In August 1994 Starr [2]was appointed by a three-judge panel to continue the Whitewater investigation, replacing Robert B. Fiske, who had been specially appointed by the Attorney General prior to the re-enactment of the Independent Counsel law. His powers were very broad, and he was given the right to subpoena nearly anyone he felt may have information relevant to Whitewater. He would later abandon his brief by investigating Clinton's alleged sexual misconduct with Monica Lewinsky and other women.<br />The story behind Starr's naming is interesting. The three-judge panel which named Starr was led by Judge David Sentelle, an appointee of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and a protege of right-wing Senator Jesse Helms. Rehnquist, throughout the years when the Independent Counsel Act was inactive, ensured that two of the three judges on the panel, known as the Special Division, were reliably partisan Republicans. In late July 1994, Helms, fellow Republican senator Lauch Faircloth, and Sentelle met for lunch. All three initially denied that the conversation included the topic of the upcoming special prosecutor, though later Sentelle admitted that it "may" have come up in conversation, and also admitted that he was looking for a Republican "who had been active on the other side of the political fence" to head the new investigation. For years, the three insisted that the primary topic of conversation at lunch had been the respective conditions of their prostates. On August 5, Starr was named independent counsel. The New York Times, among other news outlets, came out strongly against Starr, in part because of the inappropriateness of Sentelle's apparent discussion of the position with two partisan Republicans bent on the discommodation of the president, and in part because of Starr's extensive conflicts of interest. But there is little that can be done about Starr's appointment; as Justice Antonin Scalia acidly observed in 1991, when the Bush administration was being investigated over the Iran-contra affair, "What if [the Special Division is] politically partisan, as judges have been known to be, and select a prosecutor antagonistic to the administration...? There is no remedy for that, not even a political one."<br />Starr's predecessor, Fiske, had been removed primarily because of his alleged conflicts of interest, though Fiske was a moderate Republican whose reputation as an impartial judge was strong throughout much of the legal community. In contrast, Starr had a number of apparent conflicts of interest that cloud his appointment. His law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, of which Starr is a partner, represented numerous clients, most notably tobacco companies and auto industry clients, that are engaged in defending themselves against government prosecution; Starr continued to assist in these clients' defense while investigating the president. The firm itself was being sued by the Resolution Trust Company, one of the government agencies that Starr would investigate as independent counsel. Starr himself was heavily, if quietly, involved in assisting the lawyers bringing suit against Clinton on behalf of Paula Jones, and himself helped author an amicus brief presented to the court in support of Jones.<br />
