Whitewater Prosecutor Denounced Clinton Lawyer Says Starr Breaks Jury Rules, Smears First Couple

In an extraordinary public lecture, President Clinton’s attorney on Tuesday accused Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr of violating grand jury secrecy rules and inflicting “leak-and-smear damage” on the president and first lady.

In a six-page letter to Starr released to the news media, attorney David Kendall heatedly criticized the independent counsel for conducting “a public relations offensive” against the Clintons in a New York Times Magazine article published Sunday and in other public statements.

The story quoted unnamed prosecutors as saying that newly discovered Whitewater documents might shed some light on whether Hillary Clinton told the truth to federal prosecutors.

Kendall’s letter, personally approved by Clinton, raised the public controversy in the Starr inquiry a notch higher and questioned the ethics, judgment and political motives of the independent counsel.

In replying to Kendall, Starr said, “We adamantly reject the suggestion of impropriety.”

Kendall noted that the Times story said Starr had provided background assistance for the article, which quoted other prosecutors both by name and anonymously.

The article also said that when Starr referred to possible obstruction of justice in seeking to extend the life of the Whitewater grand jury, he meant evidence about the mysterious discovery in the White House residence of the first lady’s billing records from her former law firm in Little Rock, Ark.

Kendall said in his letter to Starr that “grand jury secrecy rules are aimed at preventing precisely this kind of leak-and-smear damage.”

He added: “You well know that you have no evidence whatsoever that Hillary Clinton had anything to do with any ‘disappearance”’ of the billing records for a failed savings and loan, Madison Guaranty, linked to the Whitewater land development.

Citing a line from the Times story suggesting that Starr had decided to become a “more zealous prosecutor,” Kendall said, “the public posturing on your part suggests to me a total loss of perspective.

“I don’t believe there’s ever been a jugular here for you to go for, but in the last several months, you’ve demonstrated an unerring instinct for the capillary.”

The president’s attorney said that as the investigation “crawls into its fourth year,” it is time for Starr to finish his inquiry.

“This means not chasing every rainbow or every partisan rumor, whether in the hope of wounding or destroying a target, or for any other reason,” Kendall wrote.

Kendall honed in on a quote by an unnamed prosecutor about why the independent counsel is seeking notes made of a conversation between Hillary Clinton and the White House counsel’s office.

The prosecutor said, “If notes from the White House counsel’s office indicate that a person’s story has changed over time, you could have countless issues of possible false statements to the grand jury.”

Kendall contends such “public musing” over what a grand jury may be thinking is improper.