Up next, a 2019 interview with mr. Starr, where he reflected on his leaning into the investigation on former president bill clinton. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back. If you were with us earlier. If you are just joining us, welcome to the Annapolis Book festival. My name is john beed. I am a former Service Officer with the u. S. Agency for international development, but i am a proud father of three. I am delighted to be able to join this conversation with our next author, kenneth starr, who has graciously come back to the festival this year to talk about his latest book. A memoir of his time leading the 1990s investigation into whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky matter during the tenure of president bill clinton. When you have been in the center of the public eye as can has, he needs no introduction, but i will give you a quick snapshot of his distinguished career in law and public service. He is a graduate of brown university, duke law school. He was the u. S. Solicitor general. He was dean of the pepperdine law school. He was chancellor and president of baylor university. He has been a very distinguished private attorney with firms across california, texas, and washington, d. C. He was also something called an independent counsel. Even though we have a bright crowd here because this is the key school and the annapolis area, i bet if i asked you or if i said the three names, newbold morris, Ashley Palmer green, and john b henderson, and you not allowed to answer, ken, no one knows who they are. But i5 said the names to bob parks, ken starr, and weller, you know i am talking about special counsels who were appointed and have been assigned to highlevel cases involving the executive branch. There are some differences and distinctions between each of those titles and we will get into that a bit later with ken, but first i want to start off by taking us back to 1994. You have been in private practice with the chicago Firm Kirkland ellis and enjoying a nice time in the washington, d. C. Area teaching law at nyu. And you get a call from judge sentelle, who is calling to ask if you would be willing to replace bob fisk, at that time was heading up the whitewater investigation. Ken, why did you want to leave this great job in the d. C. Area and go back into the political arena . And did you have any idea what you are about to get into . Mr. Starr i had no idea whatsoever. But when i arrived in little rock on the day of my appointment, and i had a deal in arkansas that would take six months to investigate, wrap up, it that there wasnt much money involved, but when i arrived on that faithful avenue afternoon, i had taken the oath of office. This was an assignment, go get it done. I arrived in bob fisks office, and this is going to foreshadow bob moeller. He was appointed by the attorney general special counsel. He had a different title. He was an appointee of then attorney general janet reno. I am sitting in his office and i knew bob. He is a very distinguished lawyer in new york, i had worked with him. We had had chats about practicing together and i have the highest regard and i still do for robert fisk. Bob said, and i described this, ken, move your family to little rock. You will be here for a long time. [laughter] he had found more than a blend deal in arkansas. Mr. Beed could you take us into your operation . How big was your team, who was working with you, and who were some of the key actors on your team . Mr. Starr the Team Expanded or contracted depending on the circumstances. We assigned lawyers to specific matters, the death of minced and foster junior, for example. The fraudulent billings of wednesday or hubble winston hubbell, and hilarys law partner at the law form firm had a guilty plea for defrauding clients. Fraud is really bad, but one of the victims of fraud is the United States government, woe be unto that person. There were different matters under investigation, but one of the significant things happened early on, john. I went overnight from being a lot person, i had been a judge in the d. C. Circuit judge as you were kind enough to mention. I had duties in the Justice Department, and while no one was saying bob fisk needs to go and we need a replacement, special division that did the appointment of the special counsel, independent counsel, as i was called. But it was truly independent of the Justice Department and bob had been appointed by the attorney general, so there is a logic there. In any event, the New York Times praised my appointment. Two weeks later, the New York Times called on me to resign. In those two weeks, i had not done much bad. In fact, i had done nothing at all. But the political view changed, the spin cycle inside the clinton propaganda machine, and i am not being political here, this is just reality and history. This comes back to who is the team i see some people here who might be as old as i am who remember something called watergate. One of the heroes, a truth seeker of watergate was sam dash. Sam had been successful a distant assistant pa in philadelphia. I knew sam well. Sam comes to my office and says, ken, you are being pilloried because of your republican credentials. I said, i have noticed that. He said, i am not a republican. He was a wellknown and prominent democrat. He said, you should consider retaining your evidence counsel. There was a check and balance. That was something i had not expected to have to do, but as we geared up, the final thing i will say for the trial, it turned out there was Serious Fraud there in little rock. As we gear up for the trial against the city governor and james and Susan Mcdougall, these are names from the past, but some of you may have recalled that james and Susan Mcdougall for the sole owners of the madison guaranteed savings