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KEN STARR NEVER wanted his report to Congress to be just about sex and lies. He hoped it would be a sweeping document, one that would show Bill Clinton engaged in a pattern of misconduct and cover-ups. GOP members of Congress cling to the hope that there may still be some other bombshell in the independent counsel's files. The special prosecutor has reached back to Whitewater. He's probed Hillary Clinton's role in the firing of the travel staff and alleged abuses of confidential FBI files. But in the end, sources tell NEWSWEEK, Starr unearthed no clear-cut evidence of crimes or impeachable offenses by the president in any matter other than his affair with Monica Lewinsky. The scandals, and their dead ends:
Whitewater. Starr's prosecutors have long believed the story first told five years ago by Little Rock businessman David Hale: that, in 1986, Clinton pressured Hale to make a fraudulent $300,000 loan to Clinton's business partner Susan McDougal. Clinton flatly denied the charge when he testified at the 1996 trial of Susan and Jim McDougal, and Starr's prosecutors considered accusing the president of perjury. But the idea of including Whitewater perjury in the Lewinsky report was rejected because there were no credible witnesses to finger the president. Jim McDougal is dead, and Hale is a felon. So is the only other witness, Susan McDougal, who has refused to testify about the loan.
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Meanwhile, there are new questions about Hale that may help the White House in its continuing campaign to attack Starr. An independent investigator has uncovered evidence that $8,800 of Hale's legal fees were paid by associates of conservative philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife. Jay Bequette, the Little Rock lawyer who received the money, declined to comment, and a Scaife lawyer denied knowledge of the payment. But Hale's current lawyer, David Bowden, confirmed that Hale received the money as a "loan," though he denied it influenced Hale's testimony against Clinton.
Travelgate. The 1993 firing of the travel office smacked of cronyism and abuse of power. Starr's prosecutors did find evidence that senior White House officials, including the First Lady, may have misled investigators. But there wasn't enough to bring any indictments and nothing in the probe implicated the president.
The FBI Files. At one point Republicans flogged Filegate as the most serious of the Clinton scandals. Critics charged the improper acquisition of more than 900 FBI dossiers on members of GOP administrations was part of a dirty-tricks operation. But sources familiar with the probe say Starr found no evidence that the files were obtained for any political purpose. Instead, Starr's staff was forced to conclude that the collection of FBI files was exactly what the White House had insisted: a bureaucratic snafu. And so the independent counsel was left with Lewinsky--and now Congress is, too.
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