Newly Released Details Paint Two Portraits of Lewinsky

The Monica S. Lewinsky whom President Clinton’s accusers have portrayed to the public--the vulnerable victim led astray by the ultimate power figure--appears again and again in the mound of grand jury testimony, computer messages and other documents unloosed Monday by the House Judiciary Committee.

This is the Lewinsky who testified that she took antidepressants, who broke down in tears during her grand jury testimony and who blushed while recounting the ever-so-explicit detail of her Oval Office liaisons.

But turn the page and a less sympathetic, more scheming and self-absorbed figure emerges--one who does not necessarily equate sex with a committed relationship, who speaks of her sexual appetite and flings with married men and who once flew into a jealous fit when she saw a photograph of Clinton hugging his wife.

In a letter to Clinton seeking another presidential tryst, Lewinsky demonstrated her historical knowledge of presidential mistresses: “Remember, FDR would never have turned down a visit with Lucy Mercer.”

In her testimony, Lewinsky described a curt telephone call she had with Clinton on Jan. 5, 1998, in which she had been in a bad mood.

“I had been peeved by the photo and the footage that was in the media from the president and first lady being romantic on their holiday vacation,” Lewinsky testified. “I was jealous and it just seemed [like] an aspect of their relationship that he had never really revealed to me and it made me feel bad.”

And she wrote to a friend recounting an escapade with a nonpresidential boyfriend in a computer message: “Did i tell you i had sex with thomas last week? I am sooooooo naughty. it was fun and good. i went over there with some ice cream and pretty much seduced him in a way that made him make the moves on me . . . cool or what???”

Recounting a visit to a spa, she messaged another friend: “I did it with the nutrition guy!!!! Yeah! Now I can start the count over again.”

The new portrait of Lewinsky--complicated and intensely personal--could loom important as the public sorts out its thoughts on a relationship that has erupted into a movement to impeach the president.

Public Split Over Lewinsky

Polls show that Americans have mixed feelings about the Other Woman, with far more people viewing Lewinsky as an opportunist than a victim. Even those involved in the prosecution seemed conflicted. As aides to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr grilled Lewinsky at the federal courthouse after pressuring her to tell all or face prosecution herself, grand jurors seemed to offer her their blessings.

“Monica, none of us in this room [is] perfect,” one sympathetic juror told her near the close of her sometimes emotional testimony in August. “We all fall, and we fall several times a day. The only difference between my age and when I was your age is now I get up faster.”

At first, jurors addressed her as “Ms. Lewinsky.” By the time it was over, she was just plain “Monica.”

She left the witness chair with these kind words from the forewoman: “We wanted to offer you a bouquet of good wishes that includes luck, success, happiness and blessings.”

A few days later, in a deposition given to two female prosecutors from Starr’s office, Lewinsky came off as a sexually aggressive, star-struck young woman.

“Lewinsky told the president that she had had an affair with a married man before and that she knew the rules. . . . She was sending a signal that she could keep quiet and lie if necessary,” prosecutors wrote in their report.

She would tell Starr’s aides that she felt insecure during the relationship, wondering at one point whether the president did not call her back because she had not been erotic enough during phone sex. Having been banished to a Pentagon job by suspicious White House supervisors, she relentlessly pursued a transfer back, letting Clinton know that if he did not help her find a job she would fill her parents in on their time together.

When prosecutors first confronted her about her false deposition in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment suit against Clinton, Lewinsky described herself as so scared that she sought to call her mother.

“You’re 24; you’re smart, you’re old enough, you don’t need to call your mommy,” she quoted Jackie Bennett, one of Starr’s deputies, as telling her.

A Fixated Intern Focuses on Clinton

The documents portray her as so anxious about her relationship with Clinton that she was oblivious to the larger world.

On Jan. 21, 1996, the first day that an American soldier had been killed in Bosnia, Lewinsky stopped to talk to Clinton near the Oval Office. “The president said it was very sad to have someone die as a result of one of his executive orders,” prosecutors wrote.

But Lewinsky wanted to talk about their relationship. “Lewinsky was feeling like she was being taken for granted,” Starr’s deputies wrote. “As they were heading to the back hallway, Lewinsky stopped the president and asked him if he was interested [in her only for] sex.”

In an e-mail to a girlfriend, Lewinsky acknowledged that it was going to be difficult to forget the president once she left Washington.

“I really hope that the creep and i can still have contact, because, i know it sounds soooooooooo ridiculous, but I can’t get him out of my heart,” Lewinsky wrote. “i love him a lot. I know it’s stupid. I want to hug him so bad right now i could cry.”

The friend, Catherine Davis, wrote back: “I am sorry any of this has or will hurt you but I think you are really better off, emotionally and professionally, getting out now. I hope your experience with him will not jade you to other men. I know you thought he was pretty awesome and he sure holds a damn successful position (!-understatement), but he is still human and still flawed like the rest of them.”

Lewinsky expressed hatred for Linda Tripp, the onetime friend who secretly taped her conversations and told Starr about her. She said that Clinton had hurt her feelings during his televised address to the nation by implying that their relationship was about little more than oral sex.

“What I took away [from the Aug. 17 speech] was that I didn’t know what the truth was,” she said. “And so how could I know the truth of my love for someone if it was based on him being an actor?”

Even as she seemed to spill out sexual details, Lewinsky clearly squirmed in discomfort in the process.

“Oh, my gosh,” she told the grand jury. “This is so embarrassing.”

“You could close your eyes and talk,” a juror said.

“We won’t look at you,” another added.

“Can I hide under the table?” she asked. “Uh . . . I had . . . I had wanted . . . I tried to . . . I placed his genital [sic] next to mine and had hoped that if he . . . oh, this is just too embarrassing. I don’t. . . .”

Lewinsky cried at least twice during her grand jury testimony, the first time when she recounted the day Starr’s agents first confronted her at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in suburban Virginia on Jan. 16. She sobbed again toward the end of her grand jury testimony. “I’m really sorry for everything that’s happened,” she said.

While prosecutors were after details, grand jurors probed her motives and morals.

One juror asked Lewinsky why she kept having affairs with married men. “You’re young, you’re vibrant,” the juror said. “I can’t figure out why you keep going after things that aren’t free, that aren’t obtainable.”

“That’s a hard question to answer,” Lewinsky responded. “There’s work that I need to do on myself. . . . A single young woman doesn’t have an affair with a married man because she’s normal.”

A juror answered back: “I want to let you know that we’re not here to judge you in any way.”

But Lewinsky said that the question had been a fair one and that she herself did not understand her actions. “You’d probably have to know me better and know my whole journey . . . from birth to now to really understand it. I don’t even understand it.”

Lewinsky suggested that one reason she pursued the relationship was that she had fallen in love with Clinton, whom she referred to as a “sexual soulmate” who reminded her of a little boy.

“When you look at it now, was it love or sexual obsession?” a juror asked.

“More love,” she said, “with a little bit of obsession, but definitely love.”

Times staff writers Alissa J. Rubin, Norman Kempster and Melissa Healy contributed to this story.

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Letters Between the Two

The documents released from the House Judiciary Committee contain the correspondence between Bill Clinton and Monica S. Lewinsky since the start of their relationship. Shown below are a few samples:

Clinton to Lewinsky: Sept., 1996

Lewinsky to Clinton: June, 1997

Lewinsky to Clinton: Sept., 1997