University Press (Beaumont, Tex.), Vol. 74, No. 28, Ed. 1 Wednesday, January 28, 1998 Page: 4 of 6
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University Press • Wednesday, January 28,1998 • Page 4
President under fire
Clinton denies impropriety; Lewinsky wants deal from Starr
WASHINGTON (AP) — With the
Clinton presidency at risk, Monica
Lewinsky offered Monday to cooperate
with Whitewater prosecutors and President
Clinton emphatically denied any improper
behavior.
“I did not have sexual relations with
that woman,” he declared with Mrs.
Clinton at his side.
Sources have said Lewinsky was willing
to testify that she had sex with Clinton
while working at the White House. In
secretly taped conversations with a friend,
she says that Clinton urged her to deny
their relationship under oath, according to
officials who have heard the tapes.
“I never told anybody to lie,” Clinton
said in the remarkable White House state-
ment. “Not a single time. Never. These alle-
gations are false and I need to go back to
work for the American people.”
If Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth
Starr grants Lewinsky immunity to testify, it
would likely put the 24-year-old former
White House intern on a collision course
with Clinton, whose denial Monday was
unequivocal. The stakes couldn’t be higher:
Democrats and Republicans alike have
warned that if it turns out Clinton is lying,
his presidency would crumble.
Administration officials said the Secret
Service had investigated rumors that an
agent had caught the two together and was
unable to verify the reports. Senior officials
with the agency told The Associated Press
they had doubts about the reports.
Wagging his finger for emphasis at the
end of a White House ceremony on child
care, Clinton stared into a bank of TV cam-
eras and declared, “I want to say one thing
to the American people. I want you to listen
to me. I’m going to say this again. I did not
have sexual relations with that woman,
Miss Lewinsky.”
Clinton’s legal team was searching
Lewinsky’s background for material to use
against her if she becomes a cooperating
witness.
Her attorney, William Ginsburg, has
given Starr an outline of how she could help
his investigation. Starr must now decide
whether he wants to meet the terms.
Ginsburg has said he was demanding full
immunity for his client.
“The ball is totally in Judge Starr’s
court and Judge Starr has to tell us what he
will do,” Ginsburg said, jostled by a swarm
of photographers and reporters as he made
his announcement.
Lewinsky’s offer to cooperate — which
sent shock waves through the White House
— prompted an indefinite delay in any
grand jury appearance by her. She earlier
had been expected to testify Tuesday.
Ginsburg, who has negotiated with
Starr’s office for days, told reporters that
Vice
President
Al Gore,
left, and
President
BUI
Clinton.
AP Leafdesk
Lewinsky “is getting stronger. She does not
like being isolated.”
Meanwhile, attorneys for Clinton
asked a federal judge in Little Rock, Ark.,
to move up the trial date for Paula Jones’
sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton,
complaining that the media frenzy sur-
rounding the Lewinsky case had created an
“undue distraction.” Clinton’s legal team
thinks the lawsuit could be a high-profile
forum to discredit Lewinsky if she cooper-
ates with prosecutors against the president.
Jones was opposing the change.
A CBS News-New York Times poll
conducted over the weekend indicated the
allegations involving Lewinsky have affect-
ed Americans’ views about Clinton’s moral
standard and his ability to govern effective-
ly. But the poll showed there has been little
change in Clinton’s overall job approval
rating. Fifty-six percent said they approve
of the way he is handling his job, 38 percent
disapprove. The telephone poll of 943
adults has a margin of error of three per-
centage points.
When Clinton delivered his dramatic
20-second statement Monday, it buoyed his
supporters and riveted attention on
Lewinsky as she prepared for a grand jury
appearance. Starr is investigating whether
Lewinsky or the president lied in providing
depositions in the Jones case and whether
he encouraged her to he under oath.
The New York Times reported in
Tuesday’s editions that Lewinsky visited
Clinton at the White House in late
December, two weeks after she was sub-
poenaed to provide information in the
Jones case and one week before she sub-
mitted an affidavit declaring that she and
Clinton had not had a sexual relationship.
It was not immediately known who
cleared her into the White House that time,
the newspaper said, adding that her access
to the building had previously been restrict-
ed but it was not known who imposed the
restriction or why. The paper cited a former
White House official and associate of
Lewinsky for the information on the visit
and the restrictions.
The scope of Ginsburg’s formal testi-
mony offer was unknown, including the crit-
ical question of whether Lewinsky was pre-
pared to testify that Clinton urged her to
deny having an affair with him.
For the president, there is no turning
back now. Bruce Buchanan, a political sci-
entist at the University of Texas, said
Clinton’s statement “sounded pretty cate-
gorical to me. I don’t see any weasel words'”
Clinton dispatched Vice President Al
Gore to Capitol Hill to tout his State of the
Union address and rally Democrats. Behind
closed doors, the vice president pre-empted
the questions of concerned Democrats with
his opening statement.
“It’s important that Democrats support
the president and his agenda today, tomor-
row and in the future,” Gore said.
