The High Cost of Ken Starr

WASHINGTON: Both sides in the war between Ken Starr and the Clinton administration got a heap of ammunition Wednesday. First, a General Accounting Office audit of the prosecutor's Whitewater probe shows Starr spending $30 million in taxpayer dollars over four years. That makes Starr's the most spendthrift of the six independent counsel probes now under way, and means his probe is nearing the $40 million cost of the most expensive independent counsel probe ever conducted, Lawrence Walsh's Iran-Contra investigation.

Second, a New York Times report says White House lawyers are waging a clandestine court battle over executive privilege -- invoking it not just in Clinton's name, but in Hillary's and Bruce Lindsey's too. The upshot: Starr looks like a profligate, and Clinton looks like he's doing some major stonewalling. Nobody wins.

The conflict is hardest on those caught in the cross fire. White House personnel chief Marsha Scott let her frustration boil over Tuesday -- after being subpoenaed for the seventh time in the Whitewater affair. "I don't even know where the Whitewater area is," she told reporters. "This whole process harasses people." Us, most of all.