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Margaret Carlson was named in 1994 the first woman columnist in TIME's history. She writes primarily about policy and politics and is a regular panelist on CNN's Capital Gang.
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Ken Starr, Gumshoe
By Margaret Carlson
(TIME, February 2) -- Last week America learned there was probable cause to believe
the President betrayed his wife, his daughter and his country.
Whether or not it is finally proved that he had an affair with a
21-year-old intern and then tried to cover it up, he behaved
irresponsibly enough to enable prosecutors to expand what
started out as an investigation of an Arkansas land deal into a
fishing expedition for intimate details of his daily -- and
nightly -- life.
What gives this the overtone of Greek tragedy is how utterly
avoidable it was, if the President had exercised the slightest
bit of restraint. Already given a lot of slack by voters who
believed he was an adulterer but elected him anyway, the
President had only to comply with the minimal standard of
presidential marital conduct: Don't have sex in the White House
with a woman not your wife (no one thought to add "intern"). In
these sexually perilous times, we all know lawyers and
businessmen who won't meet in a hotel room with a colleague of
the opposite sex. But Clinton, fighting accusations that while
Governor he exposed himself to a female state employee, is now
accused of behavior so reckless, so arrogant, so tawdry that if
the charges turn out to be true, he should be ashamed to show
his face, much less brag that he is going about "business as
usual." None of the rest of us can. We feel his shame.
Thanks to Clinton we have two other problems: having to explain
to the kids over Cheerios not the significance of a visit to
Cuba by the most famous celibate in the world but just why it is
that a perky anchorperson is talking about something called oral
sex. The second, perhaps more lasting problem is the legal
precedent set by this ballooning investigation. Until last week,
the criticism of independent counsel Kenneth Starr went largely
to his unchecked power. Former Republican independent counsel
Joseph diGenova calls the whole setup "a constitutional
monstrosity." Now we watch as a prosecutor gunning for a
President uses tactics to dig up dirt that would make NYPD
Blue's Detective Sipowicz blanch. Starr not only pulled a sting
on a former White House intern but reportedly planned to wire
her to run one on the President himself, as if he were John
Gotti.
Consider Starr's response when Monica Lewinsky's "friend," Linda
Tripp, brought him 20 hours of surreptitiously recorded
conversations. He wired Tripp, listened in and then three days
later instructed her to lure Lewinsky once again to a Virginia
hotel for lunch. Instead of a sandwich with Tripp, Lewinsky, now
24, got a raft of agents swooping down on her. At 1 p.m. they
took the stunned Lewinsky to a set of rooms and commenced an
on-again, off-again interrogation that would last 10 hours.
Starr's office said she was free to leave at any time, but her
lawyer, William Ginsburg, said she was "restrained by mental
coercion. She was crying and screaming and yelling...They told
her if she left she'd be subject to immediate prosecution. This
kid was beside herself." He described it as "a treatment for
NYPD Blue." Throughout this ordeal, Lewinsky had no lawyer
present.
If a prosecutor appointed to unravel a land deal (remember
Whitewater?) bootstraps himself into a civil suit and thereby
compels testimony about the most intimate matters, we will soon
have a government that can get to anyone. Everyone has something
embarrassing to hide. When we aren't all dealing with a
President we're ready to string up, this unfettered intrusion
may be what haunts us most. What a Hobbesian choice: lie and
face prison or tell the truth and face public humiliation. The
perjury follows, even though the act -- reprehensible though it
might be -- did not flow from official duty. No one should lie,
but Big Brother shouldn't ask. This all comes by way of a
prosecutor who before he took the appointment was ready to file
an amicus brief supporting Paula Jones. Now he's her amicus, all
right; the course of her case is in Starr's hands as much as
anyone else's.
You don't have to have a moment's sympathy for the President to
know that this convergence of Jones, Starr and the FBI is not
right. No one is worried much about civil liberties when
Sipowicz is browbeating the bad guy on NYPD Blue. But the latest
Washington drama is for real. As Starr disgraces the Judicial
Branch and Clinton the Executive one, things once lost -- like
respect for privacy, the presidency and proportion -- cannot be
retrieved. Next up: perhaps the Legislative Branch, to stage a
trial blending the worst of Watergate and Melrose Place, a show
so repulsive it might even shame Ken Starr.
--With reporting by Viveca Novak/Washington
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