Editorial: Put statute, Starr out of their misery

The 1978 law allowing for the appointment of independent counsels was supposed to limit political manipulation in public corruption cases, but instead it has created a monster, resulting in prosecutorial abuses by independent counsels. Questions about the independent counsel statute have been prompted lately by Kenneth Starr's investigation, which originally looked into Bill Clinton's investments in an Arkansas land deal when Clinton was governor. It has veered wildly to other areas, however, examining a White House attorney's suicide and eventually careening into the president's private life, which resulted in a failed impeachment trial.

Although the Senate acquitted Clinton, Starr isn't finished. He is prosecuting some of the peripheral characters in what would be a black comedy, if it were only a movie. Now Starr himself is under investigation for misconduct by the Justice Department over allegations that he withheld information about potential conflicts of interest regarding the Monica Lewinsky investigation, coerced witnesses to testify and leaked grand jury information.

But Starr objects, saying he should not be investigated by someone connected to the Justice Department. Attorney General Janet Reno shouldn't cower to the same bullying tactics Starr has used against witnesses. If anything Reno could have fired him long ago for his misconduct, but if she had done so during the impeachment trial she would have been accused of politicizing her office.

Starr isn't the only independent counsel whose actions have generated controversy, though. Even after a federal jury acquitted former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy on corruption charges in 1998 after a four-year, $17 million investigation, independent counsel Donald Smaltz was unrepentant. Indeed, Smaltz said, "The actual indictment of a public official may in fact be as great a deterrent as a conviction of that official," a statement reflecting a seeming willingness to abuse his office by indicting for effect. Prosecutors aren't supposed to be sending "messages" via indictments; they're supposed to indict only if the evidence warrants prosecution.

Democrats finally have been chastened by the law's abuses now that their party controls the executive branch, but that wasn't the case in the 1980s as they cheered on the independent counsel's inquiry of Republican administrations during the Iran-Contra investigation, which lasted six years and cost $40 million.

Reno should fold Starr's sideshow tent immediately and Congress should shut down this circus permanently, allowing the independent counsel statute to die quietly when it's set to expire in June. With the level of public scrutiny that exists today, the Justice Department should be allowed to investigate cases of public corruption in the executive branch until it can be proven that it can't do so impartially.

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