Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- A federal judge called Wednesday for an
investigation into links among Whitewater prosecutor
Kenneth W. Starr
and other conservatives.
U.S. District Judge Henry Woods said groups accused of
funneling money
to key government witness David Hale might also have
orchestrated his
removal from a Whitewater case initially assigned to
him.
``It is important to me, and I believe to the
integrity of the judicial process,
to know whether any person in the justice system,
including those in
(Starr's office) or in the legislative branch, was
aware of machinations to
affect and determine what judge would preside over the
... case,'' Woods
said in a statement released by his office.
Woods, a lifelong Democrat, was assigned to hear a
fraud and conspiracy
case against then-Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, also a
Democrat, until the 8th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals removed him in March
1996.
Starr asked that Woods be removed after the judge
tossed out Tucker's
initial indictment.
The bulk of the case against Woods depended on media
articles
suggesting Woods had close ties to President Clinton
and the first lady.
Woods said some articles were based on an ``untrue''
and ``libelous''
op-ed column written by one of his political
opponents.
Woods declined to be interviewed.
Also Wednesday, another federal judge said he would
reserve judgment
on a request to bar Starr from investigating whether a
conservative group
funneled money to Hale.
U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele said he would not
act on a general
ethics complaint against Starr until the independent
counsel decides
whether he will look into alleged payments to Hale or
ask the Justice
Department to appoint a special investigator.
Starr said Tuesday he hadn't decided what he would do.
The same day, the attorney for Whitewater figure Susan
McDougal, Mark
Geragos of Los Angeles, wrote to ask Eisele to
prohibit Starr from
pursuing such an investigation, which Geragos called a
``clear conflict of
interest.''
Starr has a stake in Hale's credibility, Geragos'
letter said, and has other
conflicts.
Geragos was in court Wednesday and was not immediately
available for
comment.
Last week, a deputy attorney general said in a letter
to Starr that, while
there might be an appearance of a conflict, he would
leave the decision to
Starr.
Hale was a key witness at 1996 trial that resulted in
Mrs. McDougal's
conviction for fraud, for which she was sentenced to
two years in prison.
She didn't begin that sentence until March 9, after
serving 18 months for a
contempt of court citation for refusing to testify to
a Whitewater grand
jury.
An Arkansas woman claims Hale received money from
conservative
activists working for a foundation that publishes the
American Spectator
magazine and that Hale gave the magazine information
about Starr's
investigation.
American Spectator publisher Terry Eastland has said
he was not aware
of any money being given to Hale. However, he and the
magazine's
foundation are conducting an audit to track $1.7
million dedicated over
four years to their ``Arkansas Project,'' which was
set up to dig up
information on the Clintons.
The foundation received about $1.56 million between
1993 and 1996
from two groups controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, a
Pittsburgh
philanthropist who has underwritten several
anti-Clinton projects such as
an investigation into whether former White House
lawyer Vincent Foster
was murdered.
Starr has several connections to the magazine
foundation. Eastland and
Starr are friends, and Washington lawyer Theodore
Olson, another Starr
friend and a former law partner, is on the
foundation's board. Olson was
Hale's attorney in the mid-1990s.
In a separate matter, the Justice Department rejected
a request by a
conservative legal group to open a criminal
investigation of New Yorker
magazine's disclosure of Linda Tripp's security
clearance forms from the
Pentagon.
The magazine reported in March that Tripp was arrested
on a grand
larceny charge nearly 30 years ago and never mentioned
it on a Defense
Department security clearance form she filled out in
1987.
Tripp, a Pentagon staffer, recorded conversations with
Monica Lewinsky
about an alleged affair with Clinton. Those recordings
led to an
investigation into whether Clinton had the affair and
tried to get Lewinsky
to lie about it.
Clinton has denied both allegations.
--
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