Bob Woodward Excerpt

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Robert S. Bennett, leaning close to his client in the private study off the Oval Office, announced his suspicion in an aggressive baritone. "Mr. President," he said, "I find your explanation about one of the women frankly unbelievable."

"This is what impeachment is made of," said Bennett, President Clinton's lawyer in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. "Your political enemies will eat you alive if there's anything in that deposition that isn't truthful."

There can be no fudging or finagling, Bennett said. It would be better to have to deal with the first lady if there is a problem. "If . . ." Bennett said, stopping for effect, making it clear there could be no evasion. He shook his head, almost feeling electricity in the air. "You are dead. You are dead!"

Every case, every witness, every client has a point of greatest vulnerability -- an Achilles' heel. Locating it is a lawyer's, and ultimately the client's, insurance policy.

It was Jan. 16, 1998, the day before Clinton was to give his deposition in the Jones case, and Bennett believed he had located the real problem Clinton faced the next day. It was not Kathleen Willey, the former White House volunteer who claimed Clinton groped her in 1993, because that had never been a relationship. It was not Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern. It was totally improbable that the president had taken up with a young woman, age 23 or 24, who apparently brought pizza and mail to the Oval Office.

No, Bennett believed, he had smoked out the real liability -- Marilyn Jo Jenkins, a beautiful marketing executive whom Clinton had known for more than a decade. Jenkins was a longtime employee of the Arkansas Power and Light Co. Her name had been linked to Clinton in published reports, but only in vague references.

She had met with Clinton in his basement office in the Arkansas governor's mansion four times in the less than three months between his election in 1992 and his inauguration in 1993. Three of the meetings took place about 5:15 a.m. or 5:30 a.m. Phone records showed that from 1989 to 1991 Clinton had placed 59 calls to Jenkins's home or office. Arkansas state trooper Danny Ferguson had brought gifts from Clinton to Jenkins.

Clinton had denied to Bennett that he had a sexual relationship with Jenkins. Bennett was not buying it. He noticed that Clinton reacted differently when Jenkins's name came up. The president paused in a forlorn and wistful way. Bennett couldn't quite put his finger on it, but Clinton's manner seemed to be a definite tip-off.

Bennett reminded the president that the judge would make a final ruling the next day at the deposition about the questions relating to women. Supposedly, Clinton was going to be asked only about women who had been state or federal employees, and Jenkins had never worked for either government.

He was going to object, but the judge could rule either way, Bennett said. It probably was a 50-50 shot whether questions would be allowed about Jenkins. The president had to be ready to answer, Bennett said, inviting Clinton to share with his lawyers his possible responses.

During his years in the White House, Clinton had become increasingly isolated. He would not even confide in his own lawyers.

Four years earlier, after Jones had filed her suit, Bennett had held a series of strategy meetings with the president. "Most of my cases, I can get my clients out from under the underlying conduct," he told Clinton at one session. "What happens is they flunk the investigation. They do things during the investigative phase to cause the trouble." So Clinton had to be careful. "Don't do your own investigation. Don't contact witnesses. Don't do anything. If you have a bright idea, pass it on to me."

Eventually Bennett sought the president's confidence about his past. "My handling of this and dealing with it is going to be only as good as the information I get," he told Clinton.

One day, Clinton and Bennett went for a stroll on the White House grounds. Both had cigars. Bennett lit his. Clinton did not. Bennett took the matter a step further. Rumors persisted in Washington connecting Clinton sexually with various women. For all Bennett knew, they were total garbage.

Perhaps it was the intimacy of the walk, the perfectly tended White House grounds or the male party and communion suggested by the cigars.

"If you're caught . . . in the White House," Bennett said, "I'm not good enough to help you."

"This is a prison," Clinton responded. "I purposefully have no drapes on the windows." As for women, "I'm retired," the president declared, repeating himself emphatically. "I'm retired."

