High Court Refuses to Shield White House Lawyers, Agents

The Supreme Court, clearing away the legal claims that grew out of the independent counsel’s investigation of President Clinton, refused Monday to shield White House lawyers or Secret Service agents from having to testify under oath in a criminal probe.

On a pair of 7-2 votes, the justices dismissed appeals filed by the White House and the Treasury secretary, whose department oversees the Secret Service. Instead, they let stand lower court decisions that said government officers, when subpoenaed, must testify in federal court, even when they are close confidants of the president.

The president’s legal team had urged the court to shield White House lawyers, including deputy counsel Bruce Lindsey, under the traditional doctrine of an attorney-client privilege. Lawyers for the Secret Service said the president’s security would be jeopardized if the chief executive decided he must keep his guards at a distance.

In the end, however, only Clinton’s two appointees, Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, voted to hear the appeals (Rubin vs. U.S., 98-93 and Office of the President vs. Office of Independent Counsel, 98-316).

On the surface, Monday’s court action amounts to a legal defeat for Clinton and a victory for independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr. In the long run, however, the outcome could show that Starr’s intense investigation of the president inflicted damage on the presidency.

Historians and politicians will long debate who deserves the blame--Starr or Clinton--but now that any independent prosecutor can demand that the president’s closest aides reveal their private conversations with the chief executive, the Office of the President has emerged weakened from the legal battle.

More than a dozen Secret Service members already have testified before the grand jury, and in September Starr submitted to Congress a voluminous report on his investigation of the president’s relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.

Still, Starr’s investigation continues, and his prosecutors could use the court’s decision as a reason to recall Lindsey before the grand jury.

When questioned in his four previous grand jury appearances about what happened in various meetings with the president, Lindsey refused to answer on the ground of lawyer-client privilege. That privilege was finally rejected as invalid on Monday.

Now, Starr’s investigators might go after Lindsey on separate criminal charges, such as conspiring to obstruct justice.

From the beginning, prosecutors have seen Lindsey as the president’s closest confidant among his White House lawyers and as someone who was devoted to protecting him from scandal. They suspect that in the Lewinsky matter, he conspired to silence witnesses against Clinton.

However, if Lindsey becomes the target of an investigation, he could refuse to answer questions by invoking his 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

During the summer, when the White House and the Treasury Department filed their appeals in the Supreme Court, it looked as though the outcome might affect the impeachment process. Congressional investigators could have demanded that White House lawyers answer questions about their confidential conversations with the president.

But that concern has faded in recent weeks as public sentiment against the impeachment inquiry registered with the Republican majority on Capitol Hill.

Starr issued a statement saying, “We are gratified by the two decisions of the Supreme Court.” The legal dispute had “substantially delayed” his probe, he added.

White House Counsel Charles F. C. Ruff said he was disappointed by the court’s action and continued to believe conversations between the president and his official lawyers should be protected.

Breyer, in urging his colleagues to take up the matter, said the status of White House lawyers “is of importance to our nation’s governance” and deserved a full hearing. He also wrote a nine-page opinion laying out the history of presidential assassinations and argued that the “physical security of the president has a special legal role to play in our constitutional system.”