Friday, September 11, 1998

Public should be able to see Starr's report

As things come to look gloomier and gloomier for President Clinton, he has grown more and more contrite, but not so contrite that he has instructed his lawyer to stop his game of delay and undue interference.

Even while Kenneth Starr was passing his 445-page grand jury report on to Congress, Clinton's lawyer was arguing that he should see it first and have a chance to respond, and even as the Republicans in control of Congress were promising the report's prompt public release, the lawyer and some of Clinton's Democratic defenders were saying this was unfair.

The argument against Starr's passing his report to Congress without Clinton's legal team having a crack at it is roughly based on a courtroom analogy and the right of a defendant to cross-examine witnesses and to make counter-arguments. But the first part of this process will be for the House to consider articles of impeachment, the equivalent of an indictment. Starr's report is akin to a prosecutor's recommendation to a grand jury, which would not be accompanied by a defendant's denials or explanations.

If the House votes to impeach, the Senate will conduct a trial. By then, the White House will have had ample opportunity to make any case it wishes in response to the report's contents.

There are two basic reasons the release of the report to the public is a good idea. For one, many of the details would be leaked anyway, only sometimes out of context, perhaps, and sometimes erroneously. Next, this is a democracy and the issue is whether the president stays in power. The public needs to have the report, which the White House can simultaneously peruse and criticize as much as it wants.

If the White House had its way about examining the report, there would be a still longer wait for this crisis to be resolved, as well as questions about the propriety of sharing the report first with the accused party. Starr's issuance of it so quickly after the grand jury testimony by Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton is commendable. It has been eight months since Starr began this particular probe, and his conclusion at this date - considering the obstacles he has faced - can be counted as speedy. The worst thing would have been for him to have waited for the release until right before the November elections.