10/29/98

Dear Mr. Starr,

I do a lot of traveling abroad, mostly to Europe, and the people I talk to don't seem to understand why Americans are so intent on shooting themselves in the foot. And at this moment, they see your investigation of President Clinton as nothing more than an invasion of privacy exercise. They see you as a voyeur, not only obsessed with delving into the intimate life of our President, but one who has no problem sharing these details with the entire world.

I can find very few plausible explanations for my European friends. The best I can do is talk about America's dedication to freedom, and to the rule of law, to which my Europeans friends respond that freedom to expose someone's personal life is not real freedom. Or put another way, freedom for whom? To that I answer that celebrity status comes with a heavy price, and privacy is usually a casualty of high public office. They, in return say that it is one thing to be pursued by paparazzi like Princess Diana was, but it is another thing entirely for an official entity of the government to be behaving like a tabloid newspaper. It is the "official" nature of the enquiry that disturbs my European friends.

I confess that I have run out of arguments to counter my European friends with. They see you, Mr. Starr, not as a legitimate prosecutor, pursuing potential criminality, but a person more reminiscent of a character in an American cheap detective novel, getting the "goods" on a big shot for the benefit of a client. Mickey Spillane couldn't have come up with a more spicy plot. We already had a reputation of being trigger happy "cowboys", shooting our way through problems. Now, thanks to you, we have also added sleazy "private detectives" to our collective stereotype.

So what I would like to know, Mr. Starr, if you ever considered the massive public relations damage you created for us Americans who deal with foreigners on a regular basis, not to mention our reputation and standing in the world?

The next time I meet with my European friends, I would like to tell them something besides apologizing for being an American. Help me out.