Starr, GOP Issue Curtain Call for Lewinsky

The tether had been let out a bit.

Monica S. Lewinsky has been on a long string these last few months that has reached from the Capitol to New York to Los Angeles. But a tether nonetheless.

And now Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel who’s never met Lewinsky but more or less runs her life, has yanked her back to Washington. Or is it the black hole of a drama that began with a girlish crush on the president of the United States that won’t let her go?

People who care about Lewinsky have characterized her as someone being persistently and relentlessly used to accomplish the ends of other people. She once was a private person with a private life. But she has lost all that.

Now, after an end run by Republican prosecutors and legal maneuvering by Starr, Lewinsky is expected to be interviewed today. Word is that Starr’s people will ask the questions but the House managers--apparently hoping against hope that she will tell them something new, any little morsel they can offer up on the floor of the U.S. Senate as further evidence that the president should be impeached--will be sitting in, hanging on every word.

Saturday, she returned from Los Angeles, whipsawed once again between the affair she began four years ago with President Clinton and the life she is trying to remake.

In the last few months she has been moving ahead, renting her own apartment in the Brentwood area, not far from where her father lives, and getting out more often. She has been taking a spinning exercise class at a local gym and working with her biographer, Andrew Morton, also Princess Diana’s biographer.

Lewinsky and Morton were spotted together in December apparently working on the book at eateries like the outdoor cafe at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica. According to her publisher at St. Martin’s Press, her upcoming book, “Monica’s Story,” will show her as “a pawn in Washington power games.” The book is almost finished, says a friend, and is expected to hit bookstores in March or April.

For the most part, when she has been in Los Angeles, Lewinsky has been able to guard her persona with her penchant for wide-brimmed hats.

But she has been less successful at maintaining her privacy when visiting her mother in New York City, where she has been unable to avoid the paparazzi and nosy New Yorkers.

Lewinsky has also found herself the object of a mean-spirited media waistline watch in the New York press. One New York tabloid, The Post, has dubbed her the Portly Pepperpot and dogged her every bite--down to the details of how many chocolate goodies, cappuccinos and vanilla cupcakes she consumes in a sitting.

She is also often reported as being kind to strangers. On one occasion, she told an L.A. signature-seeker, “I don’t feel comfortable with signing autographs yet. I’m kind of known for something that’s not so great to be known for.” Another time, she was spotted helping an employee at Bendel’s on Fifth Avenue who was overwhelmed with gifts to wrap. So Lewinsky started helping her with tape and paper.

Certainly the scrutiny isn’t likely to let up soon. There’s still the possibility that she will be called by the Senate as a witness, be deposed and then, as her friends say she really dreads, have to testify all over again, this time before 100 senators, about her sexual relationship with the president.

Her emotional state is said to be good. “It has been a long process, very difficult on her and her family. It has been extremely stressful, but she’s coping very well under the circumstances,” said a friend.

But her future is still controlled by Starr’s tether and the indefinite aspect of that is something she doesn’t relish, according to friends.

Her immunity agreement, which she violates under threat of jail, prohibits her, for example, from giving media interviews without Starr’s permission. So while the agreement doesn’t control when her book, for which she was given a $600,000 advance, can be published, it does limit when she’ll give her much ballyhooed interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters.

With her life on hold, Lewinsky has not tried to land any kind of job (other than working on her book) because “people would just follow her there and make life even more difficult for her,” says her friend, who refused to be identified. For now she’s doing unspecified “volunteer efforts” for a charitable cause, the friend said.

Times staff writer Robert L. Jackson contributed to this story.