The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“SPECIAL PROSECUTOR KENNETH STARR'S INVESTIGATION” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S2698-S2699 on March 27, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
SPECIAL PROSECUTOR KENNETH STARR'S INVESTIGATION
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, another Senator in this body made some very strong criticisms of the special prosecutor, Mr. Ken Starr. Judge Starr was appointed to that office some time ago. In recent months he was asked to continue his investigation into matters involving the Monica Lewinsky situation and to the possible obstruction of justice.
It happened this way: Mr. Starr presented information to the Attorney General of the United States, Janet Reno. He told her about the circumstances and what he knew and the evidence that had been obtained. She agreed that a special prosecutor should be appointed. They then went to a three-judge court, and the three-judge court, as the law requires--Federal judges, all with lifetime appointments, above politics--those three judges commissioned Kenneth Starr to be an investigator of this circumstance. He, therefore, has been directed by a court. He accepted that responsibility. As a result of that, he has a duty to perform.
Now, Mr. President, I know that the Chair has served, himself, as attorney general of the great State of Missouri. I have served as attorney general of Alabama. And I served almost 12 years as a Federal prosecutor, a U.S. attorney. I have prosecuted a great many public corruption cases, fraud cases, white-collar-crime cases. They are not easy. The people who have committed those kinds of crimes do not desire that they should be caught. They do not make it easy that they should be apprehended. It would be their preference to be able to get away with whatever they may have committed.
Now, many say Ken Starr as special prosecutor has a duty or responsibility to get someone. I assure you, that is not true. I assure you, with all confidence, because I have served in the Department of Justice with Mr. Starr and I know his reputation, that he has absolutely no desire to get anyone. But he has been commissioned, he has been given a mandate, he has been given a responsibility to find out what the facts are. Sometimes that requires issuing subpoenas. If you do not get the facts, you have not conducted an investigation, and you have violated your responsibility and the requirements that have been given to you. If you do not interview the secretary sitting outside the office about what went on there, what kind of investigation is that? What kind of investigation is that? That would be like no investigation at all.
What about this circumstance--some say that his attempt to question the mother of Miss Lewinsky is somehow wrong. Congress makes the laws of the United States. I was a prosecutor for nearly 17 years. I know how the law is written. There is no grant of immunity or protection for a mother for confidentiality of communications under these circumstances. It is not there.
If the Senator from Vermont or other Senators in this body want to change the Federal law to create a protection for that, let them introduce the legislation. Let us have it out right here. Let us discuss it. But that is not the law.
So we have, in the special prosecutor, an individual who is supposed to gather the evidence he can legally gather. Presumably he believes the mother of this young lady has information that she ought to give, and he has every right to ask for it. In fact, to fail to ask for that information would be a failure of the responsibility that has been given to him by the courts and laws of this country.
There are a lot of other things being said, such as why would you dig into his books? I saw a report recently about an individual who was charged with poisoning someone. This is not hypothetical but it is an example, I think, of why subpoenas sometimes are issued. Under the subpoena the authorities discovered and uncovered a book the individual had describing how to make poisons.
I had an occasion to personally prosecute, a number of years ago, a doctor. He was the subject of two national television movies and a book. In the course of that, we discovered a book that he had on deadly poisons and how to commit murder. It was relevant to our case, and it was introduced in the case.
So I do not know what it is that Mr. Starr issued that subpoena for. He cannot defend himself. He cannot run in here and say, ``Oh, Senator, let me tell you why we did that. Your remarks are unkind. They're unfair. I had a specific reason for issuing that subpoena. Let me tell you what it is.'' He can't do that. So he is a victim of these kinds of complaints by those who want to undermine his ability to do the job he has been commissioned to do.
I am really troubled by this. I am very, very troubled that we in this body, and, in fact, the President of the United States of America and his staff, are systematically trying to intimidate and undermine the legal and moral authority of the commissioned special prosecutor. To my knowledge, that has never happened before in our country.
If there is nothing to hide, why not let him do his job? They say, why doesn't he finish? If they would be more forthcoming, he would have already been finished. How can you finish when people refuse to give testimony? They claim executive privilege and therefore make you go to court to obtain court orders, which takes months to get, to argue over these issues.
The President committed early on that he would be forthcoming, that he would give all the evidence, and the truth should come out. But, as so often occurs with this President, we are finding that not to be the case.
Mr. President, I will just conclude and say that, if nothing else, we need to respect the rule of law. That great hymn, ``Our Liberty is in Law,'' that is the American form of government. We respect the rule of law. We do not use political power or other efforts to undermine that rule. We trust our system to work. We have multiple opportunities to appeal if the system goes awry at any stage. Ultimately we have to accept that. And if we respect it and give ourselves to it with integrity and ability, I think we can get just results.
We may not ever know the full truth in this circumstance. That is not Mr. Starr's responsibility. Mr. Starr's responsibility is to get as much truth as he can get. He can find the truth within the rule of law. So it is really discouraging to me to see when a subpoena is issued to any institution for a specific piece of information, it is to be compared to some fishing expedition. Because I assure you, that is not true. I assure you that that subpoena would not be issued unless there was a sound basis for it.
____________________
