Country Would Be Lesser Without It : Independent counsel law needs to be renewed

When Congress adjourned for the year, it had failed to renew the independent counsel law, passed 14 years ago in the wake of Watergate and due to expire on Dec. 14. And as the Iran-Contra probe has continued at what some consider unseemly cost and length, the view has begun to spread that the law has outlived its usefulness. On the contrary, the law is needed more than ever.

THE PROBLEM: The Bush Administration’s mushrooming Iraqgate scandal shows what will have been lost. The independent counsel law exists not just to ensure that the executive branch will be policed impartially but also to ensure that a new president will not turn law enforcement into vendetta.

The investigation of a Republican scandal by independent counsel has been galling to the GOP, but the same investigation by the Justice Department under a Democratic president could be more galling still.

This is just the possibility that looms if Gov. Bill Clinton is elected Nov. 3, and, the independent counsel law having expired, he puts his attorney general in charge of Iraqgate on Jan. 21, the day after his inauguration.

Iraqgate began with mistakes of foreign policy judgment as the Bush State Department continued the tilt toward Iraq that began under the Reagan State Department during the Iran-Iraq war.

Iraqgate became potentially criminal as loan guarantees were extended to Iraq ostensibly for agricultural but actually for military purchases, and government records allegedly were doctored to cover up the diversion. Christopher Drogoul, Atlanta branch manager for an Italian bank, was prepared to take the rap, then changed his mind.

In the aftermath of that change, the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have accused each other of, in effect, engineering a cover-up, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun an investigation of their conflicting claims, and the Justice Department has announced an unrelated (or is it?) investigation of FBI chief William S. Sessions.

THE NECESSITY: The unedifying spectacle of these investigations and counter-investigations is the clearest possible demonstration that the independent counsel law is a good and necessary one. Atty. Gen. William P. Barr, who declined one earlier request to authorize an independent counsel, has now, in accord with the provisions of the law, appointed retired federal judge Frederick Lacey, 72, to investigate the case. But Lacey will not be a true, court-appointed independent counsel. While investigating the Justice Department, he will report to Barr. If Clinton is elected, Barr still has time to authorize an independent counsel on the basis of Lacey’s findings. If Bush is elected, Barr can say that no independent counsel is needed.

Barr’s move, in short, is a stall, but his understandable fear of a Democratic attorney general looking into Iraqgate only strengthens the case for the independent counsel law. In the end, no law can protect us completely from our protectors, but the case for revival of this law by the new Congress could not be clearer.