This boo is well paced, and the story was very interesting. In particular, it was really interesting to see this from the point of view of the Independent Counsel's office, since the main views we've had up to now are former President Clinton's view and the media's view. Also, as someone born in 1983, I have some memory of Monica and the impeachment late in his Presidency, but most of the early investigation was not about Monica. It was about a land deal in Arkansas called Whitewater, and it was interesting to finally understand what that was all about, since I was too young to understand at the time.
Perhaps more importantly, this book is very relevant because of the cast of characters. Names like Brett Kavanaugh, Rod Rosenstein, Hilary Clinton, Eric Holder, and many others that would be immediately recognizable, are all connected with this investigation. And the amount of impact this investigation had on history and our current times is probably more than has generally been acknowledged up to this point.
For example, Starr describes Eric Holder as someone who was originally a very honest straight shooter in the DOJ, but that he seemed to change about halfway through Clinton's tenure. While Starr did not talk in the book about what happened to Holder after the investigation, now that 20 years have passed, we know Holder went on to be the Attorney General under Obama, where he was mired in controversy surrounding the Fast and Furious scandal and held in Contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over documents they asked for. In fact, he is the only Attorney General in history to have been held in both civil and criminal contempt. Did the corrosive lack of ethical standards of the Clinton administration have much to do with this in him? It sure appears so.
Then we have Hilary Clinton. Most people think the investigation was just about Bill and Monica, but most of it wasn't. It was about the Whitewater land deal and some shady dealings between the bank and the Rose Law Firm, where Hilary was a partner. Starr writes that a lot of the Rose Law Firm billing records that were under subpeona mysteriously disappeared. Moreover, when they interviewed Hilary, they believed she was wholly dishonest, as she answered almost all questions as "I don't recall/remember." Fast forward 20 years to the email scandal, and she destroys 30,000 emails under subpeona, claiming they were just personal, not government related. She then used Bleach Bit to wipe the server's hard drive, so we'll never know now. In her interviews and testimony, she would mostly answer "I don't remember/recall." Same pattern of dishonesty and contempt.
Starr writes in the book that he is glad Clinton was not removed from office over the investigation. I used to feel the same way, since he otherwise was a pretty talented president. But my opinion on that has strongly changed after reading this book. Ironically, I do NOT agree with Starr's conclusion. It seems like most people in the government, especially in the DOJ, FBI, etc, were pretty ethical and honest when Starr did this investigation, and that was true regardless of party. Since Clinton, we seem to have much more dishonesty and lack of ethics in the bureaucracy, and after reading this book, I now believe a lot of this can be traced straight to Bill and Hilary, and the example they set and the fact that they got away with everything and were never punished. I think had Bill been removed from office, it would have been a powerful example that you aren't above the law just because you are a powerful government person, and this country might be on a very different track today. This book changed my mind: the US Senate should have removed him.
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