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to Congress. The only question was what form the document would take, and when it was best to dump it into the House’s lap. Starr, in an unusual role reversal, had become the most impatient person in his office. He wanted to “send it up [to Congress]” in the spring, even before Lewinsky had been pinned down as a cooperating witness. Most of the OIC prosecutors were aghast at their boss’s impulsiveness. They were frustrated and displeased at “how little” concrete evidence they had even after “months of frenzied activity.” Most of Starr’s prosecutors believed it would be disastrous to send their messy collection of evidence to Capitol Hill, because “it wasn’t there [yet].”

Ethics adviser Sam Dash was also horrified that Starr’s lawyers were organizing the draft referral into “counts,” as if it were an indictment. Dash shouted at his younger boss, “The independent counsel does not draw up an indictment of impeachment! That’s the House of Representatives. All the statute calls for is referring information.” If Starr did not slow down and fix his misguided report, Dash said, he would be forced to quit.

Starr backed off, for the time being. Yet he was itching to pass off this hot potato to Congress. The ordinarily passive independent counsel was now a man with a mission. He first issued an “edict” that the report had to be completed by the “end of July.” After his staff pushed back, Starr modified his directive and gave them until Labor Day. This would leave a couple of months before the November elections—a safe enough cushion if they wanted to avoid being accused of seeking to manipulate the midterm elections. Paul Rosenzweig piped up that “we might as well wait until January” when the new Congress took office, since nothing would happen before then, anyway. The mild-mannered independent counsel became “livid” at that suggestion. He was insistent that his staff adhere to the new September deadline.

Starr later categorically denied that he timed the release of his report to impact the November elections. To the contrary, he said, his only goal was “to get it out as promptly as possible.” Starr explained, pushing his glasses firmly onto his nose, “We were not trying to do anything in terms of stirring up public interest. The public interest was already there.” Yet this much could not be disputed: Ken Starr was more insistent about getting the report to Congress in September than about almost any other deadline during his tenure as special prosecutor. He pointed to calendars on the wall and issued the command, his eyes gleaming with resolve: “Circle Labor Day!”

A NAGGING issue that continued to divide the Office of Independent Counsel had to do with the level of sexual detail that should be included in its still-growing report. Some of the prosecutors suggested “segregating” the nasty stuff. They could bury the extra-spicy details in a separate appendix, locking them away in a triple-X location. Other prosecutors feared that this would “draw more attention” to the juicy material, flashing red lights as if inviting readers into a lurid peep show. The “sex appendix,” they warned, would be the first thing that got “leaked” by Congress. Paul Rosenzweig, one of the voices opposed to hiding the X-rated material, circulated a confidential memo titled, “Bowdlerdizing the Final Report.” In this, he invoked the name of the nineteenth-century English physician, Thomas Bowdler, who was infamous for publishing a sanitized version of William Shakespeare’s plays for women and children in order to protect them from smutty and offensive material. Bowdler’s name had become synonymous with prudishness and literary censorship. Rosenzweig argued that if OIC tried to hide the sexual detail, the public would conclude they did so “because Ken was a puritan.” Moreover, the explicit sexual details were necessary to expose and rebut “the president’s utterly insane notion that [Monica] had sex with him but he hadn’t had it with her.”

In the end, Starr’s deputies agreed with Rosenzweig: It was best to treat the steamy sexual material “in a sort of a