Saturday, December 12, 1998

Counsel law deserves to die when it expires

The nation's independent counsel law is so fundamentally flawed it should be allowed to die when it expires next June 30.

That unambiguous verdict was reached by a distinguished bipartisan panel composed of what Washington calls, in all seriousness, "wise men," among them former U.S. senator and Reagan chief of staff Howard Baker and former Carter attorney general Griffin Bell.

The independent counsel law has given us 21 special prosecutors, including Lawrence Walsh's six-year, $48 million pursuit of Iran-Contra and Kenneth Starr's four-year probe that began with Whitewater and ended with Monica Lewinsky. Rather than hold the prosecutorial process above reproach, it seems to have done the opposite.

The panel's objections to the independent counsels are familiar. The diminishment of the stature of the Department of Justice. The inherent unfairness of singling out the 49 covered individuals for special prosecution. The lack of accountability and time and budget constraints on the prosecutors.

The act would not be the law now except that each time it has come up for review, it has been in one or another party's political interest to renew it. "Republicans and Democrats have battled to a draw," said Bell. "It's time to give it up." Bell admitted that when the original law passed in 1978 during the Carter administration, he was opposed to it but kept quiet because the president was not. Now he tells us.

What was striking was that the panel believed the law was probably beyond reform. The panel said, unenthusiastically, that if -- if -- the law were reformed instead of simply killed, the change should be to require the attorney general to remove himself from the picture if the target of an investigation was the president, vice president or the attorney general.

The independent counsel law should not survive in its current form. We're not prepared -- yet -- to give up on the possibility of reform, but Baker makes an excellent point when he cautions, "We have to be careful we don't reform this to where it's worse than what it was in the first place."