Monica's Story

by Andrew Morton

  Suddenly the public-address system came to life and a voice announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States accompanied by the First Lady.” As the military band struck up “Hail to the Chief,” there he was on stage. “I remember being very taken aback. My heart skipped a beat, my breathing came a little faster and there were butterflies fluttering in my tummy,” Monica says. “He had a glow about him that was magnetic. He exudes a sexual energy. I thought to myself: ‘Now I see what all the girls are talking about.’”

  She was now eager to have a closer look at the man who was, ultimately, her boss. Her chance came towards the end of July, when a supervisor gave the interns permission to attend a departure ceremony. During one of these functions, which are held whenever the President leaves the White House for more than a few hours, he walks along a roped-off path between two lines of people, shaking hands as he goes, and then climbs aboard a gleaming navy-blue military helicopter, Marine One, which whisks him away, usually to the presidential retreat, Camp David in Maryland.

  After her first sight of President Clinton, Monica found her second view of him a real letdown. As he made his way along the line of people pressing against the ropes, it was clear that he was on autopilot, merely going through the motions of meeting and greeting without engaging with his well-wishers. When he reached Monica’s section he looked straight through her. “It was disappointing because he seemed nothing up close,” she recalls.

  Knowing she was due to attend another departure ceremony on Wednesday, August 9, Monica decided to give him another chance, to see if the man she had at first sight nearly swooned over was really so vibrant in person. She decided to wear a new sage-green suit her mother had just bought her from J. Crew. Most important of all, her new suit gave her a sense of confidence and self-assurance.

  As the President moved down the roped-off line of guests, he stopped to chat to a fellow intern and her father, who were standing just in front of Monica. While talking to them, he suddenly spotted her and, as she says, “gave me the full Bill Clinton . . It was this look, it’s the way he flirts with women. When it was time to shake my hand, the smile disappeared, the rest of the crowd disappeared and we shared an intense but brief sexual exchange. He undressed me with his eyes.” This was no juvenile fantasy. Later, during their affair, the President was to tell Monica that he remembered that moment vividly. “I knew that one day I would kiss you,” he said to her as they sat in his office.

  The moment over, she turned away and bumped into her friend Jay Footlik, who had recommended her for the internship. While they stood talking, she noticed that the President was still looking her way.

  Next day, still exhilarated by her silent exchange with the President, Monica was thrilled to learn that, at the last minute, the interns had been invited to attend a surprise forty-ninth birthday party for the President, which was to be held that afternoon on the South Lawn of the White House. Thinking that he might recognize her if she wore the same outfit, Monica drove home, ironed her “lucky green suit,” and returned to the White House.

  It was a relaxed and light-hearted occasion with a Wild West theme, the two hundred or so interns and the permanent White House staff amused by the comic antics of their bosses, who had organized a series of skits in honor of “the Chief.” Vice-President A1 Gore arrived for the party in a beat-up station wagon, while a number of other senior advisors, including Leon Panetta and Harold Ickes, made their entrance on horseback. Even the President was dressed in cowboy gear, while, appropriately enough, country and western singer Jimmy Buffett was the musical highlight of the event.

  During the birthday show, the President spotted Monica early on and kept looking her way and smiting—although she was not the only one to get the “full Bill Clinton.” When it was time for him to walk along the line of well-wishers, Monica was, this time, at the front and in due course was rewarded with a presidential handshake as she told him, “Happy birthday, Mr. President.” In response, “He looked deep into my eyes and I was hooked,” she remembers. As he moved off, his arm, casually but unnecessarily, brushed against her breast. Continuing to walk on down the line, he looked back at Monica and tried to identify her from the plastic pass hanging on its cord from her neck. Noticing this, she saw that the pass was the wrong way around. She quickly untwisted it, knowing that he would see from its cotor—pink—she was an intern. The President smirked at her.

