Monica Lewinsky, the onetime White House intern whose 1990s affair with former US president Bill Clinton nearly brought down his presidency, broke a long silence on Tuesday, saying she regretted what happened.
Writing in Vanity Fair magazine, Lewinsky, 40, said it was time to stop “tiptoeing around my past — and other people’s futures. I am determined to have a different ending to my story.”
Her affair with Clinton was one between consenting adults and the public humiliation she suffered altered the direction of her life, she wrote.
“Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position,” she said in excerpts of the article published on the magazine’s Web site.
“I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton. Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened,” Lewinsky added.
The affair led to Clinton’s being impeached by the US House of Representatives in 1999. The Senate acquitted him and Clinton completed his second term in 2001.
Lewinsky dropped from sight after the scandal. She got a master’s degree in social psychology from the London School of Economics and has lived in Los Angeles, New York and Portland, Oregon.
“I turned down offers that would have earned me more than US$10 million, because they didn’t feel like the right thing to do,” she said.
Lewinsky said she was strongly tempted to kill herself several times during the investigations and in one or two periods after.
Her name resurfaced in US political discourse in February, when former first lady and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton was quoted as calling her “a narcissistic loony toon” in an article based on the papers of a Clinton friend.
Spokespeople for the Clintons and The Clinton Foundation had no immediate comment on the article.
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
RSS