After Testifying, Starr Critic Vows He Won’t Lighten Up

Capping a week of outcry over the tactics of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, a White House critic of the prosecutor testified before a grand jury Thursday and vowed afterward not to back off.

“Ken Starr’s prosecutors demanded to know what I had told reporters and what reporters had told me about Ken Starr’s prosecutors,” said the White House aide, Sidney Blumenthal. “If they think they have intimidated me, they have failed.”

Starr has publicly decried the distribution of false information about members of his staff but has yet to cite evidence showing that Blumenthal or other presidential aides are responsible. In brief comments to reporters, Starr reiterated his view that, if White House officials spread falsehoods about prosecutors, they will be obstructing justice.

Yet by pursuing the particulars of Blumenthal’s contacts with the news media, Starr has succeeded in diverting public attention from the conduct of President Clinton and to the independent counsel’s office.

The original focus of this phase of Starr’s inquiry was whether Clinton lied under oath or encouraged others to do so about the president’s relationship with a former White House intern, Monica S. Lewinsky.

“This is an abusive process which shows no respect for the Constitution, no respect for the grand jury system,” said one of Blumenthal’s lawyers, William A. McDaniel Jr. “It is lawless and it is wrong, and it’s an outrage that Mr. Blumenthal and others have to be subjected to this type of prosecutorial abuse.”

According to his lawyers, Blumenthal testified that he knew nothing about the work of private investigators hired by Clinton’s lawyers. Blumenthal’s lawyers said that he also was questioned about his conversations with the president, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and certain news reporters.

“The bulk of the questioning today was about the prosecutors--what’s been said about them, what Mr. Blumenthal has heard about them,” said Jo Marsh, one of his lawyers. Prosecutors “asked him whether the first lady and he had ever discussed the Office of Independent Counsel. They asked him whether he and the president had ever discussed the Office of Independent Counsel.”

Marsh added: “They asked him if the first lady or others at the White House--including the president--had directed him to take any actions or steps against the Office of Independent Counsel, and that answer, along with the answers to the other questions I’ve outlined for you, was absolutely not.”

Blumenthal, who as both a journalist and a White House aide has inveighed against personal criticism of the Clintons, is a confidant of the first lady’s. In an interview late Thursday, Blumenthal praised Mrs. Clinton’s claim last month that the Lewinsky matter is part of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” to bring down her husband.

“I think that phrase of the first lady’s broke through,” Blumenthal said. “It was very effective, politically.”

Another Clinton aide, Nancy Hernreich, the Oval Office gatekeeper who often knows who gets in to see the president, also appeared before the grand jury. Neither Hernreich nor her lawyers would discuss her testimony.

In another development, Lewinsky’s lawyer said in an interview that his client stands, without qualification, behind her sworn statement of Jan. 7, in which she denied having a sexual relationship with Clinton. The attorney, William Ginsburg, until this week had repeatedly left open the possibility that Lewinsky might renounce the sworn statement if granted immunity from prosecution by Starr.

Starr was appointed in August 1994 to investigate real-estate transactions in Arkansas involving the president, who was then governor, and Mrs. Clinton. The deals, known now as part of the Whitewater controversy, were financed by a federally insured savings and loan that failed at a cost to taxpayers of more than $50 million.

Over the last 3 1/2 years, Starr’s investigation has broadened, either at his own instigation or, twice, that of Atty. Gen. Janet Reno. Last month, it was Starr who launched the inquiry into the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship.

Starr’s staff began investigating the matter on Jan. 12. By the end of that week, Starr won formal authority from Reno and from a special panel of three federal judges who oversee the independent counsel.

By Thursday, a cross-section of lawyers--including some who have previously supported Starr in the face of tough, sophisticated maneuvering from the White House--were moved by the questioning of Blumenthal to criticize the independent counsel.

“I don’t think that Starr should be subpoenaing information, trying to determine whether or not people are saying nasty things about his staff,” said Henry E. Hudson, who served as a U.S. attorney in Virginia under President Reagan. “I’m somewhat concerned. . . . We all hope there’s some rationale for it.”

Said Carl Stern, a lawyer and former Justice Department spokesman who now teaches media and public affairs at George Washington University: “The Justice Department’s own guidelines, which the independent counsel is supposed to observe, call for giving breathing space to the manner in which journalists acquire news.”

Abner J. Mikva, who once served as Clinton’s White House counsel but who also is known for his independence, said he does not believe that Starr should be investigating the allegations about Clinton and Lewinsky.

“I think the attorney general has to seriously consider removing Judge Starr from this investigation,” Mikva, a former federal judge and congressman, said Wednesday night on ABC-TV. “I think it is impossible for him to continue as an independent counsel.”

Times staff writers Ronald J. Ostrow and Jonathan Peterson contributed to this story.