Clinton Upbeat as TV Spot Nears : Candidate: He presses campaign as he prepares for interview before national audience on adultery allegations.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton pressed through a day of campaigning before liberal audiences Saturday as he readied for a potentially pivotal appearance tonight on the CBS television program “60 Minutes” with his wife to discuss allegations of marital infidelity.

At appearances in Washington and Boston, Clinton was besieged with questions from reporters about a story in the Star, a supermarket tabloid, in which Arkansas nightclub singer Gennifer Flowers alleges that she had a 12-year affair with the governor.

Clinton has strongly denied Flowers’ allegations. On Saturday he called the story “obviously the product of sleaze tabloids and opposition money. . . . The Republicans and the tabloids paid somebody to change a story that a lawyer said was the truth.”

Clinton’s reference to a lawyer concerned a letter an attorney for Flowers wrote to a Little Rock radio station last year threatening a lawsuit if they reported that she and Clinton had an affair.

Explaining the reference to Re publican involvement in the story, aides said campaign officials believe that an Arkansas businessman active in the state GOP helped Flowers negotiate her contract with the Star. Aides also said that Flowers, now an administrative assistant at a state agency, once told Clinton that a Republican had offered her money for her story.

The businessman named by the campaign officials could not be reached for comment.

The editor of the Star, Richard Kaplan, has acknowledged that Flowers was paid for her story, but has declined to say how much she received.

Kaplan said Saturday that he and Flowers, who is being kept in an undisclosed location by the Star, intend to hold a news conference Monday in New York City to respond to questions about her allegations and Clinton’s comments on “60 Minutes.”

The decision by Clinton and his wife, Hillary, to appear on “60 Minutes” culminated jockeying among three of the television networks to book him on news shows to respond to the adultery allegations.

CBS’ “60 Minutes” offered the couple the opportunity to be interviewed on a special edition of the top-rated news program following the Super Bowl tonight--which will give them an estimated audience of 24 million TV households. Until Friday, CBS had been planning to pre-eempt “60 Minutes” with Super Bowl-related programs.

In exchange for the “60 Minutes” appearance, the Clinton campaign agreed to a demand by the program’s executive producer, Don Hewitt, that the governor cancel previously scheduled appearances on Cable News Network’s “Newsmaker Saturday” and on the ABC News program “This Week with David Brinkley” this morning. Clinton had planned to appear with his wife on the CNN program and alone on the Brinkley show.

David Glodt, executive producer of the Brinkley show, said: “It disturbs me that a guy who is running for President is deciding back and forth” between programs.

Clinton campaign spokesperson Dee Dee Myers said: “We felt bad canceling CNN and the Brinkley program. But, in the course of our negotiations with CBS, they wanted exclusivity. The combined audience for ‘Newsmaker’ and Brinkley is a fraction of what we’d reach on CBS, and their audience is more of a political insider audience than the national audience of ’60 Minutes.’ We felt it was in the best interest of the campaign (to choose the CBS program.)”

The couple is to be interviewed by “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft. The interview--which the network is promoting as a discussion by the Clintons of “their lives, their marriage and his campaign for the presidency”--will be taped this morning at an undisclosed location.

The Super Bowl--traditionally television’s highest-rated event--is expected to end at about 7 p.m. PST. Local stations on the West Coast have the option of airing the Clinton interview immediately following the Super Bowl, or delaying it until after their local newscasts. A network spokesperson said KCBS in Los Angeles has decided to air the program immediately following the game.

Appearing upbeat and relaxed during his campaign stops Saturday, Clinton said he saw tonight’s television appearance as an “opportunity to talk directly to millions of people.” But he cautioned against expecting dramatic revelations, saying, “I don’t expect to say anything inconsistent with what I’ve already said.”

Clinton and his wife in the past have acknowledged problems in their 16-year marriage, but have said the union is now solid and that it should be protected by a “zone of privacy.”

The Star story overshadowed Clinton’s generally well-received appearances before two groups that had been skeptical of him: Jesse Jackson’s National Rainbow Coalition in Washington and the Coalition for Democratic Values, another liberal organization, in Boston. Before both audiences, Clinton forcefully made the case that the party must change if it is to win back the White House.

“I strongly feel we have to be willing, all of us, to go beyond the little boxes we put ourselves in--liberal or conservative,” he told the Coalition for Democratic Values. “So many of our issues require us to look beyond our labels.”

But for much of the day it was difficult for Clinton to look beyond anything but the controversy over the adultery allegations. As reporters and television cameras swarmed around him, Clinton late Saturday conceded that he did not “have any idea” whether the couple’s joint appearance on “60 Minutes” would end the questions that erupted Thursday when the Star released Flowers accusation.

Asked if he expects the “60 Minutes” interview would put the issue behind him, Clinton said: “It’s going to be behind me; whether it’s behind you (the press) is up to you.”

Times staff writer John J. Goldman contributed to this story