Author Unknown by Don Foster

Author:Don Foster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Bennett (1999):

The Independent Counsel Act … should not be re-enacted.… I believe it should not be re-enacted in any form.… The first flaw is the hair-trigger provision for activating an independent counsel investigation.… Rather than freeing prosecutorial discretion from political bias, the Act has become another weapon … in the arsenal of partisan politics … puts the scandal machinery in overdrive … create[s] opportunities for actual or apparent partisan influence in law enforcement … [violates] the rights of the targeted public official … [and puts] enormous law enforcement power of the Executive Branch in the hands of a single individual who for both political and practical reasons is unaccountable, unchecked, and who cannot meaningfully be challenged.… As Justice Scalia stated in his now-prescient dissent in Morrison v. Olson, “How frightening.…” [A]ny benefits to be derived from an independent counsel regime are outweighed by … corrosion of public confidence in our justice system; the erosion of the separation of powers; and incursions into the rights of individuals in and out of public office.… [T]he independent counsel process … has not only undermined respect for the Department of Justice but has also led to disrespect for Congress.

At least with respect to the Independent Counsel issue, Steven Calabresi and Robert Bennett think a lot alike. The obvious similarities between the Calabresi essay (April 1994, pub. 1995), the anonymous “points to make in affidavit” (January 1998), and Bennett’s statement to Congress (March 1999) do not prove that one of President Clinton’s personal lawyers in the Jones case contributed to the Talking Points—much of the shared diction is content-linked—but it invites the same old questions: Did Bob Bennett know the Isikoff article? Did Bob Bennett know the Calabresi essay? Did Bob Bennett write “points to make in affidavit”? If not, does he know who did? Good questions!

On May 5, 1999, Kathleen Willey testified that Bob Bennett first asked her to sign an affidavit swearing that she was not sexually harassed by the president and that she refused, signing a more general affidavit stating only that she had no information pertinent to the Jones litigation. When Willey was called to give a deposition anyway, Bennett advised her, she said, to plead her Fifth Amendment rights rather than answer questions about what happened: “It was a threat,” she said, “coming from the president.”35 (Bennett, not under oath, said that all of that was an “absolutely bald-faced lie.”)36

Whether Bennett made an effort to influence the testimony or the affidavit of Linda Tripp concerning the Willey matter may never now be known, but the OIC did learn that Bennett’s people made a generous effort to assist Frank Carter (the attorney Vernon Jordan retained for Monica Lewinsky, and who was later fired and replaced by William Ginsburg and Nathaniel Speights). One day after Jordan drove Monica to Carter’s office, someone in Bob Bennett’s firm graciously faxed Carter a copy of Isikoff’s “A Twist in the Jones Case” and some “generic” tips on how to prepare an affidavit.37 In his Grand Jury testimony, Carter could not recall whether or not those faxed materials from Mr.

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