  Flattered and excited by his attention, Monica decided to join a male colleague and go to the end of the line of people behind the ropes, hoping to get a picture of him (many of the guests had brought cameras). When the President arrived he spotted Tom Campbell, an old friend from his college days in Washington. They talked about old times for around twenty minutes, Monica and her friend part of a dozen-strong group listening to the two men reminisce. By now the party was over and most of the guests had departed, leaving only Monica and a few others on the lawn. As the President headed back to the White House, he turned around and caught Monica’s eye. In the exuberance of the moment, she blew him a kiss, at which he threw back his head in laughter.

  When she got home to her mother’s apartment she excitedly told her mother and Aunt Debra about the day’s events, then spent most of the evening reading the autobiography of Gennifer Flowers, a nightclub singer with whom Clinton had had a long affair while he was Governor of Arkansas. “At the time there were so many other women who found him attractive that I didn’t see anything wrong in feeling the same way,” she says. “I was still consumed by Andy and this was just teasing—it was fun and made me feel good.”

  Certainly both the older women saw it that way—nothing more than a giddy flirtation, a welcome respite for Monica as she licked her emotional wounds over Andy Bleiler. “It was very flattering to her but it seemed like high-school stuff,” says Debra Finerman. “It wasn’t taken seriously because everyone knew President Clinton was a flirt and had lots of women. I remember thinking to myself, ‘I can’t believe this middle-aged man is engaging in such immature behavior.’”

  The following day saw Monica—exercising to the full both her penchant for the dramatic and her tendency to see life as an unfolding movie script—fondly expecting the Secret Service to call her discreetly with the news that the President wanted to see her, in the same way that Clinton’s hero, John F. Kennedy, used the Secret Service to bring women to him during his presidency. Every time the phone rang her nerves jangled. The day passed, however, without the dramatic presidential request for her company.

  These brief flirtations with the President were good for her ego, but what was more important was that she was enjoying the mechanics of the job. Her remarkable facility for remembering numbers, dates and people’s names ensured that she pulled her weight in spite of her inexperience, and her conscientiousness and enthusiasm for her work were soon noticed by her superiors. Monica was now thinking in terms of working at the White House permanently, despite her belief that she was not a “Washington type.” After a conversation with her supervisor, Tracey Beckett, who was encouraging and told her that she could use the help, she decided to stay on for a second internship in the hope of securing a full-time position after that had ended.

  With this in mind, in mid-August she attended another departure ceremony, during which the President stopped to chat to a group of interns who were about to finish their six-week stint. Summoning up all her courage, Monica introduced herself, carefully making the point that she was staying on for a second term. Then, after he had joined them for a group picture, he left for his summer vacation. A few weeks later, Monica and several other interns were enjoying a picnic and soaking up the last of the summer sunshine on West Executive Avenue, which lies between the Old Executive Office Building and the West Wing, when the President suddenly walked out of the White House. The interns, disconcerted by his unexpected arrival, stood up in a gesture of respect. As he passed, he grinned at Monica and they waved to each other.

  By now she had told several
of her friends, including her former Beverly Hills classmate Natalie Ungvari, who visited her in Washington in September 1995, that she harbored a crush on the President. She had even written him a poem for National Bosses’ Day, which she had had printed on a card and signed by all the interns. When the Director of the Intern Program, Karin Abramson, suggested that she take it over and give it to the President, Monica suffered a rare attack of shyness and insisted that Abramson accompany her. In the end the poem was given to a presidential aide, and in due course she received an autopen letter of thanks in response.

