Starr’s passion was understandable. He is on the eve of the most important event in his investigation so far: the six- to eight-week trial of the Clintons’ old friends, a drama that will be a running narrative of Arkan-sas shenanigans. For the Clintons, the bad Whitewater news keeps coming. Last week the president was subpoenaed to testify in the McDougal case. And the mystery of Mrs. Clinton’s long-sought billing records on Madison – now a crucial element in Starr’s inquiry – deepened when her former law partner, Webster Hubbell, told Congress that he last saw the records in the hands of Vince Foster, the White House deputy counsel who killed himself in July 1993. Starr is investigating why more than two years passed before the records turned up on a table in the White House residence – a development that brings the scandal, and the charges of a possible cover-up, perilously close to the Clintons.
A still-boyish striver, Starr, 49, is a contradictory character. On the one hand, he is a tempting target for conspiracy theorists. When Starr was appointed to replace Robert Fiske as independent counsel two years ago, Democrats sensed a plot. They noted that North Carolina Sen. Lauch Faircloth was seen lunching with Judge David Sentelle at a time when Faircloth was criticizing Fiske for not being tough enough on the Clintons. A few weeks later, Sentelle, who headed the three-judge panel in charge of hiring and firing special prosecutors, removed Fiske and named the far more conservative Starr. (Faircloth and Sentelle – two elderly gentlemen – later insisted they were talking about their prostates, not politics.) Clintonites also point out that Starr served in both the Reagan and Bush Justice Departments and recently considered running for the GOP Senate nomination in Virginia. Starr has done legal work for the archconservative Bradley Foundation, which supports, among other causes, the American Spectator, the relentlessly anti-Clinton journal that broke ““Troopergate,’’ the story of Clinton’s alleged gubernatorial philandering. And Starr volunteered to help a conservative women’s group make the case that Clinton should not be immune from the Paula Jones sexual-harassment lawsuit.
All of this would make Starr seem like a partisan. But as usual in Whitewater, the truth is more complicated. Indeed, some Starr watchers suspect that, because of his courtliness and his many outside distractions, the special counsel is not zealous enough. Remarkably, Starr, a former federal appellate judge with no experience as a prosecutor, may miss the McDougal trial: he has two arguments scheduled at the same time before the Supreme Court on behalf of private interests, including the NFL Players Association.
Starr’s moonlighting is a source of controversy. Unlike Fiske, who had long been highly paid in private practice, Starr had spent much of his career on a govern-ment salary. So when he accepted the Whitewater job, he decided to keep his other clients as well, continuing to draw about $1 million a year from Kirkland & Ellis, his Chicago-based firm. Two weeks ago, on the day the Clintons’ personal lawyer, David Kendall, was first scheduled to be questioned by the grand jury about why it took so long to find Mrs. Clinton’s billing records, Starr was preparing to argue a case for General Motors. Starr insists that he is in no way slighting Whitewater, and wants to dispose of it before the election. And his aides are in awe of his 12-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week grind.
Starr is said to be angered by charges of partisanship or distraction. In Arkansas, Max Brantley, editor of the Arkansas Times, accuses him of conducting a ““reign of terror’’ in the state. A businessman who was questioned by federal agents working on the probe complained of ““Gestapo’’ tactics. Starr has tried to make peace, speaking at local Rotary and Kiwanis clubs about ““this wonderful community.''
Starr has little zest for confrontation, associates say. As Bush’s solicitor general, he was blackballed as a potential Supreme Court nominee by White House conservatives who felt he wasn’t hard-line enough. ““The Clintons ought to be dancing in the streets that they got Ken Starr in charge of this case,’’ says Paul Cappuccio, who worked closely with Starr at Justice and is now his partner at Kirkland & Ellis. ““The guy is just not a no-holds-barred prosecutor. He’s a judge.’’ Cappuccio recalls watching Starr arrive once at the Supreme Court to defend a law banning flag-burning. The solicitor general, dressed in a traditional cutaway, spotted the flag-burners, who were sporting tattoos, and went over to make polite conversation.
Starr may be gracious, but he is also extremely ambitious, a small-town Texan determined to make it in the GOP establishment. He is not likely to seek indictments just for the sake of headlines, and he has hired his own ethics adviser, former Watergate Committee counsel Sam Dash. But Starr is not going to whitewash the scandal. With an annual budget of $6.6 million, a staff of 18 prosecutors and dozens of FBI and IRS agents, Starr can afford to be thorough. And, as his vehemence toward the mock jury in Arkansas demonstrated, he is hardly indifferent to the outcome.
