Clinton Lewinsky Quotes

The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban landmines...I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them. And that's not funny....OK, well, if I say that, I might get a shock laugh, but it's not really satire.

Here in America either it's Faunia Farley or it's Monica Lewinsky! The luxury of these lives disquieted so by the inappropriate comportment of Clinton and Silk!

THE WASHINGTON POST headline across page one in its editions of Wednesday, January 21, 1998, was shocking: “Clinton Accused of Urging Aide to Lie.” Bill had spent a tense night and early morning on the phone with Vernon Jordan, Bob Bennett, Bruce Lindsey, David Kendall, and Betty Currie, talking about the story and trying to keep his legal ducks aligned. Hillary said later he nudged her awake just after 7 A.M. and sat on the edge of their bed. “You’re not going to believe this,” she quoted him telling her, but there were “news reports” blanketing the Internet and airwaves as well, that he had had an affair with a young White House intern named Monica Lewinsky and had asked her to lie about it to Paula Jones’s lawyers.

On page 603 it is stated that at first Blumenthal could not remember the lunch with me and my wife at which he had loudly impugned two female witnesses against Clinton. This makes it distinctly odd that he should have such have a vivid and detailed but mistaken recollection of the same lunch on page 607.

The last time that I consciously wrote anything to 'save the honor of the Left', as I rather pompously put it, was my little book on the crookedness and cowardice and corruption (to put it no higher) of Clinton. I used leftist categories to measure him, in other words, and to show how idiotic was the belief that he was a liberal's champion. Again, more leftists than you might think were on my side or in my corner, and the book was published by Verso, which is the publishing arm of the New Left Review. However, if a near-majority of leftists and liberals choose to think that Clinton was the target of a witch-hunt and the victim of 'sexual McCarthyism', an Arkansan Alger Hiss in other words, you become weary of debating on their terms and leave them to make the best of it.

What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. And what this involved was a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton. (For the full background on this, see the chapter 'Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?' in the paperback version of my book No One Left To Lie To. This essay, I may modestly say, has never been challenged by anybody in the fabled Clinton 'rapid response' team.) Yet one constantly reads that both Clintons, including the female who helped intensify the slanders against her mistreated sisters, are excellent on women's 'issues.

On occasion Jobs would use the semi-abandoned Woodside home, especially its swimming pool, for family parties. When Bill Clinton was president, he and Hillary Clinton stayed in the 1950s ranch house on the property on their visits to their daughter, who was at Stanford. Since both the main house and ranch house were unfurnished, Powell would call furniture and art dealers when the Clintons were coming and pay them to furnish the houses temporarily. Once, shortly after the Monica Lewinsky flurry broke, Powell was making a final inspection of the furnishings and noticed that one of the paintings was missing. Worried, she asked the advance team and Secret Service what had happened. One of them pulled her aside and explained that it was a painting of a dress on a hanger, and given the issue of the blue dress in the Lewinsky matter they had decided to hide it. (During one of his late-night phone conversations with Jobs, Clinton asked how he should handle the Lewinsky issue. “I don’t know if you did it, but if so, you’ve got to tell the country,” Jobs told the president. There was silence on the other end of the line.)

Oh, boy. Now you see what you've done, Monica Lewinsky, you stupid, stupid tart, I thought. Because of you, I have to explain to my Nana, while she's in a hospital bed with an enlarged gallbladder, what oral sex is. Do you see the damage you've caused? Do you see where your sinful path has led?

