The Nineties in America - Salem Press (2009)

tee released to the public 3,135 pages of documents
assembled by the office of independent counsel.
These included Lewinsky’s grand jury testimony, in-
cluding those parts that explicitly described the
physical nature of the relationship, as well as refer-
ences to a semen-stained blue dress that she had
kept from one of their encounters. President Clin-
ton’s videotaped grand jury testimony was also re-
leased. The Starr Report, in which the word “sex” ap-
peared more than five hundred times (Whitewater
was mentioned twice), alleged eleven impeachable
offenses, including lying under oath, obstruction of
justice, witness tampering, and abuse of constitu-
tional authority. None of these were related to the
Whitewater investigation, Travelgate, or the FBI
issue.
The report was criticized as being biased, lurid,
and designed to embarrass the president. Many also
argued that, though Clinton’s behavior was repre-
hensible, none of his actions constituted an impeach-
able offense. The House Judiciary Committee, vot-
ing almost entirely along party lines, submitted four
articles of impeachment to the House of Represen-
tatives in November of 1998. The House approved
two articles of impeachment, which it sent to the
Senate. The Senate vote took place on February 12,

1999. The tallies in both cases were well short of that
      needed for impeachment.

Impact While the investigation, the report, and the
subsequent impeachment proceedings revealed un-
seemly elements of President Bill Clinton’s personal
life, they did not hurt him politically. Indeed, the
public perception seemed to be that Starr and the
Republicans were abusing the proceedings for parti-
san gain. They did not achieve this, for the Republi-
cans actually lost seats in the House of Representa-
tives in the 1998 election. When the Independent
Counsel Act came up for reconsideration in 1999, it
was not renewed.

Further Reading
Clinton, Bill.My Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

2004. Includes Clinton’s perspective on the Starr
      report.
      Harriger, Katy H.The Special Prosecutor in American
      Politics. 2d ed. Lawrence: University Press of Kan-
      sas, 2000. Places the Starr investigation in politi-
      cal and historical context.
      Rae, Nicol, and Colton C. Campbell.Impeaching
      Clinton: Partisan Strife on Capitol Hill. Lawrence:

University Press of Kansas, 2004. Discusses na-

tional political trends that made the impeach-

ment almost inevitable.

Washington Posteditors.The Starr Evidence: Including

the Complete Text and Grand Jur y Testimony of Presi-

dent Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. New York:

PublicAffairs, 1998. Verbatim testimony from the

grand jury proceedings.

Wittes, Benjamin.Starr: A Reassessment. New Haven,

Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002. Argues that

Starr misconstrued the role of the special prose-

cutor; critical of Clinton.

David M. Jones

See also Clinton, Bill; Clinton, Hillary Rodham;

Clinton’s impeachment; Clinton’s scandals; Lewin-

sky scandal; Reno, Janet; Scandals; Whitewater inves-

tigation.

 Stem cell research

Definition Research with undifferentiated cells

capable of producing the various kinds of

specialized cells found in organs and tissues

The potential importance of stem cells as a medical resource

is the possibility of using them—or their progeny—to repair

tissues and organs that have been damaged to an extent

that exceeds the capacities of innate processes of repair. Such

research became increasingly controversial in the 1990’s be-

cause of the apparent necessity of using early embr yos as

sources of totipotent and pluripotent stem cells, and because

of attempts to use cloning techniques to generate stem cells

compatible with the tissues of adult patients.

A newly fertilized egg cell is “totipotent” because it is

the ultimate ancestor of all specialized cells, but

once the process of differentiation has begun, its

constituent cells lose that ability by degrees, becom-

ing “pluripotent” before any evident specialization is

manifest and “multipotent” thereafter. A few “uni-

potent” stem cells are preserved within most mature

tissues, making limited provision for their renewal

and repair.

The enormous potential of stem cells in promot-

ing the repair of diseased or injured organs is inher-

ently compromised by problems of supply. Although

mature bodies do contain multipotent stem cells,

they are very difficult to locate and harvest, as well as

being potentially less useful than totipotent or plu-

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Stem cell research The Nineties in America