Truth at Any Cost; Ken Starr and the Unmaking of Bill Clinton

New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. [8], 326 pages. Notes. Note on sources. Index. Some DJ wear and tear (at bottom of spine). Inscribed by both authors on the fep. Inscriptions read: Dan You are the man. Sue Schmidt. To Dan--who sets the standard for political coverage and generosity--not always qualities in the same guy. Michael The authors are each award-winning journalists who worked at The Washington Post. Susan Schmidt is an American investigative reporter with the Wall Street Journal. She is best known for her work at The Washington Post, where she worked from 1983 until leaving for the Wall Street Journal. In 2002, she won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on post-9/11 terrorism with Bob Woodward and five other Post reporters. In 2006, Schmidt again shared the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting with James V. Grimaldi and R. Jeffrey Smith for their probe into, and exposure of lobbyist Jack Abramoff's corrupt activities. Michael Weisskopf (born 1946) is a Polk Award-winning journalist, currently working as a senior correspondent for Time magazine. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1996 for the accounts he and David Maraniss gave of the activities in 1995 following the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994. Weisskopf specialized in national and international news during 20 years at The Washington Post. Weisskopf has received the George Polk Award, Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Press Club of Atlantic City's National Headliners Award, the Los Angeles Press Club's Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism,and the U.S. Army's Fourth Estate Award. What drove the man who nearly toppled a presidency and forced the most serious constitutional crisis in twenty-five years? Conventional wisdom portrays Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr as a right-wing religious zealot out to destroy the president, and Bill Clinton as a victim whose only "crime" was a private indiscretion. In Truth at Any Cost, two of America's preeminent investigative reporters, Susan Schmidt and Michael Weisskopf, reveal for the first time what really went on inside the Office of the Independent Counsel. The book details Ken Starr's motivations, his inner struggles, and his anguish as he comes under attack by Clinton's ferocious partisans. It goes behind the locked doors of Starr's office as prosecutors make the fateful decision to pursue the case against Clinton for lying to conceal his embarrassing affair with an intern half his age. Schmidt and Weisskopf lay bare what happened on the night when FBI agents first confronted Monica Lewinsky, how the White House launched a political jihad to survive, and how Starr's team agonized over Clinton's fate.
For four years, the bland, smiling man behind the investigation of President Clinton remained a mystery, both to many who supported him and to those who feared him. Until now. Truth at Any Cost shows Ken Starr in a new light: as an upright but politically naive prosecutor who withstood public vilification to pursue the truth--including what he and his deputies saw as the president's attempts to use the power of his office to thwart a legitimate inquiry. Here is an unblinking look at the battle between Starr's legal absolutism and Clinton's chronic evasions. It examines Starr's impassioned quest to bring the president to justice, and explains how Starr eventually became a casualty of his own mission, leaving the arena as bloodied as the man he had pursued.