Starr said he wouldn't apologize for his investigation or its methods, calling it his "duty" to root out corruption.

Throughout his speech and the questioning period, Starr defended the scope of his work, repeating that he had a "mandate" to look into "perjury, intimidation of witnesses, subornation of perjury or obstruction of justice."

To a French journalist, Starr said, "If you read my mandate--and I'm sure you report this to your readers in France--Ken's mandate does not use the 's' word. It did use the 'p' word, and the 'o' word and the 'I' word, because those are federal crimes in the United States," said Starr as some members of the crowd began to hiss.

Starr used the twenty minutes allotted for the speech to sketch the reasons he thought the Senate had not sustained President Clinton's impeachment.

Starr, the solicitor general in the Bush administration, said the "structure" of American government made impeachment an untenable alternative.

He said all branches of government are biased toward stability.

"The American people decided that they wouldn't support the removal from office of a duly elected president," he said. "Censure was a more narrowly tailored and appropriate remedy to the President's misconduct."