Panel Interviews Candidates to Succeed Starr

In the clearest sign to date that Kenneth W. Starr is about to resign as independent counsel, a panel of appellate court judges Wednesday interviewed five of his deputies behind closed doors to choose a successor to wrap up the five-year-long Whitewater investigation.

The leading candidate was believed to be W. Hickman Ewing, a hard-driving veteran prosecutor from Memphis, Tenn., who headed Starr’s Arkansas office and primarily investigated the 1980s involvement of President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in Ozark real estate transactions.

Ewing’s associates described him as the most veteran of Starr’s deputies, a key confidant who appears to have Starr’s trust and to share his legal philosophy.

At the contempt trial of Whitewater figure Susan McDougal in Little Rock, Ark., earlier this year, Ewing acknowledged that he had drawn up a draft indictment of the first lady that was never approved. His draft charge reportedly centered on Mrs. Clinton’s allegedly false testimony about her work as a Little Rock lawyer for a savings and loan that was at the heart of the Whitewater investigation.

The other deputies interviewed, according to sources at the U.S. courthouse here, were Jay Apperson, the principal investigator of Clinton confidant Webster L. Hubbell; Ed Page, who previously worked in the investigation by another independent counsel of former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros; Mike Emmick, an assistant U.S. attorney who worked on the Monica S. Lewinsky case; and Paul Rosenzweig, who writes legal briefs for Starr’s office.

Starr has intimated to associates that he would like to leave office in October, before he has signed off on a final report of his multifaceted investigation. His office had no immediate comment on the interviewing process.

Although the federal independent counsel law expired in June, with Congress choosing to let it lapse amid criticism that it had become too political, ongoing inquiries can run their course.

In fact, the three-judge panel that appoints independent counsels issued a ruling last month allowing Starr to continue his investigation, even as he appeared eager to turn the project over to someone else.

The courthouse interviews were seen as an accommodation to Starr, who is a former member of the appellate court from which the special panel is drawn.

That panel, headed by Judge David Sentelle, a close friend of Starr, voted, 2 to 1, for Starr to remain in office over the strong objections of a senior judge who is a Democratic appointee. The dissenting judge, Richard D. Cudahy of Chicago, declared that “an endless investigation . . . can serve no possible goal of justice and imposes needless burdens on the taxpayers.”

But the other judges, Sentelle and Peter T. Fay of Miami, both Republican appointees, said that Starr’s inquiry had been “unusually productive.” They cited 24 indictments, 16 convictions and the impeachment of Clinton.

It would not be irregular for Starr, who reached his fifth year in office on Aug. 5, to resign before a final report is completed. In 1974, as the Watergate cover-up trial was concluding, special prosecutor Leon Jaworski resigned to resume his law practice in Houston, turning over to his deputies the task of closing out the long Watergate scandal. President Nixon had already resigned.

It would be rare, however, if the appellate judges named someone outside Starr’s office to succeed him.