When does scandal become farce? Already, the Whitewat-er investigation has consumed thousands of man-hours by dozens of FBI agents and government lawyers who have conducted three investigations under two prosecutors. Despite relentless press coverage, most Americans would be hard put to answer a quiz on the basic issues, such as: what crime might the Clintons have committed? (Answer: some sort of possible fraud involving their Arkansas real-estate investment and its relationship to a failed S&L more than a decade ago.) The tedious congressional hearings that ended last week didn’t even deal with the alleged crime. They focused only on the question of whether administration officials had interfered with the investigation, or – even if they hadn’t – whether they had lied to Congress.

Last week Whitewater got yet another new prosecutor. In a move that will add months, if not years, to the case, and that induced new anxiety in the White House, a three-judge panel refused to accept the appointment of Whitewater independent counsel Robert Fiske. Instead, the judges picked Kenneth Starr, 48, a former court of appeals judge and U.S. solicitor general in the Bush administration. Starr will now have to organize a new staff. He can pick up where Fiske left off – or start all over again.

The judges did not question Fiske’s integrity. Rather, they saw an “appearance” problem. Fiske had initially been named by Attorney General Janet Reno last January because the Watergate-era special-prosecutor law had been allowed to lapse by Congress, mostly because of Republican opposition. The law was revived this year, and most people expected the panel of judges to simply endorse Fiske’s appointment. But the judges ruled that it was inconsistent with the independent counsel’s act for the Clinton administration to play any role in the selec-tion of the special prosecutor.

It may or may not be relevant that two of the three judges on the panel that rejected Fiske were Republican appointees, and one of them, David Sentelle, is an acerbic Reaganite. Right-wingers regarded Fiske as suspicious: a former U.S. attorney, he had represented Democratic elder Clark Clifford in the BCCI case and had been a friend of former White House counsel Bernie Nussbaum in New York legal circles. The Wall Street Journal editorial page kept after Fiske with headlines like too much baggage (shortly after his appointment last January), the fiske cover-up and the fiske cover-up ii. Still, most observers, Democrat and Republican alike, thought Fiske was conducting a neutral and fair-minded investigation.

In fact, in many ways he is not much different from his replacement, Ken Starr. Both are regarded as earnest, upright, straightforward. The main difference is that Fiske was an experienced prosecutor, whereas Starr, a former appeals judge, has never handled a criminal trial. He will have to learn on the job as he tries to master voluminous details in a tangled case.

The White House is worried that Starr, a conservative Republican, will be more aggressive. And aides point out that Starr himself has a slight “appearance” problem. He has talked before to the lawyers handling Paula Jones’s lawsuit against President Clinton, and was considering filing a brief attacking Clinton’s argument that presidents should enjoy legal immunity while they are in office.

The fact that Starr is free to reopen any aspect of the case is potentially bad news for the Clinton administration officials who just spent the last two weeks testifying before Congress on the question of whether they improperly sought to interfere with the federal investigation of Whitewater. Fiske had concluded that there was no criminal obstruction of justice. Most ominously for Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman, whose testimony was repeatedly contradicted by others during the hearings, Starr could commence a perjury investigation. (A Newsweek Poll showed that by 38 percent to 28 percent, Americans thought Altman should go, with 34 percent undecided.) Starr’s appointment may mean more grand juries, more legal fees and further proof, if any was needed, that America has a government of lawyers, not men.

Have the recent congressional hearings made you more likely or less likely to think of Whitewater as a serious issue, or have they not had much effect?

19% More likely 9% Less likely 66% No effect

The Newsweek Poll, August 4-5, 1994