Monica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973) is an
American woman with whom the former United States President Bill Clinton admitted
(after initially denying) to having had an "inappropriate relationship"[1] while Lewinsky worked at the White House in 1995 and 1996. Its repercussions in the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the surrounding scandals of 1997-99 became known as the
Lewinsky scandal. The scandal severely affected Clinton's second term and gave Lewinsky
significant notoriety.
Early life
Lewinsky was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in
southern California on the west side of Los Angeles and in Beverly Hills. For her
primary education she attended the John Thomas Dye School in Bel-Air
(along with Tori Spelling).[2] After transferring from Santa Monica College, she
graduated with a psychology degree from Lewis
& Clark College in Portland, Oregon in 1995.
Then, Lewinsky moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked at the White House as an intern starting in July, getting a paid job there in
November.
Scandal
Between 15 November 1995 and 7
April 1996, Lewinsky had a relationship with the President. She later testified that the
relationship involved oral sex, but not sexual
intercourse.
Clinton had previously been dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct, most
notably in regard to a relationship with singer and former Arkansas state employee
Gennifer Flowers, and an encounter with Arkansas state employee Paula Jones (née Corbin) in a Little Rock hotel room in which
Jones claimed that Clinton exposed himself to her. These alleged affairs would have occurred during Clinton's time as
Governor of Arkansas. Lewinsky's name actually surfaced during legal
proceedings connected to the latter matter, when Jones's lawyers sought corroborating evidence of Clinton's conduct to
substantiate Jones's allegations.
Lewinsky left the White House in April 1996 because her superiors felt she was spending
too much time around Clinton. Since September 1997, Lewinsky's older colleague and confidante Linda
Tripp was secretly recording their telephone conversations regarding the affair with Clinton. In January 1998, after
Lewinsky had submitted an affidavit in the Paula Jones
case, denying any physical relationship with Clinton, and attempted to persuade Tripp to lie under oath in the Jones case, Tripp
gave the tapes to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, and these tapes added to his ongoing investigation into the Whitewater pseudo-scandal. Starr broadened his investigation to include investigating Lewinsky,
Clinton, and others for possible perjury and subornation of perjury in the Jones case. Noteworthy for its revelation of Tripp's motivations
was Tripp's, after speaking with Lewinsky, reporting of their conversations to literary agent Lucianne Goldberg. Tripp also convinced Lewinsky to save the gifts that Clinton had given her during
their affair, and not to dry clean what would later be infamously known as "the blue dress."
Clinton denied having had "a sexual affair," "sexual
relations," or "a sexual relationship" with Lewinsky while under oath,[3] and on 26 January 1998 claimed
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss
Lewinsky" in a nationally televised White House news conference. The line later became famous for its technical verity but
deceptive nature, based on one's definition of "sexual relations." [4]
Clinton also said, "there is not a sexual relationship, an improper sexual relationship or any other kind of improper
relationship"[5] which he defended as truthful on
17 August 1998 hearing, famously arguing "it depends on what the
meaning of the word 'is' is"[6] (i.e., he was not,
at the time he made that statement, still having a sexual relationship with Lewinsky). Under pressure from Starr, who as Clinton
learned had obtained from Lewinsky a blue dress with Clinton's semen stain, as well as testimony
from Lewinsky that the President had inserted a cigar-tube into her vagina, Clinton admitted that he misled the American people and that he had had "inappropriate intimate contact"
with Lewinsky. Clinton denied having committed perjury because, in the court's definition [7], oral sex was not "sex" per
se.
In addition, relying upon the definition of "sexual relations" as proposed by the prosecution and agreed by the defense and by
Judge Susan Webber Wright, who was hearing the Paula Jones case, Clinton claimed
that because certain acts were performed on him, not by him, he did not engage in sexual relations. Lewinsky's testimony to the
Starr Commission, however, contradicted Clinton's claim of being totally passive in their
encounters. Clinton's lawyer later argued that different people can remember the same events in different ways.
Outcomes
President Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives and ultimately acquitted by the Senate on all charges brought
there: allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice regarding the affair and
lying under oath in a civil lawsuit. The aspects of the President's behavior in the Lewinsky matter that exonerated him in the
eyes of the Senate will never be known conclusively beyond Senators' apparent belief that the charges simply did not warrant
removing a President from office.
Paula Jones' civil lawsuit against President Clinton, the matter in which President Clinton originally provided testimony that
gave rise to his impeachment, was ultimately dismissed.
In the scandal's immediate aftermath Congress chose not to extend the legislation that empowered the driving force behind the
investigation of the Lewinsky matter, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.
