Good afternoon everyone and welcome back if your with us earlier or you just joining us welcome to the Annapolis Book festival into the key school read my name is john beat i am a Foreign Service officer for International Development but much more importantly, am a proud father of three including a son who is a junior here at key school. I am very delighted to be able to join this conversation with our next author. Kenneth starr. Lets graciously come back to the festival this year to talke about his latest book. A memoir of his time leaving the 1990s investigations into whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky matter during the tenure president bill clinton. When youve been in the White House Center of theil public ey, as can certainly t has, judge starr probably needs no introduction but ill just give you a quick snapshot of his distinguished career and law and public service. Heis hamza graduate of George Washington university coming brown university, duke law school, he was the us solicitor general, he was dean of the pepperdine my school, chancellor and president of baylor university, and he is been a wry distinguished private attorney with firms in california. Texas and washington dc and he also was something called an independent counsel. Even though we have a very bright crowd here because this is the key school and this is the annapolis area. I bet if i ask you or if i said the three names newbold morris, athlete, rain and John B Anderson and youre not allowed to answer can. I bet no one knows who they are. But if i said the names Archibald Cox, ken starr and beaumont broke, you know im talking about a very select of special prosecutors independent councils, special counsel who were appointed and have been appointed to look into highlevel high visible little cases involving the executive branch. There are some differences in distinct joints between each of those titles and we will get into that a little bit later with ken. But first i wanted to take and start off by taking us back to 1994. Ac youd been in private practice with the chicago Firm Kirkland and ellis and joining very nice time in the washington dc area area when teaching law and nyu. You get a call. From judge sentelle. He was calling to ask if you would be willing about replacing bob was heading up the whitewater investigation. Ken, why did you want to leave this great job and time in the dc area and b go back into the political arena and if you have any idea what you are about to get into. Fools rush in and i had no idea. Ea not whatsoever. But when i arrived in little rock, on the day of my appointment, and i thought well its a failed land deal in arkansas and will maybe take six investigate and wrap up. There wasnt that much money involved, but when i arrived in little rock up on that fateful afternoon, i had taken the oath of office just quietly. We didav have family president ,s just an assignment go get it done. Ii arrived in bob fisks office and bob, this is going to foreshadow bob muller and all of that was appointed by the attorney general as special counsel. Ey he had a different title and the titles have switched but he was an appointee of an attorney general reno. So i am sitting in his office and i knew bob, very distinguished lawyer in new york and id actually worked with him we had had chats about even practicing together at the highest regard and i still do for robert fisk. Bob said, and i described this in the book i talked about, can move your family to little rock, you are going to be here for a long time. [laughter] he had found more than a failed land deal in our arkansas. Could you takeld us into your operational debt. How big was your team, who was working there,ho lawyers, fbi agents, and who are some of the key actors on your team . The Team Expanded or contracted depending on the circumstances. We assigned lawyers to specificc matters, the death of Vincent Foster junior for example. The fraudulent billings of webster hubbell, name from the past but who was the associate attorney general of the United States and hillarys law partner at the Rose Law Firm. Who entered a guilty plea for defrauding clients as a law firm and the clients concluded the United States fraud was really bad but one of the victims of the fraud was United States government. Will be into that person. So there were different matters under investigation but one of the significant things that happened early on john. Was i would overnight from being a law person, id been a judge, as you were kind enough to mention, i did two tours of duty in the Justice Department. The news york times was very sweet and while no one was saying bob fisk needs to go, and we need a replacement, the special division that did the appointed of this special counsel,po independent counsel s i was called, they determined know we need is someone who is truly independent. Of the Justice Department bob had been appointed by the attorney general. There is a real logic there. But in any of it, New York Times praised my appointment. Two weeks later, the New York Times called on me to resign. [laughter] now and those two weeks, i hadnt done much bad, in fact, i had done nothing at all. [laughter] but the political changed the fact of what howard kurtz called the spin cycle inside the clinton Propaganda Machine and im not being political here, this is just reality and history. I then was w visited so this cos back to who was the team by someone i see some people who might be as old as i am and you remember something called watergate. At one of the heroes of real truth seeker was sam dash. Sam had been a very successful