Presidents lie all the time. Really great presidents lie. Abraham Lincoln managed to end slavery in America partially by deception. (In an 1858 debate, he flatly insisted that he had no intention of abolishing slavery in states where it was already legal — he had to say this in order to slow the tide of secession.) Franklin Roosevelt lied about the U.S. position of neutrality until we entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Though the public and Congress believed his public pledge of impartiality, he was already working in secret with Winston Churchill and selling arms to France.) Ronald Reagan lied about Iran-Contra so much that it now seems like he was honestly confused. Politically, the practice of lying is essential. By the time the Lewinsky story broke, Clinton had already lied about many, many things. (He’d openly lied about his level of commitment to gay rights during the ’92 campaign.) The presidency is not a job for an honest man. It’s way too complex. If honesty drove the electoral process, Jimmy Carter would have served two terms and the 2008 presidential race would have been a dead heat between Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

He said when he got up in the middle of the night he ran into the bathroom door. But we’re pretty sure she clocked him with a book. —RESIDENCE WORKER ON LIFE IN THE CLINTON WHITE HOUSE DURING THE MONICA LEWINSKY SCANDAL T

could swing outward to reveal layer upon layer of world maps. This was the place where Roosevelt had charted the course of World War II. Unsettlingly, it was also the room from which Clinton had admitted his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Gabrielle

What the [Clinton/Lewinsky scandal] showed was that a matter of personal behavior could crowd out of the public's attention far more serious matters, indeed matters of life and death. The House of Representatives would impeach the president on matters of sexual behavior, but it would not impeach him for endangering the lives of children by welfare reform, or for violating international law in bombing other countries (Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan), or for allowing hundreds of thousands of children to die as a result of economic sanctions (Iraq).

If you were Bill Clinton, how did you justify Monica Lewinsky to Chelsea? What did you say about the cigar and the beret and the little blue dress? If you were Anthony Weiner, how in the world did you explain to your daughter your apparently insatiable need to text pictures of your junk to strange women?

This brings us to the crux moment in the supposed 'Show Trial' melodrama. Employing the confusing and confused testimony of Jude Wanniski (who he also describes as a political nut-case, if not a nut-case flat-out, and to whom he introduced me in the first place) Blumenthal suggests that I concerted my testimony in advance with the House Republicans, notably James Rogan and Lindsey Graham. Feebly bridging the gap between sheer conjecture and outright conspiracy, Rogan is quoted as saying: 'Hitchens may well have called Lindsey..' I did not in fact do any such thing. Why should my denial be believed? It's not as if I care. I probably should have colluded with them, if my intention was to land a blow on Clinton (which it was) let alone to plant a Judas kiss on Blumenthal (which it was not). But every other fragment of Blumenthal's evidence and description shows—even boasts—that Congressman Graham was essentially punching air until the last day of the trial. That could not possibly have been true, especially in his cross-examination of Blumenthal, if he knew he had an ace in his vest-pocket all along. Only a tendency to paranoia or to all-explaining theories could suggest the contrary. I'd even be able to claim for myself, I hope, that if I'd truly wanted to gouge a deep or vengeful wound I could or would have made a better job of it.

The really strange thing about this is that it was one of the Fog Facts. That is, it was not a secret. It was known. But it was not known. That is, if you asked a knowledgeable journalist, or political analyst, or a historian, they knew about it. If you yourself went and checked the record, you could find it out. But if you asked the man in the street if President Scott, who loved to have his picture taken among the troops and driving armored vehicles and aboard naval vessels, if you asked if Scott had found a way to evade service in Vietnam, they wouldn't have a clue, and, unless they were anti-Scott already, they wouldn't believe it. In the information age there is so much information that sorting and focus and giving the appropriate weight to anything have become incredibly difficult. Then some fact, or event, or factoid mysteriously captures the world's attention and there's a media frenzy. Like Clinton and Lewinsky. Like O. J. Simpson. And everybody in the world knows everything about it. On the flip side are the Fog Facts, important things that nobody seems able to focus on any more than the can focus on a single droplet in the mist. They are known, but not known.

The backlash against feminism in the 1990's is the historical and cultural context in which I now perceive Carolyn's story. Women who spoke up about workplace inequality or domestic abuse were dismissed as histronic troublemakers. The new twenty-four-hour tabloid media - which skewered Anita Hill, reduced Marcia Clark to a "lawyerette," and blamed Monica Lewinsky for her affair with President Clinton - leveled unprecedented vitriol at Carolyn. It was all too easy to cast this unknown figure, who had no public profile until she met John, as a wild banshee, a vapid fashionista, or an undeserving harpy.

