Cold Open

It’s February 1998, inside an apartment building in Washington D.C.

A 24-year-old woman steps inside an elevator. With a trembling finger, she presses the button for the ground floor. Behind her dark sunglasses, mascara runs from the woman’s tearful eyes. She nervously chews her fingernail as the elevator begins its slow descent. 

Until recently, Monica Lewinsky was a lowly government employee working in the Pentagon’s public affairs office. Now, she’s the most talked-about person in America. Last month, an online media outlet published a story about a rumored affair between Monica and the President of the United States, Bill Clinton. Now Monica finds herself at the heart of a media frenzy. Everywhere she goes, she’s dogged by camera crews and reporters heckling her about intimate details of her sex life.

As the elevator’s doors open, Monica steps out and briskly walks across the lobby, preparing herself for the media storm waiting outside.

The humiliation has been bad enough, but things could get a lot worse for Monica. Because rumors of her affair with the president emerged amid an ongoing investigation into allegations of corruption by the Clintons. When asked about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Clinton lied under oath, claiming he never had sexual relations with her. Monica lied, too - also denying any impropriety between her and the president.

But now, with reporters and prosecutors sniffing around for evidence, Monica worries that she may be charged with committing perjury, withholding evidence, and obstructing justice - serious crimes punishable by prison time.

So today, Monica is on her way to see her lawyer to discuss possibly striking a deal with the prosecutors. If they can make a deal, Monica would be granted complete immunity. All she would need to do is testify against the man she fell in love with.

Her mind racing, Monica reaches the front doors of her building. Through the glass, she can see the news crews staking out the apartment, the hordes of paparazzi jostling for the best angle. Monica pauses to re-adjust her jet-black hair. Then, she takes a deep breath… and steps outside to face the cameras.

The affair between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky will drag the presidency into a swamp of scandal, gossip, and disrepute. The unprecedented public exposure of extremely private details taking place at the very heart of government will send shockwaves reverberating through Washington. In July 1998, Monica will strike a deal with prosecutors, agreeing to hand over evidence proving her affair with Clinton. This will force the president to respond, going public with his admission that he lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky – a sensational revelation that will bring Clinton’s presidency to the brink of collapse, following his on-air confession on August 17th, 1998.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is August 17th, 1998: President Clinton Confesses to the Lewinsky Scandal.

Act One: Frenemies

It’s April 1996, two years before President Clinton will admit his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Linda Tripp, a 46-year-old civil servant, makes her way through the Pentagon’s public affairs office with a stack of documents under one arm. Linda’s been working here in the Pentagon for almost two years. She was transferred from the White House, where she worked in the office of the president’s legal counsel. Going to work every day in the executive mansion was a dream come true for an ambitious person like Linda, and she loved serving under President George H. W. Bush, a man she deeply admires.

Things would be very different now, Linda thinks, if Bush were still president.

She drops the documents on her desk and sits down with a disgruntled sigh. She removes a mirror from her purse and re-adjusts her highlighted blonde hair. Then, she snaps the mirror shut and glares venomously at the poster-sized photograph leaning against her cubicle of the current president, Bill Clinton.

Three years ago, after Clinton defeated Bush in the presidential election, Linda noticed the White House’s culture was starting to change - and she didn’t like it. She disapproved of Clinton’s younger staff, who used to stay up late eating pizza in the Oval Office like members of some frat house. Clinton himself struck Linda as an immoral womanizer, and she took an instant dislike to his wife Hillary, whom she considered brash, vulgar, and unladylike.

Putting it plainly, Linda did not like the Clinton administration - and the feeling was mutual. After only a few months, Linda was transferred to the Pentagon. On the surface, it was a promotion. But to Linda, who always dreamed of working in the White House, her move across the Potomac felt like a kick in the teeth. But Linda intends to have the last laugh.

A short while ago, she approached a literary agent with a book proposal - a tell-all exposé of the Clinton administration, including details about the president’s alleged infidelity. But the book never came to fruition. Linda didn’t have enough material, and the publisher eventually lost interest. What Linda needs now is a scoop - something concrete and scandalous - something that can breathe new life into the project. But without any access to the Clinton’s inner circle, Linda doesn’t expect to find that any time soon. 

So, for now, it’s business as usual at the office. But, as she types at her desk, Linda senses someone standing right behind her.

Turning, she finds a pretty young coworker with black hair and wide eyes gazing adoringly at the poster of Clinton. Linda only keeps the poster here to conceal her true feelings about the president, but the young woman’s expression is filled with genuine affection. She apologizes for bothering Linda, then explains that she met Clinton while working as an intern at the White House. Linda is curious and asks for her name, the young woman tells her it’s Monica Lewinsky.

