Installment Two

in the stirring series of excerpts from Sidney Blumenthal's new blockbuster book (free one-day pass).

Some sidbits from this installment about professional panty sniffer/persecutor Ken Starr:

"Ken Starr had been granted his authority for an expanded investigation. He had a budget of unlimited funds. He had prosecutors, FBI agents, and private investigators. For all intents and purposes, he had no authority exercising oversight over his work. That was why he was an independent prosecutor.

"He also had a retinue of reporters at his call. Of course, it is against the law for a federal prosecutor to leak information that is or might be used in a grand jury. The Federal Code of Criminal Procedure 6(e) strictly forbids that sort of disclosure by a prosecutor or anyone associated with his apparatus. Witnesses are free to speak about their own testimony, but this is rare because they fear punitive retribution. Starr's men, however, had been leaking for years in their slog across the marshes of Whitewater. Starr's grand jury chamber became an echo chamber by virtue of his influence over the press. Within the grand jury room his prosecutors ruled unchallenged, and by using the grand jury process--dragooning witnesses and leaking information or surmise about them--Starr now dominated Washington."

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And remember this one crazed individual working under Starr, Jackie Bennett? Here's what Blumenthal says about him:

"Jackie Bennett was a 'crazed hard charger,' according to my source, and 'fascinated with the president's sex life.' He had grabbed onto sex as a means of getting Clinton and been using private investigators to conduct sex hunts for almost a year. 'It was whatever worked.' When Bob Woodward's article about Starr's sexual pursuit of Clinton was published in the Washington Post in June 1997, a prosecutor who was not privy to Bennett's work asked Starr if it was true. 'He said it was not happening.' Yet Starr publicly admitted at the impeachment hearing before the House Judiciary Committee that it had been happening. Reading Woodward's article, Sam Dash also asked Starr about it: 'The response I got was, "We're not looking into the sex life of the president. We're looking into persons who may have information. We're trying to identify them on Whitewater and things of that nature.' I accepted that.'

"Bennett was the chief leaker in Starr's office--'leaking to reporters constantly,' a prosecutor told me--and had a hierarchy of favorites in the press whose careers had become reliant on him. He was especially 'sweet' on Susan Schmidt at the Washington Post. Starr assured Dash that he was investigating for the source of the leaks and asked Dash if he wanted to do so as well. Dash explained that that was not his job. 'I was constantly told by Ken and his staff that they weren't leaking,' he told me. The leaks went on."

Much more at the link.