POLITICAL WRAP - WHITEWATER APRIL 12, 1996 TRANSCRIPT

JIM LEHRER: All right. And back now to Mark Shields and Paul Gigot. How important do you think this trial is, Paul, to the ongoing drama or saga of Whitewater?

PAUL GIGOT: I think it's absolutely critical. It's absolutely critical to the independent counsel, Ken Starr, in particular. This may be his--it's his biggest case so far. And it's very clear that, no pun intended, Hale is his star witness, and it's clear that Ken Starr, the prosecutor, believes David Hale, otherwise he would not have brought these charges, brought these cases. The question is: Will a jury believe David Hale, and if, if that jury does, then as Sara said--

JIM LEHRER: So you agree with Sara Fritz, that this--it either stops or starts on the outcome of this--I don't mean either stops--or it continues based on the outcome of this trial?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, certainly the Hale portion of it stops or fails based on this. Any credibility that David Hale--any value that David Hale has as far as further charges are blown out here if he can't convince this Arkansas jury that he's credible.

JIM LEHRER: Mark, how do you think--how important do you think this is?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think it's important, Jim. When you've got a criminal conspiracy, it's a problem for the prosecution at any time because the prosecution witness has to be a party to that of--ideally is a party to that conspiracy, and it's usually not somebody who's confused with Albert Schweitzer or George Washington or Mother Theresa. It's somebody who's been involved with a conspiracy. So immediately he's attacked, his credibility, and lied to the FBI, lied to the SBA, and I think that's a--that's a problem for the, for the prosecution here. His demeanor I thought was persuasive. He handled himself well, but I think that sits there. Politically, it's no help for the administration. I don't care if the story is on page 9, page 97, and the President's videotaping testimony, it's politically harmful.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Now, there's another side issue that has arisen, and that has to do with Ken Starr and his right to continue to take high-profile civil cases, while he's still--while he's still--while he's functioning as the Whitewater independent prosecutor, is that a problem for him, Paul?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, certainly some of his political opponents are trying to make it an issue. One of the things he's done early on, did early on to try to create a little immunity for him on that, was to hire Sam Dash of Watergate fame, the Democratic counsel. I believe it was--

JIM LEHRER: But he was--he was the lead counsel for the Senate Whitewater committee under Sam Irvin.

PAUL GIGOT: That's right. And so he basically has asked Sam Dash to sign off on any of the cases that he takes and say, is this a conflict of interest, and one of the surprises here for me is that Ken Starr is not actually prosecuting this case in Little Rock. He's given over to his deputies. So we'll see if this, if this damages the case at all because he is spending time in other things, but in terms of the conflict of interest charge, I--it seems to me that Sam Dash does give him immunity on that point.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I disagree with Paul. I think that Ken Starr has a very thriving law practice and this argues, Jim, if anything, for the advantage of having somebody like Judge Fisk, who's at the twilight of a career, still has his energy, and his wits and energy about him, but isn't looking for clients. I mean, here's Ken Starr with high profile cases involving tobacco clients and all sorts of other very controversial, high visibility, and I think it presents a problem for him, I really do. I think that this is the sort of task of this magnitude and this seriousness that really it ought to be exclusive, not that he gives up his clients but that somebody else in the firm handles them and that he is--he's separated this, the Caesar's wife thing. And I think, I think that is a problem.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Paul.

PAUL GIGOT: If you're going to have--the whole independent counsel notion, maybe that's the problem here, because you're talking about somebody who's outside the Justice Department, who has to be somebody in private life, so in that sense, he's probably a walking conflict of interest. It's hard to have somebody who doesn't have clients, unless you have somebody who really is retired, so if you're going to hire somebody who's an active lawyer, you're going to run into these problems all the time with the independent counsel statute.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. One final thing before we go, and that's the guilty plea of Dan Rostenkowski, Mark. He said that he only did what everybody else did, and there was a new standard applied to him. What do you think of that argument?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, Jim, if Dan Rostenkowski did wrong, and I think he did do wrong, I think it's also important that you remember that he did an awful lot right. Here's a man who had the most powerful position in all of Washington on Capitol Hill, and none of the offenses that it alleged against him as chairman of the Ways & Means Committee, where he had enormous power to, to shape winners and losers in our tax policy. None of the charges involve any rigging of the tax code in favor of any big powerful interests. There's no question Dan Rostenkowski is a product of a time that has changed. Coming out of Chicago, if you didn't your brother-in-law a job, you weren't considered a good guy in the business, and especially a job where your brother-in-law didn't have to show up. But I, I do not in any way either rationalize or, or condone with what he's charged, but I think it's important that Dan Rostenkowski be remembered as somebody who re- wrote the tax system as a regular out of Chicago, wrote, reformed it in 1986, and made it fair and not simpler, and that was, that was a failure but did make it fairer.

JIM LEHRER: Paul.

PAUL GIGOT: Well, they weren't big crimes. They were small. The amounts of money involved were small, but I think this whole case suggests to me a kind of walking argument for term limits. You have in Dan Rostenkowski somebody who was in power, in office thirty-six of the forty years that the Democrats held office. And when you hold office that long, there begins to be a feeling that it's never going to end and that I, that you lose your, your distinction between public money and private money, and that's what happened in a lot of cases here. It all became part of one big pot. And he really had a hard time making distinctions between who was on the payroll and who was--and what was just simply private business. That's the sort of thing that happens over time when you're simply, when you don't really--aren't going to be challenged for, for reelection.

JIM LEHRER: I see Mark--

MARK SHIELDS: Jim, yeah, character--

JIM LEHRER: We're going to have to--

MARK SHIELDS: Character has nothing to do with the calendar, Jim. I looked at the people who've been convicted of crimes in the House of Representatives from Pat Swindle of Georgia, who wasn't in the majority, to Buzz Lukens of Ohio, to John Henson of Mississippi, Dick Kelley of Florida, all of whom are in the minority, didn't have that kind of power. Ray Lederer from Pennsylvania, Ozzie Meyers from Pennsylvania, none of whom had been there twelve years, none of them who had been there eight years.

JIM LEHRER: Paul.

MARK SHIELDS: Term limits are baloney, and it's an absolute smoke screen.

PAUL GIGOT: This flowed out of the post office scandal, which really was a problem of, of unaccountability, too long in office.

JIM LEHRER: And we've been too long now. We have to go. Thank you both very much.

REGIONS TOPICS RECENT PROGRAMS ABOUT US FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS / FEEDS:

Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station.
PBS Online Privacy Policy Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved.