Clinton hits his decision on inquiry

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The January 1994 White House request for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the Whitewater scandal was the "worst presidential decision I ever made," former President Bill Clinton says in his new book, "My Life."

"It was ... wrong on the facts, wrong on the law, wrong on the politics, wrong for the presidency and the Constitution," Mr. Clinton said in the 957-page autobiography, blaming it on exhaustion and grief over the death just days earlier of his mother, Virginia Kelley.

"I was completely exhausted and grieving over mother," he said. "It took all the concentration I could muster just to do the job I had left her funeral to do."

But a bipartisan call for an outside prosecutor came after The Washington Times reported in December 1993 that documents involving the Whitewater-Madison affair were secretly taken from White House Deputy Counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr.'s office by Clinton staffers just hours after his July 1993 suicide.

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the powerful Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, led the charge, saying an independent counsel was "necessary."

Mr. Clinton, whose book was released yesterday to poor reviews but good sales, said that had he followed the advice of White House Counsel Bernard L. Nussbaum, who "never got over my foolish decision" to seek a special counsel, there would have been "no investigation, subpoenas or grand jury."Robert B. Fiske, a Republican and former U.S. attorney in New York, was named special counsel on Jan. 20, 1994, by Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate -- at the White House's request -- the Clintons' involvement in Whitewater Development Corp., an Arkansas land venture, and Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association, a failed thrift owned by longtime Clinton friends, James and Susan McDougal.

In August 1994, Mr. Fiske was replaced by former Republican Solicitor General Kenneth W. Starr, appointed by a panel of three federal appeals court judges after Mr. Clinton had signed into law a new independent counsel statute.

"Unlike Fiske, Starr had no prosecutorial experience, but he had something far more important; he was much more conservative and partisan than Fiske," Mr. Clinton said. "His bias against me was the very reason he was chosen and why he took the job."

Mr. Starr ultimately accused Mr. Clinton of a "pattern of obstruction, false statements and a misuse of executive authority" to thwart the Paula Jones sexual misconduct case and the Monica Lewinsky probe, which led to his impeachment by the House. After a trial, the Senate voted not to remove him from office.

Mr. Clinton said Mr. Starr abused the power of his office in bringing indictments against many of the president's friends in what he described as accusations that were unrelated to the Whitewater probe.