Original subtitles

♪♪

Larry: Do you feel like a victim?

Lewinsky: No, I don't. How do you feel?

What do you -- In this whole story,

Monica Lewinsky is what?

Uh, um...

I think she's a young woman who made some private mistakes

and who's very sorry for those mistakes,

but was also part of some other forces

that she certainly couldn't control.

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

It was an affair that nearly toppled a presidency --

A 21-year-old White House intern

and the married leader of the free world.

Their scandal would make household names of Linda Tripp

and Ken Starr

and it would change how the media covers the president,

and it would forever change the way

we think about blue Gap dresses.

Tonight, the unbelievable story

of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky --

what happened behind closed doors

and the details of an intricate trap

set by his foes

that President Clinton walked right into.

Believe it or not, the story first broke on the Internet

on a then relatively little-known Website

called "The Drudge Report."

This is "How It Really Happened."

♪♪

Larry: Tonight, the Clinton White House

faces a huge crisis over another allegation

of sexual impropriety by the President.

Oh, my God.

This was a thunderclap of monumental proportions.

On you go to Washington, your first job there is?

I was an intern.

Franken: This was a major story.

We're talking about an intern in the White House.

Van Susteren: The reports allege Clinton had a year

and a half affair with a white House intern

and then allegedly tried to get her to lie about it.

It was just so stunning.

At issue, did the president of the United States

participate in a conspiracy?

I just thought, "Oh, God. No."

We wondered, "How is he going to react?"

I never imagined in my wildest dreams

it was going to go in this direction.

We're back with Monica Lewinsky.

What was the thumb thing?

Oh.

She's lied either before or she's lying now.

Press: Truth and consequences -- Who's telling the truth,

and what are the consequences for President Clinton?

The story that becomes Bill Clinton's impeachment

begins at the registration desk in a Little Rock hotel,

long before he becomes President of the United States.

The lawsuit is called Paula Corbin Jones

plaintiff versus William Jefferson Clinton.

This was an allegation of sexual harassment.

Cammarata: Paula Jones claimed that she was working

as an Arkansas state employee at a conference.

Governor Bill Clinton was speaking.

Isikoff: She said she gets summoned by the trooper

to go up to the hotel room,

and at that point, Bill Clinton proceeded

to make unsolicited sexual advances.

The allegations about President Bill Clinton

were salacious,

and they were unending.

He pulled me and started running his hand up my leg,

and he tried to kiss on my neck.

Cammarata: He wound up sitting down at a couch

and exposed himself and asked her to kiss him.

Woodruff: And what did you do then?

Oh, I stood straight up.

I jumped up and I said, "I am not that kind of girl,"

and I said, "I need to be leaving immediately."

Cammarata: On May 6, 1994, we filed a lawsuit

on behalf of Paula Jones

against the President of the United States

for acts that we believed were violative of her rights.

This case is about character and integrity.

This case is about the powerful taking advantage of the weak.

Paula Jones is seeking $700,000 in damage.

Cammarata: Bill Clinton's response

was to deny anything of the sort.

He, through his agency, maligned Paula Jones,

said that she was just after money,

fame, fortune, and she was just, in essence, trailer-park trash.

This complaint is tabloid trash with a legal caption on it.

Cammarata: One of the civil lawsuits against Michael Jackson

had just settled,

and one of the tactics that the plaintiffs used in that case

was a purported description of Michael Jackson's penis,

and Paula Jones' lawyers said,

"Okay, let's use the same tactic."

As to avoid that "he said, she said,"

I made inquiry of Paula,

as to whether or not there were

any distinguishing characteristics

in Clinton's genital area.

Which mostly had the effect

of just being deeply humiliating to the President.

It, quite frankly, was kind of a perverse PR strategy.

Andersen: The Paula Jones lawsuit

dragged on seemingly forever.

Franken: It was a combination of legal maneuvers

that went on for several years.

Andersen: There were a number of opportunities

to settle the case,

but it was something that Hillary was not willing to do.

She didn't want that kind of black mark

on her husband's presidency.

Penn: One day, after the '96 presidential election,

the president essentially sat me down in the oval office,

and he said, "You know, there are some people

who think I should settle this Paula Jones suit."

I said, "Look, I think you'd be better of settling it,"

that everything was going well in the presidency.

We'd won reelection.

