Word: starrs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...audience is rapacious in its demands: loosen our inhibitions; make us laugh. Onstage, life is stripped to bare essentials. The voice, the timing, the jokes are your only weapons. Every second of uneasy silence is a little death. I launch into my monologue: "You've been reading about Kenneth Starr and grand-jury leaks. Well, I can't get one. I'm the Rodney Dangerfield of investigative reporters." A small laugh, less than a guffaw, more than a titter. But that's all I need. I'm launched...
Talk turned, as it does these days, to Bill Clinton's sex life, to Ken Starr's pursuit and Monica Lewinsky's dilemma. The atmospheric pressure in the room abruptly changed, from light and bantering to something like road rage...
WASHINGTON: In the Lewinsky case, being called in by Judge Norma Holloway Johnson is the nearest thing to taking a trip to the principal's office. Johnson was working overtime Monday night, hauling Starr prosecutors, White House counsels and the latest batch of Lewinsky lawyers into her chambers for a stern lecture on why they shouldn't talk to strange reporters. The reason for the reprimand: Growing controversy over Ken Starr's interview with Brill's Content magazine cofounder Steve Brill, in which Starr admitted leaking sensitive information to selected journalists. The Justice Department now says it's "examining" Brill...
...long run, however, Starr's greater sin may be naming the three reporters his office "spoke extensively" with -- Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post, Jackie Judd at ABC and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. The Post's media guru Howard Kurtz talks of a "genuine sense of discomfort in media ranks" that Starr would simply name names so easily. Even more discomforting for the all-day news networks: Their grand jury sources have suddenly dried up. For once, no one knows in advance which witness will appear Tuesday. Looks like Johnson's verbal spanking is working already...
...White House, of course, loves an excuse to stall. Though some of the crumbs dropped in Brill's magazine seem very serious, Starr maintains that he did nothing illegal, or even improper. However, if it can be shown that the independent counsel leaked grand jury evidence to reporters before it became grand jury evidence, that would be a serious breach of the spirit, if not the letter of the law. "I only wanted to talk to them about the timing," Starr said in the interview. No reporter with any direct contact has yet fingered Starr himself as the source...