- WASHINGTON -- Bill Clinton
has given his most candid account yet of his affair with Monica Lewinsky,
saying he did it because he "could". He called the decision "a
terrible moral error" but not a resigning issue.
-
- In a US television interview to launch the promotional
tour for his autobiography, My Life, Mr Clinton said family counselling
had saved his marriage, eventually persuading Hillary not to walk out on
him, even though she had put him "in the doghouse".
-
- He said: "We did it together, we did it individually,
we did family work."
-
- The former president never uttered Lewinsky's name in
the interview. But he told the veteran CBS news anchor Dan Rather that
he had committed adultery "for the worst possible reason - just because
I could. I think that's just about the most morally indefensible reason
anybody could have for doing anything".
-
- But in a carefully controlled display of contrition,
to be broadcast on Sunday on 60 Minutes, the most-watched current affairs
programme in the US, Mr Clinton emphatically stopped short of giving any
ground to those who had called for him to stand down.
-
- He said fighting impeachment had been "a badge of
honour". He added: "I didn't see it as a stain, because it was
illegitimate." Asked if he had ever thought of abandoning the White
House, he said: "I didn't quit, I never thought of resigning and I
stood up to it and beat it back."
-
- Mr Rather, who was himself interviewed by USA Today,
said Mr Clinton proved he had written the 975-page book himself, in long-hand,
by showing a stack of notebooks more than 1.8 metres (6ft) high.
-
- Despite the scandal that dominated much of his time in
office, Mr Clinton maintained that he had "had a lot of great days
during his presidency".
-
- He said: "The day that the Kosovo war ended, and
I knew Milosevic's days were numbered, was a great day."
-
- But he believed his greatest achievements had been economic.
"I kept score, how many people's lives were better off ... I think
the fact that we were able to have 22m jobs and record home ownership and
lower interest rates ... people actually had the ability to do more things
than ever before." He wished, he added, that he had been able to solve
the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
-
- Mr Clinton underscored his conviction that he was the
victim of a plot to unseat him when he spoke at the New York premiere of
a new documentary, The Hunting of the President, based on a book that meticulously
unpicked the alliance of rightwing journalists, political activists and
Republican hangers-on who wanted him out of the White House.
-
- Ken Starr, the independent counsel who led the investigation,
was "the instrument of a grand design", Mr Clinton said, echoing
his wife's famous comment that "a vast rightwing conspiracy"
was being directed at the couple. "When the Berlin Wall fell, the
perpetual right in America, which always needs an enemy, didn't have an
enemy any more, so I had to serve as the next best thing," Mr Clinton
said.
-
- Democrats have expressed worries that Mr Clinton's book
tour will force the divisive elements of his legacy back on to the agenda,
especially if he dwells on his battles with the right. And it would be
just at the moment when their candidate, John Kerry, is starting to forge
an anti-Bush consensus.
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1241766,00.html
|