There was no reason to have this hanging around,

and he, of course, in the end didn't do that.

Cammarata: It was a big mistake on the part of Bill Clinton

not to settle the case.

Morris: This entire mess with Monica Lewinsky

and impeachment would never have happened

if he had settled that lawsuit.

I remember talking to Joe Cammarata about the case.

This was a couple of years after it got filed and said,

"You know, it's unlikely you'll ever be able to prove this

unless there are other women out there

who will say they had similar experiences."

Cammarata says, "Well, what if we got one?"

And I said, "Do tell."

Cammarata: There was one day that I received a telephone call

from a woman who would not give me her name,

and she said that she had something happen to her

that was similar to what had happened to Paula Jones.

Through some detective work,

I was ultimately able to figure out

that this was most likely a woman named Kathleen Willey.

Andersen: Kathleen Willey was a friend of Bill's,

and in 1993, she went to Bill for a job,

and instead, she later claimed Bill made his move on her.

He hugged me, which was not unusual.

He's like that, and, you know,

the hug lasted a little too long,

and he acted pretty badly.

Isikoff: I went to see her and I said,

"Are there others you spoke to about this at the time?"

And she said, "Yeah, there was this woman

who worked in the White House, who I told about it right away,"

and she said her name was Linda Tripp.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

He said, "Kathleen Willey has named you

as a contemporaneous corroborative witness

in her sexual harassment claim against the President."

She said, "Well, there's a story here,

but it's not the one you're thinking of."

She told me about a young woman, a former intern,

who was having an ongoing affair with the President.

This seemed at first blush astounding and improbable,

but I wanted to know more.

♪♪

In 1995, Monica Lewinsky came to Washington.

A friend of our families had a grandson

who had had an internship at the White House

and had thought it might be something I'd enjoy doing.

Man: Had you ever worked around politics and campaigns

or been very active?

No.

John: I remember Monica Lewinsky,

like many interns, were fascinated by their job,

who were honored and privileged

and lucky and excited and curious

about working in the White House.

Randall: The daughter of a Beverly Hills doctor,

she graduated from Lewis and Clarke college

in Oregon in 1995 with a degree in psychology.

From those who worked with her,

there emerges a picture of contradictions.

Descriptions range from easygoing to unstable.

I'd say she was very ambitious.

She was a very hard worker.

She knew what she wanted, and she worked very hard to get it.

Lewinsky: I had met him in August of '95

at a departure ceremony.

So were you introduced there, or you just --

No, he went down the rope line.

That was the first time?

Mm-hmm, and at this departure ceremony,

he just happened to give me this...

Look? Look.

Andersen: Monica later said she got the full Bill Clinton,

as she put it,

which was essentially undressing her with his eyes.

She said there was something terribly animalistic

about the way he looked at her.

I did the internship that summer and had secured a position

by late fall of that year, right as the furlough,

the government shutdown occurred in November.

The U.S. Government has now been partially shut for 44 hours

with 800,000 federal workers idle.

In 1995, there was one of these periodic fights

between a Republican Congress and a Democratic president,

which led to a government shutdown.

As a result, the interns took on more responsibility

than they normally would have.

Sesno: Monica Lewinsky was working,

interning for Leon Panetta, the White House Chief of Staff.

She flashed her thong at Bill Clinton,

and they started flirting,

and later that night, they had their first sexual encounter.

Sesno: The way she introduced herself to the President,

with a flash of her thong underwear,

indicated and demonstrated

that she knew exactly what she wanted,

and she was gonna get it.

If he had said, "Don't you ever do that,"

that would have been that,

and she would have been just another intern.

Monica Lewinsky will never be just another intern.

Did you say to yourself, "Whew, this is the President?"

Larry, I was a 22-year-old foolish kid,

and there was this charismatic, powerful man

who was standing there showing interest in me,

and I was attracted to him,

and I think I was swept up,

you know, with the power of the presidency.

After the first physical togetherness,

did you fall in love?

Not at first, but I came to.

Lewinsky: ...I saw somebody totally different

than I had expected to see,

and that's the person I fell in love with.

Morris: He was asked, "Why did you have this affair?"

And he thought about it a while, and he said, "Because I could."

Judd: There were occasions when they would meet

in the White House in the Oval Office.

There were also phone calls,

some of them in the middle of the night.