In January 1998, as Bennett prepared for Clinton's sworn deposition in the Jones case, he was still pressing his client on that same question. Just a few days before the deposition, Bennett came back from a closed session with Judge Susan Webber Wright concerned that he did not have enough information about the president's relationship with Lewinsky. One of the Jones lawyers had told him, "Our information is that she had an affair with the president," and so he returned to Washington and the White House to ask more questions.

Why were they asking about Lewinsky? Bennett asked the president and Lindsey. What might be the basis for alleging that Lewinsky had an affair with you? Has she ever been to the Oval Office?

Clinton said Lewinsky had brought a pizza to the Oval Office during the government shutdown. She delivered mail. No problem, he said. Absolutely nothing, no difficulty.

"Betty Currie had invited her church group to look at the Christmas decorations," Clinton said, referring to his personal secretary, "and Monica tagged along and maybe she poked her head in." Nothing more.

Could there be a rumor or a part of this story we don't understand? Some misunderstanding? Bennett wanted to see if he could trace the origin of the information the Jones lawyers claimed they had about an affair with Lewinsky. What haven't I asked?

Bennett figured that short of hitting the president with a chair, he had posed the hardest questions. They reviewed the rest of the list.

"After this case is over," Bennett joked, "your reputation as a womanizer may go down the drain."

By the morning of Jan. 17, Bennett felt well prepared. He was convinced they were dealing with a past buried in Arkansas.

Bennett arrived early at the White House. He approached Lindsey about what the president might say about Marilyn Jo Jenkins.

"I appreciate what you said yesterday," the president said, "and I've worked it out."

At the deposition, the Jones lawyers spent the morning asking primarily about Lewinsky. After lunch, they asked the president about his relationship with Jenkins, but the judge ruled that they could not ask further questions about her -- a victory for Clinton.

"Great," Bennett said. He felt they hadn't laid a glove on him. Only about 10 percent of the questions had been about Jones.

The atmosphere was almost one of celebrating, just short of breaking out the champagne.

Five days later, the news broke that independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr had launched a massive investigation into Clinton's relationship with Lewinsky. For months, the president issued passionate public denials and tried to maintain an air of normalcy. On May 25, Memorial Day, the president played golf and that night attended a Washington Capitals playoff hockey game with Vice President Gore.

Early in the game, Clinton went to the back area of owner Abe Pollin's luxury suite. He walked up to Jack Quinn, his former counsel, and Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo. The subject of what Clinton called his "troubles" finally came up.

"Goddamn it!" the president said. He said he knew he was paying a price for the Lewinsky investigation. Then Clinton launched into a three-minute tirade against the Jones lawsuit and Starr.

"It's a hokey, trumped-up, baseless lawsuit," he said. All his problems stemmed from that lawsuit, he said.

Starr had set a perjury trap for him, he said, seething. The attempt to question Arkansas state troopers the previous year about his sex life was directly connected to the conspiracy against him.

"What this guy is doing is discovery for the Paula Jones case. That thing they were doing last year was about discovery." Starr and the Jones attorneys were working hand in glove. The president said he was fed up, had had it up to here, putting his hand up to his eyes. "That guy's on a mission to get me!"

During the second intermission, Clinton, smiling, told a TV interviewer, "I'm having the time of my life. I love this. It's fascinating."

Clinton finally agreed to testify before Starr's grand jury on Aug. 17. He acknowledged an "inappropriate intimate relationship" with Lewinsky but insisted he had not perjured himself. That evening he gave a brief televised address in which he apologized but also lashed out at Starr and insisted that he had a right to a private life.

The next day, he and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton left for a Martha's Vineyard vacation with daughter Chelsea.

It was one of the darkest and loneliest periods of his presidency. He went for a five-mile walk on the beach, accompanied only by his dog, Buddy.

One of the few people the president spoke with regularly was Terry McAuliffe, the chief fund-raiser for the Democrats. McAuliffe, 41, a boyish, outgoing entrepreneur, was Clinton's primary money man. The first cheerleader, McAuliffe tried to keep Clinton in a fighting mood. "I'm with you," he said in a phone conversation. "People support you, love you, sir. We're going to get through this."

