WASHINGTON _ Ken Starr had firm criteria when hiring lawyers for his independent counsel investigation of President Bill Clinton: The attorneys had to be smart, possess sterling credentials and be willing to log long hours.
Another important skill, he said in a recent interview, was harder to assess, but revealed itself as pressure mounted _ an ability to tune out the noise.
Few federal inquiries have generated as much controversy and press attention as the one Starr ran, which ultimately led to Clinton's impeachment on charges of lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
The experience served as a launching pad for the careers of many ambitious, young conservative lawyers who now, 20 years later, can be found sprinkled through senior positions in Washington.
Thursday, two of Starr's most prominent proteges will have their focus and determination tested almost simultaneously in a cacophonous crucible that resounds with many of the same conflicts from that tumultuous period.
Brett M. Kavanaugh will seek to salvage his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in testimony that will delve into sexual assault allegations dating back to high school.
Rod Rosenstein will meet with President Donald Trump to discuss his future as the Justice Department's second-in-command following a tense and tumultuous week that nearly saw him resign, or be fired. The fate of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election could hang in the balance.
Colleagues and associates said that the lessons Kavanaugh and Rosenstein learned can be seen as they grapple with the modern media world's intense spotlight and a hyper-partisan atmosphere that make the 1990s seem slow-paced in comparison.
"One of the things I learned" from working with Starr, Rosenstein said in a recent interview in his fourth-floor office at the Justice Department, "was that when you are assigned a difficult job, you keep your head down and do the job. In a high-profile case, you are going to be criticized and you are not going to make everyone happy. You have to do the right thing and in the right way."
So far, keeping his head down _ at least most of the time _ has seemed to serve Rosenstein well as he oversees Mueller's probe. But he has, nonetheless, come under intense fire from Trump allies for months.
The president, echoing criticism of the Starr probe by the Clinton White House, has repeatedly called the Mueller investigation "a witch hunt."
Rosenstein's position became more tenuous last week when The New York Times reported that the deputy attorney general last year had suggested wearing a hidden device to record Trump in the Oval Office and had contemplated invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
The deputy attorney general said the report was inaccurate, but talked with administration officials about possibly resigning, according to people familiar with the matter. He was summoned to the White House early Monday, expecting to be fired, but spoke to Trump and was granted a reprieve until Thursday. Associates expect him to continue in the job at least through the midterms in November.
Kavanaugh and Rosenstein held very different jobs during their tenure with Starr, but faced many of the same pressures.
A graduate of Yale Law School, Kavanaugh was a top Starr deputy who spent his early time on the independent counsel team re-investigating the suicide of White House lawyer Vince Foster. Some conservative members of Congress had pushed the theory that Foster had been killed to prevent him from disclosing sensitive information about Bill or Hillary Clinton.
Kavanaugh briefly left Starr's staff in 1997 before returning to help craft the office's final report. In memos, the lawyer advocated that Clinton should be forced from office for "his pattern of revolting behavior" and pushed prosecutors to aggressively and explicitly question the president about his sexual activity.
In one of the twists of history, the 53-year-old Kavanaugh now faces the prospect of answering similarly explicit questions about his own history in a televised Senate hearing. A California professor, Christine Blasey Ford, has accused him of sexually assaulting her as a teenager during a party. Two other women have leveled other accusations of sexual misconduct. He has denied the allegations.
After leaving the counsel's office, he worked closely with President George W. Bush in the White House and was confirmed in 2006 to be a federal appeals court judge in Washington, where he has gained a reputation for being a consistently conservative jurist.
Though he worked for Starr, Kavanaugh has expressed skepticism about the validity of such probes since the 1990s. In legal journals, he has argued that such special investigations of the president are a mistake and likely unconstitutional.
His views on such investigations were the focus of hearings earlier this month in the Senate, where Democrats suggested that Kavanaugh's change of heart was politically convenient now that a Republican was in the White House. They expressed concern that if he were confirmed to the Supreme Court, challenges to Mueller's authority could end up before Kavanaugh.
Rosenstein played a smaller role in the Starr's office. A Harvard Law graduate and public-corruption prosecutor before joining the independent counsel's staff, he thrived in the courtroom.
He played a supporting role in the successful prosecution of three one-time associates of the Clintons, Susan McDougall, Jim McDougall and former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker. They were convicted in 1996 on charges related to a $3 million conspiracy to defraud two federally backed financial institutions stemming from an Arkansas real-estate development known as Whitewater.
Rosenstein also helped investigate whether the Clintons played a role in improperly obtaining FBI background files on Republicans. He interviewed Hillary Clinton about the case in January 1998; the independent counsel ultimately concluded no crime had been committed.
He went on to become a federal prosecutor and enjoyed a 12-year stint as U.S. attorney in Maryland, being appointed to that post by Bush and by President Barack Obama. He was then tapped by Trump to become deputy attorney general.
When Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, Rosenstein took over supervising the probe. He named and tapped Mueller as a special counsel to take over the investigation shortly after Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James B. Comey Jr.
Rosenstein has been attacked by Trump's allies for his handling of the case. Over the summer, 11 House Republicans introduced articles of impeachment to start the process of removing him from office.
Friends and former colleagues say Rosenstein's supervision of Mueller's investigation has been informed by what he observed while working for Starr. The independent counsel began with a mandate to investigate the Whitewater land deal, but the probe eventually sprawled into matters far afield from that, ending with the accusations about Clinton's sexual conduct that led to the impeachment.
Throughout Mueller's investigation, Rosenstein has sought to keep it focused on its original mandate _ to investigate possible Russia meddling in the presidential election and potential links between Moscow and Trump associates.
Mueller has referred other matters to federal prosecutors in other offices, including charges related to Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney and fixer. Cohen pleaded guilty to charges brought by federal prosecutors in New York that stemmed from the payment of hush money to two women who alleged they had affairs with Trump.
Starr said in an interview that he was impressed by how Rosenstein and Kavanaugh have handled pressures that reminded him of those his office faced.
"I tried to have an eye for great talent and great character, and these two met that criteria," he said during an interview as he toured to promote his newly published memoir, "Contempt."
"Both were also determined to do the job and focus on it, and to seal out the distractions and to be disciplined even in the face of relentless attacks ... They are doing that today."
