January 15, 2008

Oral history: The Monica Lewinsky scandal ten years on
Ten years after a young intern nearly brought down a president, the players in the Monica Lewinsky scandal talk to our correspondent
Damian Whitworth



On the evening of Saturday January 17, 1998, the internet gossip merchant Matt Drudge posted a story that opened the most sensational scandal season in the history of the American presidency. He reported that Newsweek magazine had killed a story about President Clinton’s sexual relationship with a former intern. The next day he had her name: Monica Lewinsky.

The mainstream media were slow to catch up, but by the following Tuesday they were reporting that Clinton was being investigated for encouraging others to lie to cover up the affair.

For the next year the story dominated the headlines as Clinton was investigated, impeached and eventually found not guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours in a Senate trial.

Ten years on we know what happened to Bill Clinton. He is campaigning tirelessly for his wife as she seeks to win the second Clinton presidency. It is a curious twist of fate, and an indication of how deep were the repercussions of the scandal, that her campaign might not be happening if it weren’t for Monica Lewinsky.

For it was in the wake of the scandal, in which Hillary was seen as the wronged wife, that she decided to run for the Senate from New York. Her shamed husband, anxious to try to make things up to her, eagerly threw his weight behind the move. A wave of sympathy helped to sweep her to victory. As soon as she was elected, talk began about her running for president.

But what of the other dramatis personae from that sorry saga? Newt Gingrich, the Republican Speaker of the House, resigned when voters expressed their disapproval at the impeachment drive. Two years later, though, scandal fatigue severely complicated Al Gore’s presidential campaign. Now many of the Clinton aides intimately involved in the defence of the President are at his wife’s side. Many other supporting actors saw their lives changed for ever. Some are desperate to stay in the spotlight, others would love to be able to leave the stage, but few have been able to find the exit.

Paula Jones: the woman who started it all

Paula Jones was not the first of the Clinton women. There had been many before her and there were more after. But she was the trigger for the investigation of the President that nearly brought him down. Jones brought a sexual harassment case claiming that when she was a lowly state employee and he was Arkansas Governor a state trooper took her to Clinton’s hotel room, where he exposed himself.

The case came tantalisingly close to being settled before Monica Lewinsky ever appeared on the radar. But when it became clear that Clinton would not apologise as part of the deal, Jones, spurred on by her angry husband, pressed ahead with it.

Her lawyers wanted to establish a pattern of behaviour, and it was during the process of tracking down other women employed by the state or federal government who had been sexually involved with Clinton that the Lewinsky relationship was discovered. In November 1998, after admitting to the Lewinsky affair and facing a Senate trial, Clinton belatedly settled the case, agreeing to pay Jones $850,000 but not admitting any wrongdoing or apologising.

Since then Jones and her husband have divorced. In posing nude for Penthouse she was denounced as “trailer-park trashâ€