October 15, 1999
Web posted at: 4:45 p.m. EDT (2045 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A special three-judge panel will unseal an order next week naming Robert Ray as the replacement for Independent Counsel Ken Starr, sources said Friday -- a move the White House immediately labeled "dubious."

Ray is currently one of Starr's assistant prosecutors. Starr, whose investigation of President Bill Clinton led to the second presidential impeachment in the nation's history, will step down next week and return to private practice.

Starr

Before coming to Starr's office earlier this year, Ray had worked for Independent Counsel Donald Smaltz, who unsuccessfully prosecuted former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy.

White House reaction was swift.

"It's somewhat of a dubious proposition that someone involved both in the Espy investigation and the Starr operation" is "getting a promotion," White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said.

Lockhart said he thought that "Americans will be glad that Mr. Starr can now take out his garbage in private."

The 39-year-old Ray has extensive experience as a prosecutor from his work as an assistant U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York starting in 1989. In that capacity, he supervised and worked on a number of public corruption and organized crime prosecutions.

He joined Smaltz's office in 1995 and won convictions against a Tyson Foods executive and a Tyson lobbyist in the probe of illegal gifts to Espy.

Upon moving to Starr's office early this year, Ray helped prosecute Webster Hubbell, a longtime presidential friend and former associate attorney general.

Hubbell pleaded guilty to a felony in June for allegedly concealing his and Hillary Rodham Clinton's legal work on a fraudulent Arkansas land deal owned by her Whitewater partner, Jim McDougal, and Hubbell's father-in-law, Little Rock businessman Seth Ward. Hubbell says he knows of no wrongdoing by the first lady.

People who have worked with Ray or dealt with him as a prosecutor were complimentary of the prosecutor.

Ray is "a decent guy and I think he'll make a good replacement for Starr," said William Gardner, a defense lawyer who represented several clients in the Espy investigation.

"He's not a zealot and he's not particularly political," said attorney Barry Coburn, a former prosecutor who worked with Ray for several years in Smaltz's office.

"I don't know his political orientation to this day," Coburn said of Ray. "He's a prosecutor's prosecutor with good people skills and excellent judgment."

Ray "has a high level of credibility; if he didn't know something, he said he didn't know," said U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey of New York. Mukasey presided over two cocaine conspiracy jury trials Ray won as a assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan.

Ray will take over what remains of what was once an investigation into Whitewater, a long-ago Arkansas real estate deal involving Bill and Hillary Clinton -- an investigation Starr took over in 1994.

So far, Starr has spent more than $47 million on the investigation of the president and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton that began with the Whitewater real estate deal in Arkansas and spread to the Monica Lewinsky probe.

Ray will wrap up the probe into the White House travel office firings as well as questions about whether Kathleen Willey was illegally pressured to remain quiet about her accusation that Clinton fondled her in a room off the Oval Office.

There will also be a final report which is likely to be months away. Two months ago, Starr pledged the report will be issued "well before next year's election."

The report could cause some political headaches for the first lady if she officially launches a campaign to capture a Senate seat in New York.

The news of Starr's decision to step down does not come as a complete surprise. On August 18, CNN reported Starr had been involved in "theoretical discussions" about stepping aside. More recently, federal judges who oversee the independent counsels had been interviewed several possible successors.

Although the law authorizing the appointment of independent counsels recently expired, Starr's investigation as well as the other independent counsel investigations still under consideration remain in place.

Starr resigned once before in February 1997 to take a job at Pepperdine University in California. But he withdrew his resignation within days after coming under heavy criticism for leaving the post before his investigation was completed.

CNN's Bob Franken and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Friday, October 15, 1999

• Sources: Ray to take over Starr's position next week
• The new Al Gore
• Senate to debate proposed soft money ban
• Bradley raises slightly more money than Gore
• Two tribal officials plead guilty to campaign finance charges
• President honors agents who protect him
• Senator accuses HUD of manipulating investigation
• Former Nixon adviser dies of cancer
• Drug policy director angered by suggestion of lack of cooperation
• Clinton calls Senate cuts 'unconscionable'

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