Ken Starr’s Little Secret

By Scott Horton

In looking at the current scandal about the politicization of the U.S. attorneys in the Bush Administration, I am reminded frequently of the Clinton years and the investigation of the Whitewater scandal conducted by Ken Starr, now a dean at Pepperdine Law School.

The investigation had strong political overtones, as any such matter invariably does. But it was managed in a blatantly political way, to its own strong discredit. Most of the serious abuses which are surfacing in the current story also occurred in Starr’s investigation. The failure to maintain the secrecy of grand jury materials was shocking. Recently I picked up an advance copy of a new biography of Hillary Clinton called Her Way and discovered that the leaks have continued, and that Starr was being openly cited as a source. My thoughts on this subject appear in a column in the August issue of the American Lawyer.