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Mr. President, Mr. Speaker,
my fellow Americans.

Again, we are here
in the sanctuary of democracy,

and once again,
our democracy has spoken.

On January 24, 1995,
President Bill Clinton

addressed Congress
and the American people.

Two years into his presidency,
and just months after suffering

the worst midterm election
defeat in modern history,

he was chastened and humble.

And now all of us,
Republicans and Democrats alike,

must say, "We hear you.

We will work together to earn
the jobs you have given us."

After the midterms,
the president, I think, felt

that he was almost a hostage
in his own White House.

He was unhappy
with the White House staff,

he was unhappy
with the policy direction,

and so he actually began
a very quiet operation

to begin to change
his administration.

Beginning in early 1995,

White House staffers
began to notice

a change in the president.

His speeches contained

unfamiliar language
and cadences.

In meetings, he'd get up
abruptly and leave the room.

Many aides felt he was
no longer listening to them.

I recall a meeting

that the president's economic
advisors

and political advisors
were having

about how he was going
to spend the next three weeks,

what themes he was going
to emphasize.

And I remember somebody
from the back of the room,

I think it was Erskine Bowles,

then the president's
chief of staff,

saying,
"This is all irrelevant."

Irrelevant?

We're the staff.

We are the people
who help the president.

Why are we irrelevant?

And he didn't exactly say.

He said there was some other
force in the White House.

And again and again
there seemed to be instances...

It was almost like in astronomy,

there's a black hole
and you can only tell it's there

because planets begin moving
into its gravitational orbit.

But you look
and there's nothing there.

That was Dick Morris.

Dick Morris was the black hole.

Dick Morris,

an abrasive political consultant
from New York,

had a history with the Clintons

that went all the way back
to Arkansas.

Other than Hillary Clinton,

he was the most important
political advisor

that Bill Clinton had had
over the course of his career.

He was there for the very first
election to governor in 1978

and had been with Bill Clinton

for most of the Arkansas
gubernatorial years.

Morris set up shop
in the White House

and began to chair
weekly strategy meetings

that were attended by most of
the president's senior staff.

Clinton typically dominates

any group or discussion
that he's in.

In the meetings on the second
floor of the residence,

which we had every week,

Clinton would literally
sit there for an hour sometimes,

hardly saying a word,
listening to Morris.

When I first started to work for
Clinton in the White House,

he had two big negatives:

a third of the country
thought he was immoral

and a third of the country
thought he was weak,

and I basically went to him
and I said,

"I can't do much
about the immoral,

but we sure can solve the weak."

And therefore we embarked
on a conscious strategy

of making sure people
saw Clinton as strong.

The heart of Morris's operation
was his polling,

which he used to diagnose
where Clinton's weaknesses lay

and how he could correct them.

Polling became
absolutely central.

How do we present ourselves as
an alternative to Newt Gingrich?

How are people
seeing the president?

What sort of policies
would make them feel better

about Bill Clinton?

They polled everything.

They polled every last word
that came out of his mouth.

They polled where he should go
on vacation.

Instead of going
to Martha's Vineyard,

that elite island
off the coast of Massachusetts,

they had him riding a horse
in Wyoming.

I think Bill Clinton's allergic
to horses.

But that's what the focus group
said would be

a more acceptable vacation.

One of the big problems

was the relationship
between Bill and Hillary.

Voters thought that it was
a zero-sum game,

that for Hillary to be strong,
Bill would have to be weak.

And, as a result, the perception
of Hillary's strength

became a perception
of Bill's weakness.

The polling made me
understand that,

and when I came back
to work for Clinton,

one of the first things I did
was to tell Hillary,

"You can be as influential
as you want to be,

"but do it in private.

"Don't sit in on the strategy
meetings,

"don't make the appointments,

"don't make everybody
be cleared with you.

"At the bedroom at night,
tell him what to do,

but don't let it be seen
in public."

Morris's advice hit home.

After the stunning defeat
in the midterm elections,

Hillary had received
a large share of the blame.

She was outspoken, she was
smart, she was hard-driving,

and some people resented her.

Remember, during the campaign,

there was two
for the price of one.

Well, people aren't electing
two for the price of one.

They're electing the president.

She had been caught out
trying to be a co-president.

That just wasn't gonna fly,

and that's when she really had
to begin to really reexamine,

again as she did
as governor's wife,

"What does the public
want from me in this role?"

And to take on gradually

a little bit more of the
traditional role of first lady.

Well, welcome to the White House

and to the beginning
of the Christmas season here.

Unsatisfied by her ceremonial
role as first lady,

Hillary began working on issues
important to her,

but not alarming to the public.

She began writing
a book about children

and traveled abroad with Chelsea
to advocate for women's rights.

She wrote a weekly
syndicated column,

and even consulted a psychic
in the White House.

But it wasn't enough.

She felt, for one of the rare
times in her life,

completely depressed.

She said everything that she was
doing wasn't working.

She just didn't know
what to do anymore,

because she really wanted
to be in there

right at Bill Clinton's side,

fighting all the political
battles that he was doing.

The president wants to defend
Washington bureaucracy,

Washington red tape
and Washington spending,

and higher taxes to pay
for less out of Washington.

While the Clintons struggled
to find their way back

from the political wilderness,

their rival, Republican Speaker
of the House Newt Gingrich,

was dominating politics
in Washington.

I think Newt felt like
he had led

a great revolution
and led the House...

And the Senate that for matter...
To victory,

and that he could...
we could be the, you know,

the driving force in this city,
and that he was, in effect,

comparable or equal
to the president.

Gingrich and his
newly elected army

of Republican representatives
quickly passed bill after bill

from their
"Contract with America."

Sensing his strength, Gingrich
was intent on drawing Clinton

into a political showdown

that would determine, once and
for all, who was in charge.

In the spring of 1995, Gingrich
picked his battleground.

I think the central issue

that we challenged
the Clinton administration on

was on the budget.

We wanted to balance the budget.

We thought that was the most
important domestic policy issue

that existed in the country,

and it was gonna be ugly, as all
deficit fights inevitably are.

What you currently have is

a system designed to be
a centralized bureaucracy.

In May, Gingrich unveiled a plan

to eliminate the federal budget
deficit in seven years

through huge cuts
in government spending.

Most of the cuts
would be concentrated

in two government
health insurance programs:

Medicare and Medicaid.

Gingrich had managed

to shift the focus of power
and media attention

from Clinton to himself.

Washington and the media
is all about

the new flavor of the month.

And the new flavor of the month

was not the Clinton
administration.

You had Newt Gingrich...

I mean, he was a powerful,
charismatic figure

who had an answer
to every question.

There are three themes that
define where we are right now.

And he not only

wasn't afraid
to talk, he longed to talk.

His problem was,
over time, he talked too much.

With Gingrich in the spotlight,

Clinton seemed
increasingly peripheral.

April 18, 1995.

Bill Clinton gives
a press conference,

and we're all over him
about his lack of power.

Newt's running the town!

Newt's in control!

Yes, Jean.

President Clinton,

Republicans have dominated
political debate in this country

since they took over Congress
in January,

and even tonight, two of the
major television networks

declined to broadcast
this event live.

Do you worry about making sure
your voice is heard

in the coming months?

Clinton is forced to say

that the president
is still relevant here.

The Constitution
gives me relevance,

the power of our ideas
gives me relevance,

the record we have built up
over the last two years

and the things we are trying
to do to implement it

give it relevance.

The president is relevant here.

It was awful.

You know, "The president
is still relevant."

Just the fact that he felt
compelled to say those words

says everything.

I am willing to work
with the Republicans.

The question is,
what happens now?

About a third of the building
has been blown away.

The next day, on April 19, the
bomb went off at Oklahoma City.

It was the largest
domestic terrorist event

in American history.

That changed everything.

The bombing in Oklahoma City was
an attack on innocent children

and defenseless citizens.

It was an act of cowardice
and it was evil.

The United States
will not tolerate it,

and I will not allow
the people of this country

to be intimidated
by evil cowards.

Within 48 hours of the incident,

the FBI arrested 26-year-old
Timothy McVeigh,

a former soldier with a burning
hatred for the government.

His massive truck bomb,

detonated outside
the Murrah Federal Building,

killed 149 workers,
along with 19 children.

Four days after the bombing,

Clinton traveled to Oklahoma
City to console the mourners.

I went with him

down to Oklahoma City
for that Sunday morning.

On the flight, we worked
on the speech some more.

He was very focused
on what to say.

I remember we went into what I
think they call the Cow Palace,

and I've never been in a setting

that was as eerily silent
as that one was

except for the sound of sobbing.

ROBERT McNEELY:
He stood there for hours

and met with every single person
and talked to everybody.

It's kind of a throwaway line
now, "I feel your pain,"

but he literally could.

I mean he could take people
and just hug them

and connect to them in a way
and really listen to them.

You have lost too much,

but you have not lost
everything.