College forwards to prosecutor
allegedly forged letter by Lewinsky
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)
— Lewis & Clark College
officials encouraged an
employee to give Whitewater
investigators a document that
was allegedly forged by
Monica Lewinsky, a
spokesperson said Monday.
The allegedly phony let-
ter on school stationery was
written to help someone
Lewinsky knew continue
receiving unemployment ben-
efits, The Sunday Oregonian
reported, quoting an unidenti-
fied source.
The newspaper also
reported that Lewinsky, who
attended the school from 1993
to 1995, bragged of having an
affair with a married man.
College spokeswoman
Jean Ware said the school
encouraged an employee who
kept a copy of the document
to turn it over to Whitewater
prosecutor Kenneth Starr,
who is investigating allega-
tions that Lewinsky had a sex-
ual relationship with
President Clinton and that
Clinton asked her to lie about
it. Clinton denied the allega-
tions again Monday.
“I think it is fair to say
that the employee believes
that it may be an issue of
forgery,” Kempe-Ware said,
although she refused to dis-
cuss the specific contents of
the document or identify the
employee who kept a copy of
it.
She said the employee
brought it to the attention of
school officials Thursday
night after allegations arose
about Lewinsky and Clinton.
The college has not done
its own investigation of the
document.
“The issue is in the hands
of the independent counsel to
determine if there is relevance
or authenticity to this docu-
ment,” she added.
Lewinsky, 24, graduated
from Lewis & Clark with a
bachelor’s degree in psychol-
ogy-
The Sunday Oregonian
quoted three unidentified
acquaintances of Lewinsky as
saying she spoke openly about
a relationship she had in
Portland with a married man
eight years her senior.
One of the acquaintances
said Lewinsky had no prob-
lem with the fact she was see-
ing a married man or dis-
cussing it publicly, sometimes
in front of people she barely
knew, the newspaper said.
“I never quizzed her
about it personally, but I
often heard her talk about it,”
said the student, who now is
attending graduate school.
“She was proud and not
repentant at all.”
Presidential sexual misadventures no novelty
By Arthur C. Gorlick
Reprinted with permission,
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
A sex scandal firestorm now
swirls around President Clinton, but
he is by no means the first chief execu-
tive caught up in one. Several presi-
dents have been linked to extramarital
and romantic encounters.
Sometimes, scandals disrupted
the presidency and national elections,
but others surfaced only after the
deaths of the presidents and their part-
ners. Some remain a source of conflict
for historians. Some were torrid.
Warren Harding and his mistress,
Nan Britton, who had been infatuated
with him since she was a teen-ager liv-
ing near his home in Warren, Ohio,
made love in a White House coat clos-
et in 1919, resulting in the birth of a
daughter. At the time he was 53 and
she was 23.
Harding also was linked with
other women during his 1920 election
campaign.
Other presidential liaisons were
more reserved. While they might draw
only a shrug in our time, they could be
shocking in their era if they had
become generally known.
George Washington wrote pas-
sionate letters professing his love to
Sarah Cary Fairfax, known as “Sally,”
the wife of his best friend.
Accounts of the presidents and
their romances are detailed in numer-
ous biographies and histories, and
they were compiled recently by
Wesley O. Hagood in his 1995 book
“Presidential Sex.”
Thomas Jefferson is known or
suspected to have had several extra-
marital partners before his wife,
Martha, died, and several after that,
including Sally Hemmings, a slave at
Monticello, his Virginia plantation.
Her relationship with him was the
focus of a 1974 book by Fawn M.
Brodie, “Thomas Jefferson: An
Intimate History,” and in newspaper
reports and popular bawdy songs.
In 1884, Republicans chided
Democratic candidate Grover
Cleveland for his relationship with
Maria Crofts Halpin by marching
through the streets pushing baby car-
riages, chanting, “Ma! Ma! Where’s *
My Pa?”
Woodrow Wilson prepared a -
White House press release in case his I
relationship with Mary Peck, a young
divorcee he had met while vacationing
in Bermuda, became known.
There are numerous accounts
that Franklin D. Roosevelt had sever-
al extramarital affairs, including one
over many years with Lucy Page
Mercer, once Eleanor Roosevelt’s
social secretary.
Dwight Eisenhower’s relationship *
with his World War II driver, Kay
Summersby Morgan, became public
when her biography was published in
1976, a year after her death.
John F. Kennedy’s encounters
with numerous women, including
movie star Marilyn Monroe and
Judith Campbell Exner, a girlfriend of
Chicago mobster Sam Giancana, con-
tinue to be examined.
Lyndon Johnson was linked with
Alice Glass, the mistress and later
common-law wife of Texas millionaire
and newspaper publisher Charles
Marsh.
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Andris, Tonya. University Press (Beaumont, Tex.), Vol. 74, No. 28, Ed. 1 Wednesday, January 28, 1998, newspaper, January 28, 1998; Beaumont, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth500670/m1/4/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Lamar University.