Remaining unaddressed to this day is the US Constitution's allowing of civil suits against a President to proceed while that
President is in office thereby forcing him to divert his attention from the business of the American people to that of an
allegedly aggrieved and/or politically motivated private party.
After the scandal
The affair led to a period of pop culture celebrity for Lewinsky as a
younger-generation nexus of a political storm that was both lighthearted and extremely serious at the same time. It also
contributed to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. After a 21-day trial, the
Senate vote fell short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction and removal from office under the Constitution.
Around early 1999, Lewinsky reportedly said "I'm well-known for something that isn't great to be well-known for."[8]
By her own account, Lewinsky survived the intense media attention by knitting; soon after
the scandal she started a business selling her own brand of handbags online, but she closed it in
2004. In 2000 she appeared on The Tom Green Show
in which the host took her to his parents' home in Canada's capital city of Ottawa in search of fabric for her new business. Lewinsky made a cameo appearance as herself in two sketches
during the May 8, 1999 episode of NBC's
Saturday Night Live, a program that had lampooned her relationship with
Clinton over the prior 16 months. She was also the host of the short-lived reality
television dating program called Mr. Personality in 2003.
After Clinton's autobiography My Life appeared in 2004,
Lewinsky said in an interview with the British tabloid Daily Mail:
"He could have made it right with the book, but he hasn't. He is a revisionist of history. He has lied. (...) I really didn't
expect him to go into detail about our relationship (...) But if he had and he'd done it honestly, I wouldn't have minded.... I
did, though, at least expect him to correct the false statements he made when he was trying to protect the Presidency. Instead,
he talked about it as though I had laid it all out there for the taking. I was the buffet and he just couldn't resist the
dessert. (...) That's not how it was. This was a mutual relationship, mutual on all levels, right from the way it started and all
the way through. ... I don't accept that he had to completely desecrate my character."[9]
In December 2006, Lewinsky graduated with a master's degree in Social Psychology from the London School of
Economics[10] where she had been
studying since September 2005.[11] Her thesis was
entitled “In Search of the Impartial Juror: An exploration of the third person effect and pre-trial publicity.”
References
- ^ "Clinton Admits to Lewinsky Relationship, Challenges Starr to End Personal 'Prying'" - CNN.com
- ^ She later attended Beverly Hills High School, but then left and graduated at Pacific Hills School, formerly known as Bel Air Prep, as salutatorian. "That Girl" by Leonard Gill, March
15, 1999. Memphis Flyer book review. Accessed December 18, 2006.
- ^ Starr Report: Nature of President Clinton's Relationship with Monica Lewinsky
Accessed December 18, 2006.
- ^ The term oral sex is ambiguous, because it applies to both
fellatio and cunnilingus; most journalists assume that
fellatio is meant—an assumption supported by the existence of the celebrated blue dress, which could have gotten its celebrated
stains during fellatio but not during cunnilingus—but it is still not a precise term. Perhaps the ambiguity implies that readers
(viewers) should not ask too many questions, which would be a vestige of the traditional reticence the press formerly observed
about presidential sex lives, which most famously protected the sexual secrets of John F.
Kennedy, but also protected the secrets of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
Dwight Eisenhower and quite possibly others. [citation needed]
- ^ The NewsHour with Jim
Lehrer: President Bill Clinton January 21, 1998
- ^ Videotaped Testimony of William Jefferson Clinton Before the Grand Jury Empaneled for Independent Counsel Kenneth
Starr August 17, 1998
- ^ "Perjury about sexual relations
from the Paula Jones deposition" by Steve Kangas. Accessed February 12, 2006
- ^ "For Lewinsky,
fame the same as notoriety" by Leonard Pitts, APRIL 20, 2000. Miami Herald. Accessed December 18, 2006.
- ^ "Lewinsky:
Clinton lies about relationship in his new book" Associated Press, June 25, 2006.
USA Today. Accessed December 18, 2006.
- ^ "Monica Lewinsky Earns Master's Degree in London" December 21, 2006. Accessed December
27, 2006
- ^ "Weekly media coverage (26 August-8 September 2005): Other News" September 8, 2005.
London School of Economics. Accessed December 27, 2006
Further reading
- Andrew Morton: Monica's Story:
an authorised biography/interview. St. Martin's Press, March 1999; ISBN
0-312-24091-0, mass-market paperback ISBN 0-312-97362-4
- One Scandalous Story: Clinton, Lewinsky, and Thirteen Days That Tarnished American Journalism by Marvin L. Kalb
- Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the Public Interest (Sexual Cultures) by Lauren Berlant and Lisa Duggan
External links
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