Tuesday, February 2, 1999 -- St. Paul, Minnesota -- Golly gee. Those awful big-city liberals at The New York Times have taken Kenny S.'s name in vain again!

Seems that over the weekend of January 29th, if one can believe Starr's mouthpiece Charles Bakaly, the evil ones at the Times told a big, big fib about Kenny's OIC. They said that, according to sources within the Office of Independent Counsel itself (sources who, as usual, refused to identify themselves), that Starr was planning the singularly boneheaded move of indicting the President while he was in office.

The uproar over that was amazing.

Immediately, the White House (the staffers of which must have been hugging their sides in glee) whipped out a response stating that if Starr tried this, it would be legally actionable as obstruction of justice, witness/jury/trial tampering, abuse of power, etc., etc., etc.

The GOP Senate was horrified. They also realized -- being for the most part far better lawyers than their House Manager "peers" who presume, like Bob Barr, to take them to task for being feeble-minded -- the truth of what the White House was saying: If Starr went ahead with this stunt, it would throw a serious, perhaps fatal, monkey wrench into the impeachment process, and rebound hideously against the Republicans. This is why they were all over the Sunday-morning gabfests speaking of Starr's "unfortunate timing". (Translation: "Ken, you idiot! Here we are, trying to figure out a way to boot Clinton or at least brand him for life while looking 'non-partisan and noble,' and you damned near ruin it!")

In addition, at least one of the Republican Senators, Susan Collins of Maine, admitted what any first-year (hell, first-semester!) law student could tell you: that lying under oath and perjury are not, repeat, not, always the same thing.

(Note: What Senator Collins didn't want to also admit is that there is serious doubt that the President could have lied at all under oath. The whole basis for the "lying under oath" accusation rests on the definition of "sex" used by Paula Jones' lawyers: a definition that was so bizarre that even the presiding judge, Susan Webber Wright, was stonkered by it, and made a comment -- captured on videotape -- to the effect that she didn't understand the definition, and doubted the President could understand it. Remember, in order to lie -- much less to commit perjury -- you have to know and understand that you are lying! But I digress.)

The upshot of all this hoo-ha is that Starr's mouthpiece Charles Bakaly has plopped before the cameras on Good Morning America the very next day -- Monday, February 1, 1999 -- to deny everything. He denied that Starr was planning to indict the Prez while he was in office, he denied that Starr was even thinking about such a maneuver, and he denied that anyone in the OIC spoke to the media about it. (One could almost hear the cock crow three times after Bakaly was finished with his denials.)

Bakaly was able to get away with this because, as usual for Starr's boys and girls, the story was done as a leak to Starr's unindicted media co-conspirators (or, to use the preferred term from the OIC, "informers"). If it had been part of an official announcement, Starr's deniability wouldn't exist.

But let's assume, as an intellectual exercise, that Bakaly was telling the truth for once: that -- despite the NYT's crediting the information to sources within Starr's OIC (as opposed to the usual "sources familiar with the investigation") -- the OIC had nothing to do with the story, and that it was indeed false. If this is indeed the case, why doesn't the OIC sue The New York Times for slander?

It will be damned hard for Bakaly to keep up the pretense that this indictment idea didn't come from the OIC Brain Trust, so long as millions of copies (both print and electronic) of the Times' original story -- complete with the OIC accreditation -- exist. The only way the OIC could make the pretense work (aside from ransacking the NYT's computers and web site) is to persuade their bobos at the Times to issue a humiliating retraction. The chances of that happening are Slim and None... and Slim just left town. (We're talking about the same outfit that took over thirty years to admit that rockets could operate in a vacuum.)

In fact, after a few hour's reflection, Starr's crack brain trust must have realized that very thing, because Monday afternoon found reporters being gifted with a statement graced with Kenny's signature. This statement did not address whether any OIC staffer had talked to The New York Times, but did promise an internal investigation "to determine whether anyone in this office improperly disclosed information." (Wink wink, nudge nudge.)

However, Starr's sudden about-face on this punctured trial balloon might not save either his OIC or the impeachment process itself from injury.

The White House has already asked Starr's overseer, Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, to add this little leak to the 24 other prima-facie instances of illegal leaks under investigation that have emanated from Starr's Office of the Independent Counsel. I wouldn't be surprised if she does. She was already hellaciously angry at Starr and his staffers for continuing to tweak her nose by flouting Federal Rule 6(e); she must be ready to explode by now.

In addition, David Kendall, Bill Clinton's chief sword-arm, asked Judge Johnson Monday to require Starr to show why he and his staff should not be held in legal contempt for improper violations of grand jury secrecy. Again, I suspect Kendall's request will find a receptive ear. Kendall told a posse of reporters that Starr's OIC "engaged in illegal and partisan leaking," as these reporters themselves knew full well, having been the sneaky recipients of said leaks. (Don't worry. Their time will come soon enough.)

And if that wasn't bad enough, Starr is about to get another big fat self-inflicted black eye.

The Susan McDougal trial -- the one he insisted on holding -- starts this month. Susan is chomping at the bit to show what she says is evidence of Starr's having tampered with her late ex-hubby Jim's testimony. This alone could overturn every single Whitewater verdict Starr has achieved -- and would kick away at the underpinnings of the impeachment case. The revelations of Starr's GOP-sponsored perfidy will be indelibly welded into our cerebellums. Forget? Not with new revelations popping up every so often; the very delaying tactics Starr used aginst the various probes launched against him will insure that new disclosures and rulings on his OIC's behavior will be popping well into the next millenium.

Karma is running over the GOP's dogma, and not a moment too soon.

-- Tamara Baker