Starr Subpoena Sharpens Clash With Clinton

Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr signaled Tuesday that he will prosecute White House officials if he believes they have spread false information about his staff--escalating to frenetic proportions his confrontation with President Clinton and his aides.

In an extraordinary day of rhetorical combat, Starr summoned to a federal court Sidney Blumenthal, a senior Clinton aide who has helped map the White House political assaults on Starr.

Starr took the additional step of subpoenaing any notes or records of Blumenthal’s that deal with news media contacts--prompting reactions of outrage from the White House and elsewhere.

“It’s us today and probably you tomorrow,” White House spokesman Mike McCurry told reporters.

The developments show a willingness by Starr to take a particularly confrontational tack with his White House adversaries and to absorb fiercely critical reviews in the process.

Said Steven R. Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union: “The independent counsel is a government official and the conduct of his office is fair game for public comment and criticism. . . . What Ken Starr perceives as suspicious behavior, the framers of the Constitution saw in a very different light. They called it free speech.”

By seeking to investigate what White House aides might be telling the media about his staff, Starr has expanded further the scope of his investigation of allegations that Clinton had an affair with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky and encouraged her or others to lie about it.

The chief federal judge overseeing aspects of Starr’s investigation ruled that prosecutors are entitled to question Blumenthal and to obtain relevant notes and other materials that he compiled after joining the White House staff last August. According to his attorney, Blumenthal is now scheduled to testify before the grand jury Thursday.

“Our conclusion after today is Ken Starr is out of control,” said Blumenthal’s lawyer, Jo Marsh. “He has total disregard for the rights of private citizens and for anyone else other than his staff.”

Starr’s subpoena of Blumenthal demanded that he turn over any materials he has about Lewinsky and the staff of the independent counsel’s office. In addition, the subpoena sought “all documents referring or relating to any contact directly or indirectly with members of the media which related or referred to [Starr or any member of his staff].”

According to a person familiar with the matter, Blumenthal complied with the subpoena and turned over records reflecting his contacts related to Starr’s investigation with numerous reporters, including Elizabeth Shogren and others from The Times.

Blumenthal, who before joining the White House was a writer for the New Yorker, the New Republic and the Washington Post, criticized Starr in an interview Tuesday night.

“For Ken Starr’s theory to make any sense and be operable, I could not be acting alone. I would have to be acting with co-conspirators, and the co-conspirators would have to be necessarily members of the media,” Blumenthal said. “Ken Starr regards freedom of speech and freedom of the press as worthy of investigation as a criminal conspiracy.”

Starr’s subpoenaing of Blumenthal also amounted to a show of support for two prosecutors in his office, Bruce Udolf and Michael W. Emmick, whose personal and professional conduct has been the subject of innuendo and attack.

Udolf, known for his aggressive pursuit of public corruption cases in Miami, in the 1980s was fined $50,000 by a judge in Georgia because he kept a suspect in jail for four days without either a bail hearing or access to an attorney. Emmick, who until last July held a senior position in the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, was once accused by a federal judge of bringing an indictment out of vengeance.

Without naming Emmick or Udolf, Starr sought to explain his office’s subpoenaing of Blumenthal.

“This office has received repeated press inquiries indicating that misinformation is being spread about personnel involved in this investigation,” Starr said in a statement. “We are using traditional and appropriate techniques to find out who is responsible and whether their actions are intended to intimidate prosecutors and investigators, impede the work of the grand jury, or otherwise obstruct justice.”

Federal law makes it a crime for someone “by any threatening letter or communication” to “influence, intimidate or impede” a member of a grand jury, a prosecutor or certain other officials.

The war of words over the subpoenaing of Blumenthal overshadowed the appearance at the courthouse of Terry F. Lenzner, whose private-investigation firm has assisted the defense of the president and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton throughout Starr’s 3 1/2-year investigation of the failed Arkansas real estate venture known as Whitewater.

More recently, Lenzner’s firm also has worked in tandem with the lawyers who are defending Clinton against the sexual-harassment lawsuit brought by Paula Corbin Jones, a former Arkansas government worker.

In a joint statement, lawyers representing the Clintons said the services of Lenzner’s investigative firm have contributed to a proper, “vigorous defense.”

“There is public information available, which, of course, it is our duty as counsel to research and gather,” the Clintons’ lawyers said, adding: “But we have not investigated, and are not investigating, the personal lives of . . . prosecutors, investigators, or members of the press.”

Lenzner, a lawyer who worked on the staff of the Senate committee that investigated Watergate, said as he left the courthouse that he had testified before the grand jury for about two hours. But Lenzner declined to tell reporters whether his firm has gathered information about Starr or his staff.

“I can’t comment on that,” Lenzner said.

McCurry said he stood behind his comments Sunday, when he denied that the president or anyone on his behalf had retained private investigators for the purpose of looking into the backgrounds of prosecutors or reporters.

“I think there’s a difference between looking at what matters are on the public record, what’s in the public domain, how people have used their positions of trust and authority, whether they have misused those positions of trust and authority and personal derogatory information,” McCurry said.

In addition to Lenzner, two other witnesses appeared before the grand jury: Jocelyn Jolley, who supervised Lewinsky’s work in the White House legislative affairs office, and Jennifer Palmieri, who remains a staff member at the executive mansion.

An attorney for Palmieri said after she testified that Palmieri knew of no inappropriate conduct by anyone at the White House. Jolley, who was transferred from the White House to another federal position on the same day in April 1996 that Lewinsky was shifted to a public affairs post at the Pentagon, declined to comment.

Jolley’s lawyer, Judy Catterton, would not discuss her client’s testimony.

In a related development, Starr sought to enlist the Justice Department’s former internal watchdog, Michael E. Shaheen Jr., to conduct an investigation of alleged leaks of confidential information from the independent counsel’s office, The Times learned. But Deputy Atty. Gen. Eric Holder blocked the move.

A senior Justice Department official said Holder turned down Shaheen’s request for department attorneys and FBI agents to carry out the investigation because he did not want to interfere with a leak complaint pending before chief U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson.

That complaint, in which David E. Kendall, Clinton’s defense lawyer, accused Starr’s office of leaking information from the grand jury inquiry, resulted in Starr’s pledge to investigate the allegation.

In turning to Shaheen, Starr sought to involve the only person to head the Justice Department’s office of professional responsibility since it was created in 1975. Shaheen, who enjoyed a reputation for independence and integrity, retired from the department last December. He has not been replaced.

The senior official said Starr had hoped to include Shaheen’s appointment in his office’s response to Kendall’s complaint.

Times staff writer Cecilia Balli contributed to this story.