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| QUESTIONING JUDGE STARR | |
 November 19, 1998  | ||
 | Jim Lehrer talks with Margaret Warner, journalist/author Elizabeth Drew and National Journal columnist Stuart Taylor midway through the questioning of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.
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| JIM LEHRER: All right. An afternoon break. We're uncertain at this point as - let's see - Congressman Gekus - there are 35 actually - yes, there are - there are still 30 to go -- Margaret, if I have counted right. Margaret Warner is here, along with Stuart Taylor and Elizabeth Drew for this break. As you heard Chairman Hyde say, they will be back at 5 after 2. I wouldn't take any bets on that, but that's neither here nor there.
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| Hard questions about Kenneth Starr's tactics. | ||||||||
| Where do you think things stand at this stage of the game, Stuart?
JIM LEHRER: All right. Elizabeth, the point - speaking of Barney Frank, Barney Frank really pressed Starr on the question of why have you waited till now to tell us - the American people as well as the committee - that the President has no culpability on Filegate, there's no evidence he even had anything to do with the Travel Office thing, and we're not going to send you anything on Whitewater?
JIM LEHRER: And Congressman McCollum has said from the very beginning on this program and elsewhere that if he believed or there was evidence that the President had committed perjury, clearly that would be an impeachable offense. ELIZABETH DREW: Absolutely. He's one of about six or seven Republicans on that committee that said it almost from the beginning, which is this is - people keep trying to say we're doing just what Rodino did in '74. We're being just like - nothing like that happened in '74. JIM LEHRER: What do you make of the bribery question?
MARGARET WARNER: But you could see that the Republicans are where a lot of the public - I think it was Mr. Sensenbrenner said his own constituents say, well, everyone lies about sex, why would you prosecute the President on this, and they've been trying to help Ken Starr, you know, lead him through demolishing some of the Democrats' arguments. | ||||||||
| Starr's treatment of Monica Lewinksy. | ||||||||
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JIM LEHRER: What about, Elizabeth, what - going back to Abbe Lowell, the - where we started this afternoon after lunch, the Democratic counsel who went after Starr on his tactics, particularly that first night - I won't go through the whole thing - do you think he drew any blood? ELIZABETH DREW: Oh, absolutely. I assume that's what Stuart was alluding to. STUART TAYLOR: Especially the treatment of Monica Lewinsky. ELIZABETH DREW: Right. And I was surprised - I didn't know that there would be such a useful peg for the Democrats to link Mr. Starr's behavior with the case for impeachment, that Mr. Starr himself wrote to the committee. I think he didn't think through what he was saying, which was a characteristic we saw later this afternoon as well; that how I behaved is relevant to the credibility - I don't have the exact words right now - of my charges. So he gave Lowell this bridge that he so happily crossed, and asked him a number of questions. I was surprised Starr - maybe I shouldn't have been surprised, but they seemed a little insensitive here. The Ritz Carlton is a very comfortable and nice hotel - if you're going to be detained somewhere for several hours. That's a swell place to be. JIM LEHRER: Why would anybody complain? ELIZABETH DREW: Yes. And he - I don't really understand what he was saying about that - well, we reached for her lawyer at some point - he was very vague on this, because - it was a very critical part of this - and she was not allowed to call her lawyer - and of course the reason - STUART TAYLOR: I'm not sure that's right. ELIZABETH DREW: Well, she -
ELIZABETH DREW: She says she wasn't, and it was not clear when - STUART TAYLOR: I think she says they discouraged me from calling my lawyer; they told me it would - you know, that the immunity deal was off the table. ELIZABETH DREW: Well, that's pretty strong discouragement. And the point is, of course, if she had been able to tell Frank Carter, her attorney, what was going on, they feared that Frank Carter would call Vernon Jordan, who had first obtained them. What he didn't get into was they were trying to get this young woman, whom he kept saying was this felon committing felonies, to wire herself to sting Vernon Jordan and the President. It was a very - JIM LEHRER: That was not mentioned. ELIZABETH DREW: No. JIM LEHRER: Go ahead. STUART TAYLOR: A quick little point. I think his answers were not very good on that, and I think their treatment of Monica Lewinsky is subject to legitimate criticism on that occasion. Let's take that as a given. It's debatable, but I - I think that Starr defending himself isn't stepping back and saying is - none of this has anything to do with what the President did - in other words it's not as though we manufactured evidence - we - even if they mistreated Monica Lewinsky, the evidence they eventually got from her did not come on that occasion, came after full litigation of their complaints about that occasion, came when she had some very good lawyers, and she gave testimony that nobody has - has seriously challenged the accuracy of, and I think it's not irrelevant that Starr - that Starr's people are subject to that particular criticism, but I think it doesn't have a whole lot to do with whether or not the President should be impeached. | ||||||||
| Any new information? | ||||||||
| JIM LEHRER: Margaret, going back to a question that I asked Stuart this morning after the morning session, did you hear anything, as somebody who’s been following this story from the very beginning, have you heard any piece of information, except the Travelgate, Whitewater, and Filegate, no deals, have you heard anything new?
