Sheriff Starr Saddles Up to Chase His Last Lead

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WASHINGTON: It's the last piece of the Lewinsky puzzle, at least until Bill Clinton leaves office: the trial of Julie Steele. Remember Steele? She's the one who says she lied when she backed up ex-friend Kathleen Willey's story about getting a presidential groping in November 1993, and then recanted -- which is what she told federal agents and two of Starr's grand juries. But Starr thinks she's lying about lying, pressured by the long arm of the White House to discredit her own corroboration. If that sounds confusing -- and wildly tangential now that impeachment is just an unpleasant memory -- that's because it is. But for Starr, it's the last legal loose end that could unravel a White House's tapestry of lies, and he's going to pull on it for all it's worth.

The prosecutor is hoping that Steele, 52, will scare more easily than Susan McDougal, and give up the White House to avoid a possible 35-year jail term. But first he is going to have to convince a jury, and with as little credibility as Steele would have as a witness against Clinton -- she'd have to be lying about lying about lying -- Starr appears to be chasing very long odds. After losing the McDougal case with Steele herself testifying against him, and then telling Congress to scrap the law that pays his salary, Starr has taken on the air of an old crank screaming obscenities on a street corner. Starr, Steele has said, "is willing to use or abuse any man, woman or child who gets in the way of his prosecution of Clinton." That's just what Susan McDougal said before a jury acquitted her, and just about what Clinton said before public opinion acquitted him.