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So Starr is likely to turn his fire back to those who might have helped keep damaging witnesses quiet--starting, front and center, with Monica Lewinsky's personal headhunter, Vernon Jordan, this week. Whether Starr can convince a grand jury that Jordan sought to silence Lewinsky is uncertain: lawyers on the case told TIME that Jordan first met with Lewinsky to discuss job prospects on Nov. 5, 1997, a full month before she learned she would be subpoenaed in the Paula Jones suit. And a source involved in the case told TIME that Starr is investigating at least one other instance of possible witness tampering--by a private eye.
Those probes may yet give Starr the break that has eluded him for four years. But it is possible that he is after something other than high crimes and misdemeanors. It is widely agreed that politically, the House of Representatives at the moment is in no mood to impeach Clinton even if it could. What Starr might do, however, is paint an intricate portrait of a President who shades truth, pressures associates and bends the law--all in the service of staying in office long enough to make history.
On the other hand, Starr's narrative effort poisons itself. The real beauty for the White House in last week's spectacle was that at some point the audience simply changes the channel. As long as the whole scene looks like a snarly Washington grudge match, most viewers would much prefer to watch the Dow snuggle up against record highs on CNBC and tune out the capital altogether. And the White House realized as much. On the defensive early in the week about its aggressive tactics, Clinton's team was so delighted by Starr's conduct, it just decided to stay out of the way. "He's working for us," a senior official clucked. His tactics left even old Starr associates dismayed. "I can't get over it," said a former Starr prosecutor. "He's completely out of control. I can't begin to defend this."
The decision to grill Blumenthal instantly transformed a city where people have black belts in Not Taking a Stand. It sent everyone scurrying madly into one of two camps: either you were part of the vast right-wing conspiracy trying to get the Clintons or you belonged to the vast left-wing conspiracy trying to topple Starr. It made news organizations, many of which had relied on leaks to move the story along, suddenly jump off the fence and swear fealty to the First Amendment. The New York Times deplored Starr's undermining of "important legal and constitutional principles," calling his behavior "bone stupid."
But Starr felt strongly that he had to defend the family, the little team of prosecutors that is derided as cowboys by the White House but that acts increasingly like an old-fashioned clan. There are only 10 in Starr's Washington office, and so on Friday night, Feb. 20, as reporters' questions started pouring in--some based on public records, some based on obscure documents that only a bloodhound could track down, many on tips from Clinton supporters--Starr felt he had to fight back, if only for the sake of morale. Before the night was over, three of the prosecutors, including one who was bedridden with pneumonia, were forced to become their own defense lawyers, knocking down incomplete stories until 2 o'clock Saturday morning.