Clinton vents rage at media
2004-06-23 12:38
London - Former US president Bill Clinton hit out Tuesday at the way the media handled the Monica Lewinsky affair, saying it gave a helping hand to the far right in its zeal to "hurt people".
In a BBC interview to promote his just-published autobiography, Clinton expressed anger when asked why he had a fling with the White House intern when he was under investigation over the Whitewater affair.
"Let me just say this," he said, wagging his finger at Panorama interviewer David Dimbleby in an outburst that seemed to veer towards the incoherent.
"One of the reasons he (special prosecutor Kenneth Starr) got away with it is because people like you only ask me the questions."
"You gave him a complete free ride. Any abuse they wanted to do. They indicted all these little people from Arkansas - what did you care about them, they're not famous, who cares that their life was trampled? Who cares that their children are humiliated?"
You like to hurt people
"Nobody in your line of work cared a rip about that at the time. Why? Because he was helping their story. People like you always help the far right, because you like to hurt people, and you like to talk about how bad people are and all their personal failings," he said.
"Look, You made a decision to allocate your time in a certain way, you should take responsibility for that, you should say, 'Yes, I care much more about this than whether the Bosnian people were saved, and whether he brought a million home from Kosovo'."
Clinton regained his composure, however, and happily fielded questions about other aspects of his presidency, plus global terrorism, Iraq and the Middle East.
Whitewater was a failed Arkansas real estate project in which the Clintons were involved when he was governor of the state in the 1980s and his wife Hillary was a partner in a local law firm.
They were cleared of illegal wrongdoing in September 2000 by Starr's successor Robert Ray, two months before the presidential election that put George W Bush into the White House.
Clinton's autobiography My Life hit the bookshops in Britain in parallel with its release in the United States.