Although the office of the independent counsel has been a fixture on the U.S. political landscape since the days of Watergate, the post is inherently flawed and should be eliminated, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr told a packed Battell Chapel during his visit to Yale on Sept. 16.
Starr, whose investigation of Bill Clinton led to the President's impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives last year, came to the University as a guest of the Yale Political Union, an undergraduate organization devoted to promoting political discourse on campus. During his talk, Starr argued in favor of the Political Union's debate statement "Resolved: Congress was correct in not renewing the Independent Counsel Statute."
Although he rarely alluded to his own experience in the independent counsel's office, which he described as "a fourth branch of government," Starr did note that "independent counsels are especially vulnerable to attack" by both politicians and the public.
"The independent counsel doesn't have the jurisdiction to investigate all avenues available to the Attorney General," Starr said, adding that such restrictions create delays in the process, as the independent counsel is forced to go to the courts to have his investigative authority expanded. This, in turn, "opens the independent counsel to the accusation of exceeding his jurisdiction," he said.
Furthermore, contended Starr, not only is there an intrinsic partisan animosity between the office of the independent counsel and the Justice Department, but "the independent counsel is dependent on and vulnerable to the administration for the investigation."
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