and loans which collapsed fraud. Madison guaranty was hilarys client of the law firm, which raised serious questions. It was also in a staycation an institution whose funding was inappropriately used for the land dealings. When you unravel it all, there was fraud at the core of the entire transaction of the financing of the whitewater land deal. As we looked ahead to that trial , knowing we were going to trial and we were going to get guilty please along the way, some people, you see what is unfolding now and the scandal involving a college admissions. It is an ugly situation. The people are entering guilty pleas. That is what we were experiencing in the upshot once we expanded the trial team, and the trial Team Included rod rosenstein, the now Deputy Turney general of the United States. Attorney general of the United States. Mr. Beed you mentioned it was a complex web of transactions you were looking at under whitewater. There were also prominent offshoots of the investigation, one of which was a controversial death of a confidant and former law partner of Hillary Clintons , mens foster, who was at the time of white house counsel. There were questions around the circumstances of his death, but you are ultimately able to conclude it was in fact suicide. Could you talk about that case and how you came to that conclusion . Mr. Starr bob fisk had undertaken an examination of the circumstances of the death. Vincent foster was a very successful lawyer, a law partner of the Rose Law Firm of hillery. The three of them were very close. I am pleased to say that there was no suggestion that vince foster was somehow involved in the fraudulent transactions involving madison guaranty. Within seven months of coming to washington, d. C. , this successful and prominent lawyer from all appearances who is happily married with the family took his own life. Bob fisk concluded that it was a suicide. There were so many conspiracy theories, so i decided we need to take a second look to make sure that we have done absolutely everything to examine the questions that were being raised because there were suggestions that vince foster in fact was a victim of homicide and that his body had been moved to the park. Lets call it conspiratorial theories of different kinds. We took an elaborate look at that. We did hire experts, some of the leading experts in the country in terms of forensic examination and i think we proved jan to a shadow of a doubt, not just beyond a reasonable doubt, that he in fact did commit suicide. Wes i raised in the book was why did he commit suicide . Why was he depressed . And the why is something that i do speculate about in the book because i think he was a person of conscience. There were some aspects of the former partners relationship with the Rose Law Firm including socalled missing Rose Law Firm billing records that showed that hillary had committed participated in various sundry legal advice aspects to madison guaranty savings loans, including transactions that were clearly fraudulent. That proved that she was aware of the fraud, and that is a key distinction. Why would the Rose Law Firm records in those preelectronic days go missing . And the Rose Law Firm said, it was stolen. This is not proper. You do not take billing records out of the law firm. They, of course, eventually found them in the residence of the white house. Mr. Beed contrary to some opinions, investigations like the one that you are in have been referred to as fishing expeditions. By character and by definition, the fact that the professionals from the Justice Department that are carrying these out, they are anything but. To be able to take anything under the purview, you have got to get going, which is in your case, when the monica lubinski matter came under your purview. You initially had i would like to know how that came to your attention. And you ultimately had to get permission from the attorney general at the time move forward. Could you talk a bit about that . Mr. Starr that last fact was at the time underappreciated by the american people. That the investigation of the president for possible crimes such as perjury and obstruction of justice was expressly authorized by the attorney general of the United States, janet reno. This came to be because of a connection with vince foster junior. The last person who we knew saul vince foster alive in the white house was under trim. In trim linda trim. Linda says a young woman, and that was Monica Lewinsky, working alongside me at the pentagon in the Public Affairs and Public Information office has made me aware that there is a relationship with the president , but most relevantly, she is asking me to commit her perjury perjury because she has committed perjury herself. At the end of that phone call on sunday night, i was away at the American Bar Association meeting in colorado. She said, you know me. I am linda trimp, a witness in the vince foster death investigation. We took steps, some of which have been criticized, and criticism comes with the territory, but we verify what linda had told us on that sunday evening. She had recorded a number of telephone conversations with monica, so we were reviewing those. The fbi was looking at those as well. We did have the famous episode at the ritzcarlton, which has been severely criticized, but her conduct was vindicated in litigation. We confirmed realtime that this was exactly what was underway. Maybe monica was encouraging linda to file a perjurious affidavit. There were a lot of societal concerns and rightly so. This was essentially a civil rights case that had been brought by Polly Gorman Jones at the time, an employee of the arkansas government. She alleged that there had been very horrible event that was unsettling to her. She brought up federal court action under the civil rights