The position of independent counsel in the US, recently held by Mr Kenneth Starr, has been a failed experiment, Senator Chris Dodd, Democrat, told the conference. Mr Dodd of Connecticut is in his fourth term in the US Senate.
He said he supported the legislation setting up the office of independent counsel in 1978 following Watergate, and supported its renewal until midnight on June 30th, when it came to an end. "There is not a mourner to be found," he said.
The independent counsel was more akin to a prosecutor than to the tribunals in Ireland. He could initiate prosecutions, which was an essential flaw of the position.
"There are deep questions to be answered about a law which vests in one person unique powers. The actions of Mr Starr over the past five years helped to seal the fate of the Independent Counsel statute.
"Beware the lawyer with one case," he said. The independent counsel was freed from any constraints of accountability. His powers turned on its head the principle of innocent until proven guilty, and subjected the target to extraordinary legal costs.
Over the past 21 years, there had been 20 independent counsels. Some investigations had taken up to nine years. They had cost $150 million, of which Mr Starr's alone had cost $50 million.
"Yet in two-thirds of those investigations there was not a single indictment," he said.
The matters investigated ranged from procuring two tickets for an athletics event to promoting an illegal war in Nicaragua.
Mr Dodd said he had sat on the Whitewater congressional committee from 1995 to 1996, which had spent millions of dollars investigating a land deal 20 years ago. At the same time the independent counsel was investigating the same thing. "Both spent all this time digging a dry well."
Recalling the Watergate scandal, which led to legislating for independent counsel, he said that proved not why an independent counsel was needed but why one was not.
Mr Mark Tuohey III, a former deputy independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation and a member of a commission on the role of the independent counsel chaired by Senator Robert Dole and Senator George Mitchell, said it recommended the restoration of the powers of appointing a special counsel to the Attorney General.
The commission also recommended legislating for regulations governing the conduct of such a special counsel.