Kenneth Starr

Kenneth Winston Starr (born July 21, 1946 in Vernon, Texas) is an American lawyer and former judge who was appointed to the Office of the Independent Counsel to investigate the Whitewater land transactions by President Bill Clinton. He later submitted to Congress the Starr Report, which led to Clinton's impeachment on charges arising from the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Time as Independent Counsel

In 1994 Starr was appointed by a three-judge panel to continue the Whitewater investigation, replacing Robert Fiske, who had been specially appointed by the Attorney General prior to the re-enactment of the Independent Counsel law. His powers were very broad, and he was given the right to subpoena nearly anyone he felt may have information relevant to the several scandals he was charged with investigating.

Related Topics:
1994 - Robert Fiske - Subpoena

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Though his judicial reputation earned him initial popularity in the investigation, particularly after his aggressive emphasis on confronting political corruption in Arkansas -- culminating in the successful fraud prosecution of then-sitting Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker and Clinton real estate investment partners James and Susan McDougal -- Starr's service became controversial when his powers were expanded to investigate the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Democratic sympathizers of President Clinton rallied around the President and carried on a campaign which portrayed Starr as a repressed political zealot on a mission to remove Clinton. They claim that Starr pursued other lines of investigation peripheral to the Whitewater controversy, such as the controversy over the appropriated FBI files and Vince Foster's suicide, in order to

Related Topics:
Jim Guy Tucker - Susan McDougal - Sex scandal - Vince Foster

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"get" Clinton. Susan McDougal, in the documentary The Hunting of the President, alleges that Starr's office pressured her to lie under oath in order to back up its allegations against Clinton. President Clinton's backers in the media, primarily through the now-defunct monthly Brill's Content, also damaged Starr's office when it accused Starr's office of leaking grand jury testimony in violation of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Eventually, the allegations of leaking were quietly dismissed after an investigation supervised by Chief Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, but not before public confidence in Starr's operation was damaged. Still, Starr's investigation led to the impeachment and disbarment of President Clinton, with whom Starr shared Time Magazine's Man of the Year Award for 1998.

Related Topics:
The Hunting of the President - Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure - Norma Holloway Johnson - Time Magazine - Man of the Year - 1998

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After having been maligned for several years in the media and by President Clinton's backers in Congress, Starr expressed regret for ever having agreed to the Justice Department's request that he oversee the Lewinsky investigation, saying "the most fundamental thing that could have been done differently" would have been for somebody else to have investigated the matter.http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/11633179p-12522663c.html

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