Clinton Attorney Requests Early Copy of Starr Report

President Clinton’s personal attorney asked independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr on Monday for a chance to review any report detailing possibly impeachable offenses before it is sent to Congress and suggested he might challenge the legal legitimacy of such a report.

David E. Kendall, who has represented Clinton through years of Starr’s investigations--from the Whitewater land development project in Arkansas to the Monica S. Lewinsky controversy--said prosecutors should give him an advance copy of the report so he can have a week to prepare a rebuttal that would be submitted at the same time to the House of Representatives.

“You have had unlimited resources at your command and no practical restriction on your power to investigate every aspect of the president’s life for the past four and one-half years,” Kendall wrote in a letter addressed to Starr and his deputy, Robert J. Bittman. “Elemental fairness dictates that we be allowed to respond to any ‘report’ you send to the House simultaneously with its transmission.”

Nothing in the independent counsel statute directly calls for an advance copy of an impeachment report to be provided to the president targeted. The Kendall letter was faxed to news organizations Monday evening, and no one answered the phone at Starr’s office to provide a response.

Starr’s office has been preparing a report covering more than 300 pages outlining possible offenses that Clinton may have committed in connection with his affair with Lewinsky and his actions during the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit, such as perjury and obstruction of justice.

White House officials are increasingly worried that the report could be written in such a damning tone and include such salacious sexual details that it would undermine the president’s already eroding political support. In recent weeks, Clinton advisors concluded they need their own simultaneous reply to present events in their most innocent light and to provide congressional defenders with ammunition to counter an impeachment drive.

The strategy underscores the unprecedented nature of the current situation, in which there are few procedural guideposts for anyone involved, including the president, prosecutors and lawmakers.