The timing of these trysts really defies imagination.

Were you with the president at times when -- intimately --

and he would also be conducting affairs of state,

the story that he was on the phone talking to Congressmen?

Uh, yes.

Another time he was talking

to his political adviser Dick Morris.

I thought about how incredibly self-involved,

narcissistic, and absurd Bill Clinton was

for letting this happen while he's president.

Toobin: The amazing thing about Bill Clinton's relationship

with Monica Lewinsky was that it was a real relationship.

It went on for years.

I mean she put an ad inThe Washington Post

in February 1997, Valentine's Day,

and they had started up in 1995.

I mean, this was pretty long-term.

There were also an exchange of lots of gifts.

Andersen: Hat pins, sunglasses, in one case, he gave her

the same book he gave Hillary,

a copy of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass."

It's surreal to think that he would be doing that,

especially at the time

when he was facing the charges from Paula Jones.

I mean, really he was courting disaster from day one.

I formed an opinion really early in 1996.

I knew that the minute there was no longer any contact,

she would talk about this.

She would have to. She couldn't help it.

It was a part of her psyche.

During this period of time, as you're seeing him --

Yes, I had confided in a couple of my friends.

And Linda Tripp?

Eventually, yes, Linda Tripp.

Wisenberg: We quickly found out she was quite the topic

of conversations in the White House

And that she was considered a clutch --

somebody, a female, who's too close to the president.

John: Evelyn Lieberman, who was the Deputy Chief of Staff

in those days, used to look at Monica

like the nuns used to look at me,

and I said, "Ooh, why doesn't she like her?"

Well, now we know.

Sesno: In April of '96,

several people determined

that they needed to get her out of the White House

and they wanted to get her over to the Pentagon

and away from Bill Clinton, and that's what they did.

And the rest truly is history.

Monica, met her where?

At the Pentagon.

♪♪

Tripp: This was abuse of a child.

Don't ever believe that this was consensual sex,

and he went to extraordinary lengths

to cover that up, criminal lengths.

Larry: Abuse of a child even though she was older?

Well, look. She was -- I have kids that age.

She was 21.

Monica is 21 going on 14 on a good day,

and she was a child.

She was a mixed up, unstable, volatile child.

Sesno: Linda Tripp was this peculiar woman

who worked at the Pentagon,

who had an agenda all her own, it seems.

Judd: Tripp worked in the George H.W. Bush White House,

and then Bill Clinton won.

[ Cheers and applause ]

And it became pretty clear

that she didn't like Bill Clinton very much.

Toobin: The Clinton administration

transferred her out to the Pentagon

where she didn't want to be and was unhappy.

There were a number of alienated

White House employees

who had been very successful in writing books

about how terrible the Clintons were,

and Linda starts thinking about a book deal,

and she mentions it to Tony Snow,

who had been the White House press secretary.

So Tony Snow arranges for Linda Tripp

to meet Lucianne Goldberg.

Goldberg: Linda was, to me,

your basic hardworking bureaucrat.

Toobin: Lucianne Goldberg is a literary agent

who loves conservatives, but even more than that,

she loves gossip and juice and controversy,

and Linda Tripp is manna from heaven for her.

This is not about me.

It's about Linda Tripp.

I was in the position to get information

that it looked like the rest of the world

was interested in hearing.

Sesno: Monica Lewinsky gets to the Pentagon,

and she meets Linda Tripp.

Monica was looking to Linda, who was older and more experienced

in the government, for advice, and they liked talking

and, I think, talked very, very frequently,

sometimes in person and often on the phone.

Larry: And when you got to know her, did you like her?

A lot. A lot.

-Mm-hmm. -Like an aunt?

Like a -- no, my aunt is incredible.

[ Laughs ] She was nothing like an aunt.

You have to weigh a bigger mistake

between the moment of getting involved with the President

and the moment of blurting out

that I had the affair with him to Linda Tripp as --

You relate them equally?

I probably have to say that. Really?

McDaniel: And so Monica chose Linda as her confidant.

As this relationship developed,

she would regularly tell Linda what was going on.

Sesno: Tripp wanted to sell her story to Lucianne Goldberg,

which would help Linda Tripp's pocketbook.

My job is to sell books, so I was going to do everything

I could to move that story along,

sell the book, take my 10%,

and go on to the next person.

