Kenneth Starr

Re “Starr Will Leave Whitewater Post to Join Pepperdine,” Feb. 18:

Let me get this straight. Kenneth Starr spends three years and $11 million taxpayer dollars on Whitewater and whatever else he could get his hands on, making himself richer in the process (see speeches and offer from Pepperdine), and putting innocent people through hell, and now he just wants to quit? With nothing? Just walk away? And I have to pay for it? Does this man have no shame?

Boy do I feel stupid.

ANDREW KIRN

Santa Monica

What is one to think of Starr’s decision to abandon his two-year, multimillion-dollar investigation of the Clintons? Is it remotely imaginable that Archibald Cox or Leon Jaworski would have given up on the Watergate investigation at a similar juncture for a position at Harvard?

It seems obvious that the Whitewater firestorm, fueled for so long by partisanship and right-wing, hate-talk radio, is about to flicker and die. When it does and the hard questions about cost and motivation have to be answered, Starr plans to be safely ensconced in Malibu.

KEVIN P. SMITH

Newbury Park

As a federal judge and adjunct professor of law at Pepperdine, I am delighted by Starr’s appointment. I have known Starr since our days together at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington during the early 1980s, and have looked with great pride on his successful career as a jurist and as an attorney, in public and private life. Indeed, his skills as a judge and advocate are equaled only by his talents as a teacher of the law, which he has displayed as an adjunct lecturer at Pepperdine on numerous occasions. His move to Malibu represents a genuine boon to Southern California’s academic and legal communities.

Your article correctly cites Pepperdine Provost Steven Lemely that the university’s faculty is not without its “considerable ideological variety” or its share of Democrats. I am one of those Democrats, and I proudly endorse Starr’s selection.

BRUCE J. EINHORN