Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [348]
Starr’s advice to his troops, as he struggled to maintain a steady voice, was, “We need to get it up there [to Congress].” It was time to soar past the moon, jettison the evidence of Clinton’s grotesque law violations so that another branch of government could deal with it, activate their parachutes, and hope that the OIC starship might come down safely without further explosions that threatened to burn them beyond recognition.
In one of the great tragedies of this saga filled with many catastrophic moments, Ken Starr was overwhelmingly outvoted by his staff.
Had Starr’s view prevailed—had the case gone to Congress at this early stage—the House of Representatives would have had to gather up its own evidence relating to possible impeachable offenses by the president, and Starr and his team might have extricated themselves from the worst predicament of their rough and bloodying tenure. Starr was becoming half federal prosecutor, half impeachment deputy for a politically charged Congress. At this moment, if OIC had backed off gracefully, Starr might have removed himself from the political bloodbath that followed. Yet his penchant for deferring to his prosecutors and seeking consensus like a wise judge finally led to his own professional meltdown, no different from that experienced by the ill-fated satellite in transitional orbit.
Given their bruising experiences with the Clintons since 1994, most members of Starr’s team were vehemently opposed to surrendering this case to Congress at such an early stage. They wanted to push over every rock until the vipers in the Clinton White House were captured with forked sticks. Even Bob Bittman, whom Starr himself had appointed to oversee the Washington operation, took issue with his boss’s “pass it off to Congress” approach. The harsh reality was that Clinton was making a monkey of their operation. Most of the witnesses in the grand jury were taking their oaths, providing testimony, then running back to provide information to the White House. “He was mirroring our investigation,” Bittman would later say. “He would only tell us, and admit to us, as much as we knew.” The only way to beat the president at this game, Bittman told his boss in front of his fellow prosecutors, was to haul Clinton’s rear end in front of the grand jury and pin him down under oath. In light of the “vituperative” correspondence from David Kendall, Clinton was likely to stall indefinitely, until OIC called his bluff.
Starr recognized that he had lost the battle with his staff; so he reluctantly agreed to allow them to issue a subpoena to the president. As Starr himself would later explain, the choices had narrowed themselves down to one. “Well, what was it that remained? You’ve only got a circumstantial case. You’ve got to nail it down. We knew that meant the two participants: Lewinsky and the president.”
With that, Bittman drafted a new letter to Kendall on July 17, attaching a subpoena for William Jefferson Clinton to appear before the grand jury in eleven days. Bittman stated that the grand jury “simply can wait no longer.” This extraordinary subpoena was signed and sealed by the clerk of the U.S. District Court. Bittman also attached an advice-of-rights form, reciting that the president had a right to retain counsel and that “anything that you do or say may be used against you.…”
“If the President agrees to comply with the subpoena and testify,” Starr’s young deputy wrote,