And you have certainly
not lost America,

for we will stand with you.

He really found a way
to embrace the country

to help them channel
their grief, their confusion.

It gets him out of the mode
of reacting to Congress

and into the mode of being
a national leader,

the person that the country
can look to for assurance

and reliance and strength.

To all my fellow Americans
beyond this hall, I say,

one thing we owe those
who have sacrificed

is the duty to purge ourselves

of the dark forces which gave
rise to this evil.

He spoke to the country as
a unifying, a healing figure.

But, very subtly
and appropriately,

he also drew attention
to the fact that

the rhetoric Timothy McVeigh was
using was not all that different

from the rhetoric that the talk
show hosts and the militias

and even some of the members
of Congress were using.

Let us teach our children
that the God of comfort

is also the God
of righteousness.

Those who trouble their own
house will inherit the wind.

Here was a president
who had been, by many people,

deemed not to be strong,

who suddenly was being viewed
as both sensitive and strong,

which was a great
and very powerful combination.

At that moment,
perhaps for the first moment,

he inhabited the presidency.

Bill Clinton had begun
to find his voice at home,

but he commanded little respect
on the international stage.

For two years, Clinton had
stumbled through a series

of foreign policy mishaps.

An ill-considered action
in Somalia

had cost the lives
of 18 U.S. soldiers

and deterred the president

from asserting American military
power around the world.

Without strong U.S. leadership,

the world's problems were
reaching a critical state.

In Central Europe,

Bosnian Serbs
had begun wiping out

the largely Muslim population
in their own country.

In 1995, the massacres in Bosnia
were in full swing.

Daily rivers of blood.

Really, it was appalling.

After two years
of this kind of savagery,

Bill Clinton had a disaster
on his hands.

This was genocide in Europe.

Since becoming president,

Clinton had deferred
to European countries

with soldiers in Bosnia

as part of the United Nations
peacekeeping operation.

One has to understand

that when you are in
a peacekeeping operation,

which is an international
effort,

one president cannot
call the shots.

One president cannot
take the decision.

Particularly when
the president's country

has no troops on the ground.

Clinton's reluctance to send
American soldiers to Bosnia

collided with growing calls
for U.S. intervention.

Mr. President, I cannot
not tell you something.

I have been in the former
Yugoslavia.

We must do something to stop
the bloodshed in that country.

The ongoing scenes of this
horrific genocidal slaughter

going on by the Serbs
against the Muslims

was just undermining Clinton's
image day after day.

Clinton would complain,

"The media's trying to force me
into a war and I don't want it.

I'm not going to go
into my own Vietnam."

And every night, these images
came on the screen.

The violence in Bosnia reached
a climax in the summer of 1995.

A new set of European leaders
implored Clinton to act.

"The position of leader
of the free world,"

complained French president
Jacques Chirac, "is vacant."

Privately, Clinton had begun
to rethink his policy.

Haunted by his failure

to stop a genocide in Rwanda
the previous year,

he could no longer
stand idly by.

Finally the president
set up a trip wire

where if the Bosnian Serbs
attacked,

it would trigger a massive
NATO military response.

On July 11, 1995,

Bosnian Serb soldiers overran
the city of Srebrenica

and murdered more than 8,000
defenseless men and boys.

That was a real shock

for everyone.

And for that to happen
in Europe,

many decades after World War II,

was something that nobody
could sit back and swallow.

For Clinton, the wire
had been tripped.

On August 30, fighter planes
from NATO bases across Europe,

acting on the president's
go-ahead,

launched a massive attack
against Serbs in Bosnia called

"Operation Deliberate
Force."

He didn't blink.

And there wasn't tension on him,
there wasn't pressure on him,

he wasn't sweating
and worrying about,

"Did I do the right thing?"

We knew then, we knew that day,

that we had a commander-in-chief

who was rational and comfortable
with the use of force.

For the next two weeks,
NATO pilots flew 3,500 sorties,

as millions around the world

watched the air war
unfold on television.

The NATO action began
early this morning,

the harsh light of fires
and explosions

coloring the night sky.

Some people watched the
bombardment from their houses,

but after more than
10,000 deaths here

in the last three years,

most Sarajevans
had given up any hope

of outside intervention.

Last night it came on a scale

which could yet change
the course of this war.

On September 14, Serbian guns
ringing Sarajevo fell silent.

Two months later,

Clinton convened the warring
parties in Dayton, Ohio,

to negotiate an end
to hostilities.

The parties have agreed
to put down their arms

and roll up their sleeves
and work for peace.

Finally, when you got tough and
you said, "Enough already,

"we don't accept genocide at
the end of the 20th century

in our backyard," they got
serious and it stopped.

And then the United States...
Not the Europeans...

Led the Dayton peace process.

And to this day, imperfect
as it may be, it has held.

The Dayton Peace Accords

were a triumph for Clinton's
foreign policy

and restored his standing
as leader of the free world.

The same month,

he visited the troubled country
of Northern Ireland,

where crowds hailed him
as a peacemaker.

The young people...
Catholic and Protestant alike...

Made it clear to me
not only with their words,

but by the expressions on their
faces that they want peace.

After three years as president,

he had developed a new vision
of America's interests abroad.

It would come to be known
as the "Clinton Doctrine."

It's easy to say that we
really have no interests

in who lives in this
or that valley in Bosnia,

or who owns a strip of brush
land in the Horn of Africa,

or some piece of parched
earth by the Jordan River.

But the true measure
of our interests

lies not in how small
or distant these places are,

or in whether we have trouble
pronouncing their names.

The question we must ask is,

what are the consequences
to our security

of letting conflicts
fester and spread?

We cannot, indeed,
we should not,

do everything or be everywhere.

But where our values
and our interests are at stake,

and where we can
make a difference,

we must be prepared to do so.

There was a Clinton Doctrine,

but it wasn't purely
a military doctrine.

It was a national
security doctrine.

President Clinton thought

the United States is
an indispensable nation.

You can't do things
without the United States.

It may not be only
the United States,

and it's certainly not
doing it alone,

but it's the United States
that brings the decisive edge

in being able
to get things done.

And that where you can make
a difference, you should.

In the latest poll I saw,

86% of the American people said,
"Balance the budget now.

Don't wait, don't postpone,
don't give us promises."

Even as Clinton brought peace
to Europe,

the ideological war at home
was heating up.

Speaker Newt Gingrich
was standing by

his balanced budget proposal,
daring the president to veto it.

Once again, Clinton hoped to use
his powers of persuasion

to end the impasse.

He was thinking,

"What I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna capture these guys.

"Because A,
I'm smarter than they are,

"and B, that's my whole life's
learning,

"is how to capture people.

"And I'm gonna do it through
sheer force of personality.

"I can sit down
with Newt Gingrich,

I can sit down with the devil
himself, and I can cut a deal."

Gingrich would not yield
to Clinton's charms.

Unless the president
agreed to huge cuts

in Medicare and Medicaid,

Congress would refuse
to appropriate money

for the federal government,
shutting it down.

The one thing that the House
of Representatives has

is the power of the purse.

They can deny money.

It is the only thing

that the House of
Representatives alone can do,

can refuse to vote
an appropriation.

So, inevitably, whatever
the fight was going to be,

it was going to come down to us
denying the White House money.

Clinton seemed caught between
two toxic political choices.

If he opposed Gingrich's
balanced budget plan,

he would be portrayed

as a defender
of big government deficits;

if he gave in,

he would effectively cede
control of the government

to Gingrich and the Republicans.

But there was a third option.

Dick Morris had been polling

the Republicans'
proposed budget cuts

and believed
he had found an opening.

I did a poll for Clinton

where I tested each
of those cuts and its impact.

And I said to him,

"Do you want
the four-hour briefing

or the one-word briefing?"

And he said start
with the one word.

I said "Medicare."

I said, "None of the other cuts
are nearly as important

as the cut they're proposing
in Medicare."

The public supported a balanced
budget, Morris argued,

but not at the expense of their
most cherished federal program.

I said that what's important

is that you take away
from the Republicans

the balanced budget issue.

If you can show how you can
balance the budget

without cutting Medicare
but by cutting everything else,

then you can call their bluff.

And then all of a sudden it
becomes a question of,

"What do we cut?"
not "Do we cut?"

Morris called his strategy
"triangulation."

Clinton seized on it as a way
to regain the initiative

from the Republicans.

In June, over the strong
objections of liberals

on his staff, he announced his
own balanced budget plan,

protecting Medicare
and Medicaid.

There is an alternative,
a way to balance this budget.

It's not that we shouldn't
balance the budget.

We should balance the budget.

I strongly support it;
we ought to do that.

I believe we're going
to do that.

But we don't have to do it
in a draconian way

that hurts the American people.

You know, whether or not
to balance the budget,

we can't win that fight.

We're going to lose.

Once you accept that we're going
to balance the budget,

now let's have a fight about
what we're going to cut

and what we're going to protect.