That was my motivation. I mean, it was a job.

I told Linda I had to have more solid evidence

than her say-so for her to do a book.

She said, "Well, what can I do?"

And I said, "Can you just tape your conversations?

And she said, "I don't know how to do that."

And I said, "Well, you go to Radio Shack,

and you buy a inexpensive recorder.

They will tell you how to do it.

You just put it on your phone,"

and that's the thing that got her kind of messed up

was that it's illegal in Maryland.

I didn't know. It was just, you know, the dumbness on my part.

How would I know?

These phone calls go on and on,

hour after hour with Monica complaining about her boyfriend,

Bill Clinton, whom she calls the big creep.

[ Laughter ]

Linda Tripp is the definition of the faithless,

horrible friend who is dragging these highly personal,

highly embarrassing secrets out of Monica,

not for Monica's sake, but for Linda's sake.

Goldberg: She never said to me she felt guilty,

and I don't think she did.

I think she felt she had a higher calling.

Lewinsky: You and I have a good friendship and stuff,

and I consider you a good friend.

♪♪

On February 28th, the day after Chelsea's 17th birthday,

Monica made her visit to the president

wearing what would probably become

the most famous blue dress in history.

And the result of the sexual encounter

is that there's a semen stain on her dress.

Larry: How did the semen on the dress even come up?

She wanted me to try on some jackets

that she thought I would fit into,

and I did, and at that time,

she pulled out the semen-stained dress and showed it to me.

Was it one little stain?

No, it was everywhere.

One day, Linda Tripp calls me up

and describes a blue dress that has a stain

that would prove what it was

Monica Lewinsky had been telling her.

And she said, "Do you think I should take it?"

I said, "And do what with it?"

And she said, "Give it to you."

What would I do with it?

Linda just mentioned it to me, almost casually, one night.

She said she was going to have it dry cleaned,

and I said, "Oh, for God's sake, don't let her do that."

Toobin: Now, Linda, who's not a forensic expert,

doesn't know whether it could still be tested,

so she asked Lucianne Goldberg, "Can the dress still be tested?"

Lucianne doesn't know, but she has a former client,

Mark Fuhrman, the detective in the O.J. Simpson case,

who does know something about DNA evidence.

So Lucianne Goldberg asked Mark Fuhrman,

"You know, if there's this dress that's been stained,

could you still test it?"

And he says yes, so Lucianne says to Linda,

"Tell her to save the dress."

But did you ever think of this?

If she didn't tell you to save the dress,

President Clinton today

could be saying he never had a relationship with you.

Mm-hmm.

So in that sense, didn't Linda Tripp help you?

I don't know.

It's -- I think that's one thing

that I'll probably never be able to reconcile within me.

Because he would have denied it.

Of course he would have.

On May 24, 1997, Bill told Monica it was over.

Man: Did you ever receive a call from the President?

Sesno: She would have gone,

had the whole story not exploded.

I'm really sort of trying to do the best

I can with the situation that I found myself in.

Larry: Even though you know you're part of the fault

for the situation.

Of course, and I'm not blameless for it.

I completely recognize that I bear

some responsibility in what happened.

Welcome back to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

In early 1997, President Bill Clinton

and Monica Lewinsky's affair

had been going on for more than a year,

but how long could they keep it a secret?

At the same time the President was seeing Monica,

he was fighting a sexual harassment lawsuit

from Paula Jones.

Jones' attorneys fought and won the right to question

other women President Clinton

may have had sexual encounters with.

Now, they began looking for others to testify.

The Paula Jones case and the Lewinsky affair

were about to collide,

and the results for President Clinton

would spell disaster.

Lewinsky: It has been made clear to me that there's no way

I'm going to be able to come back to the White House.

♪♪

On May 24, 1997, Bill told Monica it was over.

Sesno: So then this relationship isn't going any place,

and Monica realizes that she's going to have to figure out

where is she going to land,

and she expresses an interest in going to New York.

Man: And you received a job offer from Revlon,

with the help of Vernon Jordan.

Is that correct? Yes.

She enlists the help of Vernon Jordan,

one of Bill Clinton's closest friends and allies.

Lewinsky: I'm afraid to hear him say, "Yes, of course,

I'll do that," and then him not do it.

Sesno: Clearly the president was trying to keep her happy.

