Some think Democrats' call for special Enron counsel is premature

WASHINGTON - Democratic lawmakers say it&#39;s time to pass the Enron inquiry to a special counsel, but some legal experts say that would just drag the nation into a costly quagmire reminiscent of Whitewater and Iran-Contra. <br> <br> The Bush administration says no special counsel is needed. <br> <br> &#34;This is a business problem that our Justice Department is going to investigate, and if there&#39;s wrongdoing we&#39;ll hold them accountable for mistreatment of employees and shareholders,&#34; President Bush told reporters Tuesday in Pittsburgh. <br> <br> Asked if a special counsel is needed to investigate Enron, his largest political contributor, Bush replied, &#34;I see a need for laws and I do see a need for a full investigation.&#34; <br> <br> Senate Commerce Committee chairman Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., says the Justice Department can&#39;t be objective because too many Bush administration officials have ties to the company. &#34;We&#39;ve got an Enron government,&#34; Hollings says. <br> <br> If a special counsel is needed to replace the Justice Department, then a &#34;special Congress&#34; is needed to handle investigations on Capitol Hill by lawmakers who have received contributions from Enron, said Joseph DiGenova, a former independent counsel who investigated the use of passport files by the former Bush administration. <br> <br> &#34;We&#39;ve got to stop having special things every time something goes wrong,&#34; he said. &#34;This is garden-variety fraud. Any good prosecutor can investigate this case.&#34; <br> <br> Lawrence E. Walsh, a former independent prosecutor who investigated the Reagan administration&#39;s sale of weapons to Iran and diversion of profits to Nicaraguan rebels, disagrees. Enron&#39;s many connections to the administration create the &#34;appearance of a conflict of interest.&#34; <br> <br> Walsh foresees a competition brewing between dueling investigations in Congress and the Justice Department. He said a special counsel would help focus the investigation on prosecuting potential crimes. <br> <br> &#34;It&#39;s important that the prosecution not get too far behind because Congress will start granting immunity, like in the Iran-Contra case, and that handicapped the investigation.&#34; <br> <br> Independent counsels were created in 1978 after Watergate convinced lawmakers that the executive branch couldn&#39;t be trusted to investigate alleged wrongdoing by government officials. Twenty-one years and about as many investigations later, the independent counsel statute was allowed to expire in 1999. <br> <br> Few mourned its passing. <br> <br> Republicans and Democrats complained the law did not hold prosecutors accountable for the money they spent or the tactics they used. The counsels were used to play politics, they argued. Even Kenneth Starr, who spent $52 million investigating President Clinton, called the statute &#34;constitutionally dubious.&#34; <br> <br> The law was replaced with eight pages of Justice Department regulations. <br> <br> The regulations state that special counsels should be appointed when an investigation presents a conflict of interest for the department, or when it would be in the public interest for a special counsel to assume responsibility. <br> <br> Neither criterion exists in this case, the Justice Department said in a statement. &#34;No person involved in pursuing this investigation has any conflict or any ties that would require a recusal.&#34; <br> <br> Attorney General John Ashcroft stepped aside from the investigation because he had received campaign donations from Enron in his failed 2000 Senate campaign. The probe is being led by Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson. <br> <br> Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., said Thompson&#39;s former law firm, King & Spalding, represented Enron at one point, so even he is not clear of connections to the company. <br> <br> &#34;It is time for this administration to appoint a special counsel,&#34; he said. <br> <br> Thompson said the firm did some work for Enron but he was not involved in any of it. <br> <br> Several legal experts said a special counsel is not needed, barring new developments. <br> <br> &#34;I think we can handle it with proper recusals at this point,&#34; said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers. &#34;The independent counsel statute was not a big hit.&#34; <br> <br> &#34;We don&#39;t even know if there&#39;s been a crime,&#34; said Northwestern University legal ethicist Steven Lubet. <br> <br> John Barrett, a St. John&#39;s University law professor who worked on the Iran-Contra investigation, said: &#34;I don&#39;t see anything that amounts to a serious allegation of government misconduct or some other kind of disabling problem that prevents the ordinary Department of Justice from handling it right now.&#34; <br> <br> <br> <br>