Photo Credit: MARK SELIGER
By Vanity Fair.
Monica Lewinsky writes in Vanity Fair for the first time about her affair with President Clinton: “It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress.” She also says: “I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton. Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened.”
After 10 years of virtual silence (“So silent, in fact,” she writes, “that the buzz in some circles has been that the Clintons must have paid me off; why else would I have refrained from speaking out? I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth”), Lewinsky, 40, says it is time to stop “tiptoeing around my past—and other people’s futures. I am determined to have a different ending to my story. I’ve decided, finally, to stick my head above the parapet so that I can take back my narrative and give a purpose to my past. (What this will cost me, I will soon find out.)”
Clearing the Air
Maintaining that her affair with Clinton was one between two consenting adults, Lewinsky writes that it was the public humiliation she suffered in the wake of the scandal that permanently altered the direction of her life: “Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship. Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position. . . . The Clinton administration, the special prosecutor’s minions, the political operatives on both sides of the aisle, and the media were able to brand me. And that brand stuck, in part because it was imbued with power.”
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Photo Credit: AP
By Bob Unruh.
Former Republican Rep. James Rogan, who served as one of the House managers of the impeachment case against Bill Clinton, says the White House launched a full-fledged attack on onetime intern Monica Lewinsky when word came out about the president’s sexual escapades with her.
“History shows that Ms. Lewinsky was treated horribly by the White House: When her relationship with the president first blared across the headlines, the White House began a full-court press strategy to destroy her: White House operatives portrayed her as a deranged stalker to any reporter willing to listen,” said the former California congressman.
Rogan has documented the case against Clinton, how it developed and how it was handled in Washington in his “Catching Our Flag: Behind the Scenes of a Presidential Impeachment.”
The book details what happened when the media force-fed America and the world a steady diet of Lewinsky’s blue dress, a wagging presidential finger and the parsing of phrases such as “the meaning of ‘is.’”
He describes how on his first day on the House Judiciary Committee, Rogan knew if the scandal ever led to impeachment proceedings, future accounts would suffer from faulty memories or faulty motives.
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