Special Websites for Special Counsels
Thursday, October 27th, 2005On 9/11/1998 a bomb was set off on the Internet. That was the day Independent Council Kenneth Starr posted his report on President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky to Congress’s website. The surge in web traffic hit major media sites carrying copies of the massive report, too. Even adding five extra servers was not enough to handle the flow to CNN’s servers.
In one fell swoop, the Starr Report put Congress on the Internet in a big way, by using the oldest Internet trick on the books: post porn on your website. People flocked to the site. On top of that, the massive flood of email to both the House and the Senate that day from citizens looking for report slowed Congressional communications to a standstill.
That was then. This is now.
This week Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald launched his own website on his investigation into the Valerie Plame leak. While the website created a stir across the media, suggesting to reporters that the site was a prelude to impending indictments that would be handed up before the Grand Jury disbanded on October 28 (2005), it has yet matched the splash of the Starr Report’s web launch.