That's a fight we can win.

Are you going
to protect Medicare?

Are you going to protect
Social Security?

You want to shut down
the government over that?

Let's go.

In mid-November,

with the issue of Medicare cuts
still dividing the two sides,

the federal government ran out
of money and shut down.

Nearly a million
federal employees

were instantly furloughed;
government offices closed;

all but the most essential
services ground to a halt.

The Washington Passport Agency
is closed for lack of funding.

Due to the shutdown of
the federal government...

Social Security...
Library of Congress...

the National Park Service...
is closed indefinitely.

If it ends soon,

the shutdown will have been
a temporary inconvenience.

But if prolonged, it could cost
the country a lot of anguish

and many millions of dollars.

Clinton took a gamble,

the biggest gamble of his
presidency to that point,

in saying, "No, I'm going
to let the government shut down

rather than accept the cuts
that you're proposing here."

Day three and nobody moves,

least of all the 800,000 federal
workers forced to stay home.

The American people should not
be held hostage anymore

to the Republican
budget priorities.

Work, work, put the government
back to work.

Through a first shutdown
in November

and then a longer one
in December,

neither Clinton nor Gingrich
blinked.

It was high-stakes poker.

Whichever side was blamed
for the shutdown

would probably lose
the next presidential election.

Our conviction was,

ultimately, a president is held
responsible for his government.

And that if we didn't blink, at
some point the public would say,

"The president needs to get
this government functioning."

The pressure on the president
was enormous.

Every day, the political
damage mounted.

Almost a billion dollars
in lost wages,

new Medicare and Social Security
claims going unprocessed;

the federal government
unable to discharge

even its most basic functions.

And the confrontation played out
on television every night.

Day 13 of the federal
budget crisis

and the shutdown that's brought
parts of the government

to a dead stop.

The major players were all
assembled in Washington today,

and they were talking,
but not to each other.

Now, one of the major problems
we have in America

is we have a president
who doesn't mind playing,

he doesn't mind talking,
but he seems to hate working.

We're working.

This was all sui generis,
this was completely new.

Nobody knew the temperament
of the country,

how it was going to play out.

And it was literally hour
by hour, certainly day by day.

There was a fear
by many Democrats,

even some within the
White House, who just thought,

"You know, he's not going
to be able to say 'no' to them.

"He wants to get along
with them.

He thinks that's the way
to save his presidency."

With the government closed,

Clinton prowled the empty halls
of the White House,

deprived of the human contact
he craved.

Among the few people
permitted to come to work

were the White House interns,

including a 22-year-old
named Monica Lewinsky.

The daughter of a Beverly Hills
doctor and his socialite wife,

Lewinsky was a graduate

of Oregon's
Lewis & Clark College.

She had an air of confidence,
even boldness,

that set her apart
from her fellow interns.

On November 15, the second day
of the shutdown,

Clinton and Lewinsky
struck up a conversation

in which Lewinsky confessed,
"I have a huge crush on you."

There were almost these sparks
flying between them

from that first moment
when they saw each other,

and as Monica said, "He gave me
the full Bill Clinton

and undressed me
with his eyes."

Hours later, the two had
their first sexual encounter.

It's almost as though there was
a part of Bill Clinton

that he had no control over.

That whenever it had the
opportunity to come out,

it was gonna come out.

And with no forethought,
with no calculation,

with no sense
of the consequences,

it was simply gonna happen.

And that's terrifying.

At this hour,
U.S. president Bill Clinton

is meeting with top
Congressional leaders

in another attempt to resolve
their budget standoff.

As Clinton recklessly pursued
his affair with Lewinsky,

he and Gingrich were locked
in their own high-wire embrace.

The president offered compromise
after compromise,

but Gingrich would not budge.

Unless Clinton agreed to his
formula of budget and tax cuts,

he would keep
the government closed.

They believed that he was soft,
that he could be pushed around,

and that they could have
their way.

They believed that he lacked the
confidence to stand up to them.

They believed they understood
his psychology,

and they thought that they had
the political upper hand.

But Clinton sensed
that his political enemies

had overreached and were out of
step with the American people.

It was our theory

we were gonna win
if it got to this point.

The polling showed it,
we felt confident about it.

We thought we had
a winning hand.

People don't really
hate the government;

they just don't want
the government

spending too much money.

They want the government
doing the right things.

And they don't want
the government shut down.

As long as they insist
on plunging ahead

with a budget that violates
our values,

in a process that is
characterized more by pressure

than constitutional practice,
I will fight it.

I am fighting it today,
I will fight it tomorrow.

I will fight it next week
and next month.

I will fight it
until we get a budget

that is fair to all Americans.

There is a moment I will never
forget in the Oval Office.

We had been going through
negotiations on the budget.

And there were some of us
that were nervous

that President Clinton
might go too far,

that he might want to go
so far in compromising

that he might hurt himself
politically.

And so we kept putting
different offers on the table,

and they kept coming back
and saying,

"Not good enough,
not good enough."

And we finally reached a day

where he wanted to do one more
compromise, one more step.

Newt Gingrich said, "No."

And Bill Clinton basically
looked at them and said,

"You know, Newt, I can't do
what you want me to do.

"I don't believe it's right
for the country.

And it may cost me the election,
but I can't do it."

And my first reaction was

he's drawn a line
that he had to draw.

He understood that he would have
to take a risk of not winning,

and winning was what
he was always about.

From that moment, I think,
in many ways,

it became a renewal of Bill
Clinton in terms of who he was,

both within himself
and with the American people.

- We want to work!
- We want to work!

As of last night, the public
appeared to be more sympathetic

to Mr. Clinton's position.

46% blamed the Republicans,
27% Mr. Clinton.

Many traditional Americans,
including some Republicans,

were outraged that
a speaker of the house

would shut down the government.

You know, Newt Gingrich
is not the president.

He shouldn't be acting like
he's the president.

Suddenly, Bill Clinton
became the embodiment

of traditional America.

He's the president
of the United States.

Whether you agree with him
or not,

no one has the right
to shut down the government

when he's the president.

Finally, Senator Bob Dole,

worried that the shutdown would
hurt his presidential campaign,

corralled the necessary votes
in the Senate

to reopen the government.

Clinton had won.

In the weeks that followed,

Clinton staked out a middle
ground between the two parties

with a vision of government that
was neither enemy nor savior.

The era of big government
is over.

But we cannot go back
to the time

when our citizens were left
to fend for themselves.

It was a real change in
his vision of how the presidency

could work.

He had started with this heroic
notion of the presidency...

Passing big laws,
doing grand things...

And then the public
just rejected it.

It hit a brick wall of what the
public thought of government.

And he realized that he had
to change how he was president,

and he had to rebuild that
public trust in government.

Capitalizing on his momentum,

Clinton announced
a stream of initiatives

designed to show middle-class
Americans that he understood,

and could improve, their lives.

After the government shutdown,

we adopted a political strategy
based on one word... values.

And our concept was

that we would help you
raise your child better.

We have worked very hard
to help communities fight crime.

"I'll provide you with drug-free
school zones,

school uniforms, medical
leave for your children."

Reduce teen smoking by raising
the price of cigarettes,

putting into place tough
restrictions on advertising...

I'll give you
all of these weapons

to raise better children.

This is a V-chip,

and it will be required to be
put in all new television sets.

Not even the Republicans
could stand in Clinton's way.

After trying to move
heaven and earth,

big swaths
in his first two years,

he started feeding us up
small pieces of bills.

And he'd get into our knickers
with ideas

that we really
could not vote against:

a hundred thousand cops
on the street.

A Republican gonna vote against
more law enforcement officers?

It was a politics
of the possible,

not the things
he dreamed of doing,

but the things he could do.

He crafted a whole new view
in American politics,

literally a third way,
a moderate way,

and achieved the results
the American people wanted.

Three years into his first term,

Clinton had pulled one of
the greatest Houdini acts

in presidential history.

With approval ratings
on the rise,

he could once again call himself
the Comeback Kid.

But as with nearly every
Bill Clinton comeback,

it was soon followed
by yet another scandal.

Yesterday, a trove of documents
from Mrs. Clinton's old law firm

that various investigators
issued subpoenas for months ago

were suddenly discovered
in the office

of one of the Clintons' aides.

In January 1996, a sheaf
of Hillary's old billing records

was discovered in the private
residence of the White House.

The documents showed
that she had done legal work

for her old friend Jim McDougal

while he was engaged in
fraudulent real estate deals

in Arkansas.

The Whitewater inquiry,

which had receded
from the front pages,

suddenly came roaring back.

There's the issue of why
it took the White House so long

to turn up the billing records.

This is a pattern:
delay, deception, withhold.

The discovery
of the billing records

for Hillary Clinton's work

for Jim McDougal and Madison
Guaranty was explosive.

Everyone had been looking
for those billing records.

There were subpoenas all over
the place to turn those over.

And then all of a sudden,
they just show up.

