HOW STARR SEES IT
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Part of the answer lies in the makeup and background of Starr's handpicked team. Though Starr prides himself on having created a "microcosm" of the Justice Department, "but perhaps more elaborately fine tuned," true legal diversity eluded him. He had tough prosecutors and brilliant litigators recruited from around the country, but his Lewinsky team had few lawyers with strong criminal-defense backgrounds to provide balance, help plot the next move or weigh in on the treatment of witnesses. "Government lawyers have never had to sit in a room with somebody who is completely innocent," says a former Starr assistant, "and know the personal toll on that person and their families." Starr's ethics adviser, Watergate eminence Sam Dash, signed off on major decisions but not the nuts and bolts. (He resigned in November, calling Starr too strong an advocate for impeachment.) A female attorney was known for her sensitivity to civil liberties issues, but the attitude won her the nickname Hallmark, after the famously sentimental greeting-card company. "This isn't the United Nations," says Starr spokesman Charles Bakaly. But when the Lewinsky scandal broke, there was nobody with the sensibility to point out, for instance, that subpoenaing Lewinsky's mother might not play too well in the real world.

Chapter Two: Starr Transformed
In some ways, Starr was remade by his prey. Four years of chasing Clinton--hunting for wrongdoing in Whitewater and its tributaries, butting heads against the Clinton stonewall--changed the man. He and his lieutenants apparently became persuaded that they were dealing with a kind of ongoing criminal enterprise. The more Clinton stalled, the more Starr pushed. The more Starr pushed, the more Clinton stalled. And in the end, each drove the other to a kind of madness. It's a subject Starr's friends discuss gingerly.

"There was not a lot of confidence in the probity of the White House," says one. "There was a long experience with its not being forthcoming and truthful." Starr claims the experience didn't change him, but the evidence contradicts him, and so do many of his friends and allies. They say he became tougher, more aggressive, more willing to assume the worst about Clinton and his people. "The impact was almost unavoidable," says a Starr associate. "You're less likely to...give people the benefit of the doubt." Starr became less deferential, summoning Hillary Clinton to the grand jury in 1996 rather than questioning her at the White House. He relied on hard-nosed prosecutors like Bittman, Jackie Bennett Jr. and Michael Emmick. He became so intense in his pursuit that in early 1997, he authorized his agents to question Arkansas state troopers about Clinton confidants, including alleged paramours from a decade before, who might have picked up scraps about shady business deals. Starr was so sure of his righteousness that he became outraged when the story broke and people had the temerity to question his motives. For the White House, it provided a predicate offense--the first piece of evidence used to paint Starr as a sex-obsessed keyhole peeper.

The issue of Starr's perspective is central since Americans rely on prosecutors--and especially independent counsels, who wield virtually unchecked power--to exercise discretion. When Tripp showed up to spill the beans about Monica and Bill, another prosecutor--one who was more streetwise, one who hadn't been up against Clinton for so long--might have shown her the door. But Starr saw a conspiracy to obstruct justice unfolding before his very eyes. He went to the Justice Department seeking authorization to expand his investigation, and failed to remind the officials that he'd had contact years before with lawyers for Paula Jones, a fact that could have led Janet Reno to send the case elsewhere.

After an additional eight months of bitter combat--legal battles won and p.r. battles lost, charges and countercharges of leaking and lying--it was time for Starr to send his referral to Congress. When it turned out to contain graphic sexual details with no direct bearing on the perjury question, the report struck many as biased, intended to inflame opinion. Starr's reputation was sealed.

Starr says he wanted to leave out those X-rated details, but a majority of his lawyers disagreed and, disastrously, he changed his mind. "We recognized full well how unpleasant and off-putting" the details were, he told TIME. (This is a man who once clucked disapprovingly at an old friend just for telling a Monica joke.) He had his lawyers write bowdlerized versions but felt they didn't make the case. And his prosecutors argued that even the details that fell outside the Jones case's definition of sex should be included, because they buttressed Lewinsky's credibility. In the end Starr relented. He instructed them to stash the naughtiest bits into the footnotes--as if that made a difference. He says he didn't know Congress would release everything and that he never anticipated being cast as Puritan pornographer. "I don't think my crystal ball was working especially well," he sighs. "It so frequently doesn't work well."

Starr also conceded for the first time that the report should have quoted Lewinsky directly, instead of paraphrasing her, when she said, "No one ever asked me to lie." He told TIME, "It really cannot fairly be said we were trying to hide that, but it did give [the other side] a nice debating point." When asked whether he would have found room to quote Lewinsky directly had she admitted that she was asked to lie, he said, "That's a good question. I think that's probably a fair question."

Starr decided not to take part in--or even observe--grand jury testimony or interviews, and that may have been another mistake. The idea flowed from his conception of himself as a judicious figure remaining above the fray. Starr would be briefed daily, he would analyze testimony, debate policy and plan moves, but he would not be in the room when key witnesses told their stories. "It was my view that I should be relying upon the professional judgments of experienced agency prosecutors, and then the reaction of grand jurors, [to determine] Is this person worthy of belief?" says Starr.

But his critics--and even some longtime friends in the legal community--believe the decision, coupled with his inexperience, allowed the investigation to be hijacked by aggressive deputies out to bag presidential prey. "Starr's Cowboys," as they became known, were accused of bullying witnesses, but Starr argues that his system kept them in line. "Outside commentators and pundits may say, 'Gee, that seems as if the prosecutor's office is being rather energetic.' Others can judge whether it was overly energetic, [but] we did create a decision-making mechanism that limited the ability of an individual prosecutor or agent to make a significant decision."

Because he did not observe the questioning of witnesses, Starr couldn't give eyewitness answers when challenged about the treatment of witnesses. His apparent aloofness opened him to yet another avenue of attack from Clinton's lawyers, and it raises one loud question: Wasn't he at least tempted to see Lewinsky and get a firsthand sense of her testimony? "Yes! I was!" he replies, his voice rising. So did he rethink the policy? He seems startled by the suggestion. "Rethink it? I was always open to a suggestion that it would be a good thing, or it might be a good thing." But that suggestion never came. His policy was put to the test in July, when Lewinsky was questioned by his agents in New York City--the breakthrough moment that led to her immunity deal. Starr spent the night before the interview in the apartment where she was to be questioned. But, he says, "I structured my departure so that she would not see me. I did not want it to be in the slightest degree more awkward than it had to be."

Starr saw the decision as a testament to his civility; Kendall used it as evidence he was out of touch with his probe. Time and again, Starr's confidence in his own moral rectitude has blinded him to, at the very least, the appearance of bias and conflict of interest. As an old friend and adviser says, "Ken suffers from judicial ethics, a view judges have that they'll do it right and be perceived as doing it right. He doesn't realize that part of the issue is perception."