Starr testimony excerpts, Part I

The following excerpts were taken from testimony of Kenneth Starr in the House Judiciary Committee's hearings into the impeachment of President Clinton.
Excerpts of the cross-examination by Abbe Lowell, minority counsel:
LOWELL: This is how your report has been described: "It is a report that marshals and characterizes the information into an aggressive piece of legal advocacy. It is one where ... few of the factual assertions are left to speak for themselves. In short, it is a document with an attitude. It is notable for its failure to acknowledge that there might be more than one way to view at least some of the evidence."
And that was from the Supreme Court reporter of The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse, on Sept. 12, 1998.
It cannot be your testimony, is it, Mr. Starr, that the 595(c) background material ... required you to make the accusations, conclusions -- in short, have a referral with an attitude? Is it?
STARR: My opinion of the statute, or my reading and interpretation of the statute, Mr. Lowell, is that I am called upon to establish the reason that in the independent counsel's view the matters that I send before you may constitute a grounds for impeachment.
That's a very serious and weighty matter. And we approached it in a very serious and weighty manner ... But with respect to any particular, you know, reporter's evaluation or description, I stand behind this referral, and I'm sure there will be questions about it.
What we tried to do in this referral was to assemble in an organized form rather than sending you simply truckloads of unorganized information, give it coherence, and then it is your judgment. And thus if it is the judgment that this referral has not in fact stood the test of your close examination -- did we get the facts wrong? -- then, of course, you should come to your own judgment and your own assessment.
But this reflects, just so the committee knows, the views of some of the most experienced prosecutors in the country. I stand behind it because it is mine. I stand behind each word of it. It is my ultimate judgment. But this is a professional product; it's not the product of one single person.

LOWELL: Whether it be your judgment, Mr. Starr, or the judgment of your entire staff, one thing I think you will agree with is that it was your and your staff's decisions to include the words "premeditated," "concocted false alibis," "deceived," "pattern of obstruction," "lying under oath," "perjury" -- which words you will never find in the report of Leon Jaworski when he was reporting the same kind of evidence to the Congress 24 years ago. Aren't I right about that?
STARR: I don't think that -- I've not reviewed all the material that Mr. Jaworski delivered, and I'm not taking issue with the fact that this document is no doubt in many respects different than the very kind of environment and legal standard under which Mr. Jaworski was operating.
But, Mr. Lowell, if I'm going to -- speaking through my voice -- but if our office is going to inform the House of Representatives that there maybe substantial grounds for an impeachment, that is so weighty, that is so serious that you need to have the benefit of our judgment and our assessment of the facts, informed by our watching the witnesses, listening to the grand jury and the way the grand jury reacted to witnesses, the assessment of the grand jury, and then to give you our judgment.
But obviously this body is entirely at liberty to reject this referral as not being substantial or credible. It is entirely your judgment. And one of the points I did try to make in the opening statement is, I believe -- and you may disagree -- that I was called upon to give you my judgment and my assessment, and I have done that. But it is the responsibility of the House of Representatives to use this to the extent that it wants, to discard it, to do whatever it thinks is necessary to come to its judgment as to whether there should be any proceeding, some sort of proceeding or not.
This is a tool. This is only a tool for you to use as you see fit. But I don't think that it's fair to criticize my office for not following a pattern that was not governed by a statute. And Col. Jaworski is not here to tell us what he would think if he went through the same process under the statutory regime that our professional colleagues went through.

LOWELL: ... I asked whether you had or any of your office members told the attorney general that your law firm -- that you were still a member of and getting a salary from -- had indeed been sought out to be Paula Jones' lawyers. I understood you saying you may not have known that.
My question is, you're telling me that Richard Porter, your partner, did not ever inform you that he had been asked to consider representing Paula Jones and had in fact assisted her in getting the attorneys she ultimately chose. Is that what you're saying?
STARR: Well, my best recollection is no. I know Richard Porter. I've had communications with him from time to time. But in terms of a specific discussion with respect to what the law firm may be -- may be doing or may not be doing -- I'm not recalling that specifically, no.
LOWELL: You do recall, though, that it was a matter that you admit that on at least six occasions you personally had had conversations with Paula Jones' attorneys over legal issues in the Paula Jones case.
STARR: I'm not sure. I had had conversations with them, just as I had conversations with others, including -- and I think the record of these proceedings should reflect that ...
And fault my judgment if you will, but it just frankly did not occur to me, as I think happens to a lot of us in life, that you just don't view that as relevant information -- and if I may say so, especially since my position had been so well-known, and including the contacts with Ms. Jones' attorneys, who reached out to me with respect to the constitutional immunity issue solely, exclusively.
... I think it's only fair to say I don't know whether there were six conversations. I know there were several, but they were only conversations, and it never ripened -- well, I'm talking about with Mr. Davis -- and it never ripened into an arrangement, an agreement, to the best of my recollection, to do anything because of the circumstances that then occurred.
LOWELL: ... your law firm obtained a nonpublic affidavit in the Paula Jones case and then sent that affidavit on to The Chicago Tribune. And that, Mr. Starr, happened while you were the independent counsel and a member of your firm. Wasn't that something the attorney general should have known?
STARR: I don't know. I'm not saying she should not. But these are judgment calls that one makes. And it also assumes, shall I say, a computerlike ability to recall each and everything that has ever occurred or information that has come to you.
And so let me say this: The fact of my involvement with the Jones matter, my personal involvement as opposed to what issues one or more members of my firm may have been involved in, I think was known publicly and thus did not occur to me as something that was appropriate or was something that I focused on.
Whether I should have focused on it, you may come to a different judgment.