Our job is to get at the truth

and the truth will speak for
itself, so thank you very much.

The Whitewater inquiry
was now in the hands

of a new independent counsel.

Kenneth Starr had been appointed

by a panel of conservative
judges to replace Robert Fiske.

Starr was a respected jurist

and former official
in the Bush Administration.

At first, his appointment

caused little consternation
in the White House.

The jury was out initially

because Starr had quite
a sterling reputation.

He was well known
in judicial circles.

He was not rabid.

He was considered
a very good conservative,

a very good court of appeals
justice, so people were hopeful.

In fact, however,
Starr would prove to be

a far more aggressive
independent counsel

than his predecessor.

Unlike Fiske, who determined
to finish his work quickly,

Starr would follow his
investigation wherever it led,

no matter the cost
in time or money.

I came to believe it was
a persecution,

not a prosecution.

It was an investigation
in search of a crime,

which is not how investigations
are supposed to work.

They were not investigating
an allegation of a crime.

They were looking for a crime.

To Starr, the sudden appearance
of Hillary's billing records

seemed anything but accidental.

The discovery
of the Rose Law Firm records

was a very significant event.

It was a significant event

because there had been
a subpoena outstanding

for those law firm records
for a long, long time.

And the Rose Law Firm said,

"We don't have them,
and they were taken away."

And there were issues as to,

well, why would law firm records
leave the law firm?

They weren't individual records,
they were law firm records.

So, why wouldn't they be there?

Where are they?

Mrs. Clinton!

Good morning, how are you all?

Mrs. Clinton,
how important is this week

in terms of turning
your image around?

Oh, I think it's important to
talk about the book I've written

about America's children,

and that's what I'm going
to try to do,

plus answer all the questions.

The discovery of her missing
billing records

undermined Hillary's efforts

to recede
from the public spotlight.

The Rose Law Firm records were
found in the living quarters

of the White House in August.

As she set out
on a national tour

to promote her book on children,

she could not escape questions
about Whitewater.

It's an important question,
Mrs. Clinton,

because Republicans on the
Senate banking committee...

She was totally under siege.

So was the president,

but he allows this kind of thing
much more easily

to roll off his back.

Hillary becomes obsessed.

She has an enemy, the enemy
is the special prosecutor,

and one or the other
is going to be killed.

In Ken Starr, though,
Hillary had met her match.

Behind his avuncular smile, he
was relentless and implacable.

On January 19,
Starr subpoenaed Hillary,

the only first lady ever
to have been forced to testify

before a grand jury.

Rather than take her testimony
in the White House,

he insisted that she come
to the federal courthouse

in downtown Washington.

I think the idea that they would
make her come to the courthouse

and to the grand jury was
intended to humiliate her.

Would you rather have been
somewhere else today?

Oh, about a million other places
today, indeed.

In the end, Hillary's
billing records proved little.

They showed that she had
represented Jim McDougal,

but didn't prove she'd known
he had used fraudulent loans

to prop up the failing
Whitewater development.

Though many urged him
to drop the investigation,

Starr redoubled his efforts.

He re-opened all the files
that Fiske had closed;

he chased down and challenged
every privilege

that had been afforded
not just to President Clinton

but to previous presidents.

He decided to re-interview
everybody,

bring 'em all back
to the grand jury.

The independent counsel focused
on finding witnesses in Arkansas

who could testify to the
Clintons' participation

in fraudulent real estate deals
15 years before.

People at the lowest level
were hurt.

People's lives were ruined.

People were left in debt that
they took years to get out of.

They broke people.

I mean, investigators invaded
high school campuses

to put the thumb screws on high
school kids for information.

In May, Starr was able
to convict Jim McDougal

of loan fraud.

Under the threat
of imprisonment,

McDougal agreed to cooperate.

Suddenly, he claimed
that Bill Clinton

had known about
his illegal loans.

After Jim McDougal is convicted,
everything changes.

Up until that point,

he never pointed the finger
at the Clintons.

He never indicated that they
were involved in wrongdoing.

But once he's convicted,

all of a sudden he begins
coming up with stories

that implicate the Clintons.

McDougal's testimony
was confused and contradictory;

few believed him.

Unable to find
other credible evidence,

Starr felt stymied
and increasingly determined

to find something that would
stick to the president.

There's no question at all
that at this point,

the Starr prosecutors believe

that the Clintons
are hiding evidence

and lying when they deny
that they had involvement

in some of McDougal's
enterprises.

And conversely,
the White House thinks

that these Starr prosecutors
have shifted

and now all they're doing
is a president hunt.

As Starr scoured the president's
past for evidence of crimes,

Clinton's prospects
for the future

were looking brighter than ever.

By the time that he is
heading into summer,

looking toward the fall
for his reelection,

President Clinton is
a new man again.

He's no longer
the figure of ridicule,

the weak figure
he had become in 1994.

He's standing strong again
with the public.

And his opponents
are looking weak.

Clinton's Republican opponent

in the presidential election
that fall

was Kansas senator Robert Dole.

With the economy strong
and Clinton resurgent,

Dole could do little
but characterize the president

as a free-spending liberal.

The federal government
is too big

and it spends too much
of your money... your money.

To force the issue, the
Republican Congress in August

sent Clinton
a welfare reform bill

he had already vetoed twice.

Welfare reform
had been a key part

of Clinton's "New Democrat"
philosophy,

but he was aware of how much
liberals in his own party

hated the bill.

Bill Clinton authentically
believed in welfare reform.

That's welfare reform
in the abstract.

He wasn't being asked to sign
welfare reform in the abstract.

And so the question was, do you
sign it and proclaim a victory

knowing that to do so

is to leave many in your own
party's base hugely demoralized?

Or do you veto it

and accept the consequences
of vetoing popular legislation

just a few months
before the election?

It was an agonizing choice
for Bill Clinton.

In August, the president signed
the welfare reform bill.

When I ran for president
four years ago,

I pledged to end welfare
as we know it.

I have worked very hard
for four years to do just that.

Today, the Congress
will vote on legislation

that gives us a chance
to live up to that promise.

Clinton's decision was the last
straw for many on the left.

Several of his closest political
allies resigned in protest.

It made him someone
who was capable of anything.

And it no longer mattered
what party he was in.

You couldn't tell
what he would do

and what he would be willing
to go along with.

With welfare reform behind him,

Clinton solidified his grip
on the race.

Deprived of his last
best campaign issue,

Bob Dole waged an anemic race.

Clinton, meanwhile,
campaigned with gusto.

We will together build a bridge
to the 21st century

wide enough and strong enough to
take us to America's best days.

Will you do that?

He was in his element.

He was shorn
of this great burden

that had been over him in '94.

He was out making the case
in the best, most positive

and toughest way he could,
and he was loving it.

Clinton was no longer the issue.

People weren't asking
how he became president,

or, "This guy's illegitimate."

He was now looked upon
as the president.

In November,
Clinton won by a margin

that had once seemed
inconceivable,

taking 31 states and 70%
of the electoral votes.

I, William Jefferson Clinton,
do solemnly swear...

That I will faithfully execute

the office of president
of the United States.

That I will faithfully execute

the office of president
of the United States.

The reelection in 1996

is obviously one of the great
comebacks in American politics.

A president who had been written
off as roadkill

just two years earlier

managed to come back to a very
convincing reelection in 1996,

the first Democrat
to win a second term

since Franklin Roosevelt.

Clinton had survived,

some believed
by selling his soul;

others, by finding it again.

As he gave his second
inaugural address,

Bill Clinton sought
to turn the page

on the ugly partisan battles
of the last four years.

The American people
returned to office

a president of one party
and a Congress of another.

Surely they did not do this

to advance the politics
of petty bickering

and extreme partisanship
they plainly deplore.

The one part of that speech

that I think mattered more
to him than any other

was his reference
to the scriptural phrase

to be the repairer of
the breach, from Isaiah.

They call all us instead to be
repairers of the breach.

He really felt like
he had come through

this trial by fire and storm
and that the country had too,

and that now we could
repair the breach

and move forward together.

He felt, he really believed,
that he had this chance

to build this bridge
to the 21st century,

and that we had to do
certain things

that would help all people
to get there.

As Clinton strode triumphantly
down Pennsylvania Avenue

flush with victory,

there was no hint that he had
already set in motion

events that would soon divide
the country as never before

and nearly destroy
his presidency.

Buoyed by his convincing
reelection,

Bill Clinton sailed confidently
into his second term.

The economy was booming,
lifting millions of people

into better jobs, better homes
and better lives.

We have much to be thankful for.

With four years of growth,

we have won back the basic
strength of our economy.

With crime and welfare rolls
declining,

we are winning back
our optimism,

the enduring faith that we can
master any difficulty.

Around the world,

American prestige and power
had never been higher.

Even Clinton's longing
to "repair the breach"

with Republicans
seemed possible.

It was two different worlds.

1997, beginning of Bill
Clinton's second term,

was totally different
from the first term.

