Ken Starr

Ken Starr wrapped up five years as Whitewater’s fidei defensor in Arkansas with a plea-bargain arrangement for Webster Hubbell (July 1), who pleaded guilty to misleading federal regulators and was placed on one year’s probation. In ironic comments indicative of Starr’s $50-million, five-year binge, Hubbell said, “I told the office of independent counsel, as I told them five years ago, that I had no knowledge of any wrongdoing on the part of Mrs. Clinton or the president.”

With the independent counsel statute expiring, Starr’s crusade seems to have ended on the sour notes that he wasted tons of our money investigating troublesome issues like Whitewater, Travelgate and the very serious Filegate and came up empty regarding the president. Instead of folding his tent and heading for Pepperdine, he donned inquisitorial robes and wasted still more millions and years.

I think there were two reasons for this. First, that Starr had spent so much time chasing Clinton’s shadows through the various “gates,” he believed he had to change his procedures to bring down what he thought was the antichrist. Second, that Starr had no boss. He was obsessed with sex and self-righteousness, and there wasn’t anyone around to tell him to cool it. Not only no boss, but no other case. And into this vacuum trudged Beltway heroine Linda Tripp. The bottom line of Zippergate: The cost to the country far outweighed the value of proving it.

MICHAEL A. SCOTT

Glendora

*

Re your June 29 editorial, “An Unlamented Passing”: What the editors do not seem to realize is that the problem with the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 is not that another similar statute needs to be narrowly drawn in order to prevent abuses such as those of Starr. The problem is that the act itself is an unconstitutional intrusion into the president’s appointment and removal powers. Having Congress ratify guidelines set by the attorney general does not rectify the constitutional problem. If a president decides to fire a special prosecutor, such as when Richard Nixon fired Archibald Cox, he faces the political consequences, as Nixon did.

GREG GIVENS

Redondo Beach

*

Once again, your Clinton spin-doctor-influenced liberal bias shows itself in your editorial. Judge Starr’s investigation spread beyond Whitewater not of his sole doing but with the full support of the attorney general and a three-judge panel that had the oversight responsibility. Your emphasis on the large cost of the Starr assignment should have included the role of the White House and its lawyers in prolonging the investigation by stonewalling the investigators, stalling on document requests and Clinton’s own despicable performance of lying under oath. Had he said in January 1998 what he said in typically obscure fashion in August 1998, this procedure would have concluded much earlier and saved a lot of taxpayer money.

You also failed to note the convictions secured by Starr’s investigations, which again include Hubbell.

BOB WOLCOTT

Glendale