Simpson Trial Has Made Greta Van Susteren A Star

LOS ANGELES - She just shouldn't be there. Not with that long, straight hair - no style to it. No makeup, either. No big jewelry or designer clothes. And that flat Midwestern voice, to the point, unadorned with dramatic flourishes or news-reader technique.

"I'm not the typical person you expect on TV," says Greta Van Susteren. "You expect women on TV to be sort of the glamorous type. That's what's so bizarre. I mean, what I am doing there, you know?"

She's smiling as she says it, that crooked smile that a news consultant would have wanted fixed first thing, if Greta Van Susteren went in for such show-biz nonsense.

"Everyone's left me alone," she says. "Which is funny. Maybe because they know better. You know, this is what you're gonna get. Take it or leave it."

CNN's taking it, and fixing to promote that plain-Jane forthrightness into star material. Greta - and everybody calls her just Greta, because Ms. Van Susteren has too many airs about it to suit this bedrock rural Wisconsinite - is getting her own daily half-hour show in tandem with fellow CNN O.J. Simpson trial analyst Roger Cossack once the Simpson case goes to the jury.

"Burden of Proof" will focus on legal issues weekdays on CNN - from high-profile cases like Simpson and Susan Smith to everyday wrangles like Social Security problems, to tricky vagaries of the law applied in complex disputes.

"There's the forfeiture case," she says, "about the woman who lent her car to her boyfriend," who used it in a crime and got it confiscated. That's an example of the kind of case "Burden of Proof" will cover.

When Greta talks about anything legal, she chats a mile a minute, displaying an impish delight in the details that doesn't come across on TV.

In person, she is much smaller than you'd expect - about 5 feet tall - wearing jeans and looking more like a collegian than a 41-year-old high-powered D.C. lawyer.

Until you get her talking about the law. The Law. She can't wax rhapsodic enough about the wonders of the American legal system, despite whatever evidence to the contrary might be on display in the prolonged Simpson trial.

While attending the University of Wisconsin at Madison on her way to law school, Greta went to the Yukon on a geology class expedition and fell in with "a bunch of people who were the following year going to go to Nepal on an anthropology trip. But then my brother came to me and said, `You can go work for (Sen.) Gaylord Nelson for the summer.' So instead of going to Nepal, I went to Washington and got Potomac fever."

After graduating from Georgetown law school, the playful Wisconsin girl turned Washington attorney.

"I consider myself an old-fashioned trial lawyer, someone from Wisconsin, basically. And I have been very lucky. I've tried murders, rapes, explosions, medical malpractice, divorce, and patents."

Her passion to absorb unfamiliar information and eagerly share it with others certainly paid off in her work before juries. And it led to her TV career of explaining it to the masses.

"I tried a slew of murder cases in D.C., and the media followed my cases. Then the mayor (Marion Barry) got into a little bit of a fix in Washington, and because I knew all the media, I did commentary on the steps of the courthouse."

Cossack takes pride in his tube partner's capabilities. "You know this woman has tried more murder cases than the so-called `Dream Team' (defending Simpson) put together?" he marvels when she passes his nearby table after breakfast. "She's done 12. They've done about four. They always come in after the fact, to do appeals."

Greta's suddenly become very popular with TV audiences. CNN's Simpson coverage regularly scores among cable's highest-rated programming, drawing some 2 million viewers daily. But "you know what?" she says. "I don't feel like a star. You'll probably see my coffee end up on my blouse this morning at breakfast. . . . This is a very fickle business. Things come and go. You know, my trade is, I'm a lawyer. I'm not a TV person."