A New York Times report this week characterizing the man who investigated the Monica Lewinsky scandal as a right-wing hatchet man failed to mention Bill Clinton owned up to the affair.
The article, which bears the none-too-subtle headline “Kenneth Starr, Who Tried to Bury Bill Clinton, Now Only Praises Him,” also compared the former independent counsel to Inspector Javert, the punishment-obsessed lawman from Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.”
“[Starr’s] Javert-like pursuit of Mr. Clinton in the 1990s helped bring a new intensity to partisan warfare and led to the impeachment of a president for only the second time in the nation’s history,” wrote Times reporter Amy Chozick.
During the Clinton years, the story continued, Starr was a “political combatant,” who conducted himself like a right-wing zealot as he investigated numerous White House controversies, including the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky affairs, the death of White House aide Vince Foster and the Whitewater land deal controversy.
As for the scandals themselves, these are the only details offered by the Times:
A federal judge in the Reagan administration and the solicitor general under President George Bush, Mr. Starr was named independent counsel in 1994, taking over the investigation of the Whitewater real estate venture and the suicide of Vincent W. Foster Jr., a deputy White House counsel. He expanded the investigation to include the Paula Jones lawsuit and the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Mr. Starr’s conclusion that Mr. Clinton had committed perjury in sworn testimony denying having had “sexual relations” with Ms. Lewinsky eventually led to Mr. Clinton’s impeachment.
Chozick’s report does not mention Clinton’s about-face in 1998, when he admitted finally to having an affair with Lewinsky. The article also ignored that the Clintons settled the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit out of court, agreeing to pay the alleged victim $850,000.
The story went on to cite certain unnamed “associates” who say they regret that the Clinton administration spent more time addressing its scandals than trying to capture Osama bin Laden.
Lastly, the Times article suggested Starr regrets the role he played in investigating the former president. The report bases this notion on the former federal judge saying last week he thinks it’s unfortunate the Clinton presidency is remembered largely for the “the unpleasantness.”
“There are certain tragic dimensions which we all lament. It’s sad that the chapter is so rooted in the unpleasantness, as I used to call it, the recent unpleasantness,” he said at an event in Philadelphia. “That having been said, the idea of this redemptive process afterwards, we have certainly seen that powerfully. President Carter set a very high standard, which President Clinton clearly continues to follow.”
Also, in 2010, Starr said in a Fox News interview he regretted that the investigation took so long and that it, “brought great pain to a lot of people.”
For the Times, these remarks “seemed almost to absolve Mr. Clinton, if not to exonerate him.”
