Starr Still On The Job...For Now

Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr is staying on the job – at least for the time being. But there are fresh indications he wants to quit before his five-year investigation of President Clinton and the first lady is done.

Wednesday, in a split decision, the panel that appointed Starr and had considered ending his investigation instead voted 2-1 to keep it alive.

The dissenting member, Judge Richard D. Cudahy, said with Mr. Clinton already impeached and acquitted, and no prosecutions pending against others, "this is a natural and logical point for termination."

In an opinion filed Wednesday, Cudahy wrote, "An endless investigation, which the passivity of the majority invites, can serve no possible goal of justice and imposes needless burdens on the taxpayers."

Cudahy is the lone member of the panel appointed by a Democratic president.

The other two judges -- senior appellate Judge Peter Fay and U.S. Circuit Judge David Sentelle -- noted that Starr's investigation has been "unusually productive," yielding 24 indictments, 16 convictions and the impeachment of the president.

The panel's opinion came amid questions about whether Starr would leave the job before his office writes its final report. The independent counsel law that created Starr's post expired June 30, but did not stop the work of existing independent counsels.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Starr told Judge Sentelle on Aug. 2 that he expected to leave the job before the end of the year.

Attorney General Janet Reno declined to discuss who might take over any unfinished investigations if Starr were to resign. "I'd prefer the Department of Justice to address the issues as they arise," she said.

Justice Department officials have told Starr they probably would be unable to take over his unfinished investigation, a department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Appearing on CBS This Morning, a former Starr deputy, Solomon Wisenberg, said the panel's decision to let the investigation continue, "should have been completely perfunctory, and it was entirely appropriate."

He said if Starr "wants to leave in a few months, I can't think of anybody who is more deserving. He's been there longer than anybody else associated with the probe."

Asked his opinion of the independent counsel statute, Wisenberg said, "I think I would agree with Judge Starr that it's proven to be unworkable. Because what happens is, when you get an independent counsel who, through proper investigation, actually finds substantial evidence against a president or against people closely associated with that president, the attack machine starts."

Starr resigned once before, in February 1997, to take a job at Pepperdine University in California. But he rescinded it within days after coming under heavy criticism for leaving the post before his investigation was completed.

Among the ongoing subjectof Starr's investigation is first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's work in the 1980s as a private lawyer on a fraudulent Arkansas land deal that played a role in the insolvency of a Little Rock, Ark., savings and loan.

Starr said last week he hoped to wrap up the investigation and write a final report at the "earliest practicable moment." He told reporters he expected the work to be completed before the general election in November 2000, when Mrs. Clinton likely will be the Democratic nominee for a U.S. Senate seat from New York.