It was American politics
the way it should be.

A Republican Congress working
with the Democratic president,

trying to find areas
they would agree on,

the hatred toward
Bill Clinton was gone.

The hatred toward
Hillary Clinton was gone.

Things had finally quieted down.

But in Bill Clinton's life,

things never stay quiet
for long.

By early 1997, at great risk
to himself and his presidency,

Bill Clinton
had been carrying on

his affair with Monica Lewinsky
for over a year.

I've asked myself
a number of times

why he put himself
and his presidency in jeopardy

in such a careless way.

The presidency is probably
the loneliest office in America.

Regardless of your friends,

regardless of how good
your marriage is,

regardless of anything,
you are alone there at the top.

And maybe Bill Clinton,

who so much needed and wanted
to be loved,

couldn't say no to someone who
was going to give him affection

and wanted affection back.

There is something in his being
that needs that adoration.

And she was forthcoming with it.

And she, Monica Lewinsky,
just gave him something

that he needed at that time,
to be adored.

The previous spring, Lewinsky's
superiors in the White House

had begun to notice her
attraction to the president.

Quietly, she was transferred
to a job across town

at the Pentagon.

There, Lewinsky befriended
a career civil servant

named Linda Tripp.

Like Lewinsky, Tripp
had come to the Pentagon

after years working
at the White House,

first in the Bush administration

and then, less happily,
in Clinton's.

Linda Tripp didn't like
the Clinton people.

She didn't like their politics,

she didn't like
their personalities,

she didn't like
their social lives,

and she simmered
with resentments.

And she finds this young woman
a couple cubicles away,

Monica Lewinsky, who decides
to cry on her shoulder.

It was very much a big
sister-little sister,

mother-daughter relationship.

Monica would tell her
everything.

Linda genuinely cared
about Monica,

but there was one
overriding emotion,

and that was what
Bill Clinton was doing.

And... I'm telling you,
this was an angry woman.

Shortly before meeting Lewinsky,

Tripp had approached
conservative literary agent

Lucianne Goldberg about writing
a tell-all book

on the Clinton White House,

but the project
had gone nowhere.

In the fall of 1997,

she contacted Goldberg
with a new project:

the true story
of an ongoing affair

between a White House intern

and the president
of the United States.

She called me and she said,

"He's having an affair with
a girl who's 23 years old."

And I said, "Yeah, yeah."

You know, the kind of agenting
that I did,

I heard a lot of wild stuff and
people have to prove things.

So she said,

"No, I'm not kidding you,
he's having an affair with...

and I know the girl
and I talk to her every day."

And I said, "Well,
can you prove this?

"Do you have pictures,
is she willing to step forward,

is she willing to go
on the Today show and say...?"

And she said, "Well, no,
I'm sure she wouldn't.

This is a big secret."

I said, "Well, you got to...

"you got to do something
to prove to me

"so I can prove to a publisher
that this...

this wild story is true."

And I said, "You say you talk
to her every day,

how about taping
your phone conversations?"

And she agreed that that
would be a cool idea

and she went to RadioShack
and bought a tape recorder

and plugged it into her phone.

Linda, I don't know why I have
these feelings for him.

I never expected to feel
this way about him.

And the first time I ever
looked into his eyes close up

and was with him alone, I
saw somebody totally different

than I had expected to see.

And that's the person
I fell in love with.

Linda wanted the world

to know about this,

and I think the motivation
was no...

you know, no deeper,
no more shallow than that.

That was it.

She wanted the world to know
about this relationship.

She came to believe
that fate did call her

to expose these defects in this
president to the country.

On the other hand,

she becomes entwined
in a scandal

that she helped to create.

He was supposed
to call me again,

I wasn't home
and I was afraid to call.

What happened?

I don't know.

I saw him for 60 seconds.

So how was it?

I mean, we hug,
and I gave him the paperweight.

So, what did you wear?

I knew if the story broke huge

that people would start calling
Linda, and Linda would say,

"Call my agent."

And they would call her agent,

and her agent
would make a book deal,

and then would make some money,
and she would get a little money

and I would get
ten percent of it,

and that's the way
the world works.

Goldberg suggested Tripp
reach out

to Newsweek's Michael Isikoff.

Before long, the two were having
regular conversations.

She would kind of tease me

and she told me early on that
there was a woman,

who had been an intern,

and that she was having
an ongoing affair

with Bill Clinton.

I was taken aback,
as anybody would be.

So, I wanted to get Linda Tripp
to tell me as much as she could.

And so I kept talking to her.

Linda Tripp was not just talking
to Isikoff.

She had also begun
sharing her story

with the independent counsel
investigating the Clintons.

By 1997,
after more than two years,

Kenneth Starr's investigation
into Whitewater had stalled.

Short on evidence
or reliable witnesses,

he had too little
to bring charges

against the president
or first lady.

We know that they were
running out of gas,

and running out of rope, and had
just about completely failed,

until Monica came along.

In early January 1998,

Starr's office received
a phone call from Tripp.

She revealed the existence

of her tape recordings
of Monica Lewinsky.

At first, Starr saw little value
in the tapes.

A presidential affair, no matter
how sordid, was not illegal.

But there was something
in Tripp's story

that caught Starr's attention:

the president had asked
his friend Vernon Jordan

to help find Lewinsky a job
in the private sector.

Could this be an attempt,
Starr wondered,

to buy Lewinsky's silence?

I'm just... I'm starting to get
a little nervous about Vernon.

Why?

I just want everything
to be easy.

I want him to call me and say,

"You know, how does
this amount of money,

doing this here sound?"

And I say, "That sounds great."

He says, "Okay, consider it
a done deal."

Clinton had good reason
to worry about whether Lewinsky

would keep their affair secret.

She had just been subpoenaed
to testify

in a sexual harassment lawsuit
against the president

brought by a former Arkansas
state worker named Paula Jones.

Tipped off to the affair,
Jones' lawyers believed

the president's relationship
with Lewinsky

would demonstrate
a pattern of behavior.

I thought it showed

President Clinton's proclivity
to make sexual advances

to extremely young,
low-level employees,

and President Clinton

had obtained jobs
for Monica Lewinsky

as part of his effort
to control her.

Highly relevant
to Paula Jones' case.

Ken Starr was watching
the Jones lawsuit

with great interest.

If Clinton was trying to
influence Lewinsky's testimony,

he would be committing
a major crime.

Suddenly, Starr glimpsed
a bridge from Whitewater

to a potentially more fruitful
area of investigation.

The bridge is that the president
and those close to him

may be encouraging Monica to lie
in the Paula Jones case

and therefore suborning perjury.

That's the little connection
they make.

It's tenuous at this point,
but they go for it.

With Starr's determined efforts,

three seemingly
unrelated threads

from Clinton's past
and present...

Whitewater, Paula Jones,
and Monica Lewinsky...

Had suddenly come together

in one potentially
devastating investigation.

And a single reporter threatened
to upend the whole thing.

I knew we had

a blockbuster of a story.

And, of course,
I had to call Starr's team.

And fair to say that when I did,
they freaked out.

They realized that
were I to publish a story,

it would blow their
investigation wide open.

Starr hoped to convince Lewinsky

to secretly tape record
the president

before Isikoff's story
tipped him off.

On January 16, he sent Linda
Tripp to meet with Lewinsky

at a food court
at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Before the friends sat down,
FBI agents swooped in.

The FBI grabs Monica
in front of the Cinnabon

and takes her upstairs
in the Ritz-Carlton,

and tries to get her to flip.

But Monica basically just drives
them crazy with her histrionics,

with her refusal to talk.

They felt like one of these
scenes in a movie

where a bunch of grown men

are trying to change
the diapers of a baby

and don't know how to do it.

Monica's crying,
she's kind of wailing out loud.

What they weren't counting on,

what they hadn't figured out is,

"So what to do we do when Monica
is not going to tell us

whether she had an affair
with Bill Clinton?"

Unable to secure
Lewinsky's cooperation

against the president,
Starr still had a card to play.

The next day, January 17, 1998,

Clinton was scheduled to give
his deposition under oath

in the Paula Jones lawsuit.

If he lied about his affair
with Lewinsky,

Starr would be able
to bring a charge of perjury.

He was about to testify,

and they knew he was going
to lie about Monica

and that was, if you want
to call it, the trap.

"And when a man
is asked about this,

"a married man is asked about
this, he's going to lie.

"And once he lies, we got him.

We got him!"

The whole purpose is
to get the president.

If you're not out
to get the president,

you should say to the president,

"You know, you're going
to testify in this lawsuit.

"You know, we know about
your relationship

with Monica Lewinsky."

They're trying to trap him
into committing perjury.

You may show the witness
definition number one.

Barred from questioning
the president himself,

Starr had to rely
on Paula Jones' lawyers.

Lead attorney Jim Fisher
began the deposition

by introducing a definition
of sexual relations

taken from a federal statute.

