"This meaning is so entrenched now. Nothing we can do is going to put the genie back in the bottle," Sinnott said. "Our big mistake in 1946 has really caught on and there's no turning back."
Officers Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy pleaded innocent in a Bronx courtroom to second-degree murder. They could get 25 years to life in prison on the charges.
Amadou Diallo, a 22-year-old street vendor from Guinea with no criminal record, was shot 19 times Feb. 4 in his vestibule by members of an elite street-crime unit looking for a rape suspect.
Through their lawyers, the officers have said they thought Diallo had a gun.
The slaying has frayed Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's already strained relationship with the black community, and many have accused him of failing to understand New Yorkers' anger.
Giuliani said yesterday: "We should allow the criminal justice system to now operate."
Judge John Collins set bail at $100,000 for each officer, even though District Attorney Robert Johnson had asked that they be held without bail. The officers left the courthouse together shortly after the arraignment.
Johnson told the judge: "On Feb. 4 in the vestibule in his own building, Amadou Diallo stood blameless, unarmed and defenseless when 19 of 41 shots were fired at him, struck him and killed him. ... These four defendants intended to take his life."
After leaving court, one of the officers, Carroll, shook hands with supporters and said in a quivering voice, "I want to thank the New York City police officers and the Street Crime Unit for their undaunted support."
The officers were immediately suspended from their jobs.
Marvyn Kornberg, Carroll's lawyer, called the intentional murder count "ludicrous."
"What's the district attorney saying? That they had nothing to do that night but roll up on an individual and attempt to kill him because he's black?" the lawyer asked.
Steven Brounstein, Boss's attorney, said in court that Johnson had "succumbed to a political agenda. My client is innocent of all charges. There was no crime on February 4."
In the two months since Diallo was killed, 1,203 people have been arrested in demonstrations over Diallo's death, the alleged police torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in 1997 and the perception that law-abiding minorities are routinely humiliated by police stop-and-search tactics.
Off-duty police officers and more than 25 of Diallo's friends and relatives packed the small courtroom for the 45-minute arraignment. About 1,000 demonstrators stood outside the courthouse.
Since the slaying, the street-crime unit has been ordered to wear uniforms instead of plainclothes, and 50 slots at the predominantly white division will be reassigned to minority police officers.
The case also reflects tension over police attitudes and tactics nationally. Earlier this month, President Clinton said he was worried that recent charges of police misconduct could undermine the fight against crime.
The officers in the Diallo case did not testify before the grand jury.
Brounstein and Culleton both said their clients began firing because they saw one officer on the ground. McMellon supposedly slipped and fell as he and the other officers confronted Diallo.
James Culleton, Murphy's lawyer, said his client "had a sick feeling inside of him, believing that he was going to be shot, and he reacted."
Earlier yesterday, Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir attended a tribute to a police officer killed in the line of duty in 1996. Safir called Diallo's death a tragedy but urged critics of the Policpartment to "acknowledge the tragedies that befall our family."
"We grieve for Amadou Diallo and the four officers involved and pray they get a fair trial," Safir said.
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Around the World
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Stretching deep into the Arctic, with only 25,000 residents, Nunavut is the product of the largest land-claims settlement in Canada's history and gives its Inuit majority their long-sought chance at self-government.
The new capital, Iqaluit, is normally home to 4,500 people. More than 1,000 visitors were expected for ceremonies starting with a midnight fireworks show to mark Nunavut's official birth. The festivities run through today with speeches, a traditional drum dance, the community feast and an evening rock concert.
With only 150 hotel beds in town, visitors were advised to bring sleeping bags and were being housed in a community college, at military barracks, in private homes and a drug-and-alcohol treatment center.
Nunavut is being created out of the eastern 60 percent of the Northwest Territories, culminating more than 20 years of lobbying by Inuit leaders. About 85 percent of Nunavut's 25,000 people are Inuit, as are 15 of the 19 candidates elected in February to the territorial legislature.
The main ceremony, to be attended by Prime Minister Jean Chretien, will be held today in a complex of hangers designed to deploy jet fighters in the event of a Soviet military threat during the Cold War. Inuit performers will present a drum dance, and Nunavut's flag will be raised for the first time.
