THE TRUSTBUSTER WHO ROARED

By John Greenwald

When Joel Klein came up for approval as chief of the Justice Department's antitrust division last summer, even some Democratic Senators viewed him as a doormat for Big Business and tried to step on his appointment. All that changed last week when Klein audaciously hauled mighty Microsoft into court. Former critics now applaud him as a true trustbuster. The New York Times, which had called Klein's appointment "disheartening" in July, finds him to be "sensible" and "right" to take on Microsoft.

The scholarly but combative Klein, who stands 5 ft. 6 in. in his running shoes, appears to be an unlikely David to Microsoft's Goliath. He came under heavy fire last April for granting unconditional approval to Bell Atlantic's $23 billion merger with NYNEX, a deal that created a giant with 39 million phone lines from Maine to Virginia. But Klein, a music buff whose eclectic tastes run from Ray Charles to Puccini, takes no predictable view on enforcement either. He simply picks his targets as he sees them. "I'm not an ideologue or a crusader," he says. "Our principle is that any consumer should have a choice in what he chooses to buy. But that's not the case when [computer makers must] automatically add Microsoft's Internet browser." Nor does Klein feel overmatched on high-tech issues. "I'm online," he says. "I know what a browser is."

That commonsense approach has guided the Bronx-born Klein through a distinguished, albeit low-keyed, career. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard law school, Klein clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell Jr. and went on to argue regularly before the high court as a private attorney. He says his biggest victory was a 1992 ruling that lets students who have been victims of sexual harassment collect damages from schools that get federal funding.

A friend of Bill Clinton's, Klein stepped into the void left by the 1993 suicide of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster and helped the First Family navigate Whitewater turmoil. He steered the Supreme Court nominations of Ruth Bader Ginzburg and Stephen Breyer through Congress before joining Justice in 1995 as understudy to then antitrust chief Anne Bingaman.

Since his arrival, Klein has quietly put up impressive numbers. His team forced agribusiness giant Archer-Daniels-Midland to pay a record $100 million fine for rigging a feed-additive market earlier this year; three former ADM executives are under indictment. Klein is reportedly preparing a massive antitrust case against Visa and MasterCard, alleging a duopoly over credit-card transactions.

Klein began probing Microsoft's browser-licensing practices partly in response to furious complaints from rival softwaremakers like Netscape. That Silicon Valley company, which is fighting to keep its 60% share of the browser market from being overrun by Microsoft, has so far handed over thousands of pages of documents. As Klein sees it, the ultimate goal in the case is to keep Bill Gates or anyone else from blocking innovation in the markets for software and personal computers. "This is an enormously challenging time in terms of the application of antitrust law to a fast-moving industry," Klein says. Few who know him well--and increasingly those who don't--doubt that this Friend of Bill's from the Bronx is up to the task. --By John Greenwald. Reported by Bruce van Voorst/Washington

With reporting by Bruce van Voorst/Washington