Thursday, April 29, 1999 --- New York (APJP) -- Just when Ken Starr thought he might be able to slither off quietly into the horizon, and his compatriot Donald Smaltz thought his failed attempt to pin charges on Mike Espy might forever be forgotten while America obsesses on Columbine High and Kosovo, both men got a heady dose of bad news.

Actually, make that a total of three doses!

Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the legal theory that Smaltz employed in his prosecution of former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy and California's Sun-Diamond Growers is essentially a pile of hooey. The court ruled that the simple act of gift-giving to a federal official without any provable connection between the gifts and specific actions of the official does not violate the law against illegal gratuities.

The court's rejection of Smaltz's tortured argument vigorously affirms a Washington federal appeals court's overturning of an earlier conviction of Sun-Diamond -- and demolishes the lame, snide and mean-spirited argument made by Smaltz after Espy was found not guilty (following Smaltz's failed four-year, $17 million effort) that the threat of prosecution in and of itself would be a deterrent to violation of laws governing gifts.

Right, Donald. Try this on for size: the Supreme Court decision should prove a rigorous deterrent to abusive, politically-motivated, Smaltz-like prosecutors.

Score one against the black hats on Tuesday -- and score two more on Wednesday, this time at the expense of Ken Starr, the American Torquemada.

In a ruling which had Starr-gazers buzzing late yesterday afternoon, U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr. ruled that prosecutors for Starr's Office of Independent Counsel will not be allowed to interview jurors who refused to convict Susan McDougal (whom the press continue to erroneously bill as Bill Clinton's Whitewater "partner") in her recent trial on obstruction of justice and contempt charges.

Howard started his ruling memorandum with the understatement of the year, saying in his ruling that Starr and his prosecutors had failed to show "good cause" which would lead the court to make a rare exception to a policy of "not invading the province of the jury."

Many saw Starr's efforts as an attempt to intimidate members of the jury after the fact -- but Howard cut to the heart of the matter in saying that "permitting the unbridled interviewing of jurors could easily lead to their harassment, to the exploitation of their thought processes... and to diminished confidence in jury verdicts as well as unbalanced trial results" -- in other words, Starr was trying to open the door to allow prosecutors to tamper with future juries.

Starr's original motion to "interview" jurors, while couched in the usual litany of his slick legalisms, looked transparently retaliatory -- since it followed revelations to the press by a number of jurors, including foreman Donald Thomas, that they found the tactics of Starr's prosecutors arrogant and abusive, the testimony of Julie Hiatt Steele concerning abuses by Starr's prosecutors convincing, and testimony of Starr toady Hickman Ewing "evasive." In finding McDougal not guilty of obstruction of justice, the jury had essentially found Starr, Ewing, and the rest of the hubristic OIC clauqe guilty of abuse of power, abuse of office, and obstructing McDougal's right to liberty.

Bravo, Judge Howard!

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As if that weren't enough to set Starr's head spinning, a major investigative article went live on the web site of The Nation late Wednesday. "Starr and Willey: the Untold Story," written by Florence Graves and Jacqueline Sharkey, drops some major bombshells:

Julie Hiatt Steele --
She's becoming Starr's
worst nightmare.
But some of the most interesting details of the article highlight Starr's efforts to keep evidence involving Willey safely under seal, including all of that troubling testimony of numerous parties who stood to turn Willey's allegation to Swiss cheese -- claiming that its publication could torpedo his "ongoing investigation" which finally pinned a now-discredited, abusive indictment on Julie Hiatt Steele.

Note that this material was unavailable for review by members of the House of Representatives -- while the entirely uncorroborated and highly questionable claim by one Jane Doe No. 5, Juanita Broaddrick, that then-Attorney General Bill Clinton had "forced" himself on her were made available for House Majority Whip Tom DeLay -- who stands accused himself of perjury in a lawsuit deposition and who is still ducking rumors of trysts with underage Mexican senoritas -- to wave in the faces of members of Congress in a Congressional back office where the "secret" evidence was being stored for selective flaunting.

The only serious problem with the otherwise excellent Nation article is that this issue is never directly addressed, this inportant connection never explicitly pointed out.

But you can be sure it will, most likely by the Bar Association of the District of Columbia. It's unthinkable that they would let this pattern and practice of abusive prosecution and de facto cover-up -- especially in the context of visiting the most grave Constitutional remedy for Executive misconduct on the nation -- blithely slide by without thorough scrutiny and severe sanction.