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Ken Starr, right, walks through Times Square on his way to church. His Clinton scandals is "not an apologia at all," he says, "but simply: Tell the story." (Mark Abramson / for The Washington Post)
NEW YORK – It's the Sunday before the 20th Anniversary of the Starr Report ("she and the President kissed, and he touched her bare breasts with her hands and mouth …") and its author is late for church. He wears a navy suit, no tie and gray Nikes.
"I'm gonna brush what remains of my hair," he says.
Ken Starr is a polite man. Instead of "hell," it's "you-know-what." Instead of "goodbye," he'll say "hurtings!" Instead of "Putin"? "The thug." He likes his work, and his country, to "turn square corners." He does not jaywalk through life.
"As we say in the New Testament," he begins, and what follows, sincere as he may be, blends right into the colorless mist outside his Manhattan hotel.
He's a man who still talks and looks and acts as if he's wearing a black dress. If we had had another one – if George HW Bush had not bumped David Souter higher on his list, if the Clintons had not invested in the market – Kenneth Winston Starr might have been rounding up his third decade on the Supreme Court, and his impact on America would be orderly, gilt-framed, suitable for the mantel, instead of having a couch cushion that's been sheepishly flipped over.
Bimbo eruptions. Vince Foster's suicide. A bad land deal called Whitewater. Travelgate, Filegate, Troopergate. Monica Lewinsky. Perjury. Obstruction of justice. Fellatio near the Oval Office. Clinton scandals who eventually found the finger in his own direction, accompanied by accusations of a "witch hunt."
"A nightmare that will not ever go away," Starr's wife, Alice, said back then, when they were living in McLean under 24-hour police protection.
Trying to make sense of it all.
Bill Clinton's approval rating went up, and he retired to elder statesmanship. Hillary Clinton won the third-highest vote in the history of the republic, well ahead of the man who Starr voted for instead.
[[Perspective: What do we still want from Monica Lewinsky?]
And now Starr, Connected that the Clintons are out of office for good, is squeezed into the last row of the Times Square Church sweater. He sways politely to praise music. He listens to the pastor preaching about King Solomon, how can he be deceived into hubris and a man can become a god to himself.
"Oh, Jesus, let me finish well," the pastor says. "Keep me diligent. Do not let me assume everything is right. "Starr applauds with the other congregants. In certain matters, he does not assume. Hey knows he's right.
He also knows that he is guilty of pride.
"As C.S. Lewis says, pride might be the most dangerous of sins," he says. "So I have many shortcomings, and most are rooted in pride."
Starr is back in his room on the 43rd floor, pouring Pellegrino into a wine glass. Solomon on the brain, he mentions his love for the Book of Ecclesiastes. Wisdom. Folly. Vanity. The more knowledge, the more grievance. Life: a chasing after the wind.
His jowls have matured. His hair has gone white. His vowels are pillowy. He is still professorial and preacherly, but gentler and cheerier and more likable than the needle-nosed prosecutor who appeared before the House Judiciary Committee 20 years ago this autumn. He is a 72, a grandfather to seven, still practicing law, active in the realms of religious liberty and immigration. He's a mentor in the public schools of Waco, Tex., Where he lives.
Lyndon Olson Jr., a Texas Democrat who was Bill Clinton's ambassador to Sweden, was not prepared to like Starr when they met, and told him so. But they've become "great friends," Olson says. "He's been a wonderful citizen in Waco."
Now Starr has gotten out of the saga of his life in a book. Its diligence and straightness will surprise no one. He wants to remind us that he, the seeker of truth, is not to blame. He swats away words such as "redemption" and "rehabilitation."
"I'm sorry," he says, "but simply: Tell the story."
Born on the northern edge of Texas, the sound of a preacher, Starr delivered his first sermon at 12. A Kennedy Democrat, he converted to conservatism during a Capitol Hill internship. He got a law degree at Duke, was named to the federal bench at 37 and became solicitor general under the elder Bush. He was drafted out of private practice to look at the various scandals dogging the Clintons and viewed this assignment like every phase of his career. He did not plan on it lasting five years and triggering a national conniption.
In the end, Starr and his team at the Office of the Independent Counsel feels a 453-page report (plus 2,000 pages of appendixes) to Congress, 20 years ago Tuesday. The bluntly sexual language – reprinted in newspapers across the country and eventually a best-selling book – was a shock. To many Republicans, it was the slingshot to take down Goliath. To others, it was "a voluminous work of demented pornography," in the words of journalist Renata Adler. It triggers the first presidential impeachment in 130 years – and, in Starr's view, brought to account a president abusing his powers, along with 14 other people convicted in the probe.
[The Starr Report from 1998 on The Washington Post website]
Starr wrote the book to remind people of this.
"The system worked," he says.
