Living History by Unknown (best non fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

hit with the soldiers and their families throughout the trip, shaking hands and signing autographs with her usual warmth and grace. She was even drafted into the entertainment when the sergeant major emcee called her to the stage from her seat in the audience. Without a hint of selfconsciousness, she hopped up to the mike for some silly banter.

“Your name’s Chelsea?” the sergeant major joked.

“Something like that,” she replied, laughing.

He then urged her to demonstrate the Army cheer she’d been hearing from the crowd.

“Hoooo-hah!”

“That was good,” he said. “Try again.”

“HOOOOO-hah!” she bellowed. The crowd broke into applause and returned some raucous cheers of their own.

Although the usual media rules applied-no interviews with Chelsea, no unauthorized photos―she was obviously more self-assured and playful on this trip than ever. Like her father, she was naturally friendly and curious and at ease in a crowd. When we visited U.S. troops stationed in Aviano, Italy, later that day, Chelsea demonstrated more of her élan. She joined me in posing for pictures with a group of Air Force pilots and mechanics.

As we walked away a voice hollered from behind us:

“Hey, Chelsea! How’s your driving going?”

She wheeled around to answer the young man in combat fatigues who obviously had been following her recent press coverage.

“It’s all right,” she said, smiling. She walked a bit farther, then turned again and shouted: “Beware if you come to D.C.!”

This trip left lasting impressions on Chelsea and me. We were so proud of our men and women in uniform, who exemplified the best of America’s values and diversity. If the people of the Balkans needed further evidence of the benefits of pluralism, all they had to do was sit at a table in the mess at Tuzla or Camp Bedrock or Camp Alicia surrounded by an array of skin colors, religions, accents and attitudes. This diversity is one of America’s strengths, and it could be theirs as well.

Before wrapping up the trip in Istanbul and Athens, we flew from Turkey’s capital, Ankara, to Ephesus, an ancient Greek city on Turkey’s southern coast that has been beautifully restored. It was a flawless day, sunny and clear, with breathtaking views of the coastline and the blue-green Aegean Sea below. I remember thinking what a perfect day it was for flying and what a perfect moment to be alive.

I arrived back in Washington on the last day of March, physically tired but filled with information and impressions to share with Bill. The problems I saw in Bosnia made the ongoing sagas in Washington seem small and inconsequential. And the sagas continued.

But, for a change, Ken Starr was under scrutiny.

In an editorial critical of the Office of the Independent Counsel, The New York Times chastised Starr for continuing in his million-dollar-a-year private law practice while investigating the White House. The case, said the editorial, “demands a prosecutor who is evenhanded and unencumbered,” but it stopped short of calling for Starr’s resignation as independent counsel, arguing―nonsensically, I thought―that his possiby tainted investigation was “too far along to start over.” Nonetheless, it was refreshing that the press was alerting the public to Starr’s ongoing legal representations of businesses such as tobacco companies, whose interests were in transparent conflict with those of the Clinton Administration.

When Kenneth Starr was appointed independent counsel, he was not required or pressured to resign his senior partnership in the Kirkland & Ellis law firm; nor did he feel obliged to drop his profit participation in lawsuits that were directly affected by Clinton Administration policy.

A few intrepid journalists―Gene Lyons of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and Joe Conason of the New York Observer―had been reporting about Starr’s conflicts of interest in limited-circulation publications, but now the story began to build in the mainstream Washington press corps. As a veteran of the Reagan and first Bush Administrations, Starr’s partisan Republican credentials were already well-known. So, to a lesser extent, were his connections to the religious Right and to Paula Jones. But Starr’s continuing business relationships with our political opponents had until recently been overlooked.

On March 11, 1996, USA Today reported that Starr was earning $3 go an hour to represent the state of Wisconsin in an effort to uphold its school voucher program, an educational policy that the Clinton Administration opposed. His fees were paid by the archconservative Bradley Foundation. The list went on: An article in The Nation magazine laid out the facts proving that Starr had an actual conflict of interest when he, in his part-time capacity as prosecutor, was investigating the RTC at the same time the RTC was investigating his law firm, Kirkland & Ellis. The RTC had sued Kirkland & Ellis for negligence in a Denver S&L case. Starr’s own pecuniary interest in his law firm partnership was directly at stake, and at the very least, there was an appearance of a conflict of interest, which the media ignored. Starr should have recused himself from the RTC investigation.

And while the settlement between the RTC and his law firm, in which the firm paid $325,000, was kept secret under a confidentiality agreement, every aspect of the Rose Firm’s legal work for Madison Guaranty was thoroughly investigated by the RTC, Congress and the press. There was no investigation of the settlement and Starr’s actions.

The sudden burst of unfavorable press in March had no noticeable effect on Starr. He ignored The New York Times’s admonition to “take a leave from his firm and all its cases until his Whitewater duties are over.” On the contrary: On April 2, the independent counsel argued an important case on behalf of four major tobacco companies in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

I was dismayed by the double standard that protected Starr and his patrons from accountability, while the conservative faction openly played the “conflict of interest” card to eliminate nonpartisan jurists and investigators. Robert Fiske, the original special prosecutor, had been removed from his post in August 1994 to make way for Starr. Fiske was removed on a conflict of interest charge far