Clinton: Demons made me do it

2004-06-19 20:55

New York - In his memoir to be released on Tuesday, Bill Clinton says he was disgusted by his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky and was forced to sleep on the couch as he struggled to regain the respect of his wife and daughter.

Blaming his relationship with Lewinsky on "old demons," the former president said that while the scandal was humiliating, his eventual acquittal on impeachment charges and the salvaging of his marriage after a year of intensive marital counselling had left him feeling free.

"In some ways, it was liberating," he wrote, according to a copy of the book obtained by The New York Times ahead of Tuesday's official release date.

The 957-page autobiography, My Life, is expected to become an instant bestseller, with its publishers ordering an initial print run of 1.5 million copies.

In the book, the Times reported on Saturday, Clinton says he ended his sexual encounters with Lewinsky after several months, when he decided he could no longer live with his actions - actions that he admits were both foolish and immoral.

When he finally told his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the truth about the affair in August 1998, he describes her reacting as if she had been punched in the stomach.

Telling his daughter, Chelsea, was even worse, and in the weeks that followed, while he slept on a couch in the White House and later at a borrowed holiday home, Clinton says he worried constantly at having not only ruined his marriage but also having lost the love of his only child.

In the memoir, which the Times described as "sprawling, undisciplined and idiosyncratic" in its choice of emphasis, Clinton suggests that the affair with Lewinsky was the product of a dark side to his personality that had haunted him all his life.

From an early age he had lived "parallel lives," Clinton wrote, with a sunny public demeanour masking deep private insecurities.

His family creed when he was growing up was "don't ask, don't tell," and he recalls watching his alcoholic stepfather beating his mother - and once firing a gun at her head - and then going to school the next day as if nothing had happened.

At pre-launch events to promote the book, Clinton has repeatedly said he never set out to settle scores, but the Times said My Life takes hefty swipes at Republicans in Congress, former FBI director Louis Freeh and the National Rifle Association, among others.

The former president really sharpens his knife when discussing Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who led the probes into the Clintons' so-called Whitewater real estate deals and Clinton's alleged perjury in relation to the Lewinsky affair.

The Times article was the second news report to leak the closely guarded details of the memoir. The publishers have threatened to respond to any advance publication with lawsuits for copyright infringement.

- AFP