Despite their 24-year age gap, Monica and Linda become friends. Monica soon feels close enough to Linda to confide in her that she’s been having an affair with an older, married man. Then, while sitting in the Pentagon cafeteria one day, Monica reveals that the married man she’s seeing is the president himself. That Clinton would take advantage of a naïve young intern doesn’t surprise Linda, who feels both appalled and vindicated by the revelation.

And it’s not long before she starts to calculate how she might turn this information to her advantage…

As the months pass, Linda learns more and more about Monica’s relationship with the president. Monica is absolutely besotted with Clinton, who transferred her away from the White House in an attempt to snuff out their affair. But Clinton’s insistence that he and Monica stop seeing each other is undermined by his constant telephone calls, expensive gifts, and late-night invitations to the Oval Office.

With this new information getting juicier and juicier, Linda tells her old literary agent all about the president’s affair with the intern more than half his age. Her agent’s ears prick up. She encourages Linda to start covertly recording her conversations with Monica. Linda obliges and over the course of the next year, she secretly records everything Monica tells her about her relationship with Clinton, much of it explicitly sexual. Gradually, Linda realizes she’s sitting on something far more important than material for a sensationalist book; she has all the necessary ammunition to bring down a president she loathes.

Linda promptly contacts the lawyers of a woman named Paula Jones, who recently made a highly publicized claim that Clinton sexually harassed her at a fundraising event in 1991. Linda is eager to strengthen Paula’s lawsuit by establishing Clinton’s pattern of behavior toward his female employees – even if that means betraying Monica's trust in the process.

After Linda provides Paula’s lawyers with her secret recordings, events will quickly escalate. The lawyers will issue Monica with a subpoena, requesting that she testify under oath in Paula’s case against Clinton. Afraid that her secret is about to come out, Monica will sign an affidavit swearing she never had sexual relations with the president.

And this will prove a costly error of judgment. In the coming weeks, the false affidavit will provide prosecutors with all the leverage they need to coerce Monica into providing evidence against Clinton, advancing their efforts to bring impeachment charges against a president for just the second time in history.

Act Two: That Woman

It’s Friday, January 16th, 1998, almost two years after Linda Tripp met Monica Lewinsky.

Inside Pentagon City Mall, a shopping complex in Arlington, Virginia, Monica walks across a crowded food court. She’s supposed to be having lunch with Linda. But she arrived a little early from the gym. So, Monica finds an empty table and starts flicking through a magazine.

Last two years have been a surreal blur for the 24-year-old. Her relationship with President Clinton quickly evolved from a mere flirtation to a full-blown infatuation. She understands that her affair can never be made public. She even understands why Clinton transferred her away from the White House to the Pentagon. But the president has been acting so cold and distant lately, sometimes going months without so much as a phone call – leaving Monica heartbroken.

That’s why she’s so grateful to have Linda to confide in. Linda is a maternal figure to Monica, and she trusts the older woman not to breathe a word of the affair to anyone. When Monica admitted that she was feeling unhappy working in government, Linda urged her to capitalize on Clinton’s influence to land another job. Monica followed Linda’s advice, and through a contact of the president’s, she has just been offered a job at a cosmetics company in Manhattan. In just a few weeks’ time, she will be leaving Washington and starting afresh in a brand-new city.

The job offer couldn’t have come at a better time.

Just a few weeks ago, Monica was issued a subpoena by lawyers representing a woman called Paula Jones, who claims that Clinton sexually harassed her in 1991. The lawyers want Monica to appear as a witness in Paula’s lawsuit, testifying that Clinton regularly exhibits inappropriate predatory behavior toward his female employees.

When the lawyers told her this, Monica flew into a panic. She signed an affidavit swearing that she never had sexual relations with Clinton. And though she knew lying under oath was wrong – she didn’t feel like she had much of a choice. She would never do anything to damage the president’s reputation.

And now, she’s looking forward to moving to New York and putting this whole episode behind her.

Soon enough, Monica spots Linda coming down the mall escalator. She stands and waves, but as she does, she sees that Linda isn’t alone. Two men in dark suits stand beside her on the escalator, their jackets barely concealing the handguns strapped to their hips.

Linda and her companions walk over to where Monica is standing. But before she can ask any questions, the men flash FBI badges and tell her that the Attorney General of the United States has authorized a criminal investigation into her actions.

Monica blinks, dumbfounded. She stares at Linda, who smiles apologetically and mumbles: “This is for your own good, Monica.”

