Bill Clinton's many skeletons

2005-10-07 07:37

New York - An endless stream of scandals surrounding former United States president Bill Clinton's White House years made him the constant target of FBI investigations, according to former FBI director Louis Freeh.

"The problem was with Bill Clinton - the scandals and the rumoured scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended," Freeh writes in an upcoming memoir of his time at the bureau.

"Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out," said Freeh, a Clinton appointee who ended up having extremely frosty relations with the president.

Freeh's memoir, My FBI, is scheduled to hit bookstores next week.

Discussing the book on the CBS News network's 60 Minutes programme, to be broadcast on Sunday, Freeh said the most unsavoury probe the FBI had to undertake was into Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

"It was like a bad movie," Freeh said, recalling how the FBI was required to take a presidential blood sample to match the DNA with a semen stain on Lewinsky's dress.

"We did it very carefully, very confidentially," Freeh said, explaining how Clinton was at a scheduled dinner and excused himself to go to the bathroom. Instead, he entered another room where FBI medical technicians were waiting to take the blood sample.

Freeh also recounted how he sought to distance himself from the various scandals by refusing a White House pass that would have enabled him to enter the building without signing in.

"I wanted all my visits to be official," Freeh said.

- AFP