It may be sprawling. It may be gratuitous. But there's little doubt that these extraordinary allegations will produced a visceral response. As TIME writer-reporter Romesh Ratnesar says, "Everyone knew it was coming, and yet when you read it in detail it seems incredibly tawdry and disgraceful." But on whom will their wrath descend? "Starr's opponents will be fairly effective at casting him as scurrilous and voyeuristic," says Ratnesar, "but Clinton can't escape either. This is too embarrassing." Indeed, no one who reads the entire report will ever look at the White House in the same way. Nor, for that matter, the Congress that decided to release it without vetting it first. America, for better or worse, is in uncharted territory now.
Clinton Report: The End of Innocence
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Our long national nightmare just got 445 pages longer. Even without 2,000 pages of supporting evidence, Ken Starr's report has instantly become one of the most shocking legal documents ever to enter the political mainstream. From the first flirtation during the 1995 government shutdown to the "termination of sexual relationship" in May 1997, Starr has spared no blushes in narrating the entire Clinton-Lewinsky affair -- point by explicit point. The graphic content of the story is matched only by the dry, mechanically legal writing. "It is," says TIME senior writer Eric Pooley, "D.H. Lawrence by way of H&R Block."