The bitter end

The mistrial in the Steele case marks Kenneth Starr's induction into the American hall of shame.

By Jack Hitt

May 8, 1999 | Independent counsel Kenneth Starr lost his last battle on Friday when a federal judge declared a mistrial in the case of Julie Hiatt Steele, the woman Starr indicted for changing her mind and refusing to corroborate Kathleen Willey's tale of sexual harassment by President Clinton. Steele declared victory in her grudge match with Starr. "I think it's time to celebrate,'' she told reporters outside the courtroom. "It's time to start my life again."

Starr's deputy in the case promised to seek a new trial, but such a move is unlikely. The independent counsel's office made the same threat after its prosecution of Whitewater figure Susan McDougal ended in mistrial, but it never followed through. Starr may pop up again -- prosecuting Webster Hubbell, even trying to torment the Clintons after they leave office. This would not be a good idea. As Julie Hiatt Steele tries to start her life again, it's time for Ken Starr to do the same. But he'll likely have a harder time of it.

When Starr appeared before the Governmental Reform Committee in April to denounce the statute that empowered him, he looked scared. If you caught the performance, then you know what Im talking about. There was Americas most repressed pornographer trying to clamp on his furrowed mask of constitutional solemnity, while occasionally flashing his smarmiest hey-little-girl-would-you-like-to-make-a-nickel smile. But then youd see it flash by, momentarily: the flaring eyes, the involuntary mammalian expression of absolute fear.

And why shouldnt he be scared? Starr knows perhaps better than anyone that nothing -- but history -- awaits him now. He knows that the bell will toll, and its gonna toll for him. You can almost feel it, the one part to this story that has yet be carried out. Its why Starr is clinging to his office. He is desperately devising an exit strategy that wont entail his own persecution. But its ineluctable. Im not talking about a legal matter or some ethical situation. More than anything this is an historical imperative.

Wherever Whitewater began, it ended not as malfeasance, not as politics, not as sex, not as perjury, but as a classic American morality play between absolutists and humanists, between people who believe that every last speck of sin must be cleansed from our souls and people who understand that we must live with an unsquarable degree of venality in our lives. Its the battle between the Puritans who knew there was only one right way, and the Quakers who believed that different people could find virtue by unlike paths. Its the battle between those who believe forgiveness is something only God dispenses, and those who believe that humans ennoble themselves by granting it to one another -- between those who crave the law and those who look to the quality of mercy. Its the battle between Joseph McCarthy, who insisted upon destroying even the lamest screenwriter who had swaggered in his youth by signing up as a "communist," and those who saw blacklisting as the extermination of the weak. Between those who believed that every last witch must be driven from Salem and those who saw witchhunting for what it was.

Ill bet Ken Starr knows the fate of Salem's Rev. Samuel Parris. After the witch trials ended, his congregation fired him. He spent the rest of life wandering the earth wearing the rent garments of a common merchant. And Joseph McCarthy? After Fred Friendly showed him on CBS television laughing his gappy teeth at the suffering of the powerless and picking his nose with his thick buttery fingers, he was censured by his own Senate. McCarthy withdrew to Wisconsin, to stew upon his abandonment and to watch his name slip into the dictionaries as a monstrous adjective. He died a drunk.

Ken Starr has good reason to be scared.

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