C. Boyden Gray

A: The president has legitimate arguments for resisting a subpoena based on the fact that he cannot be indicted. But it's by no means certain he would win those [arguments] in court. If he lost them, he would have lost a great deal for the presidency. He's already lost a great deal of bargaining leverage for the presidency on attorney-client privilege, on the Secret Service, on executive privilege.

The president has previously agreed to testify before Starr in Whitewater--taped depositions in the White House. Prior presidents have agreed . . . . So I think this president has got to do the same.

Q: Does it appear to you that Starr is building a case of obstruction of justice against Clinton?

A: I agree that is what he's looking for. A report that documents nothing more than adultery is not going to trigger an impeachment hearing. I think he is going to get more from Monica Lewinsky and he's gotten more from the Secret Service that will go beyond just adultery, that go into perjury and obstruction.

Sara Fritz is managing editor of Congressional Quarterly.

Q: Because Starr's lengthy investigation has caused difficulties for Democrats, some Republicans who once opposed the independent counsel statute are now in favor of it. Are you one of them?

A: I think it's a statute that needs to be terminated.

There is a famous Justice [Robert H.] Jackson quote, I think he may have been attorney general when he gave it, but it's about converting a normal criminal inquiry, which is to find the perpetrator of a crime, into looking at an individual and trying to find the crime that that person committed. And that's what the independent counsel statute does. It doesn't identify a dead body or a broken-into store or a stolen purse and say, all right let's go out and find who did it; it identifies an individual and asks what did that person do wrong? And that's the ultimate danger of the independent counsel statute. It doesn't work like a criminal investigation and that's why it's bad.

Bear in mind that there have been periods in our history--Teapot Dome is one; Iran-Contra is another, and Watergate is the classic paradigm, where Archibald Cox was appointed with great independence and there wasn't an independent counsel statute--where the political system is perfectly capable of creating on an ad hoc basis, when needed, an investigative authority where independence is assured. But you don't have this crazy statute that sits around waiting to be misused. So the political system can deal with these situations. It has in the past.