Word: bittman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...hard to imagine they ever will. The ultimate question for Starr is what to do legally with the case that fell short politically. A sign that an indictment isn't imminent is the departure for private practice of Starr's day-to-day manager of the Lewinsky probe, Bob Bittman, and his top appellate litigator, Brett Kavanaugh. Soon after the trial ends, Starr will come under pressure to shut it all down and return to private practice. He is famously immune to such pressure, but if he decides not to indict Clinton, there's little reason to keep going...
...Starr wouldn't set the trap. His job, he told colleagues, was to encourage Clinton to tell the truth, not catch him in a lie. When the DNA results came back, on July 31, Starr had deputy independent counsel Bob Bittman contact Kendall to request a presidential blood sample. Kendall asked if Starr's office had "a precise factual basis" for the demand--something against which to match Clinton's blood. A "substantial" one, Bittman replied. Seventeen days later, Clinton appeared before the grand jury and admitted an "inappropriate" relationship with Lewinsky. Alerting Clinton to the test results, Starr told...
...that was alien to most of his prosecutors. Every afternoon at 5 o'clock when he was in Washington, he and his 30 lawyers and 10 investigators crowded around a 30-ft.-long conference table to hear the daily report and discuss strategy. Starr previewed the agenda but had Bittman run the meetings so Starr could absorb more of the discussion. For major decisions, he assigned a prosecutor to summarize facts and evaluate the pros and cons. Starr insisted on hearing opinions from everyone at the table as he searched for the majority view, a process that he says...
...impact was almost unavoidable," says a Starr associate. "You're less likely to...give people the benefit of the doubt." Starr became less deferential, summoning Hillary Clinton to the grand jury in 1996 rather than questioning her at the White House. He relied on hard-nosed prosecutors like Bittman, Jackie Bennett Jr. and Michael Emmick. He became so intense in his pursuit that in early 1997, he authorized his agents to question Arkansas state troopers about Clinton confidants, including alleged paramours from a decade before, who might have picked up scraps about shady business deals. Starr was so sure...
...Bittman would not elaborate further. But it was a bad time to raise even the slightest of doubts about the methods of Starr's investigators, as Republican staffers on the House Judiciary Committee are earnestly scribbling away at three articles of impeachment ? for perjury, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. A bad time, because only one of those articles (perjury) has even the slightest chance of squeaking through on a House floor vote next month. And further down the road, the independent counsel statute itself is up for renewal. Already, lawmakers are suggesting that in the wake of Starr...