Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [105]
Leaning forward at his executive desk at an Indianapolis law firm, after the Starr investigations had receded into history, Bennett said, “I point back to Bill Clinton for that. I think that the fish rotted from the head down. I think he set the tone.”
So when Ken Starr offered to rescue him from this purgatory, Bennett leaped at the chance. Starr drove Bennett from the Little Rock airport to the OIC offices, on a snowy January day in 1995, pointing out the beautiful Arkansas scenery and confiding, for Bennett’s ears only, that he hoped to have the whole case “wrapped up by year’s end.” As Bennett would reconstruct that conversation later, “I mean, he wasn’t blowing smoke. I think he honestly thought that could happen.”
To those who would later accuse Starr’s prosecutors of prolonging the Whitewater/Madison investigation because of political bias, Bennett would respond: “Look, a lot of people would like to make the case—let’s get right to it—that Ken Starr staffed his office with a bunch of right-wingers who were determined to take him [Clinton] down,” said Bennett. “And I’m probably not a good argument in rebuttal.”
Yet Bennett said that deep in his heart, he did not believe that “any personal views that I had of Bill Clinton” affected his ability to remain neutral, at least initially.
Indeed, he would later share an anecdote: He had attended the inaugural parade of Clinton in 1993 with friends who had reserved a choice spot on the balcony of the FBI offices looking over Pennsylvania Avenue. On that day, Bennett had felt a positive sense of energy. “Politically, George [H. W.] Bush wasn’t my kind of president,” he confessed in a deep baritone. Bush seemed “feckless” and uninspiring. “I wasn’t passionate about him. And this new guy, Clinton—Boy, he’s talented, he’s smart. He’s performing [well] in the debates.” Bennett’s assessment as he watched the pomp and festivities of the inaugural parade was, “The better guy won. That’s how I viewed it.”
Not until he battled the Clinton White House during the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky ordeals did Bennett irrevocably change his mind.
His eyes becoming steely, Bennett said, “I formed judgments, I’m not going to deny that. I came to think, ‘This is a corrupt person.’ It took me a while to get to that point. And I will go to my grave believing it fervently; I’d bet my house on it.” He summed up his views of the president, whom he would pursue unsuccessfully for five years: “This guy is the most corrupt political figure, in my view, we’ve ever had.… That’s him. That’s who he is. That’s who he’s been all along, in my view.”
AS Ken Starr took over the reins as Whitewater independent counsel, it was obvious that he approached the job in ways that dramatically differed from his predecessor. Robert Fiske’s parting advice to Starr about moving to Little Rock had been a nonsubtle hint about working full-time as independent counsel. For Fiske it “was an all-consuming job.” Additionally, there would be “appearance problems” if one was caught moonlighting in the practice of law when one was supposed to be heading an investigation of this magnitude. Fiske later explained his philosophy: “The only reason an independent counsel is appointed is because there are public allegations against the president. These need to be resolved quickly one way or the other. The president should not be under an unresolved cloud any longer than absolutely necessary.”
Ken Starr, however, had always been a multitasker. “The whole structure of the independent counsel statute was that this was a part-time [position],” he explained, “in the sense that you did not leave your law firm. That was expressly contemplated in the statute.” Starr