Starr to Oppose Prosecutor Law Renewal

WASHINGTON —  Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, whose investigation of President Clinton revived a debate over special prosecutors, will tell Congress today that he opposes renewing the law that put him in power.

“The statute should not be reauthorized,” Starr says in written testimony prepared for his appearance before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. “Jurisdiction and authority over these cases ought to be returned to the Justice Department.”

The declaration, Starr’s first on the subject, brings him into line with Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and some Democrats who oppose saving the Watergate-inspired statute from expiration on June 30. A copy of his statement was obtained Tuesday.

In 30 pages of scholarly and legalistic testimony that quotes voluminously from others, Starr provided a glimpse into the five-year probe of Clinton that culminated in only the second presidential impeachment in history.

He blamed the public outrage over his tactics on the structure of the law, saying it prevented him from responding to attacks that characterized the probe as “just another political game.”

“If politicization and the loss of public confidence are inevitable, then we should leave the full responsibility where our laws and traditions place it, on the attorney general,” he said.

Starr said the law violates the constitutional separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches. And he raised concerns about the costs and delays incurred by many independent counsel investigations.

The law requires the attorney general to ask a panel of federal appeals court judges to appoint an independent counsel if she finds “specific, credible allegations” that a high government official has done something criminal. The law covers the 50 most senior officials in the executive branch.

Starr has suffered legal setbacks recently, even though a federal judge on Monday found Clinton in contempt for lying during a deposition on Paula Corbin Jones’ sexual harassment case, one of the alleged impeachable offenses that Starr submitted to the House, which chose not to use it.

Starr’s appearance before the Senate panel will offer Democrats the first chance to question him since the Senate’s Feb. 12 acquittal of Clinton on House impeachment charges arising from his investigation. The three members of the court panel that appointed Starr also are scheduled to testify.

The Whitewater investigation that Starr inherited in 1994 expanded to include the Vince Foster suicide, White House travel office firings, alleged misuses of FBI files and Clinton’s Oval Office affair with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.

The investigation has cost taxpayers at least $46 million through the end of last year. The record for independent counsel investigations is $48.5 million for the Iran-Contra probe during the Reagan era, and Starr is on track to exceed that.

Starr’s probe has produced more than a dozen convictions of Arkansas figures, including then-Gov. Jim Guy Tucker in 1996 and both of the Clintons’ Whitewater business partners, as well as the referral that prompted the president’s historic impeachment in December by the House.

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Updated reports and video of Kenneth W. Starr’s testimony today before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee will be available on The Times’ Web site: http://ukobiw.net/politics

Starr to Oppose Prosecutor Law Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, whose investigation of President Clinton revived a debate over special prosecutors, will testify in Congress against renewing the law that put him in power. A26