-Caveat Lector- >>>Below is the beginning of portions of an interview with Julie Hiatt Steele. Go to the site and read the conversation. A<>E<>R <<< >From www.wsws.org WSWS : News & Analysis : North America "I didn�t have a trial, I had a political process" An interview with Julie Hiatt Steele, victim of Kenneth Starr�s witch-hunt 20 July 2001 Back to screen version| Send this link by email | Email the author It has been two years since the only criminal trial in the Monica Lewinsky affair came to an end, as a federal jury sitting in Alexandria, Virginia failed to reach a verdict on charges of making false statements and obstruction of justice filed against Julie Hiatt Steele. The verdict was a stunning blow to Kenneth Starr, who announced shortly afterwards that he was stepping down as head of the Office of Independent Counsel (OIC). The treatment of Julie Hiatt Steele was a flagrant abuse of power. The police-state methods employed against her demonstrated the threat to democratic rights embodied in the Starr investigation. A woman with no connection to any alleged presidential misconduct was dragged through the media and threatened with imprisonment and the breakup of her family, simply because she refused to give false testimony and serve as an accomplice in the right-wing campaign to oust an elected president on trumped- up charges. The OIC witch-hunt has had a drastic impact on Steele�s life. She was among dozens of people who faced huge legal expenses, loss of privacy and threats of prison terms as a result of the politically motivated Starr investigation. Steele lost her job because of Starr�s baseless charges and the attendant media publicity. She has been unable to find work since, and was forced as a result to sell her house. A 54-year-old mother with three children, Steele was an acquaintance of Kathleen Willey, the Richmond, Virginia woman who claimed to have been �groped� by President Clinton at the White House in 1993. Willey told her story to a national television audience in 1998 on the CBS television program �60 Minutes,� at the height of the media furor over Monica Lewinsky. Willey was one of the few Whitewater/Lewinsky witnesses to be personally interviewed by Starr. Willey became a key witness for the OIC, which hoped to add a perjury count to its proposed impeachment referral after Clinton categorically denied under oath making any sexual advances towards Willey. Steele was the main obstacle to such a charge, because she severely undermined Willey�s credibility. By Steele�s sworn testimony, Willey had called her up in early 1997 to say that a Newsweek correspondent, Michael Isikoff, was coming to interview her. Willey asked Steele to confirm to Isikoff that Willey had told her of a Clinton sexual advance immediately after it happened in late 1993. Willey told Isikoff she had gone to Steele�s house in tears on the night of the incident. Steele went along with the request to confirm this account, but later called back Isikoff to tell him that the story was untrue. In subsequent testimony under oath, Steele steadfastly maintained that she knew nothing of any sexual encounter at the White House and had only agreed to lie to the reporter against her better judgment, at Willey�s insistence, and before she knew the issue was related to any legal proceeding, let alone the independent counsel investigation into President Clinton. Prosecutors working for Starr threatened Steele repeatedly, suggesting that she had retracted her initial account under pressure from the White House. There were leaks to the media that a White House �hit man� was stalking her, and claims that she was in hiding for fear of a murderous attack. The browbeating and intimidation reached an extraordinary level�at one point, reports circulated in the media that the FBI was looking into Steele�s adoption of a Romanian infant in 1990, to see if any irregularities could be found. The clear implication to Steele was that if she did not cooperate with the OIC, she could lose her son Adam, now 10 years old. Steele could not be charged with perjury, because her sworn testimony was consistent from her first affidavit on: she knew nothing about any contact between Willey and Clinton. Starr sought instead to prove her guilty of making false statements under oath, by bringing forward a number of witnesses who claimed that she had told them about the Willey incident before it first appeared in Newsweek. In January 1999, during the opening week of the Senate trial of President Clinton, the OIC had Steele indicted on four counts of making false statements and obstruction of justice, with a potential sentence of up to 40 years in prison. The charge and the possible sentence were so grossly disproportionate to the alleged offense that the action amounted to prosecutorial misconduct. By a truly novel legal theory, Starr based one count of obstruction of justice on Steele�s appearance on the CNN program �Larry King Live,� where she contradicted Willey�s interview on �60 Minutes.� Steele�s exercise of her right of free speech was branded a crime, on the ground that she was seeking to �taint� the jury pool for upcoming trials. The timing of the indictment demonstrated its political purpose. It was a clear attempt to intimidate other potential witnesses in the inquiry and to send a message that the Starr investigation would continue in full force, regardless of the now- expected acquittal vote in the Senate. But in the summer of 1999 Steele�s perjury trial ended in a hung jury, despite a frantic effort by the prosecution and the federal judiciary to insure a guilty verdict. The trial was moved from Washington, DC, where prosecutors feared a largely black jury would be hostile to the Starr investigation, to suburban Alexandria, Virginia. The jury included several CIA and law enforcement-connected members, and the jury foreman was later revealed to be in contact with the ultra-right FreeRepublic.com web site, a center for anti-Clinton conspiracy theories. Nonetheless, even this jury could not be persuaded to convict Julie Hiatt Steele. Kathleen Willey proved to be an extremely unconvincing witness. It emerged that she had received a second grant of immunity from the OIC to cover lies which she had told under oath in her first sworn statements about Clinton. The case was so obviously flimsy that Steele�s lawyers decided not to call any witnesses, and let the jury begin deliberations immediately, without putting on a defense. After the hung jury, Starr decided not to seek a retrial. Recently a writer for the WSWS traveled to Richmond, Virginia and spoke with Steele. Below we reprint portions of this discussion. >>>Go to http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jul2001/jhs-j20.shtml for the rest <<< <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! 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