Starr, Lewinsky’s Attorney Trade Barbs

Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr promised Saturday to “take appropriate action” if he finds anyone on his staff leaking stories damaging to President Clinton. But Monica S. Lewinsky’s attorney demanded an independent Justice Department investigation.

In an escalating war of press releases, William Ginsburg issued a statement accusing Starr of “clearly attempting to evade and avoid the responsibility for his office’s unethical, unlawful and abusive acts.”

Ginsburg, who represents the young woman who reportedly told a friend she had an affair with Clinton, also called Starr’s promise to police his own staff self-serving. He said the public would have more confidence in Starr’s investigation of Clinton and Lewinsky if he turned the matter of news leaks over to the Justice Department.

Clinton’s attorney, David E. Kendall, was behind closed doors in his Washington office Saturday, preparing to take Starr to court as early as Monday. Kendall will ask that Starr’s office be found in contempt and punished for allegedly passing to reporters secret--and, he says, sometimes false--information from secret grand jury proceedings.

Kendall detailed the allegations in a publicly distributed letter to Starr on Friday.

“We’ll look into those charges,” said Starr, who is trying to prove that Clinton had sex with Lewinsky and that both of them lied under oath about the relationship.

“We try to carry on this investigation in the most professional way. Charges have been made . . . let’s find out the facts,” he told reporters Saturday.

At work in his Los Angeles office, Ginsburg was planning his own court action against Starr--a legal motion to force Starr to abide by a signed immunity offer that prosecutors later rescinded in hopes of getting more information from Lewinsky.

As the legal maneuvering dragged on, new polls showed Clinton winning the public-opinion battle. His job-approval rating remained high, at 66%, in separate surveys by Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report.

Newsweek’s survey additionally indicated that more than half of Americans (54%) believe it is bad for the country that Starr began looking into the Clinton-Lewinsky question.

The public was also almost evenly divided over approving of Starr’s tactics in the case.

In legal proceedings connected to the Paula Corbin Jones sexual-harassment lawsuit against the president, both Lewinsky and Clinton have denied that they had a sexual relationship.

Prosecutors secretly recorded conversations in which Lewinsky reportedly contradicts the sworn denial.

Starr and his team of prosecutors are investigating whether Lewinsky, Clinton and his friend Vernon E. Jordan Jr. conspired to commit perjury and tried to persuade others to commit perjury too.