In an effort to avoid ambiguity,

I thought I would
use a definition

that was well-grounded
in federal law.

So I thought that there
could be no doubt

that these were
unambiguous definitions

for which the law had
a well-recognized meaning.

Fisher's efforts
to avoid ambiguity

had the opposite effect,

leaving Clinton a loophole
through which to escape.

So the record
is completely clear,

have you ever had sexual
relations with Monica Lewinsky

as that term is defined
in deposition Exhibit 1?

I have never had sexual
relations with Monica Lewinsky.

I never had an affair with her.

If they had simply asked him,

"Did Monica Lewinsky ever
perform oral sex on you?"

the gig would have been up.

Instead, they gave him this
ridiculously complicated,

hard-to-understand definition of
sex, which allowed him to parse.

If I could have done it
over again,

I would have just asked
the salacious questions.

I would have let him have it.

I was trying to be respectful,
and I paid a price for it.

Having said that,

he clearly didn't answer
the questions honestly.

If she told someone

that she had a sexual
affair with you

beginning in November of 1995,
would that be a lie?

It's certainly not the truth.

It would not be the truth.

The turning point was when
I started to ask him about gifts

that he had given to her
and she had given to him.

And I described some of them
quite specifically.

There was a book of poetry
by Walt Whitman, for example.

I thought his mood changed
visibly at that point.

His face became bright red,
there was tension in his face.

He knew at this point

there was a mole.

There was a rat in the woodpile.

Someone has given
all of this damning information

to these people.

He was in trouble.

Clinton's secret affair
with Monica Lewinsky

was now hurtling
toward public exposure.

The very day that the president
was deposed

in the Jones lawsuit,

Michael Isikoff filed his story
on the Lewinsky affair.

But at the last minute,

his editors at Newsweek
backtracked

and decided to kill the story.

Obviously, we had

an enormous scoop here that was
going to shake Washington.

Some of my colleagues
and some of the editors agreed,

but at the end of the day,
the brass at Newsweek

just were not willing
to pull the trigger.

Michael told me.

He said,
"They aren't gonna run with it.

"They're afraid of it,
they don't like it.

Nasty stuff,
they don't want to do it."

And I said,
"Well, what am I gonna do?

I'm sitting on this thing."

In her frustration,

Goldberg turned to an internet
gossip columnist

named Matt Drudge.

A couple of people said,

"Call Matt Drudge."

Or, I said,
"Well, tell him to call me."

So at 11:00 that night,
he called me and that was it.

It went kaboom!

The president, the intern, the
accusations, and the denials.

The allegations that the
president had an illicit affair

with a 21-year-old intern

and then attempted
to cover it up

blasted through
the White House today.

This scandal could unravel
the administration.

Over the next 72 hours,

the story made its way
around the world.

Caught unawares,

Clinton's cabinet members
rushed to his defense.

I believe that the allegations
are completely untrue.

I'll second that...

Aides who had worked for him

for five to six years
at this point

are just on the floor.

They can't figure out

what they're supposed to think
about this,

much less what they're
supposed to do about this.

I was convinced that Bill
Clinton had been set up.

He's got all these enemies
who are out to get him.

He wouldn't be so stupid

as to jeopardize
his entire presidency.

For what?

No, that was not
the Bill Clinton I knew.

Clinton did confide
in the one person

he knew would not judge him.

When the Lewinsky scandal broke,

the president paged me
and I returned the call.

And he said,

"Ever since I got here
to the White House,

"I've had to shut my body down...
Sexually, I mean...

"but I screwed up
with this girl.

"I didn't do
what they said I did,

but I may have done so much that
I can't prove my innocence."

And I said to him,

"The problem that presidents
have is not the sin,

"it's the cover up,
and you should explore

just telling the American people
the truth."

He said, "Really, do you think
I could do that?"

And I said, "Let me test it,
let me run a poll."

So I took a poll and I tested
popular attitudes on that

and I called him back
and I said,

"They will forgive the adultery,

but they won't easily forgive
that you lied."

Mr. President, welcome.

Thank you, Jim.

Clinton disregarded
Morris' advice.

In interviews days after
the story broke,

he continued
to hide his relationship

with Lewinsky.

The news of this day
is that Kenneth Starr,

the independent counsel,
is investigating allegations

that you suborned perjury by
encouraging a 24-year-old woman,

a former White House intern,

to lie under oath
in a civil deposition

about her having had
an affair with you.

Mr. President,
is that true?

That is not true.

I did not ask anyone to tell
anything other than the truth.

There is no improper
relationship.

And I intend to cooperate
with this inquiry.

But that is not true.

He says, quite indignantly,

"There is no relationship
with Monica Lewinsky."

And people begin to focus
on the words.

"He said 'is, ' didn't he?

He didn't say 'was. ""

What is he trying to say here?
Is he parsing here?

MIKE McCURRY:
I didn't notice

the peculiar tense issue
until later.

But I did think to myself,
I said,

"Boy, there's got to be
a stronger denial of this."

And I think some group
of us said,

"Look, you're denying this,
you've gotta be strong.

"You've gotta get out there
and say, you know,

how outrageous this is."

And, of course, I think that was
dreadful advice in retrospect.

I want you to listen to me,
I'm going to say this again.

I did not have sexual relations
with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.

I never told anybody to lie.

Not a single time.

Never.

These allegations are false,

and I need to go back to work
for the American people.

Thank you.

I was watching with a friend
in my office and I said,

"That is it,
this man is dead meat.

"That is it,
because I know that he's lying,

"and if I know that he's lying,

then the rest of the world
is gonna know he's lying."

When he went on the air
and shook his finger and said,

"I never had sexual relations
with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky,"

and we knew he had,

we realized then that
this had the potential

to literally change the course
of American history.

The one thing that we
can't deal with are lies.

Lies are impossible
to deal with,

so please, simply tell us
the truth.

The truth has a very powerful
way of coming out,

so let's get it out.

But clearly that was not
the road that we were on.

Having set off
on a course of deception,

there was no turning back.

Clinton continued to press
his lie, even to Hillary.

He tells her it's not true.

He tells her
that Monica Lewinsky

was a troubled young woman,

that he had just tried
to be nice to her,

to mentor her in some ways.

And that's a story
that Hillary Clinton hangs onto

like a life raft.

The day after Clinton's denial,

Hillary appeared
on national television.

I just think that a lot of this
is deliberately designed

to sensationalize charges
against my husband

because everything else
they've tried has failed.

She focused her energy
and her anger and her ire

at the external enemies...

At Ken Starr, at the press,
at the Republicans in Congress.

They were the ones who were
doing this, not her husband.

The great story here,
for anybody willing to find it

and write about it
and explain it,

is this vast right-wing
conspiracy

that has been conspiring
against my husband

since the day he announced
for president.

She says, "This is all about
the vast right-wing conspiracy,"

and in that moment,
sort of sets the tone

for the defense of the president
against these charges.

To the Clintons,

the Lewinsky scandal
was just the latest front

in a war waged
by their political enemies

to destroy them.

The Lewinsky scandal

was not really the Lewinsky
scandal.

It was really an attempt
by the Republican Party

to have a coup d'état

based on having discovered the
president's personal behavior.

This time, however, even some
allies of the Clintons

found their protestations
hollow.

You can never blame your enemies

for doing what your enemies
will predictably do.

You can only blame yourself

for what you have given
to your enemies.

If you've given them
absolutely nothing,

guess what they're gonna
be able to do?

Nothing.

As the scandal raged around him,

Clinton did his best to focus,
he said,

"On the job the American people
hired me to do."

He's coming to work every day,
he says,

and he's going to do the job
that's in front of him.

Privately, behind the scenes,

it's a completely
different story.

Of course he's obsessed by this.

Of course he's consumed by this.

Of course he is distracted.

He has a meeting with the head
of the World Bank, for instance,

who goes back to his office,
calls Clinton's chief of staff,

and says, "It's like
he wasn't even there."

The president swung wildly
between emotional extremes,

from fear to fury.

I think that there was always
a part of him

that wondered about
the dark side

and about whether he was
really a bad person

and whether he was
going to be taken down.

But he also had...

And it's possible to have these
two feelings simultaneously...

An overpowering sense
of his own righteousness.

"I feel like a character
in the novel Darkness at Noon,"

Clinton told an aide.

"I am surrounded by
an oppressive force

that is creating a lie about me
and I can't get the truth out."

In fact, the truth
was closing in.

All he can do is buy time.

All he can do is hope Starr
doesn't have the goods,

doesn't have the evidence,

that there's no physical
evidence that could prove it.

Before long, Starr had
his physical evidence.

In July, Monica Lewinsky reached
a deal to give her testimony

in exchange for immunity
from prosecution.

As part of the deal,

she turned over a blue dress
stained with Clinton's semen.

The next day, seeing no way out,

Clinton himself agreed
to answer questions

before Starr's grand jury.

