Culture of Deception

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For the 29 current and former officials of the Clinton Administration who raised their right hands and swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, last Friday was supposed to be an end, not a beginning. They had already been interviewed by federal attorneys, testified to a grand jury, told their stories to a government ethics board and explained their actions to the White House counsel. In every instance, they had been cleared of wrongdoing. As they completed their disjointed testimonies in congressional hearings last week, senior White House officials were relieved to have put the half-year of scrutiny behind them.

But then, just hours after the hearings had come to a close, the nightmare began again. A three-judge panel in Washington stunned the White House by replacing independent counsel Robert Fiske, who had been chosen by Attorney General Janet Reno in January, with Kenneth Starr, a tough, conservative lawyer who served as solicitor general under George Bush. The panel, acting under a law passed by Congress earlier this year, wanted to guarantee that the Whitewater investigation would be truly independent.

While congressional Republicans had praised Fiske when he was first appointed, lately many of them have complained about a lack of aggressiveness in Fiske's investigation and his ties to some members of the Administration. Leading the chorus was Senator Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina, who pointed out last week that former White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum had once recommended Fiske for a job with the Iran-contra independent counsel.

The investigation's fresh start is certain to distract the already embattled Clinton Administration for another six months and to push the probe's conclusion into the middle of Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign. The official White House reaction to Starr's arrival was a polite, two-sentence statement of welcome. The real reaction was different. "This is awful," said a Clinton adviser.

Starr's arrival could also mean that the White House officials whom Fiske cleared of criminal wrongdoing in June may find themselves under fresh scrutiny. More time may have to be spent preparing for depositions. More money may have to be raised for legal fees. Contact between officials in different departments will remain out of bounds. "Jesus," said one of last week's key witnesses, "a new prosecutor means I might have to go all through this again." Another witness said simply, "It's Kafkaesque."