This Is a Battle --Hillary Clinton

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Ken Starr had never prosecuted a case in his life before he set out to investigate the President of the United States. A cautious, righteous, minister's son, whose mother considers it something of a moral lapse that he now drinks coffee, he spent most of his life as a judge and a corporate lawyer, and still represents clients like Big Tobacco and General Motors. He was once considered the kind of centrist Republican that Democrats love, until he took over the Whitewater investigation and proceeded to squeeze witnesses and pursue leads with a zeal that troubled even people who lost no love for Bill Clinton.

Starr had not brought a new indictment in 1 1/2 years. While he was stalled, the lawyers in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment case were gaining speed, preparing a long list of witnesses who they thought might be able to testify to a pattern of aggressive sexual behavior by the President. When one of those witnesses, Linda Tripp, offered Starr her secret tape recordings of Monica Lewinsky describing an affair with the President and her intention to lie about it, it opened up a whole new world of opportunity for the prosecutor. Adultery was not an impeachable offense, but it might be a pathway to perjury and obstruction of justice by the President and his friend Vernon Jordan.

It looked for a while as though Starr finally had his silver bullet. Lewinsky and Clinton, after all, had denied the affair under oath; the Tripp tapes allowed Starr to threaten Lewinsky with prosecution for perjury unless she would help him expose the President's cover-up. But day after day, well into last week, the immunity talks went nowhere. On Monday, Lewinsky's lawyer William Ginsburg offered what he called a "complete proffer," in which he provided a detailed account of what she would say in exchange for a full grant of immunity. But by Thursday he announced that he had started preparing her criminal defense.

How did something that seemed straightforward suddenly get so complicated? As it turned out, Lewinsky's lawyers did not have much to say to Starr's attorneys. Ginsburg wasn't even doing the negotiating; Washington criminal lawyer Nathaniel Speights was. Starr's team wasn't satisfied by what Lewinsky volunteered, which a source close to the investigation said wasn't a proffer at all; Lewinsky's lawyers have simply been dribbling out bits of information. Republicans were worried that the most she would testify to was that Clinton's legal advice to Lewinsky amounted to little more than vague suggestions. If perhaps he had said something like "Please consider your options carefully," no House Judiciary Committee would regard that as an impeachable offense. And Starr was as yet unable to build a case against whoever wrote the mysterious three-page "talking points" designed to help Lewinsky's friend Tripp tiptoe through a deposition with Jones' lawyers. Starr has subpoenaed Clinton consigliere Bruce Lindsey, who, a source tells TIME, could have been in the best position to offer some legal coaching (see box).