Starr Grills Secret Service

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr has been meeting secretly with Secret Service agents in an effort to gather information on the relationship between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, CBS News has learned.

CBS News White House Correspondent Scott Pelley reports that Starr's team of prosecutors has taken depositions from 20 agents in an effort to document Lewinsky's visits to the White House.

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Starr has appealed to the court, and Judge Norma Holloway Johnson has ruled that the agents must testify, an opinion that is being appealed by the White House.

Meanwhile, Lewinsky's new lawyers, Jacob Stein and Plato Cacheris, met with Starr and his senior aides for more than an hour Tuesday, the start of an effort to work out an agreement for Lewinsky's testimony, legal sources said.

The meeting at Starr's office was the first substantive discussion the two sides have held since the former White House intern hired Stein and Cacheris last week in a bid to gain immunity from prosecution, the sources said.

Talks between Lewinsky's new lawyers and Starr's office did not get into evidence in the probe, but rather focused on a "framework" for gaining her cooperation, said one source.

Reached at their offices, Stein and Lewinsky family spokeswoman Judy Smith declined to comment, as did Charles Bakaly, a spokesman for Starr.

Negotiations between Lewinsky's first lawyer, William Ginsburg, and Whitewater prosecutors broke down months ago in an atmosphere of distrust, with Ginsburg claiming he had a valid immunity agreement with prosecutors and Starr's office denying it. A federal judge ruled in Starr's favor on the question, and an appeals court rejected the case.