The federal agents take Monica by the arm and lead her to a room in a nearby Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where several more men in suits are waiting. They explain that they’re prosecutors working on an independent report into President Clinton’s financial affairs. That initiative – named the Starr Report after its main author, Kenneth Starr – was recently expanded to include details about Clinton’s sex life.

And that’s why they’re meeting with Monica today. Somebody working on Starr’s team recently received a collection of cassette tapes containing explicit details about Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. They also received a signed affidavit from Monica swearing she never had sexual relations with the president – an assertion that Monica contradicts on tape and it's punishable by over twenty years in prison.

Monica feels sick. She can’t believe Linda would betray her trust like this. And when Linda turns to leave the room, Monica barks: “Make her stay and watch. I want that traitor to see what she’s done to me.”

Over the course of the next eleven hours, Monica is held in a hotel room and interrogated about her affair with Clinton. The prosecutors want a confession from Monica, because tomorrow, Clinton is due to give a deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit. Jones’s lawyers will ask Clinton if he ever had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky – and Ken Starr’s team wants to catch the president committing perjury.

Monica is terrified. She refuses to speak until her mother is present. But Monica’s mother, Marcia, is terrified of flying, so it takes nearly ten hours for her to travel down by train from Manhattan and join her daughter in the hotel room.

When Marcia eventually does arrive, she hugs her tearful daughter, and then tells her to give these prosecutors all the information they need. But when asked, Monica refuses to wear a wire or to testify against Clinton in court. Eventually, to the frustration of the prosecutors, Monica, and her mother leave the hotel without offering a confession.

In the end, though, it will hardly matter. Rumors of Clinton’s affair with a young female intern will soon reach the media outlet, the Drudge Report. And in the coming days, the scandal will enter the public consciousness, plunging Monica Lewinsky’s life into turmoil, spelling disaster for Clinton’s presidency.

Act Three: Confession

It’s August 17th, 1998 inside the Map Room of the White House, eight months after prosecutors met with Monica Lewinsky.

President Bill Clinton straightens his tie as he looks down the barrel of a news camera. Dotted around the room are several members of independent counsel Ken Starr’s legal team, responsible for this investigation into Clinton’s personal life. The president looks around at their unsmiling faces, his pale blue eyes brimming with animosity.

Ever since news of Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky broke, Ken Starr and his investigative team have been trying desperately to prove the rumors are true. They’ve harassed members of Clinton’s staff, seized White House documents, listened to phone calls, and even rooted through the trash.

Naturally, the scandal became the biggest piece of tabloid gossip to hit America in years. And Monica Lewinsky has become one of the most famous people in the world - Clinton does feel guilty about all the negative press she’s received. He wasn’t surprised when Monica eventually agreed to cooperate with Starr’s lawyers, handing over a damning piece of evidence: a blue dress she was wearing on one of her many visits to the Oval Office – a dress that DNA tests have now proved is stained with the president’s semen.

Confronted with this humiliating and undeniable proof, Clinton has no choice but to publicly confess to the affair. In his mind, nobody’s private life should be on display like this – not even the president’s. But the matter is more complicated than that. Back in January, he swore during a legal deposition that he had never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. That statement has been proven false, and the president is now facing the possibility of impeachment for lying under oath.

One of Clinton’s aides gives him the signal. There’s a countdown from five, then the president goes live to seventy million people:

"CLINTON: As you know, in a deposition in January, I was asked questions about my relationship with Monica Lewinsky. While my answers were legally accurate, I did not volunteer information. Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible."

But Clinton does not continue in this repentant vein. He strikes a more defensive tone, asserting that “even presidents have private lives”, that “our country has been distracted by this matter for too long” and that it’s time to “move on.”

But neither the American people nor politicians on Capitol Hill, will move on from the scandal. In January 1997, impeachment charges will be brought against Clinton, making him just the second president in history to face being forcibly removed from office. Five weeks later though, he will be acquitted.

Despite the scandal that engulfed the White House, Clinton will remain a popular president until the end of his second term in 2001. Monica Lewinsky, meanwhile, will become one of the first victims of the digital age and its culture of online public shaming. She will have to endure aggressive media intrusion into her life for decades to come. But, in the light of the #MeToo movement, many will re-evaluate the affair as being a clear abuse of power by the president towards an impressionable young intern more than two decades his junior - a narrative shift that will come some 25 years after Clinton finally confessed to his affair with Monica Lewinsky on August 17th, 1998.

Outro

Next on History Daily. August 18th, 1942. During the Second World War, an ill-fated Allied assault on the French town of Dieppe results in carnage and catastrophe.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Lindsay Graham.

This episode is written and researched by Joe Viner.

Executive Producers are Alexandra Currie-Buckner for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.