WASHINGTON DESK - Some public officials in the Clinton White House have unfairly compared judge Kenneth Starr to a medieval inquisitor. The federal grand jury has been described by Clinton officials, with tongue-in- cheek as Starr Chamber in-justice. Have judge Kenneth Starr's practices stifled the rights of witnesses he has subpoenaed?
This continuing monolog coming from Clinton administration staff reflects a fundamental misconception of American democratic principles of the limitations of government. Such misconceptions being repeated by high government officials in the Clinton White House make it difficult for Americans to understand who is at fault.
Americans must come to terms with the harsh reality of our own personal responsibility for good government. We must also become fully aware of the limitations of government. We cannot shift the responsibility to judge Kenneth Starr and the federal grand jury to hold public officials accountable for fraud and waste of the public treasury.
If Americans begin to hold every government official accountable for
principled ethical conduct, the Clinton administration will start telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth when summoned by judge Starr to the federal grand jury.
The performance of the Clinton administration is so far below that standard that the survival of this nation is in question. The last best hope of the republic has come down to our independent prosecutor who acts as the people's surrogate. Real citizens will rally around judge Starr and support him in carrying out his duty to the nation.
Starr's investigations have ranged from a probe of an Arkansas land deal to allegations that president Clinton and or presidential advisor, Vernon Jordan may be implicated in the obstruction of justice in connection with manipulated testimony of Monica Lewinsky's in a federal grand jury matter.
The Magna Carta, granted in the year 1215 invented the fact finding process of a jury of one's neighbors while under oath. The Declaration of Independence condemned the English government of America for suspending use of the '...benefits of Trial by Jury.' In the preamble to the Constitution we revere it with the words 'We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice...' The U.S. Constitution, Art.1, section 23 generally describes the uses of the federal grand jury.
In referring to the federal grand jury investigation into Whitewater and the alleged Monica Lewinsky subornation of perjury matters the first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has charged that her husband has been the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy headed up by judge Kenneth Starr.
While Starr used a court authorized tape wire to establish Lewinsky's attempt to suborn the grand jury testimony of Linda Tripp. That was solidly legal and the tape is admissible in every courtroom in the nation.
Recent allegations made by Cinton's presidential lawyer David Kendall, has now accused judge Starr of unethical and unprincipled leaking
of White House wrongdoing in the case.
The press has obtained information about the testimony of Cinton White House witnesses. The source of such information appears to have been grand jury witnesses who are free to discuss what they testified about. Their own lawyers routinely debrief them about what they said before the grand jury.
So, who would benefit from an attack on judge Starr's ethics?
The obvious answer to that question creates a social dilemma for this nation. The nation is in full-blown denial.
It is incomprehensible that an American president could take pride in destroying the federal grand jury and its principled prosecutor because the institution and the man did their work, too well.
To paraphrase William Shakespeare, the fault lies not in our Starrs but in ourselves.
