Where I Stand -- Brian Greenspun: Long investigation has caused Starr to lose sight of his goal

STARR-CROSSED.

It isn't the same as double-crossed, but what has been happening to special prosecutor Kenneth Starr this past week might seem that way to those who have blindly supported his four-year effort to bring down the president of the United States. What his followers have learned the hard way -- in the bright light of public disclosure -- is that everybody is human, even those who profess to be above all that.

For whatever reasons that, perhaps, only Starr can fathom, the independent prosecutor revealed his underside in an interview for Brill's Content Magazine, a new journalistic effort designed to keep critical tabs on the media. Don't be shocked that such a magazine exists or that it will flourish. After all, the media has all but invited such an effort by turning good journalism into sloppy chasing of ratings. Where editors used to act as gatekeepers in the public interest, their new goal is to print and air everything, regardless of the facts and regardless of the impact such a story may have on the public. The result seems to be a reading and viewing public that questions not the stories, but the motives of those who profess to act on its behalf. That's how credibility suffers and that's why critical magazines will work.

Back to Starr. Unless you understand the nature of the man, it is hard to comprehend why he would lay himself and his $40 million-plus investigation open to the kind of criticism that, while it may not threaten the overall effort, certainly is tainting the process in a way not helpful for even the president's most vocal attackers. I don't know the prosecutor, but I do know people who claim to know him well and who care about him a great deal. They also care about this great country of ours, and they fear any prosecutor whose goal changes from seeking truth to an ego-satisfying "get the president at all costs " effort.

And while many of Starr's friends maintain that he is a man of integrity, they are quick to point out that he is, still, a man. That means his skin is as thick or as thin as that of any of the people he is chasing. That's also Washington code for a man of integrity who has gone off the deep end in an effort to fight back against what he considers character-besmirching techniques by those he's trying to ensnare.

In short, the special prosecutor isn't really special. But he's still a prosecutor with a virtually unlimited supply of money, resources and time to bag his prey. And where his primary motive was once professional, it now seems to be quite personal. That seems to be changing the way the game is being played.

Now before people start claiming foul like I hear on those phony, shock-'em-into-watching television talk shows, there is a critical difference between President Clinton and his chief nemesis, Starr. Besides the obvious, the prosecutor has rules that must be adhered to for the protection of the innocent in this country. No such rules apply to the president or any other American. Simply put, people who are targets of grand juries and witnesses before them can say anything they want, any time they want.

Prosecutors can't. Period.

The system, while it may seem unfair in the context of a White House machine designed to fight back in the arena of public opinion, is designed to protect the innocent. We all remember those people, don't we? They are the folks who are sometimes falsely accused of crimes. Our judicial system has been created to protect those people. That's why we live or die on the tenet that every person is presumed innocent until found guilty by a jury of his peers.

It's not a perfect system, but it has served the United States well for more than two centuries. It has been stood on its head in recent months.

Practically every commentator or talking head has assumed that President Clinton had sex with Monica Lewinsky. From that belief springs every effort to paint him as a perjurer, suborner of perjury and obstructor of justice. It is no longer even an assumption but a given on many of the talk shows that have been in ratings heaven ever since Lewinsky said "I did" to her former friend, Linda Tripp.

Let's, just this once, assume something different. Let's assume that the Founding Fathers of this wonderful country got it right when they engrained the presumption of innocence into our Constitution. Following that logic, we have to presume President Clinton innocent of charges that he had sex with Lewinsky -- just as he said on national television in the most unequivocal terms when this scandal first broke.

If President Clinton did nothing wrong, then he is being tormented by a prosecutor run amok, a Congress without the gumption to stop the carnage and with a political agenda that encourages it, a judicial system with its hands tied behind a back that has turned away from the protection of individual rights and liberties, and a public so fed up with the whole thing that it has refused to step in to make its voice heard above the fray. In short, we have a president under siege for all the wrong reasons. Remember, you don't have to believe the president is telling the truth, you just have to presume that's the case until the court system does its thing.

So, presuming President Clinton is innocent, do we not support him for trying to combat in the court of public opinion the false allegations being leveled upon him? And should we not encourage him to fight a political outrage that has hamstrung his efforts to lead this nation toward a greater destiny? And, if one of the ways to do so is to use his considerable skills to defeat and deflate the prosecutor's case, which is systematically being leaked to a lazy media willing to accept what is spoon-fed to it, should we not applaud the American spirit that says fight back and stand up for your rights?

The answers should be a resounding yes. And, to the oft-asked question of why the president doesn't just come out and tell the nation the truth -- there are two answers. One, he has. He said he never had sex with Monica Lewinsky. And two, he can't do any more. Not until the criminal jeopardy is removed from his head and the heads of those around him.

It is un-American to help the prosecutor make his case, however wrong it may be, against you. At a simple political level, all this country needs to hear is President Clinton explain what is and isn't true. Most Americans would accept what he says and be prepared to move on.

But, at a criminal level, one that threatens jail, impeachment, the loss of the presidency and sinking this country into the depths of a post-Watergate depression, there is no way the accused can open his mouth. Not until the prosecutor is done with his work.

And that brings us back to Kenneth Starr. He now sees his work as a public- relations effort and that, simply, is not what he was hired to do. That he has lost sight of his professional responsibility is obvious. That he can regain the high ground reserved for independent fact-finders is far less so.

He's human and he's Starr-crossed. And his investigation is in trouble.

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