She would have gone, had the whole story not exploded.

McDaniel: The Paula Jones lawsuit

was working its way through the system,

and it came time for depositions to be taken.

Isikoff: The judge had said,

"Other women who were state or federal employees

were fair game to be subpoenaed

as potential witnesses in the Paula Jones lawsuit

if it fit into a pattern of Bill Clinton's conduct."

The lawyers for Paula Jones became aware of Linda Tripp

and Monica Lewinsky,

and so they put them on the witness list.

So you went to the Paula Jones lawyer?

No. Mnh-mnh.

But I allowed them to find me.

By letting it be known that you could be found?

Well, I told Lucianne Goldberg that if they contacted me,

I would be forthcoming with them.

It eventually was clear that the Paula Jones lawyers

were having outside legal help

from a network of conservative lawyers

who I call the elves.

And one of them is Anne Coulter,

the famous conservative activist.

Another one is a lawyer named Conway,

who is married to Kellyanne Conway,

who becomes a very famous person during the Trump campaign,

and this group who were working in secret for Paula Jones

become the glue between the Paula Jones case

and the Monica Lewinsky matter.

They figure out that if they could get the information

that Linda Tripp has about Monica Lewinsky

into the hands of the Paula Jones lawyers,

they could really create a lot of mischief.

That's exactly what they did.

Toobin: Bob Bennett, Clinton's lawyer,

in preparation for his deposition,

goes through a list of names who might come up,

Monica Lewinsky's name,

and Clinton pooh-poohs the whole thing.

He said, "You think I'm crazy to get involved

with someone like that?"

Good question.

Bear in mind that this was a carefully coordinated

political trap

set for Bill Clinton to fall into.

Man: In the morning on December the 17th,

did you receive a call from the President?

Yes.

What was the purpose of that call?

To tell me that my name was on a witness list

for the Paula Jones case.

Once I had been subpoenaed

in the Paula Jones case in December

and that Linda had been subpoenaed

in the Paula Jones case,

my antenna started to go up, and I was petrified.

I was concerned because the subpoena

had called for a hat pin,

that I turn over a hat pin, and that was an alarm to me.

It mentions a hat pin,

one of the gifts that Bill Clinton has given her,

so she begins to suspect someone has been

telling the Paula Jones lawyers about their relationship,

and she goes to Linda Tripp to speculate about that,

not knowing that Linda Tripp is

Isikoff: She's continuing to talk to Linda Tripp

who she thinks is her good friend.

Sesno: Lewinsky, after consultations in Washington

with the Clinton loyalists, signed an affidavit

saying there was no sexual relationship.

Isikoff: And at the same time, she's becoming more

and more anxious about getting this job,

so it could look more and more like Bill Clinton

is trying the get her a job in order to keep her quiet.

In the beginning of 1998, Bill and Hillary

went to the Virgin Islands on a vacation.

McDaniel: A long-angled camera was able to capture

the two of them dancing on the beach.

Andersen: There was a speculation that this had been arranged

for public consumption to show

that they were indeed still very much in love.

Isikoff: Bill and Hillary not having a care in the world

while all this turmoil is about to unfold.

This just in -- Kenneth W. Starr,

a Republican and former appellate judge

and solicitor general,

has been named by a special court

to take over as independent counsel

in charge of the Whitewater Investigation.

Ken Starr started with the investigation into Whitewater.

McDaniel: Whitewater was a real-estate transaction

in which it was believed

that Mrs. Clinton and perhaps the President

had gotten a special deal

because they'd had insider knowledge.

Starr was an odd choice to be the independent counsel,

special prosecutor.

He had never prosecuted anyone.

He had never worked in criminal law.

I think his motive was always to be a devoted public servant.

I'm certain that when he first came in 1994,

his thought was, "This will be done in about 6 months."

What happened was, as the investigation went on,

a bunch of other scandals involving President Clinton

or Mrs. Clinton occurred, for example,

the White House Travel Office investigation.

We also got assigned to handle the Vince Foster investigation.

Mr. Clinton canceled his public appearances today,

except to share his grief for Foster's apparent suicide.

Doyle: Vince Foster was the Deputy White House Counsel,

and he tragically killed himself.

There were allegations that he was murdered.

That was never proven.

Isikoff: The Whitewater case, by late '97,

was beginning to look like

it was meandering and going nowhere.