  She was in luck, however, during Natalie Ungvari’s visit. Monica arranged for her friend to be given a VIP tour of the West Wing, but since she was still an intern, Monica herself was not allowed in that area. She therefore left Natalie to make the tour, returning forty minutes later to wait for her friend in the basement lobby of the West Wing. While she waited she chatted to Lewis Fox, a uniformed Secret Service officer, who told her that the President would shortly be passing by. Sure enough, a couple of minutes later he walked into the lobby, where he began to talk to two women guests. Then he turned to Monica. As soon as she announced her name, the President, with a twinkle in his eye, said, “I know.” They had their picture taken together and as they made small talk, Monica couldn’t help noticing that he was giving her the once-over. While she found his attention flattering, she worried, typically, that she might appear too fat, and therefore tried to suck in her stomach as she chatted to him. She also thanked her lucky stars that she was wearing black, a slimming color. The incident, as insignificant as it may have been, is almost a paradigm of Monica’s nature—the hopeful, apparently self-confident, almost brash young intern silently constrained by her lack of self-esteem.

  However much fun Monica found the flirtation with the President, like any twenty-two-year-old she had to think of her long-term future. She took two weeks’ leave in October 1995 to retake her GRE, fully intending to pursue graduate school the following year. She wanted to keep her options open if the White House job did not transpire. Yet, even though her mind was focused on her future, no matter how hard she tried, she could not forget Andy Bleiler—her heart once more overruling her head. It was a pattern she just could not seem to break. Throwing caution to the winds, she returned briefly to Oregon to see him. It did not take her long to realize that she had made a terrible mistake.

  Immediately on being reunited with him, she sensed that Bleiler, who had found a permanent job at Canby High School in Portland, had returned to his familiar pattern of behavior and was seeing another girl now that Monica was no longer around. Her suspicions were to be proved horribly accurate some months later. At the time, however, in order to disguise the fact that he had a new mistress, Bleiler went into the tried and trusted routine which he had used before to end their relationship. Once again, he told Monica that he felt guilty about the affair, and that he wanted to focus on his wife and their children. Devastated by the rebuff, Monica dissolved into hysterical, inconsolable tears, and set off back to Washington downcast and depressed. It was the last time she would see Andy Bleiler for more than a year.

  Her gloomy mood was dispelled the moment she arrived back at her mother’s apartment, however. On her answering machine was a message from Jennifer Palmieri, Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff, who had known of Monica’s job search thanks to her immediate supervisor, Tracey Beckett. She said that there was a job opening in Legislative Affairs and that she had recommended Monica to Tim Keating, one of the President’s Special Assistants and Staff Director for Legislative Affairs, who was in charge of hiring and firing. A short while later she was interviewed over coffee by Keating, who was concerned that if Monica, who was one of several candidates, was offered the position, she should make a commitment to stay on past the election scheduled for November 1996. For her part, Monica’s only caveat was that she planned to enroll for graduate school in the fall of 1996, but Keating told her they could deal with that nearer the time. A few days later, she was asked to meet two senior officials in Legislative Affairs, a sign that her preliminary interview had gone well.

  On Friday, November 1, 1995, a national holiday celebrating Veterans Day, Monica was in her room, mooning over Andy Bleiler, when she received a phone call that changed her life, and possibly the course of American history. It was from Tim Keating, who told her that he had some good news and some bad. The good news was that she had got the job, and would be working in the correspondence section of the Office of Legislative Affairs in the White House; her salary would be $25,000 per year. The bad news was that he didn’t know when she could start, because a government shutdown was in the offing.

  Monica could hardly contain her joy. Putting the phone down she first screamed with excitement, then wasted no time in calling her friends and family. “I was thrilled,” she remembers. “Here I was, just a few months out of college, and I have got my first full-time paying job at the White House. What is more, I would have a coveted blue pass. I was so proud of myself.”

  The only problem was the forthcoming government shutdown or “furlough,” which was the result of a budgetary impasse between Congress and the President. Effectively, this meant that the government was not voted the money to pay for the administration, leaving the White House to be run by only a skeleton staff of key advisors until such time as the matter was resolved. Because Monica was still technically an unpaid intern, however, she could be employed to fill in the gaps left by senior staff who were forced to go home.

