Clinton’s Denial Believed by First Lady, Friends Say

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton told associates that her husband assured her last January that he was not having an affair with former intern Monica S. Lewinsky, but was merely “ministering to a troubled young person,” several friends said Wednesday.

The president apparently offered that cover story to explain his friendship with Lewinsky to his wife when the issue surfaced in public on Jan. 21, and Mrs. Clinton accepted the explanation, the friends said.

“He lied to her,” said one. “He told her a whopper, and she believed it.”

On the strength of the president’s assurances, Mrs. Clinton defended him strongly in public. In a televised interview in late January, she said that adultery by a president “would be a very serious offense.” But she added: “That is not going to be proven true.”

In the weeks since Clinton publicly admitted an improper relationship with Lewinsky, some have wondered whether Mrs. Clinton was truly in the dark all that time. After all, allegations of extramarital affairs long had plagued Clinton. And, with his wife at his side, he admitted in a televised interview during the 1992 presidential campaign that he had caused “pain” in their marriage.

But the first lady’s friends insisted that she genuinely chose to believe her husband’s protestations of innocence concerning Lewinsky--and that she was stunned when he finally confessed to her in mid-August, only a few days before he told the rest of the nation.

“The list of people betrayed in this affair starts and stops with her,” said one friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “She has been more loyal than he deserves.”

Clinton acknowledged deceiving his wife in his televised statement about the affair. “I misled people, including even my wife,” he said. “I deeply regret that.”

But the initial explanation he apparently offered Mrs. Clinton for his unusual friendship with Lewinsky--”ministering to a troubled young person”--surfaced only this week in leaked accounts of the grand jury testimony of a White House aide.

Republican congressional officials told reporters that presidential assistant Sidney Blumenthal recalled Mrs. Clinton’s account in his testimony before the grand jury of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, who investigated the Lewinsky affair.

Blumenthal’s testimony, along with that of other White House aides, is now in the hands of the House Judiciary Committee and is scheduled to be released in the next few days.

Blumenthal and his attorney, William A. McDaniel Jr., refused to comment. But another official confirmed the account of Blumenthal’s testimony and two people who spoke with the first lady earlier this year recounted similar conversations.

In her NBC interview on Jan. 27, Mrs. Clinton said she was confident that her husband’s friendship with Lewinsky would turn out to be innocent--and characteristic of a man who “tries to help people who need help.”

When interviewer Matt Lauer asked about reports that the president had given Lewinsky gifts, Mrs. Clinton replied: “His behavior, his treatment of people, will certainly explain all of this. . . . I mean, I’ve seen him take his tie off and hand it to somebody.

“The one thing I always kid him about is that he never meets a stranger. He is kind. He is friendly. He tries to help people who need help, who ask for help,” she said.

If the charges of an adulterous relationship with Lewinsky “were proven true, I think that would be a very serious offense,” she said. “That is not going to be proven true. I think we’re going to find some other things. And I think that when all of this is put into context and we really look at the people involved here, look at their motivations, look at their backgrounds, look at their past behavior, some folks are going to have a lot to answer for.”

A spokeswoman for Mrs. Clinton, who was traveling in South America on Wednesday, said she had no comment to make on the reports of Blumenthal’s testimony.

In January, as he was denying any sexual relationship with Lewinsky, Clinton offered White House aides other explanations. He told Blumenthal that Lewinsky “made a sexual demand” on him, but “he rebuffed her,” according to portions of Blumenthal’s testimony cited in Starr’s report to Congress earlier this month.

And Clinton told his chief of staff, Erskine Bowles: “I did not have sexual relationships with this woman, Monica Lewinsky. . . . And when the facts come out, you’ll understand,” Bowles recounted in his grand jury testimony.

But Clinton apparently did not repeat to his aides the explanation cited by the first lady, that he had merely been counseling a troubled young woman.

One of his close aides, asked if the president had offered that story, laughed and said: “No. And I wouldn’t have believed it if he did.”

The full text of documents released from the Starr investigation and video of President Clinton’s testimony are on The Times’ Web site, at https://www.latimes.com/scandal