LET GRAND JURY DO ITS JOB; PRESIDENT'S FATE MUST NOT BE DECIDED BY STARR'S MACHINATIONS.

Byline: Walter P. Coombs and Ralph E. Shaffer

INDEPENDENT Counsel Kenneth Starr's abuse of the grand jury system peaked this weekend when it was revealed that he wants the jury to indict a sitting president.

Not content with having conned a handful of decent citizens into thinking that as federal grand jurors they were to apply the law to the nation's highest official, Starr has pre-empted the jury's authority by implying that it will indict upon his command.

His action is both an insult to the American justice system and an affront to the jurors.

Weeks of House and Senate debate clearly indicate that impeachment of the president rests solely on the alleged untruthfulness of Bill Clinton's testimony to a federal grand jury. That issue should have been resolved long ago by the only people who listened to all the testimony and questioned every witness: that cross section of Americans who make up the most fearsome assemblage of one's peers that exists in our legal system.

For months, Clinton's critics vilified the president for using all the tricks in his legal arsenal to evade testifying before the grand jury.

The public was first told that his refusal to voluntarily appear inhibited the jurors' ability to get the facts about alleged perjury, obstruction of justice and other crimes. When he finally went before the video camera in mid-August, the panel was at last in a position to render judgment on those allegations.

That never happened.

Instead, the president's critics, not the grand jury, charged that Clinton lied to the jurors, who unwittingly became the tool of Starr and the pro-impeachment crowd. Those desiring to remove the president never intended for the grand jury to be more than a legal prop in a partisan scheme to unseat the incumbent.

Starr's manipulation of this grand jury is an all-too-common practice among prosecutors, a criticism frequently made by former jurors. This was not a grand jury investigation. It was a Starr investigation, further aggravated by a partisan congressional decision to release both the videotape and a printed transcript of Clinton's testimony. That flagrantly violated the age-old principle that such testimony must forever remain secret and confidential unless the jury returns an indictment.

Whether or not the jurors believed Clinton had committed perjury or had conspired with others to prevent the jury from determining the truth was of no concern to the Republican majority. Their claim that he had lied to the jury was simply a pretext to impeach a chief executive whose continued presence in office prevented adoption of GOP social and economic policies.

But this grand jury's work need not be over. Once a prosecutor concludes the presentation of evidence, grand jurors have the final word on indicting the investigation's target. Instead of leaving the question to a partisan Congress, the Clinton jurors should have voted on the validity of the charge that the president perjured himself. They, not Congress, spent months hearing relevant testimony and weighing evidence in this case.

Unlike Congress, they were in a position to offer an unbiased decision.

During the debate in both the Judiciary Committee and on the House floor, Republicans and Democrats alike warned that the president may be prosecuted for perjury after he leaves office. Now the independent counsel has taken up that cry.

If Starr's threat is only a bluff and he really doesn't intend to call the jurors into session, let the jury's foreman do so. Let the grand jurors decide if sufficient grounds exist to indict ordinary citizen Clinton.

These 23 Americans, carefully selected after thorough background checks, have heard all the evidence. They are in the best position to determine if the president should be charged with any violation of law. They should now hold secret deliberations, without the prosecution team present, and render their decision.

If the jurors find that Clinton lied under oath, the impeachment process should go forward to whatever decision the Senate reaches. If they find otherwise, the Senate should formally drop the matter.

Either way, the public will accept the decision with less divisiveness than now exists, and both the judicial and political processes will be saved from the inevitable stain that awaits them.