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“THE ROLE OF INDEPENDENT COUNSEL” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S6-S7 on Jan. 27, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE ROLE OF INDEPENDENT COUNSEL
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I want to discuss a serious matter. I hesitate to comment on ongoing law enforcement investigations. I have always felt that way.
I am not going to jump into the swirling mix of rumor and revelation and innuendo that has transfixed many in Washington over the last several days. I spent nearly a decade as a prosecutor. I have a very strong sense of what prosecutors should and can do. I am one who has tried to keep any kind of ideological partisanship out of law enforcement decisions. I did that during the time I was a prosecutor, and I have urged that same thing to prosecutors since.
But I am troubled that the independent counsel law has itself been corrupted and no longer serves its intended purpose. The law was part of a congressional effort to create a mechanism that would reassure the American people that partisanship was not influencing prosecutorial decisions, and that law enforcement judgment was being exercised by those who did not have an ax to grind either way--by those who approached matters from a law enforcement point of view, and not--not--
from a lodestone set in a partisan rock.
I cannot say with confidence that this is the case with the current Whitewater counsel. I look at the continuing and very selective leaks and tactics employed by Mr. Starr's office over the last few years, and particularly over the last few days. And, like so many other Vermonters and so many other Americans, it gives me pause to see these kind of tactics that no prosecutor should ever condone in his or her offices.
I have seen reports that two weeks ago he was intent on constructing a sting operation to engage the President of the United States in secretly recorded conversations. Have we sunk this low, Mr. President, that we would do things like this?
I have seen complaints that he sought to pressure a young woman and threaten her mother and father if she did not cooperate in allegations that she was counseled to lie under oath.
Maybe I am missing something here, Mr. President. But this is a far distance from investigating a decade-old land deal in Arkansas. Having spent more than $30 million of taxpayers' money in what apparently became a self-perpetuating investigation, the goal now seems to go about getting the President by whatever means necessary.
Last summer I was critical of efforts by Mr. Starr's office to involve itself in allegations of marital infidelity. The justification then to justify the leaks coming out of Mr. Starr's office was that maybe pillow talk might lead to the discovery of some evidence relevant to this decade-old land deal in Arkansas.
Now it seems that the current activities of Mr. Starr's office seem oddly coordinated to aid in a civil lawsuit against the President. The Paula Jones case has had a gag order on it from the beginning. Yet every single day we find the lawyers and those allied with Ms. Jones selectively leaking depositions and court proceedings to the public. Almost in conjunction--almost in the same package--we see items selectively leaked from Mr. Starr's office with one passing the other. You would think it was the same law firm carrying out this civil case. I have never ever seen a prosecutor do something like that in a State court, a Federal court, or any kind of a case.
Having been a prosecutor, I have a sense for the enormous power in that office. If you have $30 million to spend you have the most power any prosecutor could ever have. But with that power comes a responsibility. Decisions about what to pursue and what to prosecute are among the weightiest exercises of public authority. Exercised irresponsibly and without accountability the prosecutor's power is easily abused and is left to go towards effectively partisan purposes.
My point is that at this juncture we need an independent counsel who is clearly removed from partisanship and who can exercise independent judgment. But the country has neither. This is the most partisan, unjustified, demeaning investigation that I can ever remember in my life. Rather than succeed in insulating the power of the prosecutor from abusive partisan purposes, the independent counsel law appears to have captured partisan forces. This goes beyond any question of what might have happened in Whitewater or anywhere else. It is the tactics being used. The tactics tend in many ways to become so outrageous that they can only be considered partisan. If you want people to have confidence in the result of an investigation, then the investigation has to be nonpartisan, and it has to be perceived to be nonpartisan so that all people can respect what comes out of it.
Frankly, Mr. President, from what I am hearing throughout the country, as well as in my own State, people do not expect any idea of impartiality or nonpartisanship from the prosecutor's office. I hope that Mr. Starr will quickly take steps to change that, and will quickly take steps to stop having his office somehow coordinating itself with a civil case, a civil case involving Paula Jones.
I say this because the country is facing some other issues that also have to be attended to.
On Friday I flew back to Vermont, as I do so often during the month, and I picked up every newspaper that I could on the way up just to read in the airplane. There on the front page of a major newspaper were all of the stories of what leaks are coming out of the Paula Jones case and what leaks are coming out of Mr. Starr's office. Tucked almost as an afterthought were such stories as this: The Pope making a historic visit to Cuba, with all the ramifications that means; Microsoft's settlement with the Justice Department and implications that is going to have for jobs and consumer protection in the years to come; the Unabomber, who terrorized this country for years, pleads guilty; U.S. forces move to arrest a war criminal, something we have not seen I don't think since the time of Nuremberg; the successive visits by Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat to this country and the implications on the peace process for the Middle East. There are other such significant stories: The question of whether we are going to have to go into Iraq and act unilaterally because our allies don't appear to have the guts to stand up to Saddam Hussein. All of these things are tucked back, I say to my colleagues, almost in the fast-food ads in the newspaper. Every one of these things is going to have an enormous effect on your life, on my life, and on the lives of the American people, just as the State of the Union Message will tonight, just as what we do on the floor of the Senate this year.
These are the things that need debate. I am not suggesting that it is wrong to ask questions about the conduct of anybody--not of me, of you, of the President, or anybody else. I am not suggesting that. But what I am suggesting is let us not forget that we represent the most powerful nation history has ever known and the greatest economy history has ever known, at a time of economic boom. Let us not lose sight of what the American people want us to do in protecting this country.
But also let us ask--and I asked the same question incidentally during the activities of the special prosecutor in the Reagan era--let us ask whether we undermine the very things we want to protect in this country by allowing a special prosecutor situation to go way out of bounds of what its original aim was--especially when it becomes ideological, partisan, and allied with those who are carrying out civil cases which have nothing to do with the issue initially contemplated by Whitewater.
Mr. President, I will speak on this more as we go along. I see other Senators who are seeking the floor. I yield the floor.
Mr. INHOFE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I thank you. I ask that I be recognized for 10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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