Her Life, His Words

Looking back on his whirlwind relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky, British author Andrew Morton ponders the young woman whose life and times he has just chronicled. What kind of personal feelings did the two have for each other?

“I think, after all of those months working together in Los Angeles and New York, we were very much like an old married couple,” Morton says. “Lots of arguments. No sex.”

The author, whose “Monica’s Story” (St. Martin’s Press) hit American bookstores Thursday, laughs at the joke, then yawns. It’s early in the morning on a raw, blustery day, and the man who knows Lewinsky better than most is waking up in a hotel coffee shop, bracing himself for 14 hours of interviews.

Normally a celebrity like Lewinsky would be fielding questions herself about her book--but this is no ordinary book tour. Because of her immunity deal with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, the former White House intern is legally barred from discussing details of Starr’s ongoing investigation, and her candid views about it, without risking that hard-won protection.

As a result, Morton has been pressed into service in America, while Lewinsky flies to Europe for a host of interviews, free from her domestic restrictions. He’s hardly a substitute for America’s most famous woman, yet the nattily attired writer who wrote about Princess Diana has much to say about Starr that Lewinsky can’t. And he offers vivid recollections of what it was like to spend time with her.

“Being with Monica was like being a fugitive in this country,” says Morton, 44, who wrote the book independently but with Lewinsky’s full cooperation. “Everywhere she went, she had to wear a disguise--the baseball cap and sunglasses you saw on television. Every time she drove somewhere in L.A., she’d have to check the rearview mirror to see who was following.”

Like millions of Americans, Morton had a negative impression of Lewinsky when the scandal broke. He thought of her as a Beverly Hills bimbo, a Jewish American princess who had plunged the presidency into crisis. But when he was finally brought together with her last fall, through contacts with her attorneys and British publisher Michael O’Mara, Morton found her to be intelligent, headstrong and yet sadly vulnerable.

Most of the work on “Monica’s Story” was done in Lewinsky’s Brentwood apartment, but the duo also worked in New York, Portland, Ore., and other cities. They had unforgettable moments, like the November evening when she and Morton decided to see Woody Allen’s “Celebrity” in Century City. Morton bought the tickets while she hung back, disguised, in the lobby. When the lights dimmed, they dashed inside.

“Once the movie began, we couldn’t believe it,” he recalls, “because there was all this marvelous talk about presidential hanky-panky and oral sex and the American media. Monica was laughing so hard, she just hugged herself.”

Later that night, they watched Geraldo Rivera mention on TV that “Celebrity” seemed to mirror the Lewinsky scandal, “and at that point we both laughed at how art imitates life . . . how everything you go through is just one big TV show or movie.”

Much of the time, though, Lewinsky was despondent over the scandal’s emotional toll and how her privacy had been destroyed, Morton says. A simple shopping trip to a Santa Monica optician for sunglasses turned into a disaster, he remembers, when the optician alerted the media and the two of them were ambushed by paparazzi on the drive home.

There were many such incidents, but they paled compared with the fear and humiliation Lewinsky experienced in dealing with Starr’s office, according to Morton. If she were free to speak, he says, she would demand to know why his investigators threatened her with 27 years in prison for having signed--but not legally filed--a false affidavit. She’d want to know how Starr came to “hot wire” the Whitewater investigation into the Lewinsky affair without clandestine help from Paula Jones’ lawyers and “a massive right-wing conspiracy,” Morton said.

“Ken Starr at one point wanted to make a sex video of Monica,” he continued. “He wanted to videotape her describing everything that went on. It would have been played before Congress; it would have been on your TV screen. It would have been the biggest-selling video in the world--but then Monica would have thrown herself off a balcony, wouldn’t she?”

Starr and their deputies have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in their handling of the Lewinsky investigation. The matter is under review by the Department of Justice.

For now, the heat has subsided, and Morton predicts that Lewinsky will have an upbeat reception in Europe. Although it’s unclear how many weeks her book will linger on bestseller lists, she is poised to make several million dollars in a slick marketing blitz here and abroad.

The royalties flowing in from “Monica’s Story” may console him, however; American bookstores reported brisk business as crates of the book were unpacked from coast to coast. By April, the media frenzy should die down, Morton notes, and then Lewinsky will need to address personal issues. She needs therapy, he suggests, and she will have to consider a career. And beyond her addictions to food and older men, there’s also a problem with media consumption.

“Everybody from Alaska to Alabama knows what Monica did with a cigar, and she’s been treated like a piece of meat. The level of cruelty on late-night TV shows has been incredible,” Morton said. “She needs to be able to tune all of that out.”

He told Princess Diana the same thing when he worked on her biography; the author says she was equally incapable of looking the other way. He suggests this is a survival skill for anyone who achieves celebrity.

“I tried to talk to Monica about this, but she has trouble with it,” Morton says. “I asked her: ‘Do you think you’re the most humiliated woman in the history of the world?’ And after thinking about it a long time, she still couldn’t answer me.”