LOWELL: Mr. Starr, while we're on the subject of the Jones case, I think it is now from the material you sent to Congress pretty clear that your office did absolutely nothing to stop Linda Tripp from meeting with Paula Jones' attorneys to help them set up for the Jan. 17 deposition of the president. And the fact is, is it not, that you had the power at that moment and the reason at that moment to forbid her from having those meetings, but your office chose not to do so. Isn't that right?
STARR: That is, I think, an unfair characterization. That is to say, it is once again assuming that there was information as to communications that she may or may not have been having. We did not, to the best of my knowledge -- we did not have any information that she was in fact communicating with the Jones attorneys. And, indeed, the record will show we began working almost instantly at cross purposes with the Jones attorneys ... to protect this investigation.

LOWELL: ... I'm also understanding you to say that you're not contesting that on that day she [Linda Tripp] came in, she had the conversation, she showed you the tapes, or told you about the tapes ... you had both the authority to give her immunity and the authority to tell her not to talk. You did the first. You didn't do the second, did you?
STARR: Well, I'm not -- I would have to double check to see exactly what we did tell her. But, no, what I am trying to make as clear as I possibly can is that what we were saying to Ms. Tripp: 'You have given us this remarkable information, allegations. They're extraordinarily explosive that perhaps go to the president of the United States. We need backup.' And she was coming to us as a witness, and this information was not, at the time that it was first coming to us, in the public domain.
So we took the steps that we thought -- my colleagues who were making these decisions on the spot took the steps that we did. But if the suggestion is we wanted her to go public, the suggestion is absolutely wrong.

STARR: The reason that she [Monica Lewinsky] was being approached, Mr. Lowell, was that she was trying to get Linda Tripp to commit perjury, and since you've inquired about this, her mother had made it clear that she was willing to help finance an operation for Linda Tripp so she could leave the jurisdiction and thereby avoid being confronted in the Jones deposition. That's what this was all about. So you're focusing on a press release as opposed to a court document.
Could I say one other thing? In fairness ... the issues with respect to our conduct that evening have been litigated. You can ask, obviously, all the questions that you want. But usually if a witness believes that he or she has been mistreated, if her rights have been violated, there's a place to go. And it's called a courthouse.
And that's where these issues have been resolved, and they've been resolved favorably to us. We conducted ourselves professionally.

LOWELL: ... When you suggested to the committee that what you did, the choices you made, have to be looked at to determine the substantiality and the credibility of the evidence, I want to ask you whether or not you don't now see ... that the manner in which you decided to write the referral as one with attitude; your contacts between you, your law firm and Paula Jones' attorneys; the questions that have been raised about whether or not you got into this case with proper jurisdiction; the way you dealt with Monica Lewinsky and the evidence that came from that; Judge Johnson's orders ... about whether your office has been responsible for leaks; and the contradictions in the evidence between your referral and the statements you agree are in the evidence -- doesn't that undermine the substantiality and credibility of the evidence on something as weighty as impeaching a president of the United States?
STARR: Mr. Lowell, nothing that you have said -- and with all respect, what you have done is go into characterizations as opposed to deal with facts -- the facts are as we have found them to be. And not one of your questions suggests that the president was not involved in serious offenses that now is your responsibility to evaluate.
... I do think if there were any suggestion that we had compelled a confession from her on the evening of Jan. 16 [Lewinsky], that would go forcefully and powerfully to whether any such statement by her should be used. But, Mr. Lowell, she was treated in such a way, she did not make a statement to the officers.

Excerpts of the cross-examination by committee members:
REP. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, R-Wis.: If people can perjure themselves in court about sex, don't you think that that makes our sexual harassment laws and our domestic violence laws less meaningful and in many cases unenforceable?
STARR: Yes. Well, it certainly makes them -- I agree fully that it would make them less meaningful. And it would certainly make it much more difficult to enforce if we did not take acts of perjury or obstruction seriously in this particular category of case.