"I [screwed] it up," the president said. "I was mad. You won't believe the questions they asked me. . . . A witch hunt." Despondent, brooding, Clinton referred to reports that he was in a state of denial. "Goddamn it, I'm not in denial. I got my ass kicked. There's no denial here."

Jack Quinn, the former White House counsel, was keeping in close touch with Vice President Gore from his 12th-floor Washington office at the law firm of Arnold & Porter. Gore had expressed a welter of feelings about the Lewinsky scandal. On one hand it conceivably could elevate him to the presidency; on the other it could inflict a deep political wound on him as Clinton's number two.

Gore said he felt his honor was at stake, and he had to remain loyal. Clinton had given him unprecedented authority as vice president and the two had become friends. He could not back away from the president or be seen as backing away, he said.

He made it clear that he did not understand the sexual relationship with Lewinsky at all. He was baffled that Clinton would take the risk. His wife, Tipper, however, was unforgiving of Clinton, and Gore said he kept hearing about it at home. Overall, Gore seemed determined to remain stoic. "I'm powerless over this situation," he told Quinn, "and I can't try to deal with what I have no control over."

Just after noon on Sept. 11, the House voted 363 to 63 to release the Starr report and it was posted on the Internet. Millions of Americans clicked on to read the explicit details.

White House press secretary Michael McCurry could not believe Clinton had acted so recklessly. All along, McCurry expected the relationship had been dangerous or provocative. The leaks had been one thing, but the report documented oral sex in the hallway pantry off the Oval Office many times. It was beyond his imagination. McCurry knew the place well. He walked in to heat his coffee in the microwave three or four times a day, so he knew where to click the button and open the door. He didn't want an apology from the president because he wasn't ready to accept one.

In conversations with others on the staff, McCurry found basically the same attitude. Among the senior political advisers there was a collective primal scream of rage. They told the lawyers to go do the Sunday television talk shows to defend the president. "We're not going out," McCurry announced.

Among Senate Democrats, the anger was expressed another way. Within days, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota counted as many as seven Democrats who were running around with speeches or statements in various stages of completion calling for Clinton to resign for the good of the party.

One senator seemed to have a speech in his pocket and was itching to read it on the Senate floor. Others had just expressed a strong personal view. The list of possible defections included Sens. Robert Byrd, the former Democratic leader and senior eminence from West Virginia, Bob Graham of Florida, Dianne Feinstein of California, Harry Reid of Nevada, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, Fritz Hollings of South Carolina and Joseph R. Biden of Delaware.

Daschle urged them to be patient. But it was a volatile situation. One forceful public request for the president's voluntary resignation by a Democratic senator could start a panic.

Daschle invited Erskine Bowles, Clinton's chief of staff, and John Podesta, the deputy chief of staff, to the Tuesday, Sept. 15 Senate Democratic caucus lunch. He wanted them to hear the party distress for themselves. It would be a rude awakening to see firsthand the anger at the president from those in his own party.

Biden said their party would be better off in the coming elections if Clinton resigned. He was not necessarily advocating resignation, he said, but making clear it was his preference. Nonetheless, he said he was sure that Clinton never would quit anyway.

"He lied to me too," Bowles acknowledged, offering a meager defense. Many of the Democratic senators were furious that in private conversations Clinton was still lashing out at Starr. Few had heard any expression of genuine remorse from the president.

Another important factor for a number of the male Democratic senators was the reaction of their wives. Clinton's behavior was a nightmare for the wife of a politician, and the scorn, ridicule and dread some of the wives expressed to their husbands became a constant theme at home. The intensity and depth of negative feelings toward Clinton were so great that the senators would repeat them only to their closest friends or off the record.

In all, it looked like maybe as many as half of the 45 Democratic senators privately wanted or would prefer that Clinton resign. If a dozen or more favored resignation, the situation could reach critical mass -- 55 Republican senators plus 12 Democrats was enough to remove Clinton from office in an impeachment trial.

Back at the White House, Podesta reported, "There isn't much holding them together. There could be a stampede."

