Starr Appeals To High Court

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr wants to put his long-standing battle with the White House over executive privilege on the fast track to resolution.

CBS News White House Correspondent Bill Plante reports Starr has asked the Supreme Court to do what it did in the Watergate case a generation ago -- bypass the appeals court and rule before the end of its term next month on the question of executive privilege.

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A lower court ruling, made public earlier this week, said that although the president is entitled to executive privilege, two of his top aides, Bruce Lindsey and Sidney Blumenthal, still would have to appear before the grand jury investigating President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Click here for an explanation of executive privilege by CBS News Legal Correspondent Kristin Jeannette-Meyers.

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Thursday the administration wanted to "withhold any comment until we've had a chance to review it. It's a fairly complex piece of business."

It is by no means certain the court will grant Starr's request.

"There's no way to know," said University of Southern California law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. "It's very much in their discretion, and it is extraordinary."

The Supreme Court granted such an expedited hearing in 1974, when it ruled unanimously that President Nixon must turn the White House tapes over to Watergate investigators. That ruling led to Nixon's resignation.

In the Nixon case, the justices based their decision to move swiftly on the public importance of the case and the need for prompt resolution of the issue, said George Washington University law professor Mary Cheh.

The Clinton case "meets the test that they applied before," she said. Mark Rozell, a law professor at American University, added, "There is a compelling need, I think, to have this situation resolved."

But Chemerinsky and Pepperdine University law professor Douglas Kmiec noted that the high court was sharply criticized for hearing the Nixon case without waiting for an appeals court decision. Also, the House already was moving toward impeachment in the Nixon matter.

Starr is investigating whether Mr. Clinton had an affair with Lewinsky, a former White House intern, and then tried to get her to lie about it under oath. Both Mr. Clinton and Lewinskhave denied under oath that they had sexual relations.

Starr had asked the Supreme Court to direct the president to respond by Tuesday to the independent counsel's request for a direct appeal to the high court. He also suggested a swift schedule for filing written briefs and an oral argument June 29.

The justices are entering the busiest part of their 1997-98 term and are expected to wrap up their work by the end of June.

"There might be a bit of judicial temptation to round out the term with a bang," Kmiec said. But he added, "My own speculation is that the court will not take the case."
Several legal experts rate Mr. Clinton's chances on appeal as slim. The lower court decision closely followed the high court's precedent in the Nixon case in balancing the president's right for confidential advice against the need for testimony in a criminal investigation.

"If this goes to the Supreme Court, I really think the White House will lose 9-0 or close to it," Rozell said.

He said the Lewinsky case may not be the best case for establishing a legal precedent. "We're not talking about a level of complicity in criminal behavior or events nearly as weighty as Watergate," he said.

Because it is not publicly known what testimony Mr. Clinton is seeking to shield, it is difficult to predict how crucial the case might be to the president's own future.

Still, he added, "If these conversations contain vital information, whether Clinton survives this crisis or not could come down to a ruling on executive privilege. That may be the whole ball game in the end, as it was in the Nixon case."

Meanwhile, sources have told CBS News that Starr's investigation is 80 percent complete.

Whitewater prosecutors questioned witnesses Thursday before two grand juries, one in Washington that heard testimony from Mr. Clinton's friend Vernon Jordan, and one in Alexandria, Va., that took testimony from Pentagon administration director David Cooke.

Cooke says prosecutors asked him about Lewinsky's friend, Linda Tripp. Both Tripp and Lewinsky worked at the Pentagon. Tripp secretly tape-recorded conversations with Lewinsky in which Lewinsky said she had sex with President Clinton and that she was asked to lie about it.

Prosecutors are trying to find out whether Pentagon officials illegally leaked information about Tripp to try to discredit her.
Jordan, suspected of helping Lewinsky find an attorney and a new job in exchange for silence about an affair with Mr. Clinton, made his fourth appearance before the jury and told reporters afterward that he will return again next month.

Lewinsky, meanwhile, went to the federal building in Los Angeles Thursday to give prosecutors her handwriting samples and fingerprints. They are needed, investigators said, to compare against other evidence.