Rewind
Be careful what you tell Larry King;
Ken Starr may be watching.....Powerless "powers that be".....Drudge goes scoopless.....
Howard Kurtz's disclosure problem....by Steven Brill
One of the more amusing aspects of Kenneth Starr's indictment of Julie Hiatt Steele (the friend of alleged other-other-woman Kathleen Willey) is that one of the criminal acts Starr alleges is that "on or about August 7, 1998, Defendant Steele appeared on the Larry King Live television show...[and] knowingly made a number of important false and misleading statements." It appears from the rest of the atrociously written indictment that Starr is claiming that by lying to Larry King, Steele was attempting to mislead FBI agents investigating the case (who presumably were watching the show for clues), or that she was trying to mislead other potential grand-jury witnesses or even witnesses in the Paula Jones case, who also presumably tune in to Larry and would, as a result, change their testimony. (The indictment cites the King appearance as an example of Steele trying to obstruct justice in the Jones case.) Or, perhaps, as the indictment suggests elsewhere, by asking the grand jurors to view a tape of her King appearance after she testified before them, she was guilty of trying to mislead them. Whatever the rationale, this could be a major media story. Guests in politics and showbiz - who have heretofore regarded Larry's just-tell-us-your-side-of-it show as a safe harbor in the world of TV talk - now have fair warning. Ken Starr is watching. Indeed, maybe a good post-Monica gig for Starr and his deputies would be to set up an office just outside King's studio. Some nights, they'd nab those Hollywood hoods who conspire to commit fraud in interstate commerce when they troop onto the show to say how captivated they were with the part they played in their new movie and how much they loved working with a costar whom they actually loathed. Other nights they'd pull up the paddy wagon and lock up the pols who commit interstate wire fraud (cable is delivered over wires) by saying they haven't decided to run for president when they already have.
Copyright Brill Media Ventures, L.P. 1998