assistant d. A. In philadelphia and he was also an academic at georgetown, and i know sam well. Sam comes to my office and says ken, your being of your because of your republican credentials. Yes, i noticed that sam. I am not a republican, its worked very well known i am a prominent democrat, and he said you should consider chicken a balance. There was something i had not expected to do, nor to have to do but as we geared up finally i will say for the trial, have as it turned out that there was Serious Fraud there. In little rock and as we gear up for the trial, against the sitting governor and james and Susan Mcdougall names from the past, but some you may recall, the james and Susan Mcdougall with the sole owners of the madison guaranty savings and loan which had collapsed. It fraud. Madison guaranty was hillarys client. At the Rose Law Firm which raised a series of questions. It also was in Fact Institution whose funding was in fact used inappropriately for the financing of the whitewater land deal. It really gets complex and when you unravel it all, there was fraud at the core of the entire transaction of the financing ofn the whitewater land l deal. So as we look to head at that trial, knowing that we were going to trial, we were not going to get some of the guilty pleas Robert Palmer and appraiser he had in it fraudulent appraisal. Some people and you seet whats unfolding now in the scandal involving college admissions, right it is a pretty ugly situation. People are entering guilty pleas. Thats what we were experiencing in the upshot was that we expanded the trial team in the trial team by the way what included Rod Rosenstein. The now Deputy Attorney general of the United States. You mentioned that it really is a very complex web of transactions that you were looking under whitewater. Also some very prominent offshoots of the investigations one of which was at that time a very controversial death. And confident former law partner of Hillary Clintons vince foster who was at the Time White House counsel and there were some questions surrounding the circumstances of his death. You ultimately were able to conclude that it was in fact suicide. Could you talk a little bit about that. How did you come to that conclusion. Bob had undertaken confiscated undertaken an examination of the circumstances of the death and some foster was a very successful lawyer a law partner, the Rose Law Firm. Of hillary. The three of them were very very close. Im very pleased to say there was no suggestion that vince foster was somehow involved in the fraudulent transactions involving medicine and i guarantee but within seven months of coming to washington dc, this very successful prominent lawyer from all appearances happily married with the family took his own life. So bob concluded it was a acsuicide, there were so many conspiracy theories and so i decided we need to take a second lookok and look and just make se that we have done absolutely everything to examine the questions that were being raised because there were suggestions that were illfounded but there were suggestions that vince foster in fact was a victim of a homicide. And that his body had been b mod from marcy park sos lets just call conspiratorial theories. We took a very elaborate look at that, we did hire experts and some of the leading experts in the country country for forensic examinations and i think we prove beyond a shadow of a doubt not just beyond a reasonable doubt that he in fact did commit suicide. What a raise in the book is why did he commit suicide. Why was he depressed. The why is something that i do speculate about in the book because i think he was a person of conscious, and there were some aspects of the former partners relationship with the Rose Law Firm including the socalled missing Rose Law Firm billing records that showed that hillary had in fact performed services, not that she committed fraud but that she had committed participated in various it legal advice aspects to madison and guaranty savings and loan including transactions that were clearly fraudulent. It didnt prove that she was aware of the fraud, thats the key distinction. Nc now back to why with the Rose Law Firm records in those pre electronic days, commencing. In the Rose Law Firm said, they were stolen. This is not proper. [laughter] you dont take billing records at a law firm. They were of course eventually found. Ve in the residence of the white house. Contrary to some opinions, investigations like the one you ran, and the onest of course bob roller had just run, having referred to is sometimes as fishing expeditions, hoaxes, which ends. You by character and by definition by the effective the professionals from the Justice Department that are tearing these investigations out, they are anything but. And really to be able to take anything under your review youve got to really get the goahead which in your case, when the Monica Lewinsky matter came under your purview, you initially add. First i like to know how that came to your attention. And then, youad ultimately had o get permission from the attorney general of the time janet reno to move forward. Could you talk a little bit about that. colon this is a young woman who was Monica Lewinsky , working alongside me here at the pentagon in Public Affairs and Public Information office has made me aware there is a relationship with the president most relevantly she is asking me to commit perjury because she has committed perjury herself pregnant at the end of that phone call on sunday night i was actually at the American Bar Association meeting inin colorado one colorado. Who actually