Clinton affair: Ball now in Judge Starr’s court

The offer of a deal was put on the table today when Monica emerged from her Watergate apartmentafter a week of seclusion and drove to her lawyer’s office to work on the legal papers.

Wearing a black skirt and top, the 24-year old ingenue turned her face from the dozens of television cameras that have been staking out her place even as she sped out in her lawyer’s car. “The ball is now is Judge Starr’s court… we have given him everything that Ms Lewinsky would say if she is debriefed and he has to tell us what he wants,” Monica’s attorney William Ginsburg told reporters. He also said his client “is getting stronger.”

Meanwhile, information on the case continued to dribble out even as the White House fought back from the edge of the precipice. One network revealed that Monica had met the President as late as end-December after she was subpoenaed in the Paula Jones case, following which she filed an affidavit denying sexual relations with him. Another video clip showed her at a Democratic fund-raising dinner last year in which she contributed $250 to Clinton’s kitty.

Still another revelationwas a classified ad she inserted in the Washington Post last Valentine’s Day in which she quoted a passage from Romeo and Juliet. Addressed to “Handsome” and signed M, the message read: “With love’s wings did I o’er-perch these walls? For stony limits cannot hold love out. And what love can do that dares love attempt.” The ad was apparently inserted after Monica was transferred out of the White House to the Pentagon and her access to the President was restricted.

Meanwhile, the White House has begun to fight back with forceful refutations of many thin stories that the media is cranking out. The President himself set the tone yesterday with an angry, finger-wagging denial that he has any sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky or had asked anyone to lie. Since then, the White House has launched a fire-fighting operation, emphatically denying a slew of stories ranging from the one which said the President had bonded emotionally with Monica because of their background, to another which said a Secret Serviceagent saw them in a clinch in the White House. At least one newspaper publicly retracted a story which said that Secret Service agent had offered to testify against Clinton.

The President’s lawyers on Monday asked Judge Susan Wright hearing the Paula Jones case to move the hearing up so that they could prove the President innocent and counter the media’s feeding frenzy. The President’s aides have also been fanning out on radio and TV countering allegations and saying the media needs to focus on his work. But no one did a finer job than First Lady Hillary Clinton on NBC’s Today show in New York.

In a bravura performance, the First Lady said she her husband was innocent and the allegations were the handiwork of “Right-wing conspiracies” that were ranged against the President since he entered politics. “Bill and I have been accused of everything, including murder, by some of the very same people who are behind these allegations. So from my perspective, this is part of a continuing political campaignagainst my husband,” the First Lady said.

Hillary’s retort

United States First Lady Hillary Clinton today came in defence of her husband President Bill Clinton dubbing the sex scandal charges against him as a “political campaign.”