Can Starr meet the requirements for beating executive privilege?
MARGARET WARNER: Doug Kmiec, let me just ask you a non-hypothetical question, but it goes to something both Jack Quinn and Kathleen Sullivan raised, which was that in the Nixon case the justices put quite a burden on the prosecution to prove that he or she needed this information, couldn’t get it from another source, and so on, and as we recall, in that case, six people were already on trial, Mitchell and so on for the coverup, Nixon was an unindicted co-conspirator. Do you agree there’s a big burden on the prosecution, and how could someone in Starr’s position meet that? DOUGLAS KMIEC: Well, there’s no question that there is a burden on the prosecution. I do think the burden is capable of being met by the independent counsel. It is the burden that was–that was described by Kathleen Sullivan, basically one that says a specific need for this information and the information cannot be obtained anywhere else. It’s very clear that what the independent counsel is investigating. We don’t hav