SPECIAL PROSECUTOR JOB HAS MARGIN OF EXCESS

The appointment of Lawrence Walsh as a special prosecutor elevated a now-weathered phrase into the public limelight: Iran-Contra scandal. After 5 years on the job, Walsh brings another phrase to mind with his work: squandered tax dollars. Walsh ferried his investigation to a merciful conclusion last week, the nation almost $33 million poorer for his efforts. As Americans, we are left with a simple question: Was all this necessary? Beyond that, there is a more important question for the republic: Can this be prevented in the future?

Walsh began his Washington endeavor in December 1986, charged with the task of investigating the arms-for-hostages deals with Iran, the covert supply network to the Nicaraguan rebels and the diversion of funds from one of these enterprises to the other. The task itself sounds sweeping, but the results have been lackluster: eight people pleaded guilty or were convicted of crimes. Two others, Oliver North and John Poindexter, had their convictions reversed on appeal. In the most recent case, a jury came to no conclusion on whether Clair George lied to Congress and supported a cover-up. That case will be retried, and at least two other cases are pending. Stacked against the dollars involved, each guilty party turned up by Walsh and his team cost the American taxpayer $4 million.

Is this a proposition that laws only be enforced when it is cost-effective to do so? No. But, don't give special prosecutors an open-ended checkbook and an unlimited amount of time in which to spend money. Our goal our insistence should be accountability where tax dollars are concerned. In the local prosecutor's office (which Walsh's expenditures could have funded for several decades), personnel would drool on themselves over the opportunity to give exclusive attention to one case for five years; those people would also expect some form of censure if there was nothing to show for their efforts. Walsh faces no such uncomfortable ending to his project. He merely issued a press release and headed back to Oklahoma City.

The fact is that Walsh conducted his business in the same way Ronald Reagan was accused of running his, giving over control of the operation to anonymous subordinates. Walsh became the figurehead of an investigation directed by younger lawyers whose credentials did not carry the weight of the special prosecutor's. In this case, the operations weren't covert; the office had a free run of the public treasury. Ultimately, the ineffectual inertia of this job began to overshadow the purpose of the special prosecutor, which was to investigate wrongdoing. At some point before 5 years had passed, Walsh should have been awake enough to know that waste was reaching the critical point.

What we are after here is some accountability, some sense that money spent has a reasonable result. Special prosecutors have a place in the process of jurisprudence. Giving them unlimited budgets with boundless jurisdiction and time to work invites excess, the type that can cost more than $30 million and lead to an undesirable variety of justice. While a special prosecutor must have some room to move, the Lawrence Walsh occupancy of this title leads us to want an improved system.