Source: Oral Sex in the Oval Office

In a series of confessional sessions with workplace confidante Linda Tripp, some of them secretly tape-recorded by Tripp, Monica Lewinsky described a sexual relationship with the president punctuated by occasional, surreptitious visits to a study off the Oval Office where she engaged in oral sex. According to a source familiar with the investigation, Lewinsky indicated there were 12 to 20 such visits. Although Lewinsky offerred no proof of trysts with the president, the source said, she once unfurled a dress soiled by what she told Tripp was the president's semen. Holding the garment like a trophy, she told Tripp, "I'll never wash it again."

The visits ended in August after published reports of another woman's romantic encounter with Clinton at the White House. But the president and Lewinsky engaged in frequent phone sex, according to a source with access to the tapes. Lewinsky kept recordings of presidential calls left on her home message machine. They contained innocous greetings, but Lewinsky brought micro-cassettes to the Pentagon to play for co-worker Tripp, a source close to Tripp said.

One of the ongoing mysteries is why Tripp taped the conversations. Her lawyer Jim Moody, who described his client as a "girl scout" who tried to do the right thing, said she was motivated by self-protection. Anticipating that she would be called as a witness in the unfolding Paula Jones case, she wanted evidence that Lewinsky had confessed an affair with Clinton. But Tripp had an even longer standing interest in the White House's sexual mores. After her friend Gary Aldrich was discredited by the White House for writing about alleged sex play there, she got angry and hoped to shore up his account in a book of her own. She sent a proposal to a literary agent in New York, but the publishing plans never panned out.