Independent Counsel

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton's private eye is no trench-coat-toting gumshoe with his feet propped on a cluttered desk and a whiskey bottle in his bottom drawer.No, Terry F. Lenzner, the aggressive lawyer-turned-sleuth who was hauled before a grand jury this week by the Whitewater independent counsel, heads one of the nation's top investigative outfits. It's a firm that has held up its magnifying glass for Fortune 500 companies, Mike Tyson, political candidates of all -- stripes, and now, the embattled Clinton White House.

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Janet Reno's announcement yesterday stirred up two issues over her use of the independent counsel law:* Did she cast her initial investigations of the president, vice president and former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary too narrowly to focus on telephone calls, keeping out of the hands of an independent counsel a range of other accusations about misconduct during the Clinton-Gore 1996 campaign?* Did Reno properly refuse to use her option to ask for an independent counsel investigation of anyone else whose prosecution by the Justice Department might be a conflict of interest?

WASHINGTON -- A special Department of Justice investigator has taken the first step toward the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate whether Bush administration officials violated the law in carrying out and possibly covering up U.S. dealings with Iraq before the Persian Gulf War.A department official confirmed yesterday that retired U.S. District Judge Frederick B. Lacey has determined that there is sufficient information to proceed to...

Monica was so good on the talk show, they should promote her from the soaps to sitcom.If only other federal whistle-blowers were treated so considerately as L.R. Tripp.Keep the independent counsel! Every future president should get a Starr to investigate whatever the scoundrel is about to do next.All the inside people are for Lawrence Bell. Either they know something, or he does.Pub Date: 3/05/99

"As for the independent counsel, his search for criminal law violations must go on. And if those are found, then vigorous prosecution must follow. . . No one, by virtue of personal attractiveness, good intentions, or high office is above the law." So we wrote earlier about the Iran-contra affair.We still believe that. But those words were written 4 years and 11 months ago. This week's indictment of former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger for lying to Congress and the independent counsel comes as a surprise.

Attorney General Janet Reno has asked a special court to name an independent counsel to investigate Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy's acceptance of gifts from two food-related corporations. She did so even though a Justice Department investigation is said to have concluded that Mr. Espy was not influenced by the gifts.Ye gads, we hope not! He got tickets to a Dallas Cowboys football game from Tyson Foods and tickets to a Chicago Bulls game from Quaker Oats, and a few other freebies. "Several hundred dollars in value," according to the attorney general.

WASHINGTON -- Kenneth W. Starr, whose five-year, $46 million investigation of President Clinton sparked fierce criticism of the independent counsel law that governs his actions, will call today for that statute to be scrapped when it expires in June.The surprise testimony, to be delivered before the Senate Government Affairs Committee, might help defuse an expected barrage of blistering questions for Starr from Democrats who have lambasted him since he launched his Whitewater investigation in 1994.

The following editorial appeared yesterday in the Orange County Register. MOST commentators seem to have forgotten the purpose of the independent counsel law, which permits the U.S. attorney general to ask a panel of judges to appoint an outside counsel to investigate and, if warranted, prosecute allegations of wrongdoing by high government officials, including the president and vice president.The law was written in 1974, mainly as a response to President Richard Nixon's firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was looking into the Watergate break-in and cover-up.

WASHINGTON -- Even as they wage war over the tactics of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, members of Congress from both parties are quietly moving to ensure that Starr-like inquiries will soon be relegated to the history books.The statute that governs the appointment and conduct of the independent counsel expires in June 1999, and few in Congress are willing to defend its breadth and scope. The question now is not whether the law will be changed but how drastically."It could be eliminated altogether," ventured House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde, an Illinois Republican with jurisdiction over the issue.

The stormy, partisan Washington reaction to the decision by a three-judge panel there to oust one Whitewater independent counsel, Robert B. Fiske Jr., and replace him with another, Kenneth W. Starr, came, coincidentally but appropriately, in the week the nation was noting the 20th anniversary of the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon because of Watergate.It is often forgotten that the investigation and prosecution of the Watergate burglary and its subsequent cover-up was not carried out under the law that now covers such independent prosecutions.