from:alt.conspiracy As, always, Caveat Lector Om K ----- Click Here: <A HREF="aol://5863:126/alt.conspiracy:632085">Ken Starr/Tales from the Dark Side</A> ----- Subject: Ken Starr/Tales from the Dark Side From: Alex Constantine <A HREF="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">alexx12@mediaone. net</A> Date: Thu, Aug 3, 2000 2:27 PM Message-id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [By the end of Ronald Reagan's first term, over 100 of his appointees were forced to resign in scandal -- and Iran-Contra had yet to surface. Investigations of the Clinton White House, by comparison, have resulted in a handful of convictions, yet the Republicans maintain that this is "the most corrupt administration in history." Perhaps they do have a sense of humor, after all. � AC] NYDN Sunday, June 27, 1999 Tales From the Dark Side Good riddance to Starr and the super-snoops WASHINGTON hen the FBI asked former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros how much money he paid an ex-mistress each year, he seems to have replied in the hopeful manner of comedian Don Adams: "Would you believe $10,000?" The FBI would not. The FBI believed he paid Linda Jones $264,000 over four years. For disguising this relationship, Cisneros, one of the better public servants this nation has ever known, faces federal charges of felony conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI. Now, it comes out in pretrial maneuvering that Jones herself, the prosecution's star witness, has been lying to everyone � to the FBI, the IRS, a judge, her own lawyers, the prosecutors who are pursuing Cisneros and the media. Under cross-examination by Brendan (I Am Not a Potted Plant) Sullivan, Oliver North's old lawyer who now represents Cisneros, she admitted telling lies because "I had gotten myself into a box and didn't know how to get out." Even worse, she acknowledged that the supposedly incriminating tapes she turned over to the government to use against Cisneros are not originals, but copies of their recorded phone conversations, and that five or six of them had been doctored to eliminate her threats to Cisneros. One lawyer she consulted told the court he had refused to help her because it appeared she had been trying to subject Cisneros to a shakedown. Two other lawyers told the court she was again lying on the stand this week when she testified that they had instructed her to doctor the tapes. We have here a lying witness and doctored evidence � which the U.S. government still plans to use to try to put Henry Cisneros, a good man, in prison. "This is unheard of," says veteran defense attorney Gerald Lefcourt, who has seen prosecutors use all sorts of aggressive tactics to nail a suspect. "Ordinarily, you can't even use a tape unless all the words are audible enough so the court feels it has a product it can rely on. Here, the prosecution is bringing in tapes that have been admittedly screwed around with." What kind of prosecutor does this? An independent counsel. This one is named David Barrett, and like Kenneth Starr, he appears to be so obsessed with convicting a target that he will disregard even basic rules of fairness in his crusade. Before Barrett, we had another obsessed independent counsel, Donald Smaltz, who boasted after he lost his ludicrously thin case against former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy that he had really won because he had indicted Espy. That's what an independent counsel sees as victory: making an accusation that won't stand up before a jury but at least puts a target through the torture and cost of a criminal trial before he is found not guilty. Starr remains the abuse champion of the independent counsel set. Even though we think we know all his excesses � jumping Monica Lewinsky without her lawyer, subpoenaing her mother, repeatedly re-trying former Bill Clinton crony Webb Hubbell � we get new chilling details about him in Bob Woodward's book "Shadow." Woodward was able to do to Starr what Starr was never able to do to Clinton: get close friends and colleagues to squeal. Two subordinates, Brett Kavanaugh and William Kelley, objected to Starr that he should not include all the sexual details in his report to Congress. They were trying to build a legal case against Clinton, not an indictment of his immorality. But Starr demanded every embrace, every moan, every pubic hair. "We need to have an encyclopedia," Starr said, according to Woodward. "It will show all the information. It will show how much work we did." Kavanaugh suspected, again according to Woodward, that Starr thought Clinton's sexual behavior, rather than his alleged crimes, provided the basis for trying to impeach him. As a last-ditch attempt to protect the nation's children from these seamy details, Kavanaugh and two of Starr's most aggressive prosecutors, Robert Bittman and Jackie Bennett, urged Starr at least to warn Congress against releasing the sexual details to the public. Starr refused. Kavanaugh also urged Starr not to proceed with the indictment of Julie Hiatt Steele, a bit player in the case who had no relation to Starr's original mandate. To prosecute her, Kavanaugh said, would win Starr the trifecta of prosecutorial abuse: picking a trivial target, acting too late in the case and bringing thin charges. "I have a duty!" said Starr, and he prosecuted Steele. Her trial ended in a hung jury, and Starr's office finally announced it would not seek to try her again. What an extraordinary coincidence this is: Three independent counsels � Barrett, Smaltz and Starr � and all of them going off the deep end, abusing the vast powers of government to pursue the most minor or even nonexistent offenses at great expense to their targets and the taxpayers. Or maybe it is not a coincidence at all. Perhaps it is the Independent Counsel Act itself that transforms normally sensible lawyers into single-minded Ahabs who mistake the minnow they are chasing for Moby Dick. Once a lawyer is assigned under the independent counsel statute, he or she has a virtually unlimited budget, an unlimited time frame and a target on whom to pin some crime or other, rather than a crime that must be solved to determine who is guilty of what. In Starr's case, the