FEATURE
Triple Whammy!
Ken Starr Whipped Like a Sick Dog
New York -- April 22, 1998 -- By the end of Tuesday, Ken Starr found himself under siege from one of the most respected Republicans in America and the investigative press.
Whammy No. 1: Former President George Bush went on the record against allowing Secret Service agents to testify before grand juries.
In an unsolicited letter which arrived just in time to be filed with the court as part of a motion by the Secret Service, Bush said that agents should have the privilege of silence. "What’s at stake here is the protection of the life of the president and his family, and the confidence and trust that a president must have in the Secret Service," Bush said in his letter.
"If a president feels that the secret service agents can be called to testify about what they might have seen or heard, then it is likely that the president will be uncomfortable having the agents nearby... I feel very strongly that Secret Service agents should not be made to appear in court to discuss that which they might not have seen or heard."This comes as yet another major blow to Ken Starr from a fellow conservative -- bad enough for Ken that Susan Webber Wright threw Paula Jones' phony civil lawsuit against President Clinton, hobbling Starr's ability to plausibly use it in his futile attempt to pin perjury on the President. Bush Senior remains one of the most beloved figures in the GOP, respected as a diplomat and statesman on both sides of the political aisle. He is also the patriarch of an emerging family dynasty of high-visibility Republican power politicians. This is not the type of person Ken Starr needs to feel heat from at this juncture.
By lending his support to keeping the Secret Service secret, Bush also undermines any headway Starr may have been trying to make on the public-relations front.
Ouch!
Whammy No. 2: In an investigative article posted to Salon Magazine's web site late Tuesday by Murray Waas, Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, Ken Starr was tied to a series of questionable newspaper articles planted by The American Spectator/Richard Scaife "Arkansas Project" to have a judge removed from a case involving Jim Guy Tucker, a Whitewater figure who was at the time governor of Arkansas.
Judge Henry Woods 
The US District Judge, Henry Woods, was removed in early 1996 -- less than half a year after Woods quashed Kenneth Starr's attempt to indict Tucker. The highly unusual move was questioned at the time after scrutiny by legal scholars. In his motion to have Woods removed, Starr cited a series of newspaper articles about Woods that contained incorrect and outright questionable content -- including misleading and false information by segregationist Arkansas politician and jurist James Johnson, a staunch opponent of Clinton. Some of the inaccurate material even found its way into an article by Micah Morrison in The Wall Street Journal.
Shortly thereafter, Woods was essentially harassed by the office of Senator Lauch Faircloth, starting with a demand of some fifteen years' worth of financial disclosure statements.
While Salon makes it clear that "There is no indication that Starr knew of the origin of the questionable information," it does raise yet more suspicion of some sort of collusion between Starr and the Spectator/Scaife/"Arkansas Project" cadre, speculation compounded by questions concerning allegations that David Hale was given cash, lodging, a vehicle and other "perks" from people tied to the Spectator and the Arkansas project.
It sure as heck won't help Starr in his effort to investigate these alleged payments, coming just a few days after his accusation that the Justice Department had a conflict of interest because "their" FBI was instrumental in these charges coming to light was laughed off the front pages and editorial columns of America's press.
Postscript to this whammy: Judge Woods has demanded an investigation of what looks to be a flagrant attempt to "successfully interfere with the proper workings of the judicial system."
Biff! Bam!! The complete article is at
http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/1998/04/22news.html
Whammy No. 3: American Politics Journal has obtained an advance copy of the Wednesday edition of New York Observer in which Joe Conason surveys the conservative landscape only to find the natives preparing for the final fizzling-out of Ken Starr's investigation into... hmm, now what was it that he was looking into?
"Those talkative 'sources close to' Kenneth Starr sound strangely subdued of late, as if the Whitewater independent counsel were preparing his Republican and conservative fans for disappointment... [I]t now seems that the various avenues of inquiry explored so long and so expensively by Mr. Starr are just so many dead ends."
Conason cites an article in the latest issue of "The American Spectator, piggy bank for Richard Mellon Scaife’s Arkansas Project and house organ of the Office of Independent Counsel" by Byron York, who opines that Starr will not be able to indict anyone.
Zip. Nada. Zilch-o-rama. York even declares Filegate dead!
And we do have to clarify the wording of the usually dead-on-target Conason on one detail: The American Spectator is no longer the recipient of Scaife largesse, due to Emmett Tyrrell's refusal to buy into the preposterous notion foisted upon naive conspira-wackos by Scaife-subsidized "investigative" hack Chris Ruddy that Vince Foster was murdered. Or maybe Scaife yanked the funding for fear that the "Arkansas Project" would be exposed and he wanted some deniability.
But I digress.
Conason also lights into the amateurish sleuthing of reporters Jeff Gerth and Stephen Labaton in the Monday edition of The New York Times, a once-great paper that has taken the position of "All the Clinton-Bashing We See Fit to Print" lately. Gerth and Labaton claim that a briefcase found in the attic of Vince Foster’s Little Rock home "contained documents that raise questions about Mrs. Clinton’s accounts of her legal work for Madison."
Turns out these "questions" could have been answered with a simple look at Hillary Clinton's testimony of some three years ago -- and the answer is that Jim McDougal had a history of not paying bills in a timely manner.
Sorry, ... sorry, Stephen... no Pulitzers for you!
Meanwhile, back in Washington: Whap!!! Sock!!!! POW!!!!! Ken Starr is getting beaten like a sick dog.
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