Wednesday, April 22, 1998

Starr capable of investigating own witness

The Whitewater investigation has an abiding Dogpatch quality that just won't go away. Key records turn up in the trunk of a clunker car abandoned at a transmission shop, and now a falling out between the proprietor of a live bait shop and his ex-girlfriend has become critical to the investigation.

Parker Dozhier of Hot Springs, Ark., received, he says, about $35,000 from the harshly anti-Clinton magazine American Spectator to be its "eyes and ears" in Arkansas. The Spectator received large amounts from the even more anti-Clinton political philanthropist, Richard Scaife, to fund dirt-digging on the Clintons in Arkansas.

Dozhier's former girlfriend said some of Dozhier's Spectator money was used to pay David Hale. Dozhier regularly directed her 17-year-old son, she said, to take cash from the bait shop register and deliver it to Hale. Hale is a key prosecution witness in Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation.

Hale's testimony has resulted in several Whitewater convictions. He arranged a fraudulent $300,000 loan, for which he has served time, used to bail the Clintons and their partners out of a land deal gone sour. His testimony is key to whether the Clintons knew the loan was fraudulently obtained.

If, and as always in this murky mess it's a big if, the Dozhier business is true, there's a possibility of criminal witness tampering. The Clinton administration is demanding the possibility be investigated and is suggesting that Starr, because of distant connections to Scaife, has a conflict of interest. The Clinton camp suggests the Justice Department or some disinterested third party should do the investigation.

But the tampering investigation, if Starr decides it merits one, is his. Hale is Starr's witness and Starr's worry. It's too farfetched that Starr would jeopardize a case he has spent four years making by ignoring evidence, or just tales from Dogpatch, that a key witness may be tainted.