Et Tu, Mike?

WASHINGTON: Since nobody not even her lawyer knows when Monica will testify, Washington has to satisfy itself with gossip. And it got plenty of that Tuesday when President Clinton's trusty press secretary seemed to hint at a certain frustration with his boss over the Lewinsky affair. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune online, Mike McCurry wondered aloud whether the relationship between the President and the former intern would be easy to explain to the American people. "Maybe there'll be a simple, innocent explanation," he said. "I don't think so, because I think we would have offered that up already."

Speaking of simple, innocent explanations, McCurry offered one of his own Tuesday when he described the interview as a lapse of judgment. "I just shouldn't have said it," he shrugged at his daily White House briefing. "Sometimes being a spokesman means shutting up." But the concerns he voiced were clearly genuine; its not the first time McCurry has complained of feeling "out of the loop" on the scandal and its legal wranglings. He's just never said it so candidly before. McCurry and the President are not on the same page when it comes to Lewinsky -- indeed, he admitted, they have barely discussed the matter.

"I don't think it's going to be entirely easy to explain, maybe," he said in the interview. "I think it's going to end up being a very complicated story, as most human relationships are." That may be true of the President and the intern. It is also increasingly the case with Clinton and his loyal lieutenant.