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Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 13:17:41 -0800
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From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Independent Counsels: Misplaced Trust (fwd)
<snip>
>
>http://www.opinioninc.com
>
>Opinion,Inc.
>Guest Opinion Column Posted November 25, 1997
>
>A Regular Opinion Column from Accuracy in Media's Reed Irvine
>and Joe Goulden - Accuracy in Media's Home Page is http://www.aim.org/
>
>INDEPENDENT COUNSELS: MISPLACED TRUST
>
>By Reed Irvine and Joe Goulden
>
>Attorney General Janet Reno is under pressure to appoint new independent
>counsels to investigate President Clinton, Vice President Gore and
>Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt. The New York Times has
>editorially criticized Ms. Reno and the Justice Department for their
>failure to act on the evidence of wrongdoing that has been uncovered by
>others. It is now taken for granted that the Justice Department cannot
>be relied upon to undertake any investigation of allegations of
>wrongdoing on the part of Democratic office holders unless great
>pressure is applied.
>
>During the hearings held by the Senate Select Committee on Whitewater,
>those who watched on television were both amused and outraged to see
>senior officials either perjuring themselves or professing an inability
>to remember anything.
>
>One White House official is said to have asked a friend who was working
>in the White House during Watergate what she should do when she was
>subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury. The friend advised her that
>those in the Nixon administration who lied went to jail and those who
>told the truth did not. He suggested that she should be guided by their
>experience. That was out-of-date advice. Lying to a grand jury or to
>Congress has been legalized de facto by the refusal of the Justice
>Department to indict the perjurers.
>
>But it isn't only the Justice Department that is to blame for this sad
>state of affairs. Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel in whom such
>high hopes were placed when he was appointed over three years ago, has
>yet to charge anyone with perjury or to make effective use of the
>perjury hammer to get the likes of Web Hubbell to tell the truth
>and nothing but the truth.
>
>In fact, Starr's record should give pause to those who think that
>appointing more independent counsels is the solution to the problem of
>official wrongdoing. He was entrusted with the task of weeding the
>Washington garden when it was still spring and the weeds were
>shallow-rooted. He has suffered them for three years and they have now
>overgrown the garden. And no one can say when, if ever, Kenneth Starr
>will begin to pluck them out. It is certainly appropriate to criticize
>Janet Reno and her crew at Justice for their sloth, incompetence and
>tolerance of perjury and malfeasance, but is Kenneth Starr any better?
>
>Kenneth Starr has impressive credentials. He had been solicitor general
>and an appellate court judge. He had a reputation as a devout Christian,
>and one of his first acts was to hire Samuel Dash, former Democratic
>counsel to the Watergate committee, as an adviser on ethics. He has done
>an outstanding job -- for his private law firm. They have paid him over
>a million dollars a year while he has supposedly been devoting most of
>his time to his job as independent counsel.
>
>We don't know what he did that made him worth so much to Kirkland &
>Ellis, but his report on his three-year investigation of the death of
>Vincent W. Foster, Jr. reveals that the work he has been doing for the
>taxpayers is not only incompetent but dishonest. Giving a private
>attorney responsible to no one an unlimited budget to investigate
>charges of official wrongdoing is a grant of power that tests Lord
>Acton's dictum that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
>
>Starr's report shows that he set out to prove that Vincent Foster drove
>to Fort Marcy Park and committed suicide. He did so by suppressing
>crucial evidence and relying heavily on statements that are demonstrably
>false and even nonsensical.
>
>Three highly credible eyewitnesses gave the FBI statements that prove
>that Foster's car did not reach the park until about two hours after
>Foster's death. They said they saw a brown, mid-1980's Honda parked
>where Foster's light gray 1989 Honda was subsequently found by the
>police. The first witness, Patrick Knowlton, had noted several details
>about the car and had given a report to the police the next day. The
>FBI pressured him to change his description, but he wouldn't budge.
>
>The other two witnesses were still in the park when Foster's body was
>found. They were questioned by the police in the parking lot where they
>could see Foster's car. They had also seen an older, brown Honda where
>Foster's 1989 light gray Honda was now parked. Starr's report does not
>say one word about their description of the car they saw. Clearly, it
>wasn't Foster's, but Starr, in a footnote, implies that it was.
>
>Knowlton's lawyer, John Clarke, submitted a 20-page letter to the judges
>who appointed Starr, exposing his deceptions. The judges agreed that
>they should be exposed and ordered Starr to attach Clarke's letter to
>his report as an appendix.
>
>Starr protested, arguing among other things, that it would be
>"egregious" to publish photos of the black revolver found in Foster's
>hand that were exhibits in Clarke's letter. They would expose the
>absurdity of Starr's claim that the gun found in Foster's hand was a
>silver gun he owned. Starr had concealed the actual color of the gun
>to make that claim seem plausible. He needn't have worried. Lazy and
>inattentive reporters ignored the appendix and swallowed this and
>other lies it exposed.
>
<snip>
===========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris : Counselor at Law, federal witness 01
B.A.: Political Science, UCLA; M.S.: Public Administration, U.C.Irvine 02
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_____________________________________: Law is authority in written words 09
As agents of the Most High, we came here to establish justice. We shall 10
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