Starr is getting heat.

When are you going to wrap this thing up?

And then suddenly, along comes Monica Lewinsky.

Wisenberg: We first heard the name Monica Lewinsky

when we got a call from Linda Tripp.

We were completely uninterested

in whether he was having an affair with Monica Lewinsky.

I think presidents should be allowed,

even encouraged,

to have all the affairs they want.

That wasn't what was going on.

What we were told by Linda Tripp,

who's a very intelligent and manipulative person,

is that Monica Lewinsky is being asked to lie

for the president by Vernon Jordan,

and she's being asked to fill out a false affidavit.

♪♪

So they took it upon themselves to start investigating

whether there had been obstruction of justice

in the Paula Jones case.

Sesno: Paula Jones gets connected to Monica Lewinsky.

Monica Lewinsky leads back to the President.

It's a disaster.

Wisenberg: Linda Tripp was scheduled to meet

the very next day with Monica Lewinsky.

What better way than to wire her up

and see if she can corroborate some of the things

she's been talking about with us.

Sesno: Linda is wearing a wire.

Of course, Lewinsky has no idea.

Tripp: I feel like we're in the middle

of a John Grisham book, frankly.

Tell me the honest truth, Monica,

because this means a lot to me.

Has he already said that?

Lewinsky: What? That someone else knows?

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Great.

Things are reaching this remarkable moment of crescendo.

I get a phone call that day tipping me off

that the FBI was involved, that Ken Starr was involved.

I nearly fell off my chair.

I mean, my God.

This is real.

This is going to explode.

♪♪

Ken Starr's investigator decided

that it was time to talk directly with Monica herself.

To see if she would cooperate with us,

to see whether or not there really

is obstruction of justice going on.

Judd: Tripp invited Monica Lewinsky to meet her

at a food court in a mall.

Monica Lewinsky thought it was a social occasion.

It was not.

Goldberg: Linda told me they were going to meet

at the courtyard coffee shop,

and evidently the place was swarming with FBI.

Little does Monica know,

not only is Linda Tripp not her friend,

not only has she been recording her, but who's waiting for her?

Not just Linda Tripp, but FBI agents.

Linda Tripp was -- was keeping notes in a notebook.

She writes about Monica, "We are on opposite sides.

Guilt is still there but lessening.

Her decision to lie is hers alone."

Goldberg: : Linda called me from the escalator

and said she was on her way to meet Monica.

She said, "I see her now."

Then the phone goes dead.

And I never spoke to her again.

McDaniel: All of a sudden, the FBI agents

descended on the place,

they took Monica up to a hotel room.

Lewinsky: That's when I knew I was in trouble.

This was definitely something that had gone awry.

Isikoff: The strategy was to flip Monica,

get her to talk about Vernon Jordan's efforts

to get her a job in exchange for her being quiet

about her affair with Bill Clinton.

That's what they were hoping,

but it doesn't quite play out that way.

She decided not to tell us anything.

Isikoff: At one point, Monica's allowed to leave the room,

and she passes Linda Tripp on the escalator.

At this point, she knows Linda Tripp has betrayed her.

"Thanks a lot," she says.

"They did it to me too," Linda replies,

which, of course, is a total lie.

Sesno: Nothing of this has broken yet.

These storm clouds are gathering just over the horizon,

but most of the media and the public had no idea.

Larry: When is the last time you spoke to Bill Clinton?

January of '98, obviously before this broke.

Was it a good-bye call or what?

No, I mean, of course not.

Nobody knew this was going to happen.

Van Susteren: Tomorrow in the nation's capital,

President Clinton will be deposed by Paula Jones' lawyers.

He becomes the first sitting president

to testify as a defendant.

Isikoff: January 17th is the day of the deposition

of Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones lawsuit,

and he has no idea what he's walking into.

Man: Do you understand, sir, that your answers

to my questions today are testimony

that is being given under oath?

Yes. If the President had known

how much we knew about Monica Lewinsky,

I believe he would have either delayed the deposition,

settled the case, or answered in a very different way.

And your testimony is subject to the penalty of perjury.

Do you understand that, sir?

I do.

He sticks to his script,

claims he doesn't remember Paula Jones,

and then the questions come about Monica Lewinsky.

