Starr Steps Out of Bounds

Special counsel Kenneth W. Starr plans today to bring a White House advisor and his records before a grand jury to try to find out what he said to reporters about the Monica Lewinsky affair. The basis for this extraordinary assault on privacy is Starr’s suspicion that Clinton administration aides have been spreading “misinformation” about personnel in the special counsel’s office. As Starr sees it, that could represent an effort to “intimidate prosecutors and investigators, impede the work of the grand jury, or otherwise obstruct justice.” All of these are federal crimes.

The subpoena that Starr has issued for White House aide Sidney Blumenthal and his records appears to be allowable under the special counsel’s broad powers. At the same time Starr is clearly treading on highly problematical ground with his suggestion that any White House campaign to try to discredit him or his investigators may represent an illegal effort to influence or interfere with the work of prosecutors or grand jurors.

Starr has spent a lot of time in Washington, enough to grasp the difference between engaging in hardball politics and committing a felony. And he has been a lawyer long enough to understand that constitutionally protected comment about the special counsel’s office does not constitute a conspiratorial attempt to subvert justice.

The truth is that in the Lewinsky investigation both the independent counsel and the White House have been playing the game of media manipulation to the hilt, using leaks, planted stories, spin control and anything else--some of it pretty nasty stuff indeed--to try to shape public opinion.

What set Starr off were stories about judicial criticism or penalties levied against two of his prosecutors because of their professional conduct years ago. What the two did is a matter of public record. But Starr says many other allegations about personnel involved in his investigation are deliberate falsehoods, and so he has dubiously raised the felonious specter of attempted intimidation.

But intimidation can cut two ways. Surely hauling a White House political adviser and his log of press contacts before a grand jury can be seen as a sly attempt to keep Clinton loyalists from talking with the media, denying the public information it has a right to hear and evaluate for itself. That is not within Starr’s mandate.

The special counsel was not hired to act as a censor. His investigation has often been accused of ranging wide afield. This time it has stumbled right off the map.