REP. JOHN CONYERS, D-Mich.: This summer it became clear that your office had spoken to reporters on background, developed a different standard, telling Steven Brill "nothing improper about leaking, if you are talking about what witnesses tell FBI agents." This, to me, is quite important. Is there a distinction or a compatibility with both those statements, sir?
STARR: Yes, in this sense ... We have responded in detail to the article that you mention, and I would be happy to provide that to you; I think it's all laid out there. My position is this: We do not issue or release that kind of information. That is our position.

CONYERS: Well, let me ask you about the Travelgate and FBI files, which you did not mention the exoneration of the president in your reference. Why did you include any exculpatory information in your reference? And why didn't you put it in there instead of putting it in your statement here?
STARR: We put the statement here. You're right. We did not include that in the referral because of my views of what the referral was supposed to do. What I viewed this invitation as being was to try to -- because I was invited -- and pursuant to that invitation, we reflected on what is the information that you might need. Because we have been told, Mr. Conyers, by the Congress, you know, don't be holding things back. If you have information that could be relevant, provide it. And that's what we have in fact been trying to do.

CONYERS: And finally, sir, the failure to rule out pardon of Susan McDougal. ... I was a little bit dismayed that you would deem fit to blow out of proportion the fact that the president refused to comment on the possibility of pardoning Ms. McDougal. Was -- did I read more into that about your attitude about her than I ought to have?
STARR: No, Mr. Conyers, I think you read it fairly and accurately. And you might very well have a different view that my view is quite wrong. But our view at the time was that the president did not help the situation of our trying to get to the truth as quickly as possible by his comments. But that's your judgment.

McCOLLUM: ... In this particular case a number of our colleagues on this panel have suggested that because the Paula Jones case was dismissed and ultimately settled, because there was indeed a throwing out by the judge -- albeit appealed -- of the underlying question of whether or not there was any relevance to the testimony about other people being sexually harassed as being relevant to that case, that somehow, therefore, if the president lied in that case, it's immaterial. ...
I don't think you really fully put the nail into this. And I'd like for you to tell us, in your judgment, first of all, what you presented us today, were the elements of perjury present when the president lied under oath as you've described it in that Paula Jones case? And particularly, was materiality present?
STARR: Materiality is not affected. It is a totally bogus argument to suggest that because the lawsuit is eventually settled or dismissed that an act -- let's call it perjury; we've said, you know, a false statement under oath. That's the way we presented it to you. That is simply and utterly, demonstrably wrong as a matter of law.

REP. BARNEY FRANK, D-Mass.: Mr. Starr, Judge Johnson has found 24 instances of prima facie violations by your office of Rule 16. Now, that's not determinative of whether or not they happened. But ... are you aware of any member of your staff who in fact committed a violation, as defined by Judge Johnson? ... Are you aware in any of those 24 instances whether or not a member of your staff in fact was guilty of what Judge Johnson has found to be a prima facie violation?
STARR: We do not think that we have violated 6(e) at all.
FRANK: No, specifically on the 24 instances, are you -- because you may differ with her in part about how you define 6(e). But as she defines 6(e), are you aware of any member of your staff who committed a violation as she defined it?
STARR: Well, I -- with all respect, I think that is an unfair question. And the reason I do --
FRANK: All right. I'll withdraw it. Mr. Starr, you're the expert on unfair questions. If you tell me it's an unfair question, I'll withdraw it.

FRANK: Mr. Starr, if you're suggesting that you can't answer under this particular proceeding -- it's sealed at your request to the extent that it's sealed at all. So you could waive it. That is, Judge Johnson granted a motion for an open procedure. You appealed this to the Circuit Court and they closed it up. So if you do not object, nobody else will.
But if you didn't do any of the leaking, why not just tell us if it's wrong factually? And if, on the other hand, you're going to say, well, you successfully got the Circuit Court to seal it, I suppose I can't do much, but I don't understand why you wouldn't just tell us.
STARR: ... Congressman Frank, what she did was to provide for a procedure that didn't provide "openness." It provided for an adversarial process, and this is all in the public domain. But from this point forward, no, she is the custodian and the guide with respect --
FRANK: Would you ask her to release that? I think there's a severe, important public interest in dealing with this unique question. It goes to the credibility of a lot of what you've done. Would you then join -- maybe everybody would join; maybe the White House would join and others -- in asking Judge Johnson to relax that so we could get the answers publicly because I think there's a lot of public interest -- legitimate interest in this?
STARR: I am happy to consider that, but I'm not going to make, if -- with all respect, a legal judgment right on the spot with respect to a proceeding.

Continued in Part II

This article was published on Friday, November 20, 1998

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