Bowles had reached the point of no return. "I just want you to know that I'm not going up and doing any more defense of the president on the Hill," he told McCurry. Never again. "I can't do what I did this week. I also want you to leak it out somewhere that I'm going to be leaving when Congress leaves."

Daschle told several Senate Democrats that it might reach a point where it would be best for everyone if Clinton resigned. We're not there yet, he said, repeating his mantra, "Be patient, hold your fire."

The Senate Democrats held. Over in the House, the Judiciary Committee approved four impeachment articles against Clinton and the floor debate was scheduled to begin. Early that morning, Dec. 16, though, the president was focusing on a different crisis: Saddam Hussein was refusing to comply with United Nations inspectors. The U.S. was threatening air raids to begin the same day.

In the White House Situation Room, Defense Secretary William Cohen was meeting at 7 a.m. with the principals of Clinton's national security team. All the advisers recommended that the president give full approval for the attack to begin about 5 p.m. that day, the eve of the impeachment debate.

"A failure to take action now will undercut our credibility," Cohen told Clinton. "Our word is at stake. If we don't carry it out, we're going to be tested in the future." Weakness would be met by more of Saddam Hussein's defiance. "If you don't act here, the next argument will be that you're paralyzed," he said.

Cohen didn't say who might make the argument, only that it would be made. Impeachment had been interjected -- and not subtly -- into the decision-making process. Cohen was pressuring the president on what he was convinced was a vital national interest.

He asked the members of the National Security Council if they would make the same recommendation if there were no impeachment pending.

The president seemed to take comfort in that. When he had made private phone calls seeking advice, one of the former presidents had told him, "Bill, either put up or shut up."

About 7:30 a.m., the president directed Cohen to sign the order so the first missiles and bombs would strike Iraq in a little more than eight hours. The airstrikes on Iraq caused the opening of the impeachment debate to be postponed by a single day.

Two days later, Dec. 18, the House began its floor debate. "Goddamn, [obscenity] it!" Clinton told one friend that night. He said no one could conceivably understand how he was suffering because no one had ever been subjected to such a public evisceration.

"I'm dying a thousand cuts. It's like someone kicked me in the stomach. I've had a knot in my stomach for months!" He was in a rage. No person, no human being, no public figure, no politician, no president ever had such an investigation into his personal life, Clinton said. "No one has raw grand jury material put on the street for everyone to read, including his family." The Starr report -- which Chelsea had read on the Internet -- was an ugly counterpoint to whatever he did.

The day before the Senate was going to vote on his removal from office, Clinton was convinced he would be acquitted with no censure and no fine. "I'll survive, but I'll never be the same," the president said to a friend. He meant his family, the presidency -- his life. Acquittal would be a hollow victory. He wondered if independent counsel Starr would keep going. He would have another 700 days as president, but it would be tough. "If there is one victory," he added, "it will be a lot."

"You owe the country a few words," his friend suggested later in the conversation.

"They'll kill me," Clinton said, meaning the critics, the press, the enemies.

"No," the friend said, "you'll be talking to your friends, not your enemies."

"I have to take the heat," Clinton replied. Nothing was resolved. His family situation was unsettled, his legal difficulties uncertain. He was a chastened man.

The president said he had lots of advice strongly suggesting he not play golf.

"Where are you getting your relief?" the friend asked, recommending a golf outing. "Who can you spill your guts to? Who can you cry with?"

The Pain Of Scandal
Public Dramas Exacted a Heavy Private Toll on the First Lady

On an Aug. 18, 1998, helicopter ride out to Andrews Air Force Base to catch a plane to Martha's Vineyard, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton basically were not speaking to each other. A day earlier, the president had testified before a grand jury about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Press secretary Michael McCurry tried to defuse the tension.

McCurry, whose job included studying the president's demeanor and moods, noticed that Clinton looked as if he didn't know what to expect from his own family. Hillary appeared drained. Chelsea Clinton looked so sad that McCurry thought he did not want to ever see a kid look like that again in his life.

McCurry finally had some time alone with Hillary in Martha's Vineyard. She had been instrumental in his hiring. He had always tried to support her.

