Hollywood, you don’t understand how the independant counsel statute of the time worked at all.

AG Janet Reno had to under the statute, and did in fact, refer the matters the IC investigated. Whitewater, the Rose Law Firm billing, Vince Foster, the White House travel office scandal and more – those were all referrals made by the Attorney General to the independant counsel. Long after the White House had adopted the strategy of attacking the honesty of the IC, Justice Dept was still refering matters to them for investigation. The only exception was the matter of Clinton’s obstruction of justice involving Monica Lewinsky since that evidence was brought straight to the IC office. Nonetheless, Starr was required to obtain permission to investigate that as well.

As for the costs, those would have been far less if the Clinton admin had not actively obstructed the IC. As it was, given the large number of matters referred to him, Starr’s costs were not as outrageous as those from the Iran-Contra investigation.