Before the president
faced Starr, however,

he had to face Hillary.

That morning, Clinton awoke the
first lady from a deep sleep.

Pacing the room, he finally
confessed he had lied.

It was probably the most
shattering moment in her life.

He'd lied to her
and he'd used her,

he let her go out and
essentially make alibis for him.

And it not only jeopardized

everything they'd worked for
all their lives,

but totally humiliated
her and Chelsea,

and she couldn't
trust him anymore.

Later that day,

Clinton's deposition was
scheduled to take place

in the Map Room
of the White House.

The president's lawyers

had won an important concession
from Ken Starr:

the interrogation could not last
longer than four hours.

Good afternoon, Mr. President.

Good afternoon.

Could you please state your full
name for the record, sir.

William Jefferson Clinton.

Bill Clinton's strategy was
to run out the clock.

And so, he would start
talking about

little stories from Arkansas.

He would, you know,
take an aside

and give a lecture about justice
and the American dream.

And all along, the clock
is ticking out.

Let me begin
with the correct answer:

I don't know for sure.

Well, it would depend
upon the facts.

I think on the whole, people in
the uniformed civil service...

If we circle number one...
this is my circle here.

I remember doing it

so I could focus
only on those two lines...

It depends upon what the meaning
of the word "is" is.

The Starr prosecutors walked out

of that grand jury testimony,
totally demoralized.

They knew they had been
clobbered by President Clinton.

And even though it was just
obvious what he was doing,

it was a masterful performance
on Clinton's part.

If Clinton could finagle his way
out of Starr's legal trap,

he could not, he knew,

escape the judgment
of the American people.

And we've got about 45.

That night, President Bill
Clinton addressed the nation

in one of the most unusual
and anticipated broadcasts

in American history.

Stand by.

Five seconds...

Good evening.

This afternoon, in this room,
from this chair,

I testified before the Office
of Independent Counsel

and the grand jury.

I answered their questions
truthfully,

including questions
about my private life,

questions no American citizen
would ever want to answer.

Still, I must take complete
responsibility

for all my actions,
both public and private.

And that is why
I am speaking to you tonight.

Indeed I did have a relationship
with Ms. Lewinsky

that was not appropriate.

In fact, it was wrong.

For many of those
closest to Clinton,

this was the first time they'd
heard him admit the affair,

and they were deeply hurt.

People just shook their heads.

They couldn't believe it.

They literally
could not believe it.

What a squandering of talent
and promise and possibility.

Yes, I felt betrayed.

He lied to me, yeah.

He lied to a lot of people
about that,

not least of whom was himself.

The morning after his
grand jury testimony

and his speech to the nation,

he and Hillary and Chelsea

head off to Martha's Vineyard
for their annual vacation.

It may be the worst-timed
family vacation

in the history of the world,

but there they are,

heading out to the helicopter
on the South Lawn.

And the staff is sitting
in the White House thinking,

"What are we going to do about
the walk to the helicopter?"

They decide they can't
do anything.

They can't orchestrate it,
they can't spin it;

they are powerless to affect it.

And in the end it falls
to Chelsea Clinton, a teenager,

to take both of their hands,
on her own initiative,

take her father's hand in one,
her mother's hand in another

and walk across the lawn,

literally the bridge
between her parents

at this moment of crisis
between them.

As the Clintons spent a tense
vacation on Martha's Vineyard,

Washington was abuzz
with talk of resignation

or even impeachment.

At this moment,
he was in maximum peril.

Clinton's advisors
were acutely aware

that President Nixon
was driven out of office

not by the opposing party,
but by his own party,

when the Republicans
came to him and said,

"Enough, you have to leave."

That's when President Nixon
resigned.

And so there was real concern

that Democrats were going
to begin bolting,

and they were not returning
President Clinton's calls.

They were not happy with this.

There was a real concern
that this could be

the beginning of the end.

It had been a quarter
of a century

since Richard Nixon
had resigned the presidency

rather than endure
an impeachment.

Now, many were urging Clinton
to do the same.

But Clinton
had no such intentions.

There were the inevitable
comparisons

between Nixon and Clinton.

I always thought there was
a fundamental difference.

Both Nixon and Clinton
were convinced

that it was their
political enemies

that were responsible
for all their troubles.

The difference is that
Nixon always suspected

that his political enemies
were better than him.

Clinton hated
his political enemies

and was convinced
they were beneath him.

And that was the reason,
at the end of the day,

Clinton was never going to do
what Richard Nixon did,

which was to give into them
and resign.

Yes, go ahead.

Mr. President,

all these questions
about your personal life

have to be painful
to you and your family.

At what point do you consider
that it's just not worth it

and you consider
resigning from office?

Never.

You know, I was
elected to do a job.

I think the American people know
two or three things about me now

that they didn't know
the first time...

this kind of effort
was made against me.

I think they know that
I care very much about them,

that I care about
ordinary people

whose voices aren't
often heard here.

And I think they know I have
worked very, very hard for them.

Hard work had always been
Clinton's salvation

in moments of vulnerability.

Now, as he sought to show
the American people

he could still function,

he bore down on a suddenly
violent foreign policy crisis.

Early on the morning
of August 7, 1998,

two truck bombs
exploded simultaneously

outside U.S. embassies
in Tanzania and Kenya.

The death toll reached 200,
with another 5,000 injured.

Within hours, the FBI
had pegged responsibility

to a little-known terrorist
organization called Al Qaeda.

Clinton soon ordered his
national security team

to hunt down
and destroy Al Qaeda

and its elusive leader,
Osama Bin Laden.

CIA had information... it thought
it was reliable information...

That Bin Laden
and the Al Qaeda leadership

were going to come together
at a certain camp,

in Afghanistan, at a certain
date, at a certain time.

We went to the president
and said,

"We want to be able to land
cruise missiles at that camp

while they're there."

The order would have
huge political risks.

Clinton knew that it would be
widely seen as an attempt

to distract the public
from his own personal problems.

Somebody said something about,

"Well, you know, we have
to take into account

the political realities in the
United States at the moment."

Which was sort of
code words for,

"You've got this Monica Lewinsky
scandal going on."

And he snapped.

He just very quickly
and sharply said,

"You don't think about that.

"You think about
national security.

"You give me the national
security advice

"you would give me
if this were not going on.

You let me worry about that."

On August 20, Clinton ordered

a series of missile strikes
against Al Qaeda,

targeting training camps
in Afghanistan

and a plant in Sudan

that the administration
claimed was involved

in making chemical weapons.

The missiles narrowly missed
their main target.

We didn't kill Bin Laden.

We didn't have that to show
for the attack.

And people, frankly,

a lot of people in the Congress
and in the media

said this was just an attempt
to "wag the dog."

The timing of all of this
is more than coincidental,

and I think it may very well
run the risk...

the president may run the risk

of having an even more cynical
view of his behavior.

He knew that.

He knew that was going
to happen.

He knew it would make it worse
for him to do this.

But he launched the attack
because he thought it was

the right national security
thing to do.

That's what we told him.

And he said, "I'll do it anyway,

even though it makes
it worse for me."

Things were deteriorating
quickly for the president.

On September 9, Kenneth Starr
finally delivered to Congress

the long-awaited results
of his investigation.

In 450 pages of sometimes
salacious detail,

Starr laid out his case
against Clinton for perjury,

obstruction of justice,

and abuse of office
in the Lewinsky affair,

while dropping
almost all reference

to his original investigation
of Whitewater.

Lawyers are thorough.

Good lawyers are thorough.

There could be absolutely no gap
whatsoever between the facts

and then a reasonable conclusion
to be drawn from the facts.

The case had to be proven.

The House Sergeant at Arms

officially unsealed
the document at mid-afternoon.

It had been advertised
as steamy,

and you could almost see
the steam rising

as the boxes came open.

According to the sources,

the report focuses
almost entirely

on the president's relationship
with Lewinsky.

However this turns out,

it is a turning point
in Mr. Clinton's presidency.

It is not an exaggeration to say

that he has less control
of his destiny

than at any time
since he was elected.

The Starr report
was a turning point,

but not in the way
the independent counsel

or his Republican supporters
had expected.

Polls showed that after
four years and $40 million,

most Americans believed the
investigations against Clinton

were more persecution
than prosecution.

The Republicans had so undercut
their own credibility

in the way they were going
after him

that people, although they
deplored what he had done

and thought it was stupid

and it demeaned the office
of the presidency

and tarnished the presidency,

tarnished him and had been
a devastating blow

to Hillary and Chelsea
and all those things

that went through
people's minds,

they looked at the Republicans
and they had enough already.

After the release
of Starr's report,

Clinton appeared
in the Rose Garden

to offer his first full-throated
apology to the American people.

I am profoundly sorry
for all I have done wrong

in words and deeds.

I never should have misled
the country, the Congress,

my friends or my family.

Quite simply,
I gave in to my shame.

