c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ The media call them stings or scams. In fact, they are lies.

When the government deceives people into admitting they have done something wrong or tricks them into breaking the law on tape, the government is deliberately deceiving them.

Whether you do it or I do it or the government does it, deliberate deception is a lie and a government that lies systematically to some of its people so it can put them in jail is no better than Nazi Germany or communist Russia. Indeed, a government that lies constantly is an oppressive government, a fundamentally immoral government.

That seems to me part of what is happening with Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation of alleged wrongdoing by President Clinton.

Federal prosecutors _ with their limitless financial resources, their power to indict whomever they wish, their ruthless corruption of witnesses by grants of immunity, and their ability to destroy men and women with calculated leaks to the media _ are the greatest threat to freedom in this country.

The courts have conspired with them by absurd legal definitions, making entrapment difficult to prove. The media have conspired with them because prosecutors provide the raw, red meat that sells newspapers and improves TV ratings.

But when prosecutors violate the privacy of Mafia dons, commodity traders, aldermen, and judges, they violate your privacy as well.

When they do that to anyone, they have the power to do it to everyone. They can indict anyone. Some day they may indict you, and do you in with a”sting.”Or bankrupt you as you try to defend yourself.

But, you say, these other people are criminals, are they not?

However, criminals, too, have rights. Everyone has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Federal prosecutors, however, presume certain people are guilty and then go about using every possible trick to assemble the evidence to prove their presumption. Whatever the courts may say, this procedure makes a mockery of our constitutional right to presumed innocence. If they can do it to the president, they can do it to anyone. They can do it to you.

However, Starr has raised this technique to a new height of perfection. Appointed by anti-Clinton federal judges at the instigation of a reactionary Republican senator _ something the media never tell you _ Starr has been unable for four years _ and nearly $30 million _ to find any wrongdoing in an Arkansas business deal.

So he turns to bugging the president’s sex life.

Everyone, even the president, has the right to privacy in his sexual behavior. It is no one’s business _ not yours, not mine, not the national media.

If the president did have an affair with a woman aide, that is a lamentable moral lapse but not a crime.

The woman has the right not to be forced to testify about this in a deposition. And she has the right to talk to her friends without fear of being taped. She has the right to be free from harassment by Starr. She has the right to be immune from pressure to wear a wire so she will trick the president into incriminating himself.

Clinton also has the right to protect his own privacy _ not because he is the president but because he is a U.S. citizen with the same rights as everyone else.

Starr argues he is using approved investigative procedures. Approved lies, in other words. But a lie is still a lie even though the courts and the media and the prosecutors tell them all the time. Starr’s behavior reveals in stark caricature the extent to which lying has become part of the daily practice of federal prosecutors.

Oddly enough, I haven’t heard a single word yet from civil liberties groups. Where’s the ACLU when we really need them?

Today the president, tomorrow the media, the next day everyone. Gestapos _ like all inquisitions _ have an unlimited lust for power.

MJP END GREELEY