Bill Clinton: I Misled People

(2 of 11)

In the days leading up to Monday's confession, the mystery of what he would say to the nation was never as compelling as what he would say to his wife. Clinton had apparently found it easier to lie to 269 million Americans with Hillary at his side than to sit her down and tell her the truth. There are people at the heart of the White House who swear up and down that going into this weekend, Hillary Clinton still did not know, really know, the truth about Monica Lewinsky. Such ignorance in a very smart woman, they argue, is born of a mix of decision and denial: an unusual career--the brilliant Yale lawyer who gave up her work to make her husband better at his--and an unusual marriage, in which his serial infidelity was taken for granted by everyone except her.

Clinton took his first step on Wednesday night, Aug. 12, a sort of out-of-town opening for the performances that would follow. He tried out a lawyer's redacted version of a confession, not on Hillary but on a friend whose reviews he could trust. He said the relationship had begun during the 1995 government shutdown; it strayed across the line, and it made him ashamed. What really worried him, now that he had to face the grand jury, was how he would prepare Hillary for the next four days.

That talk came the next night, Thursday, when Chelsea was out with friends and her parents had some time to be alone. How it went is the only thing that is sure to remain between Bill, Hillary and their God.

Friday was an endurance contest. The New York Times brought the curtain up with the news that Clinton might admit to a sexual affair with Lewinsky. The fact that this had been assumed for two weeks did not dilute the drama of the paper of record's stating what he would do and how he would do it: the legalistic parsing of definitions of sex that would let him admit to lying but deny perjury--a nifty legal trick. As if that were not enough, some observers suggested that the story had been leaked to give Hillary the bad news that Clinton might not be able to deliver himself. Hillary, her lawyers and just about every White House official with a telephone would deny the report at least once that day. And in the meantime, Hillary had her own surprise to spring--an early birthday party for her husband on the South Lawn, complete with spice cake and the Marine Band and everything short of For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.

Then the White House went dark. There's nothing so rare at the Executive Mansion as a quiet Saturday, when people can relax and Presidents actually get to play. But this was a whole new kind of quiet--hollow and grim. Clinton was looking, simultaneously, at the most dangerous prospect of his public life and the most devastating chapter of his private one. He canceled his plans for the weekend to prepare for his testimony; Hillary went into seclusion. She virtually locked herself in a room upstairs, forswearing visitors and talking to no one other than her mother and other family. Chelsea was nowhere to be seen either.