Starr Puts Contract Costs at $4.2 Million

Kenneth W. Starr’s office paid $1.5 million to private investigators and spent $843,000 for advice on legal and ethical issues, a new accounting of his five-year investigation of the Clintons and their associates shows.

Starr’s independent counsel’s office listed $4.2 million in contract work in response to questions from Democratic Sens. Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont. The investigation’s total cost has topped $40 million.

Payments ranged from $591,915 for computer support to $263 to the appraiser who put a value on President Clinton’s gifts to former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky, the General Accounting Office said this week.

A single contract for investigative work was $341,703. In all, Starr’s office reported 10 contracts with outside investigators who interviewed witnesses, analyzed evidence and handled other tasks.

No other details were provided and the investigators’ names were withheld for “security reasons,” the GAO said in letters to Dorgan and Leahy.

“There is no conceivable way to justify these types of expenditure,” Leahy said Friday. “This is after he [Starr] tied up 78 FBI agents” assigned to his office.

Leahy complained that Starr gave incomplete answers to auditors for the congressional watchdog agency and said he would press for more details. That GAO compilation was requested by Leahy and Dorgan.

“The taxpayers are entitled to it, so we don’t make these kinds of mistakes in the future,” Leahy said. Leahy said accountability was a long-standing problem with the independent counsel law under which Starr was appointed. The law expired June 30 but the work of existing independent counsels continues.

Elizabeth Ray, a spokeswoman for Starr’s office, said the office’s mandate involved a “monumental effort” that “required unusual commitments of resources.”

In a letter to the GAO, deputy independent counsel Jay Apperson said: “We are confident that the expenditures cataloged in the report were all consistent with applicable laws and regulations.”

Starr estimated his office spent $4.4 million on its investigation of Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky and cover-up efforts afterward, which led to the president’s impeachment and his acquittal by the Senate.

Starr also investigated the Clintons’ Whitewater business dealings; the suicide of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster; overbilling by lawyer Webster Hubbell, a Clinton confidant; the firing of White House travel office workers; and allegations that White House officials misused FBI files. His inquiry has led to 14 convictions.

Among the office’s 57 contractors were jury consultants paid $147,311 for trial work and lawyers who made $373,700 representing Starr’s office in court matters, including allegations that the independent counsel’s office illegally leaked grand jury secrets.

Starr paid $7,500 to a communications consultant for help in preparing his testimony before a House committee considering impeachment. And he paid $300,000 to Samuel Dash, the ethics advisor who resigned over that congressional appearance. Dash felt Starr erred by becoming an aggressive advocate for his impeachment report.

Starr’s office paid $66,067 to medical consultants, who helped with the Foster investigation and evaluated the health of Susan McDougal and former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker when the defendants were arguing that their medical conditions should limit their prison time.

Starr’s salary is set by law at $118,400, and no one in his office is paid more. But the office has granted 82 cash performance bonuses of up to $8,000. None went to Starr.