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According to her taped conversation with Linda Tripp, Lewinsky began her alleged trysts with the President around the time she began her new job. She would show up at official events in the Rose Garden where she had no role, according to White House sources. Staff members were seeking ways to get Lewinsky out of the White House. When Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon asked the White House personnel office for candidates to fill the job of his personal assistant, the White House sent over only Monica's name. Bacon interviewed four people and in April 1996 hired Lewinsky for the job, which pays $30,658 a year. Bacon maintains he can recall no conversations about Lewinsky with J. Robert Nash, director of White House personnel. "There was no pressure to hire her whatsoever." And he dismissed Pentagon grumblings that Lewinsky lacked the experience for the position. "The job is demanding, and the trips are very difficult," Bacon says. "I felt it would be good to have a younger person in the job."
But her youth showed. Reporters attending Bacon's press conferences complained about Lewinsky's bumbling of clerical tasks, which included managing Bacon's schedule, preparing transcripts and answering phones. She was known for spending too much time on personal calls. A Pentagon acquaintance says Lewinsky rarely talked politics, chatting instead about her father and his wealth; she came off as flighty and flirty, "a rich Beverly Hills teen and all the insouciance that suggests." Other Pentagon officials said she was "an opportunist" and a "spoiled brat" who took advantage of her political connections. "She was an attractive girl," says a Pentagon source, "but a girl."
Buoyant and tirelessly talkative, Lewinsky freely discussed intimate details about her personal life. According to the Washington Post, Lewinsky told a Pentagon co-worker that she had had a liaison with a high-ranking Defense Department official, and asked for advice because the official seemed to have lost interest. (When reached by the paper, the official declined to comment.) Still, there was another mysterious, unidentified boyfriend whom reporters and Pentagon officials would jokily tease her over and for whom she often bought presents--including, during an official European trip, cigars. Various reports last week had her buying Clinton gifts and shuttling them to the White House. Her interest in him was clear if slightly muffled. She hung a photograph of herself with Clinton on her office wall--unexceptional homage by a civil servant for her ultimate boss. But there were also knowing asides and finally, extraordinary declarations. A midlevel official remembers standing outside Bacon's office with Lewinsky six months ago, watching as an image of Clinton flashed across the television screen. Her eyes on the TV, Lewinsky said, "I gave the President that tie." Then, in an untaped conversation with Tripp, Lewinsky allegedly held up a dress she claimed was stained with the President's semen and said, "I'll never wash it again."