Currie was the perfect assistant to a man who had been concealing sex for decades. Starr alleges no fewer than five Clinton perjuries in the Jones deposition on the issue of whether the President and Lewinsky had a sexual affair, three more in Clinton's Aug. 17 grand-jury testimony (claiming, for example, that he hadn't touched Lewinsky's breasts or genitals) and one lie in his televised statement to the American people that night, when he said his Jones testimony had been "legally accurate." The President, Starr also alleges, lied when he claimed he couldn't recall being alone with Lewinsky, lied when he said he hadn't discussed her Jones affidavit with her, lied when he said he hadn't helped her find a job. Since perjury is exceptionally difficult to prove--especially when the witness is as skilled at evasion as Clinton--it is questionable whether any of these misleading statements could be grounds for impeachment, as the prosecutor claims. And there is reason to recoil at some of Starr's tactics; he included far more sexual detail than was necessary to prove his point, and at times ignored or discounted evidence that contradicts his case. Still, many Americans--even those who have long assumed Clinton was lying--will be appalled by the depths of the President's recklessness and deceit. Others will say, Tell us something we didn't know.

So Starr tells them. After the initial shock wears off, readers may find the most damaging sections of the report to be not the salacious details that demonstrate Clinton's deceit but rather the staggeringly detailed account of the cover-up effort he directed: a campaign to avoid discovery that, Starr alleges, amounts to abusing the powers of the office to stymie Starr's investigation. Though the outlines of the story have long since been told in press accounts, the report offers scores of damning new details that drive home the truth of a 25-year-old cliche: the cover-up is worse than the crime.

Most accounts have dated Clinton's alleged scheme to buy Lewinsky's silence by finding her a New York job to the fall of 1997, when she was named as a possible witness in the Jones suit. But the report demonstrates that its roots went back much further. By early spring of that year, according to the report, Clinton began focusing on the threat Lewinsky represented, asking her whether she had told her mother, Marcia Lewis, of the affair. Word of the relationship had leaked to Lewis' friend, Walter Kaye, who mentioned it to White House aide Marsha Scott. Not long after that, Lewinsky received an invitation from Betty Currie to visit the President. On Saturday, May 24, Clinton told Lewinsky he wanted to break off the affair. The President noted, she testified, that "he could do a great deal for her."

Three days later, the Supreme Court ruled that the Jones case could proceed during Clinton's term. Soon after that decision, Jones' lawyers announced they would try to find other female subordinates who had been approached sexually by Clinton. That gave him an even stronger motive for helping Lewinsky. The report details a truly extraordinary job search on her behalf, one driven in part by Lewinsky's extortionate demands. Clinton instructed Currie and Scott to find Lewinsky another White House job after she had been exiled to the Pentagon. Currie argued against it because she felt Lewinsky was "a little bit pushy," but Clinton, Currie testified, "was pushing us hard." She said it was the only time he had ever pressed her to find someone a White House job.

When nothing opened for Lewinsky, she vented her frustration in a July 3 letter to Clinton. If she wasn't going to return to the White House, she wrote, she would "need to explain to my parents exactly why that wasn't happening." She then suggested that he help get her a job at the U.N.

The next day he called her back to the Oval Office. The President berated her for threatening him, but the visit ended affectionately, with Clinton saying he wished he had more time for her and suggesting that after his term was up, he "might be alone."

By autumn, the stakes were rising for Clinton. On Oct. 1, he received interrogatories from Jones' lawyers asking for a list of women other than his wife with whom he had sought to have sexual relations. Six days later, Lewinsky sent the President another letter complaining about her stalled job search. She was cooling on the U.N. idea now and wanted Clinton to help her get a job in the private sector. After 2 a.m. on Oct. 10, the report says, Clinton called Lewinsky and unloaded on her: "If I had known what kind of person you really were, I never would have gotten involved with you," he told her. She complained that he had not done enough to help her. Clinton said he was eager to help. She told him she wanted a job in New York City by the end of October, and he promised to try.

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