Starr Mixes Ambition, Judicious Style

Like so many of the keen-witted lawyers who seem to gravitate to Washington, Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr is a man with a burning political ambition. It is no secret that he covets a job on the U.S. Supreme Court.

At the same time, Starr’s admirers say he also has a rare quality that sets him apart from the hordes of other overachievers who aspire to the nation’s highest court. He has a steely judicial temperament that is sometimes at odds with his political instincts.

When Starr served as solicitor general during the Bush administration, in fact, his judiciousness got the better of him. President Bush is said to have crossed his name off the list of potential Supreme Court nominees because he disagreed with several of Starr’s politically unpopular judgments.

With his decision to subpoena First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to appear before a grand jury Friday, however, Starr acted in one of those unusual moments when the two sides of his personality were in perfect harmony. For Starr, summoning Mrs. Clinton to answer questions about the recent discovery of her mid-1980s legal billing records made perfect political and legal sense.

Help With Eviction

Legal analysts say that the mysterious discovery of the billing records raises serious allegations of possible obstruction of justice that the independent counsel should investigate. Politicians note that Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and others seeking the GOP presidential nomination are certain to be grateful to Starr if this Whitewater investigation proves helpful in evicting the Clintons from the White House.

It also speaks volumes about Starr’s reputation for fairness that even though he is the first prosecutor ever to subpoena a first lady to testify in a criminal case, defenders of the Clintons have not accused him of being motivated by politics.

Asked if Starr’s inquiry so far has been conducted fairly, Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.), ranking minority member of the Senate Whitewater investigating committee and the Democrats’ chief spokesman on this issue, declined to venture any criticism of the independent counsel. “You can’t make that judgment until the process is completed,” Sarbanes said.

Although Democrats such as Sarbanes have long suspected that Starr, as a conservative Republican, relishes his task of investigating allegations against the president and the first lady, his demeanor throughout the lengthy inquiry has been unassailably businesslike.

He has refrained from many of the usual temptations of a prosecutor in a high-profile case, such as courting media attention. He has consistently refused to grant interviews.

In fact, he has been so unalterably silent on the matters under investigation that his office still refused to even acknowledge a White House announcement that he had subpoenaed Mrs. Clinton to appear before the grand jury here.

“He has conducted this sensitive investigation strictly in the courtroom,” observed David Runkel, one of Starr’s former co-workers at the Justice Department who now follows the Whitewater controversy as a top aide to House Banking and Financial Services Chairman Jim Leach (R-Iowa). “It shows both his judicial side and his good political instincts.”

Nevertheless, Starr, 49, a preacher’s son, is by no means beyond criticism. Even though they are impressed with his handling of the case so far, Democrats insist that Starr has been flirting with conflict-of-interest himself by continuing to represent private legal clients while serving as independent counsel.

Hired by Clinton Foes

Starr was hired in 1993 by the Washington office of the Chicago-based law firm of Kirkland & Ellis at a salary of $1.2 million a year. Although he has agreed to trim his annual compensation down to $500,000 while he runs the Whitewater investigation, he has not shied away from representing high-profile clients, such as a conservative outfit known as the Bradley Foundation that funds some of the most virulent anti-Clinton writings on Whitewater.

Likewise, Democrats have not forgotten the controversy that surrounded Starr’s appointment by a three-judge panel headed by U.S. Court of Appeals Judge David Sentelle.

Shortly after the appointment, it was learned that Sentelle had met for lunch with Republican Sens. Lauch Faircloth and Jesse Helms of North Carolina while Starr’s name was under consideration. Both Helms and Faircloth had been outspoken critics of Clinton on the Whitewater matter. Sentelle denied that they recommended Starr.

Democrats also questioned Starr’s appointment because he had offered legal advice to a conservative group that is helping a former Arkansas state employee, Paula Corbin Jones, sue the president over charges of sexual harassment. They saw it as proof that he was biased against Clinton.

But Starr succeeded in muffling critics on these issues by hiring a Democrat, former Senate Watergate Committee counsel Samuel Dash, to advise him on ethics matters. In addition, because he lacked any experience as a prosecutor, Starr also hired several Justice Department prosecutors to assist him.

Swept Up by Probe

In Arkansas, meanwhile, Starr’s legal tactics have been criticized especially by those who resent having been swept up in his broad-gauged investigation. Democratic Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, who has been indicted on fraud charges, accused the independent counsel of exceeding his authority in pursuing crimes unrelated to the Clintons’ investment in the Whitewater real estate deal.

Starr, however, took steps to reassure Tucker and his other Arkansas critics.

Among other things, he used the occasion of a commencement speech last year at his alma mater, Duke University Law School, to send the message that his investigation was being guided by his judicial principles--not by his political ambition. He also indicated that his desire to go after wrongdoers was being tempered by genuine sympathy for those outside of the world of politics.

“Not a day goes by,” Starr said, “that we do not seek to discuss and judge what we are doing, why we are doing it and the impact of what we are doing on others.”

Ironically, by painstakingly reassuring his critics that the inquiry would not be guided by political concerns, he once again demonstrated that he has good political instincts.

Though Starr has been attacked by Tucker and other Arkansans as a ruthless Republican hatchet man from Washington, the independent counsel’s roots are actually closer to Little Rock than to Washington.

Starr, a native Texan, attended Harding College, a Christian school in Searcy, Ark., after he graduated from high school. But he stayed there only 18 months before heading to Washington to study political science at George Washington University--his first step on the way to becoming a lawyer.

After finishing law school in 1973 at the top of his class, Starr clerked for a federal judge in Miami for a year, worked for the huge law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles for a year and clerked two years at the Supreme Court. In 1980, when his mentor--William French Smith--was appointed attorney general, Starr followed him to the Justice Department.

While serving as Smith’s alter ego at Justice, according to his colleagues at the time, Starr lobbied for a court appointment that would put him on the road to becoming a Supreme Court justice. His ambition was so transparent that his old co-workers back at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher often referred to him as “Justice Starr.”

Reagan eventually appointed Starr to the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, where his judicial philosophy surprised many who expected him to be a doctrinaire conservative. His most surprising ruling came in favor of the Washington Post in a high-profile libel suit brought by Mobile Oil President William P. Tavoulareas.

Independent Streak

Likewise, as solicitor general under Bush, Starr showed a similar streak of independence, going against the White House on an issue involving government whistle-blowers.

Some former Bush administration officials believe that this ruling caused Bush to eliminate Starr from consideration for the Supreme Court. Others, however, say that Starr’s advocacy of the abolition of abortion rights caused Bush to decide that his nomination would be too controversial.

Starr’s friends were mildly surprised when he agreed to cut back on his lucrative work at Kirkland & Ellis to serve as independent counsel, replacing Robert B. Fiske Jr., who began the Whitewater inquiry. But those who know him best say Starr accepted it because he thought it might help him achieve the title he still covets most: Mr. Justice.

Starr, his wife, Alice, and their three children live in suburban Virginia. When he is at home, Starr regularly watches his children’s sports endeavors and is a frequent churchgoer.

“He’s not one of those sons of ministers who went astray,” remarks a friend.