In his new book “Trust and Confidence,” local writer and ethics specialist Jim Lichtman offers readers an inside account of the 1998 battle between the Secret Service and independent counsel Ken Starr.

Community members are invited to meet Lichtman and hear about his book during a talk and signing, 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 4 at Chaucer’s Books, 3321 State St., Santa Barbara.

Lichtman writes that during the investigation of President Bill Clinton, Starr compelled Secret Service agents to testify about what they may have seen or heard regarding Clinton’s relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. 

Secret Service director Lewis Merletti argued that if agents were allowed to testify about anything other than criminal acts, it would compromise the trust and confidence tenet critical to the proximity necessary between agents and protectees.

The result of such testimony would likely lead the president to push away protection leaving them vulnerable to assassination. 

That’s what the public learned from news accounts.

What the public did not know was that Starr relied on an anonymous source inside the service who alleged that Merletti had secretly facilitated the Clinton/Lewinsky relationship by going to the White House at night, removing the president, and taking him to a hotel to meet with Lewinsky, Lichtman writes.

According to the source, Clinton had a deal with Merletti: don’t talk about Lewinsky and I’ll make you Secret Service director. 

All of it was false.

Using interviews, documents from Merletti’s files as director and previously unreleased documents from The National Archives, “Trust and Confidence” is the only inside account of the battle between the Secret Service and Starr, a story that has never before been told.

September marked the 25th anniversary of the release of the Starr Report to Congress.

Lichtman has been writing and speaking on ethics since 1995. His op-eds have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Huffington Post, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and The New York Times.

His weekly commentaries can be found at EthicsStupid.com.