Showing emotion, the first lady said to McCurry that there was no way to understand what she was going through. As a woman, she said, as a spouse, and as a mother, it was complex.

McCurry gasped, nearly whispered thank you. There it all was in those five questions. This great public drama was, to the first lady, something more real and personal -- anger, betrayal, loneliness, exasperation and humiliation. McCurry's fondness and empathy for her ascended off the charts.

The one-dimensional portraits of Hillary in the media -- whatever version anyone might pick -- were unfair, shallow, missed the layers, McCurry felt. Here was this woman, almost frail and breakable, but still standing, mustering whatever dignity was left her. Any question of punishment, which McCurry felt the president richly deserved, seemed beside the point in the face of her endurance. Could there be nobility amid this squalor?

In her heart, she said, she still believed in the work Bill was doing as president.

As for forgiveness -- No, she said, she was not at the point emotionally where she wanted to forgive him.

Incongruously, Hillary Clinton's humiliation gave her status -- in the relationship and in the world.

In the past, she had seemed to believe that the only public face that would work for her would be a tough and confrontational one. Charm wouldn't work. In 1993, Dick Morris, President Clinton's longtime adviser, had urged her to soften her image. "One of the most appealing things about public figures is when they lead with their vulnerabilities," Morris said. "They talk about their defects and people cut them a lot of slack." He cited Eleanor Roosevelt's shyness, or even Ronald Reagan's jokes about his poor memory. Defects and weaknesses can be assets, he argued.

"I can't think of any," Hillary had said. "I'm not good at that. What do you want me to do?"

She was unsure of her role. As the family's lawyer and investor she had screwed up Whitewater and then in 1994 she had lost what was supposed to be the crown jewel of her husband's presidency: health care reform.

"I'm just confused," she told Morris at the time. "I don't know what works or what doesn't work. I don't know why this is happening. I'm just so confused."

But Mrs. Clinton's scandal-managing role continued. By the summer of 1995, Whitewater was causing her real anguish. In Newsweek that August, Joe Klein wrote that the scandal had exposed the character of the Clintons. "They are the Tom and Daisy Buchanan of the Baby Boom Political Elite." The Buchanans were the 1920s-style careless people of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."

He laid out in harsh terms how Hillary's chief of staff, Maggie Williams, had broken down in tears while testifying the previous week at the hearings chaired by Sen. Alfonse D'Amato. Williams was saddled with large legal bills, virtually abandoned by her patrons in the White House. "How could the first lady allow her chief of staff to spend $140,000 on legal fees?" Klein asked. "Why hasn't she come forward and said, 'Stop torturing my staff. This isn't about them. I'll testify. I'll make all documents available. I'll sit here and answer your stupid, salacious questions until Inauguration Day, if need be'?"

Hillary was sobbing when she called Jane Sherburne, the White House attorney in charge of scandal management.

"It's killing me to let this happen," Hillary said. She wanted to testify, to make it better, to take care of it. "Every bone in my body tells me that's what I should do."

Sherburne said they both knew Maggie was both vulnerable and tough. She was willing to throw herself in front of any train and get beat up.

Testifying, Sherburne said, would be a mixed blessing. It would be such a sensation. The pure spectacle of the first lady appearing before Congress would overshadow anything she said. Were there words she could say that would resolve the issues and answer all the questions? They would always find more questions.

"I got to do this," Hillary said, gaining strength, taking deeper, measured breaths. "I'm going to do it."

The Clintons' personal lawyer, David Kendall, was against it, they both knew -- vehemently opposed in the midst of independent counsel Ken Starr's grand jury investigation of Whitewater. Public testimony by the first lady before D'Amato's committee might play into the Republicans' hands. There would be rounds of questions with all the Republican senators homing in. Potentially very ugly.

"Am I really that powerless?" Mrs. Clinton asked. The portrait of her as heartless and selfish was tearing her apart. It was awful to stand silently by as those she cared about were being hurt, she said.

Sherburne said her testimony would have multiple legal ramifications. What about Starr, his investigation and grand juries? Politically, how would D'Amato and the other Republicans handle her? Her husband's reelection bid was a little more than a year off. The basic strategy on Whitewater was to calm the waters, avoid confrontation, minimize news coverage.

