Starr Leaks Float White House Boat

WASHINGTON: After all those lost legal battles over executive privilege, it was no surprise that the White House jumped on Ken Starr's admission that his office leaked information to reporters. "This is a bombshell," senior Clinton advisor Rahm Emmanuel said Sunday of Steve Brill's interview with Starr. Without a trace of irony, Emmanuel added: "There ought to be an investigation." The interview appears in the inaugural issue of Brill's Content magazine.

The White House, of course, loves an excuse to stall. Though some of the crumbs dropped in Brill's magazine seem very serious, Starr maintains that he did nothing illegal, or even improper. However, if it can be shown that the independent counsel leaked grand jury evidence to reporters before it became grand jury evidence, that would be a serious breach of the spirit, if not the letter of the law. "I only wanted to talk to them about the timing," Starr said in the interview. No reporter with any direct contact has yet fingered Starr himself as the source in an admittedly leaky prosecutorial office -- except, of course, for Brill. And he has a magazine about journalistic ethics to sell.