As members of the Christian right, we had dominated Republican politics throughout the decade, but we realized after Clinton was acquitted that our power and our values did not seem to be a part of any broad consensus. It seemed inevitable after the Lewinsky scandal surfaced that Clinton would be defeated, and yet he was more popular than ever, abortion was still generally accepted, and gays had made great strides into the mainstream. What had we done wrong? What did we not understand? “What has alarmed me throughout this episode,” James Dobson wrote to his supporters, “has been the willingness of my fellow citizens to rationalize the President’s behavior, even as they suspected, and later knew, that he was lying. I am left to conclude that our greatest problem is not in the Oval Office. It’s with the people of this land.

Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky is one of the five things that happened in 1995 that Campbell believes opened the door to the future.

The rise of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) in the USA population can be traced back to President Bill Clinton. While memorable for sexual foreplay with Monica Lewinsky, EHS people associate him with the 1996 Telecommunications Act that prohibits the protection of human health and safety from the known biologically toxic effects of wireless radio frequency (RF) radiation.

When I finally decided to share my information with Lew Merletti, I knew everything I said would be held in confidence. Merletti’s response to my revelation was immediate, and he encouraged me to tell my story to Ken Gormley, dean of the School of Law at Duquesne University (now the thirteenth president of the university) and the author of The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr. Gormley had interviewed Merletti during the Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to President Clinton’s impeachment. Merletti trusted Gormley. I repeated my story to Gormley, and he agreed with Merletti: “You have a story here that needs to be

When I finally decided to share my information with Lew Merletti, I knew everything I said would be held in confidence. Merletti’s response to my revelation was immediate, and he encouraged me to tell my story to Ken Gormley, dean of the School of Law at Duquesne University (now the thirteenth president of the university) and the author of The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr. Gormley had interviewed Merletti during the Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to President Clinton’s impeachment. Merletti trusted Gormley. I repeated my story to Gormley, and he agreed with Merletti: “You have a story here that needs to be told.” This is the story I kept

Section 377 made any sex apart from penile-vaginal intercourse between a man and a woman—any sex the authorities in power decide is ‘against the order of nature’—to be illegal. The Supreme Court ruling made it clear that the personal sexual preferences of adults was indeed as nature made them, and that it was lawful for them to be themselves. Obviously this was great news for the LGBTQ community, whose idea of what is ‘natural’ reflects their sexual orientation. But it also impacted married heterosexual couples since, theoretically, an act of oral sex between a husband and a wife is also illegal. And if you were not married to each other, of course, it was worse. If Bill Clinton had been an Indian, he might have survived impeachment after the Monica Lewinsky affair, but he’d have ended up in jail under Section 377.

In mid-January 1999, prior to my subpoena and unbeknownst to me while I was at JJRTC, Monica Lewinsky had signed an affidavit, a sworn statement, about her affair. In a Pentagon City, VA hotel, Monica also handed Linda Tripp, her Pentagon staffer pen pal, a document (“Points to Make in an Affidavit”) detailing what to say on an affidavit so as to protect Clinton from charges of sexual harassment made by White House volunteer aide Kathleen Willey. Where that document originated is a mystery. But it was amateur hour for Monica, as usual. Monica and President Clinton had been subpoenaed by the Paula Jones lawyers and both swore in a public civil case, under penalty of perjury—an impeachable offense for the president—that they did not have a sexual relationship. The Clintons and Monica didn’t know it, but Linda Tripp was no Clintonite. She was feeding information on them all to Newsweek and to Ken Starr. Tripp had the affidavit document proving conspiracy, and Starr had his carte blanche. Janet Reno signed off on the Justice Department and FBI expanding their investigations from the Whitewater scandal—in which their main witness, Jim McDougal, mysteriously died—into conspiracy and perjury in Paula Jones’s sexual harassment case regarding a government employee. Tripp had taped her phone conversations with Monica detailing her affair with the president, how in the Oval Office she gave him oral sex while he was on the phone with ambassadors and with Dick Morris. President Clinton paid for a White House mistress with taxpayer funds and jeopardized national security with her compromisable and corruptible presence in a secure area, all for little more than on-demand oral sex. We thought we knew what was going on. We didn’t know the half of it.

