TJ WALKER

Monica's Story on Starr

I'm sitting on the floor of the Barnes and Noble on Lexington and 86th Street, near my apartment. Discretely, I'm scribbling notes in my PalmPilot. In my hands, Monica's Story. I don't hate Monica, but I can't stand the idea of putting part of $24.95 into her hands either.

Monica's book is largely drivel, but I carefully read every page with the name Ken Starr printed on it. Here, Lewinsky has performed an admirable service of providing a permanent and public record of the grotesque abuses of power committed by Starr and his many henchmen.

"Does it bother you that I'm wearing a gun?" asked one of Lewinsky's interrogators, when they virtually kidnapped her last year. "27 years in prison" is what you'll get unless you give us what we want, they taunted. Monica was told she'd better rat on her mother and her lover or face a prison term so long she could just forget ever getting married or having children.

"Can I call my lawyer?" Monica asked.

She was told her lawyer handled civil matters, not criminal; therefore he was of no use to her. If you think this is less of a lie than "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," then you probably believe Matt Drudge should replace Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News.

Monica's account is gripping because she details how Starr's legalized lynch mob conspired to get her to commit perjury, all so they would then have enough rope to string her up, then strangle their real target, President Clinton. How did they do this? By preventing her from talking to her lawyer, thus allowing her false affidavit (the one saying she's never been intimate with Clinton) to be submitted the next day.

The mantra of Clinton critics is that everything Starr's office did is standard practice among prosecutors across the land. The ends justify the means when it comes to catching bad guys, or so the reasoning goes. But surely this is fuzzy moral relativism. When Clinton defenders have pointed out that politicians, even presidents, have always had more sex partners than your average monogamist, we are ridiculed as defining deviancy downward and institutionalizing immorality.

Well, what about institutionalizing the deviancy of prosecutors? No thinking person can doubt that Starr's minions repeatedly and blatantly lied, intimidated, employed psychological terrorism, conspired to stop crimes from being prevented, and subverted justice in their dealings with Monica.

Virtuecrats like Bill Bennett obviously don't care about maintaining or improving public morals when they publicly applaud the tactics of the Independent Counsel's Office. We now know this office operated in a manner that was morally indistinguishable from the small town sheriff putting a gun to a black man's head saying, "sign this murder confession or I'll blow your head off now!"

We are told that it is not enough that Clinton was humiliated and degraded for the last 14 months, he must be vilified in the history books. Fine, then the history books also need to reflect that Ken Starr is a bigger un-convicted criminal than Clinton.

History will judge Clinton for turning the White House into his own personal "Animal House" at night, but it will also judge Starr for turning a branch of the Justice Department into the Spanish Inquisition by day. Monica's Story is but another of many sources to document the singularity of Starr's ignominious crimes against humanity.

TJ Walker is a North Carolina native, a web publisher (www.tjwalker.com) and a television commentator who conducts media workshops. He can be reached at tjwalker@tjwalker.com or phone 212-735-6292.