JIM LEHRER: Yes. STUART TAYLOR: I guess one more – typically the reason – the usual reason why defense lawyers and defenders attack the fairness of the process is because an unfair process produces unreliable evidence. It’s not the only reason, but it’s the main reason, and what I haven’t heard yet is any persuasive argument from the President’s side that the evidence that’s been produced is, in part, unreliable. It’s fair to criticize Starr for writing an unduly prosecutorial report; I think he did. JIM LEHRER: That was one of Abbe Lowell’s major points. STUART TAYLOR: And I think it’s right, and I think it’s fair to criticize Starr from sort of bobbing and weaving and not admitting error on anything, but in the end what is the relevance of it, does it – and I think it’s telling that the Democrats – as far as I’ve heard so far – have not attacked the reliability of any of the evidence in Starr’s Report. They’ve attacked various things that were done on the way to getting there. JIM LEHRER: That does go to the heart of it, does it not, Elizabeth? Whatever the process is and whatever the procedures – whoever did what – that we’ve got to remember what – what’s at issue here. ELIZABETH DREW: Right. What Starr did – I think is relevant in the sense that Starr said it’s relevant. But Clinton still did what he did. I mean, they haven’t much gotten to what’s much referred to as the perjury trap. It was a little bit referred to earlier this afternoon. In other words, by the time the President was to testify in the Paula Jones case on the Saturday – JIM LEHRER: That was January 17th.
JIM LEHRER: We still have, Margaret – we’ve only gone through five of the members of the House – members of the committee thus far, and some of the really strong ones, like Bob Barr, on the Republican side, who was the first member of the House of Representatives to call for the President’s impeachment, a former prosecutor, himself, congressman from Georgia, and Barney Frank is very strong on the other side. But there are other strong defenders of the President where we still have some fireworks to come. MARGARET WARNER: Yes. We absolutely do, but, yet, I think you can see when they only have this five minutes, it’s very hard for anyone, even a Barney Frank, to get a head of steam going, and there’s a sort of patchwork quality – don’t you think? – to a lot of the questions and answers. I mean, someone might score a point, as Barney Frank did, why didn’t you let us know about the Travelgate exoneration earlier, but it’s hard for someone to get on a roll with Starr. JIM LEHRER: And also – JIM LEHRER: Well, as you can see, the members are back, and Chairman Hyde is back, but it also goes to the point that you made this morning too, Stuart, that there are no new revelations to come; we’ve already – we – it’s just been going on for eight or nine months now, and there was nothing – all the drama has been wrung out of this, and so that’s why even if somebody’s saying something that’s extremely important, it doesn’t sound that important, because it’s been heard before. STUART TAYLOR: Yes, and I heard this – I heard someone comparing this to earlier drama – great dramas – the McCarthy hearings – Watergate – this may not be a great drama. And one thing is that the 24-hour-a-day news cycle – MSNBC, CNN – all news, all the time – all Monica, all the time – everybody is so drenched as much as they want to listen to about this that by the time it finally reaches the House of Representatives and they finally start talking about it, it’s over – in the minds of a lot of people. ELIZABETH DREW: But, Jim, in ’74 you didn’t have this proceeding; there were no public hearings; there was Mr. Jaworski’s – he was the special prosecutor at the time – not under this law – his bulging briefcase – he sent a briefcase up to Capitol Hill with his evidence – no proposals, no summary – and a roadmap of what was in the evidence. They had what hearings they had in camera, in private, with the President’s attorney there the whole time, and here’s one that’ll shock you. The evidence was presented jointly by the Democratic and Republican counsel, and the public debate – we saw that – and we’ll see it later – in the year here – was whether what they had found constituted impeachable offenses. That was high drama. JIM LEHRER: That’s what the public saw. ELIZABETH DREW: That’s right. JIM LEHRER: Those opening statements. ELIZABETH DREW: And it was very dramatic. JIM LEHRER: But there was also something that came before that, and that was the Senate Watergate hearings. ELIZABETH DREW: Right. JIM LEHRER: That set that up before – which were very dramatic, because that’s when we all found out for the first time – that’s when John Dean – you were talking about John Dean earlier – that’s when he emerged and we saw the angry Ehrlichman and we saw everybody in a very dramatic mode, which is – this hearing does not have and the potential is not even there – MARGARET WARNER: It’s not only that we’ve heard all the facts. We’ve even heard all the arguments. For instance – until one of the – one of the Republican members will start to say talk about is lying about sex an impeachable offense – well, most of the public has already decided; they’ve heard that thrashed out on a million talk shows! JIM LEHRER: That’s right. And here we go again. | ||||||||
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JIM
LEHRER: But anyhow, the one question that's been unanswered at this point - at
least we don't have an answer to it - is that the original plan was that the minority
counsel, Abbe Lowell, was going to question Mr. Starr for 30 minutes and that
got extended to an hour and then a little bit more, and then Mr. Schippers, David
Schippers, the minority counsel, was going to question Mr. Starr, and then the
members were going to do it. Obviously, they've made a change. 
