Critics Say Starr Stretching His Authority

Critics of the Whitewater probe have been many and loud here in recent months, as Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s investigation passed the four-year, $30 million mark without bringing criminal charges against President Clinton, his wife Hillary or his top aides.

For the White House, the independent counsel had become the permanent prosecutor, always ready to strike.

But this week’s stunning news that Starr had struck again, this time pursuing charges growing out of an alleged sex scandal, have renewed complaints among administration supporters that the independent counsel had gone beyond the pale.

“This shows if you can keep yourself in business for five years, you can find something to go after,” said Stanley M. Brand, a white-collar defense lawyer and former Democratic House counsel. “As a legal matter, I question his right to go into anything like this.”

Starr’s commission from a three-judge panel was to investigate whether crimes had been committed involving the Clinton’s finances in Little Rock, Ark., and other “related matters.”

This broad mandate cannot be stretched to include sex scandals in the White House, the critics insisted.

“I think this is a potentially unfair use of the law,” said former Justice Department prosecutor Irvin Nathan said he was troubled that Starr’s jurisdiction had been widened to cover almost everything.

Other Clinton defenders also question Starr’s use of a secret tape recording to hear Monica Lewinsky’s comments about the president.

“We should think long and hard before we have sting operations against a sitting president,” said the president’s lawyer Robert S. Bennett.

But Starr and his staff have ready answers for these complaints. They say their initial investigation allowed them to pursue matters that arose during the course of their investigation.

In recounting the recent developments, it has been stressed that Linda Tripp, the former White House aide who taped conversations with Lewinsky, the intern at the center of the current scandal, came to Starr’s office with the information.

In a brief news conference Thursday, Starr also noted that he had followed the procedures set forth in the law. He contacted Attorney General Janet Reno seeking an expansion of his probe. She in turn recommended the expansion to the three-judge panel, which granted the request.

“Our job is to gather facts and to evaluate facts and to get at the truth,” Starr said outside his office. “I have a very strong belief that the facts will come out and the truth will come out eventually.”