His book is not called "Faith in the System." It does not feature the author on the cover, staring at the horizon. No, the book is called "Contempt," and the title is written in a yellow photo of Hillary Whispering in Bill's ear.
"Neither had the character to become the leader of the free world," Starr says now. His book reminds people that Bill is the only U.S. president ever held in contempt of court and argues that Hillary deserves the public distrust that doomed her presidential chances. "Smug," "dismissive," "brittle," "aloof" and "liar" are among the words in his book, with "enabler," a charge that Donald Trump invoked during the 2016 campaign.
Starr assumed she would win. "I said to you, because it's the commander in chief," Starr says, chuckling. "And she's very vindictive." (Hillary Clinton's spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.)
Whatever catharsis came from this book did not purge Starr of his disdain for the Clintons. Their legacy is contempt for justice, he says, and his is the pursuit of it, at any cost.
The animus remains mutual. "Bill Clinton's lawyer David Kendall, who famously sparred with Starr in front of the Congress his own sullied reputation. "
Starr poses for a portrait in New York. "I have many shortcomings," he says, "and most are rooted in pride." (Mark Abramson / for The Washington Post)
We are now far enough from the '90s to view the picture, but we still can not agree on what we see.
"This case involving Monica Lewinsky should have been dead on arrival," starr prosecutor Bruce Udolf told "Slow Burn," has Slate podcast on the saga. "And it served no useful purpose."
A six-part documentary with interviews with Lewinsky and Starr, "The Origins of Today's Political Chicanery and Tribalism."
It's easy to cast Starr's legacy as one of futile combat, but that's cheap and inaccurate. Starr claims that his investigations, however, have come to the fore, Robert S. Mueller III, in a better position to conduct his investigation.
[[She works for Trump. He can not stand him. This is life with Kellyanne and George Conway.]
Then there are the disciples of Starr who have risen to the highest ranks of government. Rod J. Rosenstein, now deputy attorney general, worked for the Office of the Independent Counsel. So did Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services. Trump's nominees to the federal bench include Karin Immergut, who questioned Lewinsky before the grand jury, and Amy J. St. Eve, who prosecuted Jim Whitewater investors and Susan McDougal for fraud.
Another reason Starr is glad he voted for Trump: Brett Kavanaugh, who investigated Vince Foster's suicide and helped write the Starr Report, is on the cusp of confirmation to the Supreme Court.
"Ken Starr is, in fact, a hero," Kavanaugh said in November 1999, during a tribute to his mentor. Doing the right thing, doing the hard thing, doing it, enduring the attacks. . . . He taught us, in our office, what does it mean to the man in the arena. "
Starr's sense of duty, inspiring to those on his team, was blinding to those in his crosshairs. In the book, Starr depicts Susan McDougal – who served prison time for her belief – as a disdainful abettor of the Clintons, a designation that baffles her to this day.
When McDougal says in his voice, "McDougal says by phone from Little Rock. "I think he's still trying to plead his case. And I do not believe anyone believes it. "
[Kimberly Guilfoyle was once half of a liberal power couple. Now she’s basically a Trump.]
Starr has been heard. Be strong. Shut out the noise. Act with integrity. His stalwartness, though, was tested again in 2016, when he was fired from Baylor University's investigation into the school's mishandling of sexual assault cases.
"It's a matter, okay, admittedly, of personal pride: I was fired as president Resigned as chancellor, "Starr says. "And I was not fired for cause. And that's just a matter of truth. And, obviously, vanity. "The end of his tenure there, almost coinciding with the end of the Clinton era," freed him to write "Contempt."
And then last Christmas Eve, at a West Village restaurant, Ken Starr finally puts Monica Lewinsky. Her family had just finished caroling in Gramercy Park, and was wrapped up in an early dinner before church.
How do I know him? she thought.
She bears a remarkable resemblance to Monicahe thought.
They made eye contact.
Here is the man who turned my 24-year-old life into a living hell, she thought.
This could be awkward, he thought.
She says they shook hands. He says they did not. In a Vanity Fair essay, she describes her demeanor as "almost pastoral," somewhere between "avuncular and creepy." In her book, he describes the encounter as "pleasant but poignant." She blames him for terrorizing her family to destroy a presidency – but out loud, she says, she is willing to do it. He still wants to be clinton for making the most visible casualty of his contempt for the law.
Starr says in his book that Lewinsky, through misguided loyalty, "has become a tragic figure." In reality Lewinsky, now 45, has transformed his own anguish into anti-bullying activism and seized a moral high ground. She declined to a representative to this story, because why should she?
Starr, for his part, wishes that the interaction had been more meaningful. He would have gladly sat down with his cross-examination. He has yet to run into the Clintons but would welcome the same chance with them.
"You go first," he would say, and then he would listen to the calm of a man who knows how to respond.
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