Sentelle denied they had talked about Starr or the Whitewater prosecutor post. Starr also came with a luggage cart's worth of political baggage. He once considered challenging Oliver North in Virginia's Republican Senate primary. He nearly filed a court brief for Paula Jones in her sexual-harassment suit against President Clinton. And even while serving as special prosecutor, Starr has continued to represent private clients with a conservative political agenda, including the tobacco industry.
Critics see in Starr's latest foray evidence of ax grinding.
Sex close to the Oval Office is, after all, a far stretch from Arkansas land investments. Defenders of Starr's actions say the Lewinsky probe does flow legitimately from his Whitewater charge. He was duty bound, they say, to follow a pattern of obstruction of justice wherever the evidence led him. As for suggestions of opportunism, Starr may have hurt himself by taking on a frustrating job and the withering attacks that go with it. Starr could have been an Attorney General or a Supreme Court nominee, says New York University law professor Stephen Gillers, who believes those prospects are now unlikely.