Clinton accused: Starr: the Republican lawyer who started with Whitewater and wouldn't let go

The road that has taken Kenneth Starr into the mists of President Bill Clinton's extra-marital impulses has been a winding one, and a far from easy trail for Mr Starr.

Just six months ago, Mr Starr seemed washed up, a figure of fun even. He had, after all spent $23 million (pounds 14 million) on a three-year investigation that had apparently discovered nothing. Now, he is holding hurried press conferences, the focus of media attention as a man who has allegedly found a smoking gun in the White House.

The origins of this week's revelations, and of Mr Starr's new-found fame, go back all the way to 1978. It was then that Mr Clinton, as Attorney- General of Arkansas, joined with James and Susan McDougal in borrowing $220,000 to build holiday homes on the Whitewater River outside Little Rock. Whitewater gained infamy during the 1992 presidential campaign when government investigators named both the Clintons as possible beneficiaries of illegal loaning activities by the Whitewater and Madison Guaranty, an Arkansas Savings and Loans bank headed by none other than Mr McDougal.

Fast forward to 1994, when Attorney- General Janet Reno, under intense Republican pressure, agrees to appoint a special counsel to investigate Whitewater. He was Robert Fiske. One of his first tasks: exploring any links between the affair and the suicide of Vince Foster, a Clinton pal and White House lawyer. No link was found and that issue is now closed.

There was, however, far from universal satisfaction with Mr Fiske and the way he ran the inquiry. At the bidding of a three-man panel of judges, Mr Starr, a Republican former federal judge and solicitor-general in the Bush administration, replaced Mr Fiske as the counsel in August 1994 and things started to change.

While the Clintons stayed just above the fray under Mr Fiske, under Mr Starr shoes began to drop. Charges were filed in 1995 against the McDougals and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker. In May 1996, Tucker and the McDougals were convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges.

Yet by this year, there was once more a sense (in the media at least) that things were dragging, if not moribund. Mr Starr became an object not of attack, so much as ridicule. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote an amusing and cutting fantasy of Washington DC in 2027, headlined: "Starrk Raving Mad."

The 81 year-old President would be happily playing golf from his condominium on the 16th hole of the Tiger Woods golf retirement villas in California, she said; Hillary - his "former wife Hillary" would be chairman of Disney. The intrepid Mr Starr would still, however, be eagerly interrogating elderly women about their adventures with the ageing President.

Mr Starr had, plainly, lost some of his enthusiasm for the task. There were stories that he had been offered a pleasant job at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

Much of the ennui of the job must have come from the Whitewater affair itself, a mind-numbing investigation into two-decade old property deals. Then, Mr Starr turned his attentions to the X-factor in the Clinton equation: sex. Stories spread that he was talking to state troopers and women in Arkansas about Mr Clinton's amorous adventures. This sparked off what was called "Starr Wars", a row over whether these affairs of the heart were actually within his purview, or whether he had exceeded his remit. The press sniffed an abuse of power; Mr Starr's inquiries looked, if anything, shakier still. He was regarded as politically suspect by the Democrats in any case, with his Republican background.

His latest request came last week, when he sought authorisation to investigate his suspicions regarding Monica Lewinsky: that she had had sexual relations with Mr Clinton and that he pressured her not to talk about them. Ms Reno obliged last Friday.

Thus, the two elements of Mr Clinton's tribulations, Whitewater and all its tributaries, and the sexual harassment allegations of Paula Jones, have suddenly been brought together by Mr Starr in one explosive mix. On Saturday, the President testified in the Jones case that he had had no affair with Ms Lewinsky; the stage was set.

Defenders of the President accuse Mr Starr of running a vendetta against Mr Clinton and overreaching his powers. He has this answer: that by investigating the Lewinsky affair, he may demonstrate a pattern in the President of deceit and obstruction of justice.