Sobbing again, Hillary said her parents had always told her not to be guided by the opinions of others. "You have to live with yourself." Well, now the law and politics had cornered her. It wasn't a matter of appearances -- appearing cold and indifferent to her friends and staff. If she stood by silently she would be that person they accused her of being.

"That is not who I am!" Hillary said, crying, pleading. "I take care of people."

Sherburne realized that Hillary had become the person she, at all costs, did not want to be. It was not simply a loss of identity. It was worse. She seemed to have fully realized the price that had been paid, and the identity that had been lost. She had become the person she hated.

In January 1996, Hillary looked forward to assuming the role she most liked, planning an 11-city tour for her book "It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us." But the discovery of a memo written by David Watkins saying Hillary was responsible for the 1993 travel office firings and the reappearance of Mrs. Clinton's long-lost Rose Law Firm billing records shifted the focus to her role in the scandals.

On Jan. 8, a Newsweek cover story on Hillary was headlined "Saint Or Sinner?" over a frumpy picture of the first lady. The same day, columnist William Safire of the New York Times wrote that Hillary was a "congenital liar."

Hillary wanted to discuss her issues -- children's issues -- but she agreed to answer questions about the scandals. On Jan. 15, she appeared on "The Diane Rehm Show," a serious, popular Washington talk-radio program.

She said she and her husband had always acted in "good faith." Even during the 1992 campaign, her staff had made the Whitewater documents available, she said.

"We actually did that with the New York Times," she claimed. "We took every document we had -- which, again, I have to say, were not many -- we laid them all out."

The New York Times's Washington bureau chief called George Stephanopoulos, Clinton's senior adviser, to note that Mrs. Clinton was wrong. The clearest example was the computer run of the Rose Law Firm billing records -- the same records that had been found recently in the White House residence. The Clinton campaign had these records in 1992. They hadn't been turned over. Mrs. Clinton's current claim of total Whitewater disclosure in 1992 was incorrect. There was going to be a front-page, above-the-fold, first-lady's-a-liar story.

Sherburne called Susan Thomases, Hillary's close friend, who had helped with the initial 1992 Times Whitewater story. She reported what Hillary had said.

"Oh, my God, we didn't," Thomases explained, recounting how they had severely limited the documents they made available in 1992.

Sherburne reviewed the information. They needed to say that the first lady had made a mistake and was now correcting her comment based on new information, but that she had not intended to mislead anyone.

A short statement was finally drafted with the key word "mistakenly" in it. Sherburne had to phone Hillary, who was on the road promoting her book, to clear the statement-retraction with her.

Just before Sherburne placed the call, she learned that Starr had issued a grand jury subpoena for the first lady to testify about the disappearance and sudden reappearance of the billing records.

When she reached Hillary, the first lady was profoundly upset about all these matters stacking up. Watkins's memo, billing records, the grand jury subpoena and now the coming first-lady-is-a-liar story. Fine, she said, issue the statement but call Rehm to let her know the statement was coming.

Hillary poured out her emotions. Sherburne had never heard her so distressed. She was at wit's end, under siege, in despair. She dwelled on the ugly, ugly sequence of events. "Saint or Sinner?" "Congenital Liar."

"I can't take this anymore," Hillary said. It was the voice of someone at the end of her rope. "How can I go on?" she asked. "How can I?"

Within the White House, a classic internal debate began over the subpoena. Should they announce it or try to appear in secret? Sherburne and Mark Fabiani, the White House scandal spokesman, were worried that information about the subpoena would leak to the news media. They wanted to announce it from the White House and shape the story.

Kendall presented Hillary with a number of options for going to the courthouse. She could take a limousine into the courthouse basement or even sneak in covertly.

"Nope," she said. As past master of putting the best face on disaster, she decided it was best not to attempt to sneak into the courthouse like some Mafia suspect or engage in some other subterfuge.

