According to Ms. Lewinsky, the President explained that they had to end
their intimate relationship. Earlier in his marriage, he
told her, he had had hundreds of affairs; but since turning 40, he had made
a concerted effort to be faithful. He said he was
attracted to Ms. Lewinsky, considered her a great person, and hoped they
would remain friends. He pointed out that he could do a
great deal for her. The situation, he stressed, was not Ms. Lewinsky's
fault. Ms. Lewinsky, weeping, tried to persuade the
President not to end the sexual relationship, but he was unyielding, then
and subsequently....
According to Starr's report, Monica spent the next months unsuccesfully
hustling for a job that would allow her to return to the White House.
"[V]ery frustrated" over her inability to get in touch with the President to discuss her job situation, Ms. Lewinsky wrote him a peevish letter on July 3, 1997. Opening "Dear Sir," the letter took the President to task for breaking his promise to get her another White House job. Ms. Lewinsky also obliquely threatened to disclose their relationship. If she was not going to return to work at the White House, she wrote, then she would "need to explain to my parents exactly why that wasn't happening." Some explanation was necessary because she had told her parents that she would be brought back after the election. (Ms. Lewinsky testified that she would not actually have told her father about the relationship -- she had already told her mother -- but she wanted to remind the President that she had "left the White House like a good girl in April of '96," whereas other people might have threatened disclosure in order to retain the job.... )
On Friday, July 4, 1997, Ms. Lewinsky had what she characterized as a "very emotional" visit with the President....
In Ms. Lewinsky's recollection, their meeting began contentiously, with the President scolding her: "[I]t's illegal to threaten the President of the United States." He then told her that he had not read her July 3 letter beyond the "Dear Sir" line; he surmised that it was threatening because Ms. Currie looked upset when she brought it to him. (Ms. Lewinsky suspected that he actually had read the whole thing.) Ms. Lewinsky complained about his failure to get her a White House job after her long wait. Although the President claimed he wanted to be her friend, she said, he was not acting like it. Ms. Lewinsky began weeping, and the President hugged her. While they hugged, she spotted a gardener outside the study window, and they moved into the hallway by the bathroom.
There, the President was "the most affectionate with me he'd ever been," Ms. Lewinsky testified. He stroked her arm, toyed with her hair, kissed her on the neck, praised her intellect and beauty. In Ms. Lewinsky's recollection:
[H]e remarked . . . that he wished he had more time for me. And so I said, well, maybe you will have more time in three years. And I was . . . thinking just when he wasn't President, he was going to have more time on his hands. And he said, well, I don't know, I might be alone in three years. And then I said something about . . . us sort of being together. I think I kind of said, oh, I think we'd be a good team, or something like that. And he . . . jokingly said, well, what are we going to do when I'm 75 and I have to pee 25 times a day? And . . . I told him that we'd deal with that. . . .
Ms. Lewinsky testified that "I left that day sort of emotionally stunned," for "I just knew he was in love with me."
Just before leaving, according to Ms. Lewinsky, she told the President "that I wanted to talk to him about something serious and that while I didn't want to be the one to talk about this with him, I thought it was important he know." She informed him that Newsweek was working on an article about Kathleen Willey, a former White House volunteer who claimed that the President had sexually harassed her during a private meeting in the Oval Office on November 23, 1993.....
The President responded that the harassment allegation was ludicrous, because he would never approach a small-breasted woman like Ms. Willey....
On Saturday, August 16, 1997, Ms. Lewinsky tried, unsuccessfully, to resume her sexual relationship with the President.
Ms. Lewinsky testified that she brought birthday gifts for the President (his birthday is August 19):
I had set up in his back office, I had brought an apple square and put a candle and had put his birthday presents out. And after he came back in and I sang happy birthday and he got his presents, I asked him . . . if we could share a birthday kiss in honor of our birthdays, because mine had been just a few weeks before. So, he said that that was okay and we could kind of bend the rules that day. And so . . . we kissed.
Ms. Lewinsky touched the President's genitals through his pants and moved to perform oral sex, but the President rebuffed her. In her recollection: "[H]e said, I'm trying not to do this and I'm trying to be good. . . . [H]e got visibly upset. And so . . . I hugged him and I told him I was sorry and not to be upset." Later, in a draft note to "Handsome," Ms. Lewinsky referred to this visit: "It was awful when I saw you for your birthday in August. You were so distant that I missed you as I was holding you in my arms."