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Hillary Writes About Bill and Monica

By Jeralyn, Section Media
Posted on Tue Jun 03, 2003 at 11:23:14 PM EST
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Hillary Clinton's memoirs hit the bookshelves Monday. The New York Times details the section about her learning her husband had an affair with Monica Lewinsky:

Mrs. Clinton said that at first she accepted her husband's story that he had befriended Ms. Lewinsky when she asked for job-hunting help, "had talked to her a few times" and that the relationship had been misconstrued. "For me, the Lewinsky imbroglio seemed like just another vicious scandal manufactured by political opponents," she wrote.

More than six months later, with the president preparing to testify before a grand jury, Mrs. Clinton was adamant that he had done nothing wrong and was the victim of a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Then, on Saturday, Aug. 15, 1998, he woke her, paced by the bed and "told me for the first time that the situation was much more serious than he had previously acknowledged."

"He now realized he would have to testify that there had been an inappropriate intimacy," Mrs. Clinton wrote. "He told me that what happened between them had been brief and sporadic."

He was ashamed and knew she would be angry, she recounted. "I could hardly breathe," she wrote. "Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him, `What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me?' I was furious and getting more so by the second. He just stood there saying over and over again, `I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was trying to protect you and Chelsea.' " Mrs. Clinton said that until that morning she believed that he was being unfairly attacked.

"I was dumbfounded, heartbroken and outraged that I'd believed him at all," she wrote. She said the president's eyes filled with tears when she told him he would have to confess to their teenage daughter as well.

Mrs. Clinton said she ultimately decided she still loved her husband, although "as a wife, I wanted to wring Bill's neck." She bitterly described the months of chill between them, never more painful than when they went to Martha's Vineyard for vacation right after his testimony. "Buddy, the dog, came along to keep Bill company. He was the only member of our family who was still willing to."

She said her decision to run for the Senate from New York provided a healing bridge for them. "Bill and I were talking again about matters other than the future of our relationship." she wrote. "Over time we both began to relax."
She concludes that what her husband did was morally wrong but not a betrayal of the public.

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