WASHINGTON -- A special court in Washington opened a clear path yesterday for a Justice Department investigation that could lead to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's removal from office.

The three-judge panel that named Starr to look into a series of scandals surrounding President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton said it had no authority to block Attorney General Janet Reno's plan to investigate Starr.

Stepping entirely out of the increasingly tense exchanges between Starr and Reno over that probe, the court said it "has no power to review any of the actions of the attorney general with regard to the independent counsel."

It thus dismissed a plea by the Landmark Legal Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, that Reno be blocked from investigating Starr. That group had no right even to be in court, the judicial panel declared in another part of its seven-page ruling.

As a result, Starr appeared to be left without any way to challenge Reno's investigation, and with only a last-ditch opportunity to go to court if he was ordered removed. Reno's investigation, however, is only in a preliminary stage, and removal is far from the predictable outcome.

Starr's office said it "fully accepts the court's resolution of this issue." The Justice Department said only that it was pleased with the result.

This year, Reno formally notified Starr that her department was opening an investigation of several allegations of misconduct against the independent counsel and his staff in investigating the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Among those allegations are claims that Starr's aides misled the Justice Department in gaining its endorsement for him to handle the Lewinsky investigation, that Starr's staff had improper contacts with Paula Corbin Jones' legal team in her sexual-misconduct lawsuit against Clinton, and that his deputies violated department rules by trying to work out an immunity deal with Lewinsky without her lawyer present.

After word of Reno's investigation plan leaked publicly, the Landmark Legal Foundation asked the three-judge court to put a stop to that probe. Both Starr and the Justice Department resisted that challenge and yesterday's court order ended it.

The Justice Department had argued that it would raise serious constitutional issues if the special court assumed the power to second-guess any department investigation of an independent counsel's operation. The independent counsel law, the department contended, provides for court review of any such probe only after it results in a removal of an independent prosecutor.

Katy J. Harriger, a Wake Forest University political science professor who is a specialist on independent counsels and who has contacts in the Justice Department, said, "My sense is that the Reno investigation is serious, that there's enough smoke there to look for fire."

At a minimum, the professor said, Reno is at least considering what type of misconduct would be sufficient to justify Starr's removal.

Last week, Starr's office voluntarily asked the Justice Department to investigate possible leaks of his office's strategy by his spokesman, Charles Bakaly. Reno refused to comment on that inquiry at her weekly news conference yesterday.

Reno did tell reporters that the department was preparing a new set of rules on how to handle investigations of high-level government officials, in case the independent counsel law is allowed to expire by Congress on June 30.

She has opposed renewal of that law, saying it has developed fundamental flaws that cannot be repaired by amendments.

Meanwhile, the Senate killed, by a voice vote, a Democratic-sponsored proposal to cut off funding for Starr and four other independent counsels at the end of this year, with anything remaining of their investigations to be transferred to the Justice Department.

That vote appears to allow Starr's various inquiries to continue, because it will ensure continued funding. In addition, the present independent counsel law specifies that investigations may continue even if the underlying law is not revived.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

Pub Date: 3/19/99