latitude was especially broad. Under the independent counsel statute, he could pursue "any" information that "may" constitute grounds for impeachment. It needn't be a crime; it need merely be conduct, public or private, that a majority of the House of Representatives might deem to be impeachable. Starr is also a special case in that he is an ambitious partisan Republican, rather than a true independent. His own definition of independent, he said in a speech, was merely that he be independent of his target, not independent of the partisan political struggles in this country. One solution to these governmental excesses appears to be at hand. The Independent Counsel Act is due to expire at the end of the month, and there is little sentiment to renew it. Its practitioners have given it a bad name. That does not solve the problem for the citizen at large who finds himself in the sights of an aggressive prosecutor, however. While critical of independent counsels, Gerald Lefcourt notes that other federal prosecutors can be just as aggressive and just as abusive to a target. "Name me one thing that Ken Starr did that Rudy Giuliani didn't do when he was a federal prosecutor," Lefcourt said. To pressure Lewinsky, Starr pursued her mother, Marcia Lewis. Giuliani used Sukhreet Gable to testify against her mother, Hortense. Starr aggressively prosecuted Hubbell; Giuliani went after Wall Street brokers, putting two in handcuffs in front of their colleagues before the charges were dropped. So apart from ending the independent counsel law, we need more protection from deranged prosecutors. One useful improvement would fix the grand jury process so witnesses could bring a lawyer with them when they face interrogation. Prosecutors could be required to tell the grand jurors of exculpatory evidence against a target, not just the accusations. The balance is now skewed toward the prosecutor, who can indict anyone he targets � a power that tempts even innocent people like former White House travel expediter Billy Dale to plead guilty rather than go bankrupt by defending themselves. A defense lawyer in the grand jury room might persuade the grand jurors not to indict. For the moment, say goodbye to the Independent Counsel Act. But even when it is gone, Starr and Barrett will remain in business for as long as they like. ---------------------- NYDN Friday, April 07, 2000 Bill's Cabinet Corrupt? Lay That Lie to Rest WASHINGTON or two years, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman suffered through an independent counsel's investigation into corruption charges so convoluted that they defy description. Fortunately, we need not describe them. They were false. This week, after spending nearly $4 million, independent counsel Ralph Lancaster cleared Herman, and she can now get on with her life. She is the sixth member of the Clinton administration, including the President himself, to have been put through an independent counsel investigation. The results: Clinton was impeached but not convicted. Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy was indicted but acquitted. Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's case was closed when he was killed in a plane crash. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt was cleared. Republicans keep calling this the most corrupt administration in history. The only thing missing is convictions. Despite the most aggressive and prolonged investigations, no presidential or cabinet-level crimes have been found in Whitewater, the White House's possession of FBI files, the Vince Foster suicide, the firing of White House Travel Office employees or even fund-raising abuses. What we have, after six years and $95.3 million worth of independent counsel investigations, is the discovery of two lies related to sex. Clinton lied about Monica Lewinsky. Cisneros concealed a relationship with a mistress. Attorney General Janet Reno has subjected six of her cabinet colleagues to these pointless inquisitions � yet she is constantly accused of covering up for the administration. Now to her rescue comes the unlikeliest of saviors: Charles La Bella, a hard-nosed career prosecutor who recommended that an independent counsel be appointed to investigate Vice President Gore's fund-raising activities. Reno refused, bringing renewed charges of a coverup. But in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," La Bella defended Reno against the accusation that her decision was a politically motivated attempt to protect the administration. "It wasn't politics," he said. "It was never politics. ... I really don't believe that the attorney general in any way, shape or form was protecting anybody, or anybody else at the Justice Department was politically protecting anybody." La Bella also drew a crucial distinction that seems to have eluded Clinton's many critics: There is a difference between an investigation and a charge of wrongdoing. The fact that La Bella called for an investigation does not mean he thought Gore had committed any crimes. "There's sufficient information from credible sources to trigger an investigation, not suggesting in any way, shape or form that charges were going to be brought or that charges were even appropriate," he said. This is a basic legal point, but the distinction has not survived in superheated Washington politics or the screaming matches on cable television: An accusation is not a conviction. An investigation does not presume guilt. To be under investigation does not warrant being labeled corrupt. La Bella's call for an independent counsel, he explained, was self-protection. He felt an outside counsel who decided not to prosecute would have more credibility than the Justice Department. Fair enough. But it has not been interpreted that way; it has been cited as indicating his knowledge of high-level crimes. In fact, he knows of none. With this explanation, he clears the good name of a seventh member of the Clinton cabinet who has been subjected to endless political accusations: Reno. According to La Bella, she has played it straight. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] . ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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