laws against bill clinton for his conduct these are allegations for his alleged conduct in a hotel in little rock. It was in connection with that that all of the super fit he was underway in terms of false, perjurious affidavits, encouraging others to lie and so forth. Mr. Beed obviously intense public scrutiny and a lot of babbling back and forth lyrically battling back and forth politically. You have got to have thick skin to go into these kinds of jobs. I do not want to say they are thankless, but they are difficult. And youre going to make at least half of the people upset before you come out. I wonder about the toll this takes on you personally, or bob moeller personally, and your families. Your wife was quoted at one point during whitewater saying this is a nightmare which is not going to end. And one example that hit me and a lot of people who have sent their kids off to college, your daughter was accepted into stanford. A year later after, Chelsea Clinton went to stanford. She gets there and she is receiving what the Marshals Service considered to be considerable Death Threats and she has got 24 hour protection. How do you deal with Something Like that . Mr. Starr what a great question of the year. I cannot say enough in praise of the United StatesMarshals Service, put completely professional. What they have to do the job because there was they were appointed by the courts. Why were you not protected by the fbi or the secret service . Because i was appointed by the court under the statute, i was treated as if i were a judge. I was not paid as well, but protection came through the marshals, and they did a wonderful job. It was a toll. We had aroundtheclock security at the house. Command post outside her house, what we called outside our house, what we called the brady bunch. We had the press outside our house most days. They would go away once i left for the office. And the press was fine in terms of that. One whimsical story is that at the funeral of Antonin Scalia a couple of years ago coming out of the church, the cathedral, commenting on the record about Justice Scalia when i had served under the d. C. Circuit judge and when i served as solicitor general. I say my quick piece and i am leaving. One of the press says, i camped outside your house, and i said, i am sorry. I said, no, it is fine, we made a down payment on our house because of it. So some good came out of it paid i recount some pressures on the family, but our family was strong and we were surrounded by faith and friends. Just the support of our church, our neighborhood. We have a great soda involving michael moore. Great episode involving michael moore. The filmmaker i do not have time to tell the story, but across the street neighbor, donna hogan, she is wonderful and had a young kid. The youngest was a future stanford quarterback, kevin hogan. Small world, right . This is all captured on cnn. Way to go, donna. Get out of this neighborhood, you are scaring the children, and everything. Michael had colorful things to say to donna hogan. Those are whimsical and not so whimsical moments at the time. It just suggested the controversy of the natural tone national town. We came through it as a country and we come through these things as we did during the administration. How do we in a free society that believes in rule of law and accountability keep the president and those around him or her honest . And if they are serious allegations of wrongdoing, are we simply going to say, excuse me, our chief executive is above the law. Not in the United States, and that is part of the glory. It is unpleasant, especially not fun for those wrapped up in it, and for president clinton and hillary and chelsea, this is a horrible episode to go through. On a personal level, yes, lost of lots of cough, but in terms of who we are as a free people, isnt it reassuring to know that truly no one is above the law . That is the goal. No one is above the law. Mr. Beed that is a statement you have made publicly and also in a book frequently. It is a bedrock principle for you. The other thing that is interesting in the book are some things that come out that maybe people are not familiar with about yourself. Did you know ken started as a democrat . He was a big admirer of john kennedy and still is. Mr. Starr i am still in admirer of john kennedy. [laughter] mr. Beed we have a song. I saw the light. This is a polite audience so there is no booing or hissing. Thank you for restraining yourself. I tell that story briefly, and a great admirer of john kennedy. I was a democrat, and my epiphany for me was sitting at the feet of republican congressman from texas and just hearing his philosophy and learning about the vision of freedom, the baseline for the United States of america is freedom, so this is not the time to get into that, but you are right. Guilty as charged. There is also the old saying attributed to senator shah. He is not liberal and young has no heart. Mr. Beed you also make the point, which i think is also personally revealing, that even though you agreed with some of the other political leanings that he had at the time, senator fulbright, his anticivil rights record and voting actions and all of that were anathema to you. I want to try to bring some of these things together. Your clear reverence for the law, the fact that you rightfully believe that no one person is above the law. I think some of your principles of social justice, and i want to get your thoughts because you have a unique per chaz a judge, a defense attorney, prosecutor perch as a judge, defense attorney, a prosecutor. When you look at things, African Americans are incarcerated at double the rate their share of the u. S. Population. Still have no convictions of prosecutions involved in the 2007, 2008 financial crisis. You continue to