Bookseller Says He’ll Fight Subpoena for Lewinsky List

To the applause of customers, Bill Kramer stood in the bookstore-eatery he opened 22 years ago and announced Friday that he would fight independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s subpoena for records of former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky’s book purchases.

“I buy books once a week here, and the idea that my reading list--not that it is something I’m ashamed of--would be subpoenaed strikes me as quite an invasion,” said customer Lauren Dame.

The independent counsel’s request has touched a nerve in this city, where librarians picketed Kramer’s store after his first reaction indicated--incorrectly, Kramer says--that he would not resist the subpoena.

Starr, investigating whether President Clinton engaged in sexual activity with Lewinsky and then sought to have her lie about it, has been trying to reconstruct all her activities.

In a related matter Friday, the Supreme Court gave the White House until 4:30 p.m. EDT Monday to respond to Starr’s request to bypass an appeals court and resolve his battle with Clinton over executive privilege.

Presidential lawyers huddled Friday to devise a response. Starr, who has won the battle at the U.S. District Court level, asked the justices to consider the case on an emergency basis to avoid further delays in his investigation.

Book fights usually involve what schools and libraries make available to youngsters, not what stores sell to adults. But Washington has been sensitive to such matters since October 1987, when conservatives and liberals alike denounced City Paper, an alternative weekly, for printing a list of the video rentals of conservative Robert H. Bork, then a nominee for the Supreme Court.

In response, Congress and a number of states enacted laws making such disclosures illegal. But they apply only to video records, not book purchases.

In Chicago, where Book Expo America, the world’s largest convention of English-language book publishers and sellers is about to begin, Topic A was the Starr subpoena of Lewinsky’s purchases from the Barnes & Noble store in Georgetown and from Kramerbooks & Afterwords near Washington’s DuPont Circle.

“This is the biggest controversy in the nine years of this foundation’s existence,” said Chris Finan, president of the American Bookseller Foundation for Free Expression. “This strikes close to home.”

Some convention-goers, as well as some clerks in Kramer’s store, wore black T-shirts with gold lettering that read, “Subpoenaed for Book Selling.”

A sympathetic 1st Amendment lawyer says he doubts that the bookstore has legal grounds for resistance.