Over the past few days, several preliminary ceremonies have taken place, including the presentation of a new Canadian 25 cent coin designed by Inuit artists and engraved with an owl and bear.
Nunavut's new ceremonial mace also was unveiled - made of the tusk of a narwhal, a walrus-like creature. The mace is encrusted with jewels and tiny figures of seals.
On Tuesday, the still-unfinished legislative building was dedicated at a ceremony attended by many Iqaluit residents.
"This building is for you as you take the dream and vision into the next millennium, with pride in who you are, where you live and what you will accomplish," said Tagak Curley, president of the company that constructed the building.
Curley was one of the Inuit activists who began lobbying for an Inuit-governed territory back in the 1970s.
"Our forefathers dreamed of one day regaining responsibility, ownership and accountability," he said. "They dreamed of a leadership that would incorporate Inuit traditional values into a modern style of government."
The main legislative chamber features sealskin-covered benches instead of desks, and has wooden arches which meet in the center in the shape of an igloo.
Nunavut's premier-elect is Paul Okalik, a lawyer with no previous experience in political office. At his first press conference, on Tuesday, he prodded the Canadian government for financial help to build roads and complained about the U.S. government's ban on seal products.
Gesturing to his own sealskin vest, Okalik said, "We can't trade with the U.S. in these products," and suggested that Canadian authorities should try to persuade Washington to soften the Marine Mammals Protection Act.
For the foreseeable future, Nunavut will rely on federal funds for 90 percent of its budget. Much of that funding is earmarked to address severe social problems - Nunavut's rates of unemployment, crime, substance abuse and suicide are among the highest in Canada.
Blair and Ahern flew last night to Hillsborough Castle near Belfast to press the main parties to the historic power-sharing agreement toward a compromise on a critical step in its implementation: the "decommissioning" of weapons and explosives held by the Irish Republican Army.
The April 11, 1998, peace deal calls for the demilitarization of the IRA and other paramilitary groups within two years. Sinn Fein, the IRA's political arm and a key Catholic force behind the accord, said it cannot compel the surrender of even the first weapons a year ahead of the deadline.
But the Ulster Unionist Party, the main Protestant party to the deal, said the lack of disarmament is a sign of bad faith and sinister intentions by the principal actor in Northern Ireland's armed struggle for reunification with the Republic of Ireland.
Until the IRA begins turning over its weapons, Ulster Unionist Party chief David Trimble said, he will not sit with Sinn Fein in the executive, or Cabinet, of the new Northern Ireland parliament created by the accord. This week is the deadline for the establishment of the 10-member executive, of which he is already the First Minister.
Trimble, already under pressure from Unionist hardliners, appeared willing last night to hold the creation of the Cabinet - and the future of the Good Friday accords - hostage to IRA intransigence on the weapons issue.
"We are hampered at this stage because there is not even as yet any sign that the republican movement will commit itself to implementing its share of the agreement," Trimble said yesterday.
The IRA released a traditional Easter week statement yesterday that did not mention decommissioning but still expressed support for the Good Friday agreement. "IRA guns are silent," it concluded, a reference to the 1997 cease-fire.
The British and Irish prime ministers apparently were unable to get either side to budge in a first round of arm-twisting that ended yesterday. Blair, for one, had pressing business to attend to in London as NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia with strong British participation went into their eighth day.
Yesterday's return of the two leaders, who were the godparents of the Good Friday agreement, fed speculation that a resolution of the decommissioning issue was in the works and might be reached during the night.
Ahern gave rise to optimism when he said yesterday, "I think the principles are established. We're down to one point, and that difference is about timing and dates and that's it."
Though he did not elaborate, sources close to the negotiations said various compromise formulas were on the table that would contain a sequence of reciprocal confidence-building moves by the two sides, including a "voluntary" partial decommissioning by the IRA.
If no progress is made by today, the negotiations could be adjourned because of the long Easter weekend. The weekend is also the traditional beginning of the so-called marching season here, when parades become flashpoints for violence. The pro-agreement parties had hoped to resolve the decommissioning issue before that juncture.
04-01-99
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