Former president voices concern for Lewinsky, lashes out at Starr

WASHINGTON – Former US President Bill Clinton says he was “pretty wigged out” with stress when he and Monica Lewinsky had an affair and said he thought he’d lose the office if he acknowledged it publicly in a timely fashion.

In a nationally broadcast interview aired on Wednesday, Clinton also said he still feels sorry for Lewinsky and hopes she “won’t be trapped in what Andy Warhol called everybody’s 15 minutes of fame”. Continuing a series of public appearances in connection with the release of his memoirs, ‘My Life’, the former president said, “I feel sorry because, as she said herself, she was betrayed by her friend and then she got caught up in this big media and (special counsel Kenneth) Starr imbroglio.””And none of it would have happened if I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I feel sorry about it,” Clinton said on NBC’s ‘Today’ show.He called Lewinsky “a really intelligent person and a fundamentally good person”.Clinton acknowledged under heavy Starr pressure that he had had an affair with Lewinsky, who once was a White House intern.Part of the pressure came from Lewinsky friend Linda Tripp, who tape-recorded telephone conversations she had with Lewinsky.”You can say I handed them the sword all right, but that does not excuse what they did in trampling the Constitution,” he said on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’.”And so while I’m responsible for what I did, they’re responsible for what they did and they can’t make me responsible for what they did any more than I can blame them for the mistakes I made,” he said.Asked what he was thinking when he began his relationship with Lewinsky, he said that “most personal encounters are not entirely rational”.”Secondly, I’m not sure most people would be entirely rational if they had been bankrupted and seen their friends indicted because they wouldn’t lie, seen innocent people sent to jail and seen people in your business cover it up and legitimise what happened,” he said.”So I was pretty wigged out.I was mad.I was mad at myself for losing the Congress because I tried to jam too much change down the American system in ’93 and ’94.””The government was shut down.I wasn’t sure whether I was going to win that fight or not,” he said.”And as I say in my book, I was engaged in two struggles.One for the future of the country and one with the demons I had as a child.I lost the private one.”Asked why he didn’t immediately acknowledge the affair when stories about it broke in early 1998, Clinton said, “I didn’t do it because there was so much hysteria and because I didn’t know what Ken Starr was going to do to anybody.”He said he essentially needed more time.”The American people almost always get it right if they’re given enough time and enough information.There was just this madness.Everybody was saying Clinton’s dead meat,” he said.”I will never know what would have happened, but I can only tell you this.I have not talked to a single person who was there then, who knew what was going on, who believes I would survived as president if I had said that (confirmed the affair).No one.Not anyone.”Asked if he would have lost the presidency, he replied, “That’s correct.”In the interview, Clinton said he believes that “millions of people are interested in other things” about his two terms as president.As for the Lewinsky scandal and other controversies including Whitewater, he said, “I try to deal with it as candidly as I can.”Asked if he felt badly about denying his relationship with Lewinsky even as his wife, Hillary, was going on national television and defending him, Clinton told NBC:”I was ashamed because she didn’t know the facts.”Mrs Clinton at one point had charged that her husband was the victim of “a vast right wing conspiracy”.On Wednesday, Clinton said that was true and he launched another broadside against Starr.”What she said was true,” he said.”I did a bad thing… in misleading everybody about it (the affair) and it’s also true that what Starr did was wrong.””…If hadn’t done anything, would there have been an impeachment? Probably not,” he said.”I hope nobody ever has to live day in and day out with a man who’s got unlimited power trying to put you and your wife in jail.It’s not an excuse for anything I did.””No serious constitutional scholar or lawyer thought that anything that happened was a grounds for impeachment,” he said.”They (the Starr prosecution team) did it, as they said, because they could.That’s why I did it.”Asked if he thought the writing of his book was a way of settling political scores, Clinton said, “In the context of calling Hillary before the grand jury, that was a cheap, sleazy publicity stunt, a sorry thing to do.””People don’t like prosecutors who prosecute people instead of crimes,” he said, charging that Starr “believed it violated a natural order for me to be elected president.”- Nampa-APContinuing a series of public appearances in connection with the release of his memoirs, ‘My Life’, the former president said, “I feel sorry because, as she said herself, she was betrayed by her friend and then she got caught up in this big media and (special counsel Kenneth) Starr imbroglio.””And none of it would have happened if I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I feel sorry about it,” Clinton said on NBC’s ‘Today’ show.He called Lewinsky “a really intelligent person and a fundamentally good person”.Clinton acknowledged under heavy Starr pressure that he had had an affair with Lewinsky, who once was a White House intern.Part of the pressure came from Lewinsky friend Linda Tripp, who tape-recorded telephone conversations she had with Lewinsky.”You can say I handed them the sword all right, but that does not excuse what they did in trampling the Constitution,” he said on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’.”And so while I’m responsible for what I did, they’re responsible for what they did and they can’t make me responsible for what they did any more than I can blame them for the mistakes I made,” he said.Asked what he was thinking when he began his relationship with Lewinsky, he said that “most personal encounters are not entirely rational”.”Secondly, I’m not sure most people would be entirely rational if they had been bankrupted and seen their friends indicted because they wouldn’t lie, seen innocent people sent to jail and seen people in your business cover it up and legitimise what happened,” he said.”So I was pretty wigged out.I was mad.I was mad at myself for losing the Congress because I tried to jam too much change down the American system in ’93 and ’94.””The government was shut down.I wasn’t sure whether I was going to win that fight or not,” he said.”And as I say in my book, I was engaged in two struggles.One for the future of the country and one with the demons I had as a child.I lost the private one.”Asked why he didn’t immediately acknowledge the affair when stories about it broke in early 1998, Clinton said, “I didn’t do it because there was so much hysteria and because I didn’t know what Ken Starr was going to do to anybody.”He said he essentially needed more time.”The American people almost always get it right if they’re given enough time and enough information.There was just this madness.Everybody was saying Clinton’s dead meat,” he said.”I will never know what would have happened, but I can only tell you this.I have not talked to a single person who was there then, who knew what was going on, who believes I would survived as president if I had said that (confirmed the affair).No one.Not anyone.”Asked if he would have lost the presidency, he replied, “That’s correct.”In the interview, Clinton said he believes that “millions of people are interested in other things” about his two terms as president.As for the Lewinsky scandal and other controversies including Whitewater, he said, “I try to deal with it as candidly as I can.”Asked if he felt badly about denying his relationship with Lewinsky even as his wife, Hillary, was going on national television and defending him, Clinton told NBC:”I was ashamed because she didn’t know the facts.”Mrs Clinton at one point had charged that her husband was the victim of “a vast right wing conspiracy”.On Wednesday, Clinton said that was true and he launched another broadside against Starr.”What she said was true,” he said.”I did a bad thing… in misleading everybody about it (the affair) and it’s also true that what Starr did was wrong.””…If hadn’t done anything, would there have been an impeachment? Probably not,” he said.”I hope nobody ever has to live day in and day out with a man who’s got unlimited power trying to put you and your wife in jail.It’s not an excuse for anything I did.””No serious constitutional scholar or lawyer thought that anything that happened was a grounds for impeachment,” he said.”They (the Starr prosecution team) did it, as they said, because they could.That’s why I did it.”Asked if he thought the writing of his book was a way of settling political scores, Clinton said, “In the context of calling Hillary before the grand jury, that was a cheap, sleazy publicity stunt, a sorry thing to do.””People don’t like prosecutors who prosecute people instead of crimes,” he said, charging that Starr “believed it violated a natural order for me to be elected president.”- Nampa-AP