I have been condemned by
my accusers with harsh words,

and while it's hard

to hear yourself called
deceitful and manipulative,

I remember Ben Franklin's
admonition

that our critics
are our friends,

for they do show us our faults.

If Clinton was willing
at last to take responsibility,

the American people were willing
to forgive him.

He disappoints them every time
on some level,

but he always gets up
and tries to make it better.

You know, what else can you ask
from a sinner, right?

And that's how he would define
himself, "I'm a sinner.

"And I try to be better
every time,

and I learn from my mistakes
and I go forward."

And I think the American public
is pretty forgiving of a guy

who sees himself as a sinner.

Weary of the attacks on Clinton,

Americans punished
Republican candidates

in the congressional elections
in November.

Upsetting precedent,

Democrats actually gained seats
in Congress.

I think the message the American
people sent was loud and clear:

we want progress
over partisanship

and unity over division.

Blamed for the defeat,
Newt Gingrich resigned his post

as speaker of the House
of Representatives.

To the frustration
of his Republican opponents,

Clinton seemed to have won over
the American people again.

There are two or three things

that I have witnessed
in my political career

that I never could figure out.

The fact that a lot of people

didn't think that
that was a serious problem

that he, you know, perjured
himself in his testimony,

and that he'd had a relationship

with that woman
Monica Lewinsky...

That did shock me,

and I've never quite figured out
how in the world could that be

that he'd come out
the back end of it

pretty much where he was
at the beginning.

It's just one of those things
I've never quite figured out.

We should have seen that,

"Okay, we're personally
offended, that's our condition."

But if the public isn't,
and clearly they weren't,

then get over it.

And we never got over it.

We never got over it.

We still haven't got over it.

Determined to punish
the president,

House Republicans, led by Texas
congressman Tom Delay,

played their last card:
impeachment.

A resolution impeaching
William Jefferson Clinton,

president of the United States,

for high crimes
and misdemeanors.

The Republicans were gripped

by just unreasoning hatred
of Bill Clinton.

They just despised the man

and could not stand that he was
going to get away with this.

"Article One: In his conduct

"while president
of the United States,

"William Jefferson Clinton,

"in violation
of his constitutional oath

"faithfully to execute
the office

"of president
of the United States,

"has willfully corrupted and
manipulated the judicial process

of the United States..."

On Saturday, December 19,

the House of Representatives
voted along party lines

to impeach the president
on two of four counts

involving obstruction of justice
and perjury.

On this vote, the yeas are 228,
the nays are 206.

Article one is adopted.

Bill Clinton had become

only the second president
in American history,

and the first
in more than a century,

to be impeached by the House.

The American people,

I call them to my side here
at the podium to verify to you

that the president committed
falsehoods under oath.

Republican leaders moved
the proceedings to the Senate,

where a two-thirds majority
was required

to convict the president
and remove him from office.

The Senate will convene
as a court of impeachment.

We are here today

because President
William Jefferson Clinton

decided to put himself
above the law.

This is not about sex.

This is about
obstruction of justice.

This is about a pattern,
this is about a scheme,

this is about a lot of lies.

For three long weeks,
with little hope of success,

13 Republican Congressmen

pressed the case
against Clinton.

This is not
about sexual misconduct

any more than Watergate was
about a third-rate burglary.

Finally, Arkansas Democratic
Senator Dale Bumpers rose

to express the sentiments
felt by many in the chamber

and the country as a whole.

We are here today because
the president suffered

a terrible moral lapse.

A marital infidelity,

not a breach
of the public trust,

not a crime against society.

It is a sex scandal.

H.L. Mencken said one time,

"When you hear somebody say,
'This is not about money, '

it's about money."

And when you hear somebody say,
"This is not about sex,"

it's about sex.

The Senate adjudges
that the respondent,

William Jefferson Clinton,
President of the United States,

is not guilty as charged in the
first article of impeachment.

What had begun
with a sexual indiscretion

more than three years earlier

and mushroomed into a full-scale
constitutional crisis

was finally over.

This time, however,
there was no triumph,

no crowing about
"The Comeback Kid."

Bill Clinton knew
that this time,

both he and the country
had paid a heavy price.

Bill Clinton, in his second
inaugural address,

said it was his ambition
during the second term

to be, quoting scripture,
"a repairer of the breach."

That ambition was not realized
in his second term

and it effectively died in 1998,
the year of scandal.

The fact that the president
was impeached

will always be part of his
story, part of his legacy.

It consumed a tremendous
amount of energy.

It undercut his standing.

And, I think,
limited his ability

to accomplish anything
outside of surviving

for almost two years.

And, you know, that's tragic.

Clinton created many
of his own problems,

but his enemies exaggerated,
enhanced, mythologized, lied,

were utterly hypocritical
in their attacks on him.

You know, to the extent that
I believe that every human being

is responsible
for their own lives,

he holds the responsibility
for it.

To the extent that context
shapes a life,

his enemies have a lot
to answer for.

Clinton had survived,
but the impeachment ordeal

seemed to have sapped much
of his drive and ambition.

President Clinton has more
than 700 days left in office

after he is acquitted
by the Senate,

and he promises to use
every single one of them

to its fullest.

But the constraints
were enormous at that point.

The big aspirations were gone.

The chances of re-inventing
Social Security

or re-inventing Medicare
just proved too elusive.

He had a Congress

which had just, literally,
put him on trial,

and was not willing to do
a lot of business with him.

In 2000, Clinton came
tantalizingly close

to the great historical
achievement

for which he had yearned,

but a peace agreement between
Israel and the Palestinians

broke down in the 11th hour.

The same year, after decades
of budget deficits,

the federal budget had a surplus
of nearly $240 billion,

an accomplishment for which
Clinton was given much credit.

It was only as her husband was
preparing to leave the stage

that Hillary finally stepped
front and center,

ready at last
to take her star turn.

The day the Senate votes
to acquit President Clinton

on impeachment charges,

Hillary Clinton is meeting
in the White House residence

with Harold Ickes
to plot a campaign

for the very same
United States Senate.

Literally the end of his crisis
is the birth of her new phase.

She said,
"I want to be independent.

I want to be judged
on my own merits."

And she finally released herself
from, you know,

the shadow of Bill Clinton
over her

and began making
her own decisions.

He then came to her support,

and there was nobody
more of a champion

for her Senate race
than Bill Clinton.

He was behind her all the way.

So even if I didn't know her

better than anybody
in this room,

I'd be for her.

That November,
as Vice-President Al Gore

lost the closest presidential
election in American history,

Hillary Clinton easily won
the Senate seat in New York.

I am profoundly grateful
to all of you

for giving me the chance
to serve you.

In his final round
of goodbye speeches,

Bill Clinton even bid farewell
to the Washington press corps.

You know, I read in the history
books how other presidents say

the White House is like
a penitentiary

and that every motive they have
is suspect.

Even George Washington
complained he was treated

like a common thief.

And they all say
they can't get away...

can't wait to get away.

I don't know what the heck
they're talking about.

I've had a wonderful time.

It's been an honor to serve
and fun to laugh.

I only wish that
we'd even laughed more

these last eight years,

because power's not the most
important thing in life

and only counts
for what you use it.

Bill Clinton
loved being president.

He had to literally be dragged
out of there,

clawing the floors
to get him out of there

on January 20, 2001.

In fact,
when the Bushes show up,

the movers are still desperately
trying to move everything;

literally, they're taking
drawers from the cabinets

and just dumping them into boxes
because Bill Clinton has wanted

to milk every last minute of his
presidency right up to the end.

Listen, this guy loved
being president.

He even loved being president
when it was tough.

And a lot of times I would say,
"How does he smile?

"How does he keep laughing?

How does he keep
going through this?"

But it was because he got the
energy back from the people.

Whatever you think of the man,
he wanted to do the right thing

for the people of his county,
his state, his country,

and that never changed
about him.

Clinton departed the White House
for the last time

on Saturday, January 20, 2001.

In the end, he left
much as he had come:

a man loved by his friends
and loathed by his enemies;

a politician who had achieved
a great deal,

yet left behind a curious sense
of unfulfilled promise.

I believe he's an argument
without end,

that there will be people
discussing and debating

the significance of Bill Clinton
for a long time.

Bill Clinton will be remembered

as one of our best presidents
in the 20th century,

who accomplished
an enormous amount,

and he will be remembered

because of his personal
recklessness.

And that is tragic,

because so much more
could have happened.

Did Bill Clinton
help the country,

and was the country better
for having him as president?

I think, unquestionably, yes.

But, are there elements
of tragedy here as well?

Huge elements of tragedy

in terms of failures
and opportunities lost,

and risks made that didn't
have to be made?

Undoubtedly.

I know a lot of people think
that Clinton's presidency

was a wasted opportunity.

But he came to office in 1992

and left a stronger country
in 2000.

I don't know if you can say of
a president who served us well

and improved our material good

that it was
a wasted opportunity.

And it was sure
a lot of fun to watch.

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