Did anyone other than your attorneys ever tell you

that Monica Lewinsky had been served

with a subpoena in this case?

I don't think so.

Clinton went into his deposition with some confidence

about the Monica Lewinsky situation

because he already knew

that Monica had signed an affidavit

saying nothing had taken place,

so if he denied it and she denied it,

he thought he was probably home free,

and then he got a strange gift.

Instead of just asking him in a straightforward way,

"Did Monica Lewinsky perform oral sex on you?"

they asked it in this incredibly convoluted way.

That allowed him to sort of talk around the truth

of their relationship when a straightforward question

would have yielded a complete and obvious lie.

Man: This is a definition of a term

that will be used in the course of my questioning.

The term is sexual relations.

He was asked whether or not, under the definition

in the case, he had sexual contact with Monica Lewinsky.

He brazens right through it and denies a sexual relationship

with Monica Lewinsky and figures the whole thing is over.

Counsel is fully aware that Ms. Lewinsky has filed --

has an affidavit which they are in possession of saying

that there was absolutely no sex of any kind,

in any manner, shape, or form with President Clinton.

It's absolutely clear what sexual contact

meant under the definition, and he lied about it.

In paragraph eight of her affidavit, she says this,

"I have never had a sexual relationship

with the President."

Is that a true and accurate statement as far as you know it?

That is absolutely true.

After he did that, he was then on record,

under oath in the deposition, as having lied,

and that really set the basis for everything that followed.

Isikoff: And at that point,

I thought this was a no-brainer of a story,

that this was going to be one of the biggest

and most explosive political stories in Washington in years,

but the editors atNewsweek were nervous.

We were racing towards a deadline.

It was late in the afternoon.

We had to make a decision whether to publish or not.

We knew it was possible that this could lead to the President

of the United States being removed from office.

Are we sure we know what we're talking about here?

Are we sure this reporting is true?

And so late on Saturday night,

we made the decision not to publish.

They were just afraid of it.

They were afraid to come out and publish a story

saying that the President of the United States

was having a blatant affair.

Isikoff: Obviously, I was bummed.

We knew more about this than anybody else.

Nobody else had talked to Linda Tripp

or Lucianne Goldberg,

or knew about how Ken Starr had gotten involved.

The phone rings, and it's Mike, and he's furious.

He's absolutely livid, and he said,

"They're not going to run it. They've spiked it,"

so that's when I took it to "Drudge."

I said, "I'm sitting on a story that nobody wants to publish.

It's yours if you want it."

"Drudge Report," January 17, 1998.

11:32 P.M.

"The Drudge Report" has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff...

...developed the story of his career,

only to have it spiked by topNewsweek

...hours before its publication.

A young woman, 23...

...sexually involved with the love of her life,

the President of the United States...

...since she was a 21-year-old intern at the White House.

She was a frequent visitor to a small study

just off the Oval Office...

...where she claims to have indulged the President's

sexual preference.

Michael Isikoff was not available for comment

late Saturday.

[ Imitates explosion ]

A potentially damaging cloud

is hanging over the White House this morning.

This story is a bomb, literally, that drops out of the air.

CNN has confirmed that Whitewater counsel Kenneth Starr

has been granted permission to expand his investigation.

What we wanted to know was everything.

Information about an alleged affair

continues to pour out of Washington.

Doyle: We had absolutely no idea

what was going to come at us.

We had no idea that there was going to be

a semen-stained blue dress.

Today, more details and more denials

in the matter of Monica Lewinsky.

There were salacious accusations

that the public had never heard before.

Press: Meet Monica Lewinsky.

Man: Do you, Monica S. Lewinsky, do swear or affirm...

Did he do it? Didn't he do it?

...the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

What we realized is this has just begun.

I do.

Larry: When you first saw your name mentioned,

do you remember your first reaction?

I mean, it was just -- it was scary.

Initial reports of this shocking affair

spun Washington on its head,

and news outlets scrambled for details.

Some answers came from reporter Michael Isikoff.

Days after news of the affair leaked,

Newsweek Isikoff's article,

publishing it online,

the first time they'd ever broken

a big news story on the Web, but this was just the beginning.

Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, and a cast of dozens

were now stepping onto the national stage,

a the stage befitting the Shakespearean drama

about to unfold next time

on part 2 of "How It Really Happened."

Thanks for watching.

Good night.