Professor blasts Clinton for abuse of executive privilege

Just two days after discussing executive privilege at the University of Minnesota on a panel that included Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, Penn Political Science Professor Mark Rozell shared his views on the Clinton scandal yesterday with about 25 faculty and students. "The White House has made the most extreme and unsupportable claims of executive privilege since Watergate," Rozell said in an interview yesterday. "Starr was absolutely right to challenge those claims." In his influential book, Executive Privilege: The Dilemma of Secrecy and Democratic Accountability, a book Clinton has read, Rozell defines executive privilege as simply "the right of the President and important executive branch officials to withhold information from Congress, the courts and ultimately the public." While the phrase was coined by the Eisenhower administration, the use of executive privilege dates back to George Washington, who used it in 1791 to withhold information from Congress about a disastrous military confrontation with Native Americans, Rozell explained. During the recent Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, the White House used the doctrine in attempts to prevent key aides and Secret Service agents from testifying before Starr's council. Rozell noted that Federal judge Norma Holloway Johnson ruled against this claim last May, forcing the Clinton staff members to testify in front of Starr's grand jury. Addressing the Lewinsky matter in the speech, "Executive Privilege and the Clinton Scandal," Rozell explained to the crowd gathered in the Political Science undergraduate lounge that executive privilege should only be invoked when it protects national security and serves the public interest. Commenting on the Clinton case, Rozell said there was "no national security justification" and Clinton's misuse of the doctrine gives executive privilege a "bad name" that could make it more difficult for future presidents to use in any situation. He then pointed out that Clinton's executive privilege claims contradicted the administration's own policy and cited an internal memorandum, written earlier in the presidency, stating that executive privilege should never be used in "investigations of personal wrongdoing by government officials." When not being interviewed by CNN or Time magazine, the 39-year-old Rozell works as the new on-site associate director of Penn's Washington Semester Program. Gathered in the audience to hear their director speak were future Washington Semester students Joy Silvern and Matt Vamvakis. Silvern, a College junior, felt that "because the issue doesn't have any effect on policy or American lives, [Clinton] should have been able to use executive privilege," and that the whole relationship "should never have been an issue in the first place." Vamvakis, a College sophomore with hopes of becoming a White House intern, countered by saying, "I don't think Clinton was just in his invocation of executive privilege because there were no lives at stake."

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