  It was in this atmosphere of crisis that Monica Lewinsky started her first day in her temporary job, working shoulder to shoulder with the most powerful men and women in the country, including the President. It was a highly unusual—indeed, extraordinary—state of affairs, whereby a junior White House employee came to be closely involved with the movers and shakers of the nation, working from early morning until very late at night.

  On her first morning, Wednesday, November 15, 1995, Monica spotted the President as he walked by the door to the Chief of Staff’s office, where she was working. She mouthed “Hi,” and he smiled back a “Hi” before returning to the Oval Office.

  What was particularly unusual that day was that the President, who normally visited the Chief of Staff’s office once a week, dropped by four or five times. On one of these visits Monica, who knew that her mother’s friend Walter Kaye had been due to give the President some handmade shirts that day, asked whether he liked the new shirts. The President seemed nonplussed by the question, leaving Monica thinking ruefully, “You blew it—he probably thinks you’re an idiot.”

  Later that day the tightly knit group of office workers planned to celebrate the birthday of Jennifer Palmieri, who had been instrumental in getting Monica her job. Surprisingly, the President joined the impromptu party, where he spent a good deal of the time smiling and looking at Monica; she was, in White House parlance, getting a lot of presidential “face time.” For some time she was kept busy answering the phones, a controversial radio talk-show host having given out Leon Panetta’s telephone number and encouraged his listeners to ring the Chief of Staff and complain about the government shutdown. So while the President was grinning at Monica, she was placating irate callers bent on heaping abuse upon his head.

  After a while, the President went into the Chief of Staff’s inner office. Seeing this, and now free of angry callers, Monica, who was wearing a smart navy-blue pantsuit, decided to raise the stakes in their flirting ritual. She was standing with her back to the office door, and when he returned she put her hands on her hips and with her thumbs lifted the back of her jacket, allowing him a fleeting glimpse of her thong underwear where it showed above the waistline of her suit’s pants. This incident, now infamous, was, as far as she was concerned, merely one step further in their flirtation. It was over in an instant, although she was rewarded with an appreciative look as the President walked past.

  It was a calculated gamble, and one which might have had immediately calamitous
consequences for her. Her friend Neysa DeMann Erbland observes, “When she told me about the thong thing I was shocked. She is sexual and playful [by nature], but that was a lot for her to do. By doing that she must have instinctively known that he wanted her. If she had read the signals wrong, then she would have been fired, no doubt about it. So she was sure that he was into this and her instincts proved to be correct.”

  As the evening wore on the President came more frequently to the office Monica was working in; he asked for people who weren’t even in the White House, since all the senior presidential aides were in the Capitol building, negotiating with Congress for a solution to the impasse. Later she passed the office of George Stephanopoulos, the Senior Advisor for Policy and Strategy, and, glancing in, saw the President was in there alone. He gestured to her and said, “Come on in here for a second.” When she went in, she found herself alone in an otherwise empty office with the President of the United States. Then, incongruously, he asked where had she gone to school? Nervously struggling to make conversation, Monica blurted out, “You know, I have a really big crush on you.” Laughing, he hesitated for a moment before replying, “Come into the back office.”

  Monica’s recollection of the next few moments is vivid, if romantically colored. In the inner office, the President stood close to her before wrapping his arms around her and holding her tightly. “I remember looking at him and seeing such a different person than the one I had expected to see. There was such a softness and tenderness about him, his eyes were very soul-searching, very wanting, very needing and very loving. There was, too, a sadness about him that I hadn’t expected to see.”

  There were other thoughts racing through her mind: “Oh my goodness, he’s so gorgeous—and I can’t believe I am here, standing here alone with the President of the United States.” They talked about her schooldays and where she was from, and he told her that she was beautiful and that her energy lit up a room. “He probably says that to everybody but at the time he made me feel incredibly special. Then he was just holding me, taking in my worth and my energy as a woman and a human being. He asked if he could kiss me and when he did, it was soft, deep, romantic. It was wonderful. At the same time as kissing him I’m thinking, ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ as well as ‘What an incredible, sensual kisser!’”