Clinton Library releases papers on Monica Lewinsky
Known as 'the stalker,' administration officials were told to find her a job outside the White House
WASHINGTON — The White House strategy to defend President Bill Clinton against the political fallout of his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky is detailed in documents the National Archives released Friday, part of a batch of records that might shed light on painful chapters in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s life as she ponders another bid for the presidency.
The papers include lists of talking points, questions prepared for media interviews and efforts to defend the president against impeachment, part of 10,000 pages of records being released from the Clinton administration.
According to one of the documents, top Clinton administration officials, who had started to refer to Lewinsky as ‘the stalker’ in 1996 due to her being around the Oval Office much more than was necessary, were instructed to find her a new job.
The document is a hard copy of an email from the director of the White House Office of Administration Patsy Thomasson telling two deputies, explaining the need to find Lewinsky a job at the Department of Defense.
“We are working closely with DOD to make this happen for Monica,” she wrote, adding that she was acting on a request from an aide named Tim.
“Monica is coming in to see me today pursuant to Tim’s request,” she wrote
Lewinsky was transferred to the Pentagon, where she met Linda Tripp, a civil servant who recorded conversations with Lewinsky about Clinton, and the whole affair soon unraveled.
Clinton was impeached in 1998 but stayed on to serve the rest of his second term. He was acquitted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice by the Senate in February 1999.
In addition to the 1990s-era events, the papers touch on Elena Kagan, now a Supreme Court justice, who as a White House counsel defended Bill Clinton in the lawsuit brought by ex-Arkansas state employee Paula Jones. Clinton’s testimony for the Jones lawsuit, in which he denied a sexual relationship with Lewinsky, led to his impeachment.
Many records involving Lewinsky are redacted, but one document sheds light on her job: Lewinsky sent an official request to hang a picture of Clinton, signing a telecommunications bill, in a White House legislative affairs office. Behind the scenes, Clinton officials were adamant that they were not trying to discredit Lewinsky.
“There is no evidence whatsoever that the White House was directing or involved in any campaign against her,” Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal wrote in a January 1999 memo.
In May, Lewinsky wrote a revealing essay about the affair for Vanity Fair.
“I am determined to have a different ending to my story,” she asserted. “I’ve decided, finally, to stick my head above the parapet so that I can take back my narrative and give a purpose to my past.”
“It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress,” she wrote.
Hillary Clinton’s influence in the White House is also expected to be explored in the papers, from her role on Clinton’s unsuccessful health care overhaul plan to her 2000 Senate campaign in New York. Bill Clinton left office in January 2001.
With these documents the National Archives will have released about 30,000 pages of papers since February. Both the Obama White House and the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, have signed off on their release.
Past installments have offered an unvarnished look at Bill Clinton’s two terms, detailing his unsuccessful attempt to change the health care system, Republicans’ sweeping victories in the 1994 midterm elections and the shaping of his wife’s public image.
Hillary Clinton, who went on to serve as a senator from New York and as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, now is a powerful advocate for Democrats in the midterm elections and the leading Democratic prospect for president in 2016. The possibility of a presidential campaign has heightened interest in the documents by media organizations, political opposition researchers and historians.