Interview: Monica Lewinsky Up Close

• Share

(4 of 7)

Lewinsky: I think he has a hard time being fulfilled. And I think that comes from being needy. And maybe everybody should take my comments on this as a reflection of myself too. I think he is a very, very sensual man, and I think with his upbringing, his religious background, he doesn't know what to do with it. He doesn't know where to place it and how to be appropriate.

I think he has a desire to please everybody, and he is also an ostrich, in that he avoids confrontation at all costs. He will tell you what you want to hear to avoid confrontation. If he had just said to me [when I was at the Pentagon in 1996 and 1997], "I thought I could bring you back [to the White House], but I can't. I was wrong. Can we work out another way? I want to make you happy." Instead of stringing me along. It would have changed things a lot.

TIME: You said you sometimes hate Clinton's guts. Why?

Lewinsky: I don't think I deserved from him the way he characterized this relationship. The way he allowed, if not orchestrated, the White House to say all those things about me. He said himself in his deposition that I was a good person. And I--I see him as a politician. All about "me." All about "me."

TIME: Did he really want to get back together with you in 1997?

Lewinsky: I don't know. I don't think so.

TIME: He teared up that time when you complained that your relationship seemed to be just about sex. Do you trust those tears now?

Lewinsky: No. It's very hard for me, and even in talking about everything that's happened, it's hard for me to square my thoughts, because I see him as such an opposite of what I used to see him. There's only one person who can answer that, and I don't think we'd ever get the truth on that.

TIME: If you had to do it all over again, would you have destroyed the dress?

Lewinsky: No. I mean... I never would have got to that point.

TIME: But if you had destroyed the dress, do you have any idea what the White House would have done to you? And would you have wanted the story to end that way?

Lewinsky: I'd still be standing. I think people forget what was said and written about me already. I mean, go back to last January and February and March and what was said about my family, the lies, the disgusting, horrible things that people said on TV. If I could make it through that, I can make it through anything.

TIME: Do you believe Juanita Broaddrick?

Lewinsky: What is hard for me to understand with this story is that I think...the word rape has a very different meaning and connotation today than it did 20 years ago. Twenty years ago, women were not apt to say no. And I'm not saying that means she asked for it. It sounds like it was an unpleasant experience for her.

And I feel differently about her than I do about what Paula Jones has said. I feel bad for everybody, that this topic, that these kinds of things are being discussed and aired.

TIME: Do you feel partly responsible for that?

Lewinsky: I know people do [hold me responsible]. Whether I agree with them or not is another matter.

TIME: Do you still think that oral sex isn't sex?

Lewinsky: Uh-hum [yes].

TIME: Do you think it wasn't a sexual relationship?