Forced by the Starr investigation, the president was to give testimony on the Paula Jones case any day now. Somehow Matt Drudge and his website received a leak. In response the president had signed a subpoenaed affidavit, legally sworn testimony denying any sexual relations with Paula Jones, the low-level Arkansas state employee who had accused him of sexual harassment, and more so, any relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He said they didn’t have any contact with each other, hadn’t even been alone in the same room together. He swore to it and said others could corroborate. Monica Lewinsky signed another affidavit. Ken Starr had been following the Clintons like a bloodhound. But at each turn of each scandal (Whitewater, Vince Foster’s suicide, Travelgate, Filegate, the affairs, the bribes, Troopergate, and more) it all came down to deny-deny-deny and the Clintons’ word against everyone else’s. Only this time, Clinton arrogantly denied his affair with Monica on a legal affidavit, sworn testimony. The shit was hitting the fan. Ken Starr now needed to prove Clinton was a liar—a perjurer. He needed evidence. Since they subpoenaed our logbook, I knew I was on Starr’s list. I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t drive anymore. My partner asked me what was wrong. I can remember the feeling, my heart racing, my mind whirling, racked with pain, doubt, remorse, and regret. Oh my God, Starr, the Clintons, the Service, the FBI, the Justice Department, my friends, my family—no, not my friends and family—but everyone is going to implicate me, my integrity, my professionalism, my ethics, my foundation, my character. What about Genny and my unborn child? I didn’t sign up for this! We never signed up for this! Why did the Clintons have to do this to us? Haven’t I treated them well, done my best? They just couldn’t do the right thing! They couldn’t stop themselves!

I dreamed of becoming an elite White House Secret Service officer, a member of its Uniformed Division. Nothing more—and certainly nothing less. My dream came true. I stood guard, a pistol at my hip, outside the Oval Office, the last barrier before anyone saw Bill Clinton. The last barrier before Monica Lewinsky saw Bill Clinton. Yes, I’m that Secret Service officer. I saw Monica, and I saw a lot more. I saw Hillary, too. I witnessed her obscenity-laced tirades, her shifting of blame, how she berated Vince Foster until he could stand no more, how minor incidents involving blue gloves and botched invitations sent her into a tizzy. It was like watching Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny obsessing about a quart of missing strawberries—and losing sight of the world war raging about him. I saw Hillary scheming with Dick Morris to undermine White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta. FBI agents confided in me about her emerging Filegate scandal; they were just as frustrated with Hillary’s methods as we were. Life at the Clinton White House careened from crisis (manufactured or not) to even greater crisis, the participants often unable to catch their breath and certainly incapable of learning from them. The Clinton White House atmosphere alternated from hilarity to bitter anger, lurching from nerves-on-end tension to sheer boredom, its most important residents painfully trapped between illusion and reality.

I heard them say: QUESTION:… But isn’t that why Vernon Jordan asked you on December 19th whether or not you had sexual relationships with Monica Lewinsky and why he asked her, because he knew it would be so highly improper to be helping her with a lawyer and a job if, in fact, she had had a relationship with you? CLINTON: I don’t know. I don’t believe that at all. I don’t believe that at all, particularly since, even if you look at the facts here in their light most unfavorable to me, no one has suggested that there was any sexual harassment on my part. And I don’t think it was wrong to be helping her.…

Monday afternoon, August 17, 1998, while still at the White House, President Bill Clinton became the first president to appear before a grand jury and testify regarding his own actions. It was videotaped just the way ours was, but he also appeared “live” (though remotely) to that grand jury via closed-circuit TV. Now he was cornered and finally had to pay the piper—or at least tell some portion of the truth. We all held our breath. That night he spoke via television to the entire nation, furiously trying to stay ahead of the shit storm he himself had created when, on Saturday, January 27, he made a demonstratively false sworn statement—outright perjury—that the allegations about him and Monica Lewinsky were false. He said emphatically and fervently, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” It was his word against ours with a titillated world watching. Only because of Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky’s infamous blue dress, and Ken Starr could the truth set us all free.