know me im a witness in the vince foster investigation. I am linda tripp. So we took steps some of which have been criticized which goes of the territory. But we verified what linda had told us and the surreptitious tape recording with a number of telephone conversations with monica and so we were reviewing those the fbi was looking at those as well. But then we had the famous episode at ritzcarlton that was severely criticizederti but the conduct wasd vindicated in litigation. We confirmed real time this was exactly underway that monica was encouraging the linda to file injurious case we take Sexual Harassment very seriously that this was essentially a civil rights case brought by paula jones at the time was an employee of the arkansas government. She alleged there was a very horrible kind of event that was unsettling to her so she brought federal court action under civil rights laws against clinton for his conduct, although allegations were his alleged conduct in a hotel in the rock. In connection with that all of this was underway with false perjurious affidavits and false statements encouraging others to lie. Ot intense public scrutiny and back and forth politically at this time. One thing your book brings out quite poignantly is that you have to have thickck skin to go into these jobs for quite a to say theyre thankless but theyre very difficult and you will make half the people upset before you come out. I wonder about the toll this takes on you personally or bob mulder personally and your families. Your wife was quoted at one point during whitewaterhite sayg this is a nightmare which will not end and in the one example that hit me and a lot of people who sent your kids off to college your daughter was sent off to clinton one year after Chelsea Clinton and she gets there and is receiving credible Death Threats and has 24 hour protection. What a great freshman year. [laughter] i cannot say enough praise to those United StatesMarshals Service that was professional and superb but they had to do the job because it was appointed by the court once you are protected because there was a point where the court under the statute that existed, i was treated as if i were a judge. I was not paid as well as a judge but protection came from the us marshals and they did a wonderful job. It was a toll. T had aroundtheclock security at the house so a command post was outside the house that we call the brady h bunch house. Which the press already knew so the press was outside the house most days they would go away once i left for the office and the press was fine in fact one story was at the funeral of scilly a couple years ago, ago, coming out of the cathedra cathedral, commenting on the record about Justice Scalia with the dc circuit before whom i had argued when i was solicitor general. With say my piece that i am leaving one said by the way i camped outside your house you may not recognize me i was there for eight months i said i am sorry he said i saved a lot of money we made a down payment on her house thanks to you. [laughter] so some good comes out of that. But some of the pressures were on the family but the family was strong and surrounded by faith and friends with the support of our home church and neighborhood. We had a great episode involving michael moore. A very entertaining episode from the filmmaker i have time to tell it but its a very colorful story and across the street ss neighbor had a young kid and the youngest was a future stanford quarterback futurere nfl named kevin hogan and she comes out this is all captured on cnn. Who said gets out of this neighborhood we have children here you are scaring everybody. And michael has some colorful things to say to donna hogan. Al those are whimsical and not so whimsical moments but looking back to just suggest the controversy in the national to malta but we came through it as a country we come through these things as we did during the administration of uss grant so how do we in a free society that believes in rule fof law and accountability keep the president and those around him or her honest . And if they are serious allegations of wrongdoing , will be suddenly say which is the case ins some countries, excusehe me, our chief executive is above the law but not in the United States. So it is unpleasant as all get out and especially not fun for those wrapped up like clinton or hillary or chelsea this was a horrible episode to go through. On a personal level, yes a lot of cost but in terms of who we are with the constitutional democracy isnt it reassuring to know that truly no one is above the law . Thats the goal. That is a statement you have made publicly and also in the book very frequently it is clear it is a bedrock principle for you. The other thing that is interesting in the book is things that come out that people are not familiar with. Did you know ken started as a democrat and was a big admirer of john kennedy. And still am. But not still a democrat. [laughter] we have a song i saw the light. [laughter] you have a polite audience. Thank you for restraining yourself. But i tell that story very briefly i was in Young Democrats and my epiphany was sitting at the feet of a republican congressman from texas as a sixth generation to hear his philosophy and learning about the vision of the United States of america is t freedom and this is of the time to get into that but guilty as charged. Also the old saying attributed to bernard shaw he will make hgender neutral he who has no heart he who is not conservative has no head. [laughter] you also make the point which is personally revealing that even though you agreed to s