Slap and Tickle by Tom Cutler

Author:Tom Cutler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

The girl who bit off more than she could chew

On 17 January 1998, the name on everybody’s lips was Monica Lewinsky. On Monica’s lips was the name, and not only that, of President Bill Clinton. News had surfaced on the Drudge Report website of an alleged sexual relationship between Lewinsky, a twenty-five-year-old White House intern, and Bill Clinton, the married President of the United States.

Drudge reported that Newsweek editors were in possession of a story by reporter Michael Isikoff, which they were treating as a very hot potato. On 21 January, the Washington Post announced that the story concerned a possible relationship between the President and a White House intern, sending journalists into a frenzy, and presidential aides into a damage-limitation exercise. Five days later, President Clinton, with his wife beside him, addressed a televised news conference with what seemed to be a straightforward denial: ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,’ he said, with a strange look in his eyes. And that was that. Except, of course, that it wasn’t, because Bill Clinton had form.

Before becoming president in 1993, Clinton had been governor of the state of Arkansas and a number of allegations of sexual inappropriateness had raised their ugly heads. Leaving aside Monica Lewinsky for a moment, Clinton admitted sexual encounters with only one woman – apart from his wife, obviously. This lady was Gennifer Flowers, whose name had emerged during his 1992 presidential election campaign. Clinton denied at first that there had been any relationship with Flowers but his position was somewhat undermined by recordings of him talking amiably to her on the phone, which she played at a news conference.

Now, all these years later, a former Arkansas employee, Paula Jones, had filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton, and this blast from the past had made its way to the US Supreme Court. Rather inconveniently, Monica Lewinsky’s name had popped up during the proceedings, though she denied any sexual relationship with the president. Clinton likewise denied having sexual relations with her. But things were about to unravel like a string vest, and once again tape recordings would do some damage to a president’s credibility. These tapes, along with an unlaundered navy blue dress, were going to refresh Clinton’s memory rather publicly.

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