Woodward and Bernstein Criticize Starr

Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr is endangering the presidency with his relentless investigation of the White House sex-and-perjury allegations, Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein said Sunday.

“We’re at the precipice of a very dangerous and tragic situation,” Bernstein said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

“Somehow we have to step back on this and institute some sort of control because we’re all paying the price,” Woodward said. “The government can’t function.”

The broadcast came on the 24th anniversary of the resignation of President Nixon after the infamous 1972 break-in by White House-instigated burglars at Democratic national headquarters at Washington’s Watergate Hotel.

Woodward and Bernstein, then reporters for the Washington Post, led coverage of the Watergate scandal, which drove Nixon from office Aug. 9, 1974.

A grand jury is investigating allegations that President Clinton had a sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky and then sought to have her lie about it.

Clinton has denied the allegations.

Woodward, who is now a top editor at the Post, said there was no comparison between the charges against Nixon and Clinton.

“President Nixon essentially said we’re going to use the FBI and CIA to break into people’s homes and offices, to wiretap and to open mail,” Woodward said.

“He authorized a police state. Now 24 years later, the issue turns not on something of that magnitude, but a dress,” he said.

Woodward was referring to FBI testing of a dress provided by Lewinsky for traces of semen and other genetic material as part of the Lewinsky inquiry.

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He said that Starr had “peeled back” key executive privileges, such as the secrecy of lawyer-client consultations, because of something “that is essentially a consensual sexual affair.”

Bernstein, now an editor for Vanity Fair magazine, said: “Twenty years from now, people are going to look back on this episode as a kind of national madness.”

He added: “It’s as if you have a kind of Nuremberg prosecution for war crimes and you end up with a jaywalking offense.”