WASHINGTON -- President Clinton publicly withdrew his support yesterday for the Watergate-era law that created the independent counsel, virtually ensuring that a statute that has bedeviled administrations since Jimmy Carter's will not be renewed when it expires June 30.
The White House announcement came hours before Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told a House Judiciary subcommittee that the independent counsel law -- which Clinton lobbied to reauthorize in 1994 -- has "fundamental structural flaws" that "cannot be fixed."
Barry Toiv, a White House spokesman, announced that "the president concurs."
Last week, Clinton refused to take a position on the independent counsel statute -- under which Kenneth W. Starr has investigated him for nearly five years -- saying it was "better for me at this time to say less so that others can say more."
But as he was holding his tongue in public, he was informing the Justice Department of his decision through White House counsel Charles F. C. Ruff.
When asked yesterday whether the Justice Department reached its decision after knowing the president's preference, Toiv answered: "I think they were aware."
The Clinton camp will continue to make its case today, when Robert S. Bennett, the president's personal lawyer in the Paula Corbin Jones lawsuit, testifies before a Senate committee.
The White House announcement came less than three weeks after a Senate impeachment trial acquitted Clinton of charges based on accusations leveled by Starr, whose investigation has cost nearly $50 million.
Holder delivered the administration's verdict on the independent counsel statute in the same Judiciary Committee hearing room where Starr presented his case against Clinton last year to a raucous standing ovation from Republicans.
Three of the House prosecutors who had pressed for the president's removal from office sat impassively as Holder cautiously hinted at prosecutorial excesses hounding the administration.
"As the old adage, adopted from Mark Twain, goes, to a man with a hammer, a lot of things look like nails that need pounding," Holder said.
The statute goes back to the 1973 "Saturday Night Massacre," when President Richard M. Nixon ordered the firing of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department to investigate Watergate.
Enacted in 1978, the independent counsel act was supposed to ensure the integrity of any investigation launched against a high-ranking administration official.
Since then, there have been 20 independent counsel investigations, which have spanned every administration since Carter's and have consumed nearly $150 million.
The law has been reauthorized three times, in 1983, 1988 and 1994, but it has been controversial almost from the start.
Republicans, angered at the sweep and toll of the Iran-contra investigation of the Reagan administration, called for the statute's demise when it expired in 1992. But with the strong support of President Clinton, the act was reauthorized in June 1994, a move that led directly to Starr's appointment.
Ultimately, seven independent counsels were appointed during the Clinton administration. Five are still active. One of those counsels, Donald Smaltz, spent $17 million to investigate gifts to former Clinton Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy valued at $33,000. Espy was acquitted of all charges.
This year, the opposition to the law's reauthorization has been loud and bipartisan. At yesterday's hearing of the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, Rep. Jay Dickey, an Arkansas Republican, said Starr's and Smaltz's investigations in his state have destroyed marriages, pitted friend against friend and driven innocent people to plead guilty because they have run out of money to pay their lawyers.
"It's been like a tornado has hit, like Sherman's march to the sea," Dickey said.
The investigation of Espy centered in part on Tyson Foods, Inc. an Arkansas firm accused of giving gifts to Espy.
Republican Reps. George W. Gekas of Pennsylvania and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas pleaded with colleagues to preserve some statutory mechanism to ensure that impartial investigations of White House officials can still be conducted.
But no one spoke on behalf of the existing statute. Republicans chose instead to jab at the administration for reversing its position on the statute since 1993.
Democrats continued to criticize Starr, with the Judiciary Committee's ranking member, Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, again labeling him a "federal sex policeman." Other Democrats on the panel raised new questions about Starr's conduct.
Democratic Reps. William D. Delahunt of Massachusetts and Jerrold Nadler of New York questioned why Attorney General Janet Reno is negotiating with Starr over how the Justice Department will conduct its pending probe of the independent counsel's alleged abuses.
Holder acknowledged that Justice Department officials have met with Starr to hear his concerns, but he said the discussions were not negotiations, and no agreements have been reached with the independent counsel.
"The decision on how to proceed will be made by the attorney general and the attorney general alone," Holder said.
Holder refused to specifically discuss Starr's investigation of the president, but his references were thinly veiled and involved current controversies. The Justice Department told Starr last month that it intended to investigate charges that the independent counsel and his deputies improperly hid contacts with Jones' lawyers when they sought last year to expand their Whitewater investigation into the Monica Lewinsky matter.
But this month, at the request of a conservative interest group, the three-judge panel that appointed Starr intervened, saying it would examine whether they could block Reno's probe of an independent counsel. Starr and Reno have until Monday to file arguments on the matter.
Pub Date: 3/03/99