Tripp somehow manipulated Monica into giving her the infamous blue dress. Nel and I hadn’t cleaned up everything. The president had “deposited” somewhere besides White House towels. The biggest security leak in history was the one that Monica wore into the White House and then strutted out with—right past us. There was no way to spin it. Either the president had mysteriously gone around the White House ejaculating on people’s clothing, or he and Monica had a taxpayer-funded affair for which he committed perjury. It also proved what I damn well knew, that Monica was easily manipulated, either by the likes of a higher-up like President Clinton or a lower-down like Linda Tripp. She had no business playing in a high-stakes environment within arm’s reach of intelligence of the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, and the Department of Defense. I mean, the spook shit that moved and was approved through the White House was the most sensitive intel in existence. Actionable intel is power. How could anyone in the Secret Service be expected to do his or her job if the Americans allowed people like the Clintons to assume national leadership? People still think the Lewinsky affair was one political party making a big deal over a little extra pie on the side; it wasn’t. What Starr proved was that the president had engaged in inappropriate sexually related workplace conduct with an intern/employee, as he had with other women. Some women, such as Juanita Broaddrick, even alleged he had assaulted them. He had zero integrity in this area, and that made everything he did suspect and untrustworthy. It revealed his real character. The president of the United States believed that he was above the law. He perjured himself and convinced others to perjure themselves to try to save his carefully crafted image. He created a spirit of corruption that infected the White House, the Secret Service, the whole government. Bill Clinton endangered us all by serving himself.

Monica Lewinsky thought she was slick, but man, she was obvious. She played dumb to make friends with White House staffers, Navy stewards, and even UD officers—anything to get closer to her target, President Clinton.

Eleanor Mondale and Monica Lewinsky could not satiate the president’s horndog sexual desires. There were many others. I saw plenty of awkward run-ins and drama with other officers and staff. President Clinton had difficulty managing where he saw his many mistresses, whether it was at the White House or on the road. It baffled the Uniformed Division as to how he could manage all these women without any of them realizing there were so many others. We wondered how he got any work done and joked that he would have been better at running a brothel in a red-light district than the White House.

People still think the Lewinsky affair was one political party making a big deal over a little extra pie on the side; it wasn’t. What Starr proved was that the president had engaged in inappropriate sexually related workplace conduct with an intern/employee, as he had with other women. Some women, such as Juanita Broaddrick, even alleged he had assaulted them. He had zero integrity in this area, and that made everything he did suspect and untrustworthy. It revealed his real character. The president of the United States believed that he was above the law. He perjured himself and convinced others to perjure themselves to try to save his carefully crafted image. He created a spirit of corruption that infected the White House, the Secret Service, the whole government. Bill Clinton endangered us all by serving himself. He dragged me through the mud for it. He raked a lot of people over the coals for it.

staring at the picture of President Clinton and Monica Lewinski

the Kochs’, declared, “The blue dress moment may have arrived.” But instead of using Monica Lewinsky’s telltale garment to impeach Bill Clinton, they would use the words of the world’s leading climate scientists to impeach the climate change movement.

On Monday afternoon, August 17, 1998, while still at the White House, President Bill Clinton became the first president to appear before a grand jury and testify regarding his own actions. It was videotaped just the way ours was, but he also appeared “live” (though remotely) to that grand jury via closed-circuit TV. Now he was cornered and finally had to pay the piper—or at least tell some portion of the truth. We all held our breath. That night he spoke via television to the entire nation, furiously trying to stay ahead of the shit storm he himself had created when, on Saturday, January 27, he made a demonstratively false sworn statement—outright perjury—that the allegations about him and Monica Lewinsky were false.

Goldberg was the wizard of right-wing conspiratorial fiction packaged as political exposé: she convinced White House executive assistant Linda Tripp to secretly tape-record lurid conversations about President Bill Clinton with Tripp’s “friend,” White House intern Monica Lewinsky.