Because of a quirk in the law governing special prosecutors, Sentelle had recently regained a position of extraordinary sensitivity. In early 1992, as special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's investigation of Iran/contra neared its climax, Chief Justice William Rehnquist had suddenly named the very junior Sentelle to replace moderate Republican Judge George MacKinnon as head of the three-judge panel that supervised special prosecutors. Subsequently, however, the law had lapsed, so that when the Whitewater scandal first burst upon the American political scene, Attorney General Janet Reno had named the first special prosecutor, Republican Robert Fiske. Thanks to the reinstated statute, Sentelle and his two other colleagues once again had authority over investigations by special prosecutors. Faircloth and Sentelle subsequently denied that the then widely discussed Whitewater investigation figured as a topic at their lunch. Shortly thereafter, however, Sentelle's panel rejected Reno's request that Fiske be allowed to continue and replaced him with Kenneth Starr.

The appointment was a milestone, in many senses. Starr worked at Kirkland & Ellis, a prominent Washington law firm. According to an article in Salon Magazine last November 18, he represented the tobacco industry; he was also peripherally involved in friend-of-the-court activities on behalf of the lawsuit filed by Paula Jones against the President.

As Starr's investigation proceeded, the battle between the industry and the Clinton Administration escalated. One careful, though necessarily incomplete, attempt to estimate total contributions by the tobacco companies in American national politics noted that in the 1991-92 election cycle contributions by the industry totaled at least $5.7 million, of which about 57 percent went to Republican candidates for President or Congress. Total contributions during the 1993-94 cycle--the Clinton Administration's first two years--ran at roughly the same level despite the absence of a presidential campaign (which normally swells expenditure levels), while the percentage of contributions in favor of the then completely out-of-power GOP rose to 68. Thereafter, both total contributions and the percentage in favor of GOP candidates exploded, as Democratic campaign rhetoric increasingly singled out tobacco for special attention. In the 1995-96 election cycle the tobacco industry donated more than $10 million to national political campaigns, with more than 80 percent of the funds headed for Republicans. Incomplete figures for the 1997-98 cycle show the industry giving more than $7 million, with about 78 percent of that going to GOP candidates. Lobbying expenses, it should be noted, normally run many times the level of an industry's formal political contributions.

A case this strong does not need to rely on overstatement. To my knowledge, no one ever asked whether the judge and the senators discussed the morning news, which, as veterans of North Carolina Republican politics (and in Helms's and Faircloth's cases, recipients of vast contributions from tobacco companies), they assuredly could understand quite well. One might also like to know more about what Sentelle said to the other two members of the panel overseeing special prosecutors, though the most reasonable judgment is probably that conservative jurists who don't know what they want are not well placed to resist another conservative jurist who does and heads the panel.

It also bears repeating that tobacco has never been alone in campaigning against the Clinton Administration. All along, the basic political fight has not been over tobacco but over taxes, regulation and the extent of laissez-faire. Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate, after all, have been as much in thrall to the medical-industrial complex as they have to tobacco, and both sectors have been singled out in the business press as among the likely winners in the political paralysis that comes with even failed impeachment proceedings.

The tobacco industry has a long history of targeting its political enemies. An antitobacco Web site now carries a dedication to the late Michael Synar, once Congressman from Oklahoma. A longtime opponent of tobacco, Synar introduced legislation to regulate the product in Clinton's first year in office. A year later he lost a runoff primary to an opponent backed in part by tobacco interests. As this essay goes to press, news is breaking that another recipient of tobacco-industry largesse, House impeachment manager Asa Hutchinson, asked Federal Judge Susan Webber Wright if she would testify in the impeachment trial even as she was deciding whether to hold the President in contempt for his testimony in the Paula Jones case.

Such facts cast a long shadow over US politics. It has always been hard to fathom how Ken Starr could insist that his representation of Brown & Williamson, a leading tobacco firm, after he took over as special prosecutor did not raise at least the appearance of a grave conflict of interest. But it is too much for Starr now to suggest that he might rush in where Congress fears to tread and indict the declared enemy of the industry that has for so long retained his services. If government regulation is to be anything more than rank politics, longtime servants of highly regulated industries simply cannot be allowed to disregard appearances so blithely. There may well be a case for indicting Clinton, but Kenneth Starr should not be allowed to make the decision. If the nation goes down that route, the people of the United States are entitled to be sure that it is not in fact Tobacco Road.

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