Word: starrs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Also elected were two MIT undergraduates, Fred Fagerstrom and Andrew M. Starr, and one MIT graduate student, Steven Keller...
...foot dragging paid tactical benefits. In time, relations between Starr's office and the Justice Department deteriorated. Unknown to the press or public, Starr at one point came within hours of possibly losing his job--and being declared in contempt of court--because he refused to obey a secret court order to answer questions by Clinton's lawyers about grand jury leaks. Meanwhile, those lawyers had entered into "joint defense agreements" with grand jury witnesses whose attorneys had been recommended by the White House. This sharing of information gave Clinton's defenders a direct window into the supposedly secret grand...
Impatient--and in the end repelled, in part because of the massive p.r. assault against him and his staff. Private investigators, a customary tool of Clinton backers seeking to discourage his enemies, appeared in Starr's hometown, sniffing after the political connections of the prosecutor's dead father. A White House contact told a reporter that Starr--often cartooned as a hymn-singing Fundamentalist--was himself having an affair. Clinton friend James Carville collected tapes of phone calls made to his office discussing the sexual backgrounds of Starr's staff. (The tapes are now under seal in another lawsuit...
Such efforts helped make Starr's name a popular watchword for prosecutorial excess. But as Schmidt and Weisskopf make plain, Starr bears blame as well. His rigidity and self-righteousness compounded his native ineptitude in public relations. He was unable to resolve quickly the intra-office battles among the factions that split his staff. Inherently overcautious, he and his team let prosecutorial opportunities slip by at key moments, most notably in their failure to gain Lewinsky's cooperation as the scandal broke...
...most unsettling of the book's revelations is in the epilogue. Weisskopf and Schmidt show that even before Starr left, his aides drafted a prosecution memo and sample indictment of Clinton and last October began practicing arguments to make their case. Starr's successor, Robert Ray, has recently said he is considering pursuing that indictment of the President after he leaves office. There will be room, no doubt, for many more revisions of the Lewinsky story...