On Jan. 26, 1996, she walked into the courthouse, head held high. She went to the witness room with her attorneys and lingered by the doorway. First the 23 grand jurors walked by into the grand jury room. They were mostly black and about half women.

Then suddenly a group of men led by Starr paraded by into the secret room. Hillary and Sherburne both mentally counted out, one, two. Nine altogether. All white males in suits. Sherburne looked at Hillary, then Hillary looked at Sherburne. Both registered the same reaction -- but of course.

"God," Mrs. Clinton said, noting she and Sherburne had the same reaction, "I'm looking in the mirror."

Outside, after dark, after four hours of testimony, Hillary walked up to an array of microphones.

As she came under increasing attack in the following months, Hillary pressed Sherburne and Fabiani.

"Why is Starr getting a free ride?" she asked. "I don't understand this. Everything we do gets put under a microscope and look at this guy! No one says anything negative about him. How can he get away with this?"

Hillary wanted the White House to call attention to the independent counsel's potential conflicts of interest and Starr's part-time status, the types of criticisms that she kept hearing on the news and reading in the newspapers.

Fabiani did not believe they dared declare open war on the independent counsel. The White House's relationship with the independent counsel's staff would deteriorate rapidly. Fabiani also felt a public attack is what many would expect, and to a certain extent that would mitigate any potential damage to Starr.

Sherburne decided not to tell Hillary that Fabiani had collected publicly available negative background information on the independent counsel and quietly given it to reporters. She hoped to protect the first lady and the president. But Hillary continued to vent in private about the administration's failure to attack Starr.

It was not until Jan. 27, 1998, that Hillary Clinton publicly gave voice to her anger at Starr. Appearing on the "Today" show, days after allegations that her husband had had an affair with Lewinsky, she said Starr was part of "a vast right-wing conspiracy" out to get her husband.

Matt Lauer, the show's co-anchor, asked her if she thought her husband "would admit that he again has caused pain in this marriage?"

It took the president seven months to admit before a grand jury and then the nation that he did have an "inappropriate intimate relationship" with Lewinsky.

After the vacation on the Vineyard, which she considered the dark days, she attempted to sort out her dilemma with some women friends. She insisted that she did not view Lewinsky as a real threat. It was only sex, not partnership. She had the partnership -- the real friendship and love with him.

Her friends thought that Hillary used to be a wallflower. She had blossomed in the White House years. Several close friends believed that Hillary filled so many roles in her husband's life -- the mother he didn't have any longer, the sister who had never existed, the chief adviser he didn't have anymore and perhaps had never had. She was the smartest person in the room.

"I've got to take this," she told one friend. "I have to take this punishment. I don't know why God has chosen this for me. But He has, and it will be revealed to me. God is doing this, and He knows the reason. There is some reason."

By fall 1998, as the House moved toward impeaching her husband, Hillary was still uncertain about her own course. A close friend told her about a high-profile, public couple. They had been married 40 years, the friend told Hillary. The man had lots of affairs and the woman finally caught him.

"She was devastated," the friend said, "but she thought hard about it. They had a great friendship, and she decided he is worth fighting for, and it would be unwise to turn him out or to give him to someone else. Her decision was that it was better to fight for him and to fight for the relationship."

A therapist can stop the bleeding, Hillary's friend said. That was the key to making progress and saving the marriage.

Hillary said she and Bill knew that counseling was the right thing to do. "We are doing the right thing."

"Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate" is based on presidential documents, diaries, prosecutorial records and hundreds of interviews with firsthand witnesses.

Former presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter were interviewed on the record, Ronald Reagan could not be interviewed because of his health, George Bush answered by letter and Bill Clinton declined to be interviewed.

In the first half of the book, covering the period 1974-92, most of the interviews were conducted on the record. Documentary material from the presidential libraries and the National Archives also was used extensively. Nearly all of the interviews in the Clinton sections were conducted on journalistic ground rules of "background" or "deep background," meaning the information could be used, but the sources of the information would not be identified.

Each major scene depicted in these excerpts comes from at least one knowledgeable source, often supplemented by records or contemporaneous notes and documents.