STUART
TAYLOR: Well, I think they probably moved Mr. Schippers to the end, because he's
their designated hitter. He's going to be the most probably impressive questioner
from the Republican side, and they'd like to let him clean up. In terms of what's
been happening lately, it reminds me a little bit of the O.J. Simpson trial. The
President's advocates don't want to talk about what he did. None of the questions
asked, not one, went to what the President did. They're attacking the prosecutor,
and frankly, they're drawing some blood. They're raising legitimate questions
as to the prosecutor's conduct, whether he was partial in his press release, whether
he mistreated Monica Lewinsky when he picked her up, and others. And he, I think,
has a problem, which is that he seems constitutionally incapable of giving a simple,
direct answer to a simple, direct question. There are lots of loaded questions,
but if you take Barney Frank's, they were simple, they were direct, and we get
consultative, deliberative it's not a fair question, and it makes me, as someone
who's been sympathetic to Starr and who thinks he's fundamentally honest, I guess
my gut reaction is come on, get to the point. I'm reminded of an oral argument
in the Supreme Court in which Starr as solicitor general was saying to the court
something along the lines of "let me share with you" and Chief Justice Rehnquist,
who's similarly inclined, just sort of got a little impatient, kind of, and said,
"why don't you just tell us." 
ELIZABETH
DREW: I think that's a fair question. So much has been made of these controversies
that if at some point the independent counsel decides that there is nothing there,
they ought to say so. Now, what he says on the Travel Office is that they're still
investigating, and that makes it year five, I think. It started in 1993, as I
believe. So I think that's a fair point. I was also interested on the other side.
Mr. McCollum from Florida, to me, was the most interesting, because he's clearly
trying to build a case for voting out articles of impeachment. And one of them
he has now - people haven't talked about this before - it would be bribery. And
he was suggesting that the holding out of a possibility of a job for Monica Lewinsky.
Now there's a question - there are questions about exactly what happened - would
constitute bribery, which is one of the words - one of the undisputed words in
the definition of what is impeachable offense. Then I was interested that Mr.
Starr quite easily said, oh, well, perjury, that would have been an impeachable
offense when the founding fathers wrote the Constitution. I read a lot about this.
I don't know where he gets that, but you see the Republicans building the case
and in McCollum's case rather enthusiastically for a set of articles. 
STUART
TAYLOR: Well, I think Mr. McCollum is reaching to make it sound more impeachable
and frankly, I think obviously, independent counsel Starr has had a long time
to think about this. He's written a report and given testimony and he did not
accuse the President of bribery, presumably because he thinks that the case can't
be made. Mr. McCollum hasn't given up on him. I think Starr didn't help himself
when he said, gee, you know, I'd have to think about that some more; he's had
plenty of time to think about it. I think that also we have to recognize it's
not as though - in my view - every perjury in the world is an impeachable offense
or no perjury in the world is an impeachable offense. I think any - when you dig
into it, well, how many perjuries, how long, how premeditated, did somebody say
something to protect a friend when he was caught unawares, or did he say something
umpteen times over seven months to protect himself? The context matters. The Republicans
would like it - some of them would like to say perjury, bam, impeach him. It's
not that simple. 
JIM
LEHRER: Yes. 
JIM
LEHRER: That's in dispute. 
MARGARET
WARNER: Actually, I haven’t heard anything new. I mean, as we said, there’s some
new justifications or new emphasis, but there’s certainly no new facts, but that’s
understandable, as he keeps holding up his referral – you’ve got a copy of that
– and he keeps saying these were the facts; this is what I developed; in the end
this is what counts. And I think he is resting on what’s in that. 
ELIZABETH
DREW: Right. But he did not know that Starr had moved in on it. He did not know
that Linda Tripp – Monica Lewinsky had been talking to Linda Tripp so much and
there were these tapes. And so the President’s defenders say that was a perjury
trap. Well, so, the President didn’t have to commit perjury. There’s some sort
of suggestion that if he’d known these things – I don’t know what he would have
done – refused to appear or – you know, gone out the other door, or some such
thing. So I think it’s exactly right to separate whatever may have been the flaws
in the investigation with the facts of the President’s behavior and then you get
to was the President’s behavior, is it – does it constitute an impeachable offense,
and I think you have the Democrats who’ve just absolutely decided no, so by the
way have a lot of Republicans, moderate Republicans, and so on. And there are
Republicans on this committee who are determined to say that it does, and that’s
what’s going to be playing out.
STUART
TAYLOR: Particularly if he won’t ever just say yes. (laughter among group)