All I could do was tell her that I was sorry, and...
All I could do was tell her that I was sorry, and that I had felt I couldnt tell anyone, even her, what had happenedI told her that I loved her and I didnt want to hurt her or Chelsea, that I was ashamed of what I had done, and that I had kept everything to myself in an effort to avoid hurting my family and undermining the presidencyAnd after all the lies and abuse we had endured from the start of my presidency, I didnt want to be run out of office in the flood tide that followed my deposition in JanuaryI still didnt fully understand why I had done something so wrong and stupid; that understanding would come slowly, in the months of working on our relationship that lay ahead

I had to talk to Chelsea, tooIn some ways, that was even harderSooner or later, every child learns that her parents arent perfect, but this went far beyond the normalI had always believed that I had been a good fatherChelseas high school years and her freshman year in college had already been clouded by four years of intensely personal attacks on her parentsNow Chelsea had to learn that her father not only had done something terribly wrong, but had not told her or her mother the truth about itI was afraid that I would lose not only my marriage, but my daughters love and respect as well

The rest of that awful day was dominated by another terrorist actIn Omagh, Northern Ireland, a breakaway faction of the IRA that did not support the Good Friday accord murdered twenty-eight people in a crowded shopping section of the city with a car bombAll the parties to the peace process, including Sinn Fein, denounced the bombingI issued a statement condemning the butchery, extending my sympathy to the victims families, and urging the parties of peace to redouble their effortsThe outlaw group, which called itself the Real IRA, had about two hundred members and supporters, enough to cause real trouble, but not enough to disrupt the peace process: the Omagh bombing showed the utter insanity of going back to the old ways

On Monday, after spending what time I could preparing, I went downstairs to the Map Room for four hours of testimonyStarr had agreed not to bring me down to the courthouse, probably because of the adverse reaction he got when he made Hillary do itHowever, he insisted replica louis vuitton wallet on videotaping my testimony, allegedly because one of the twenty-four grand jurors couldnt attend the sessionDavid Kendall said the grand jury was welcome to come to the White House if Starr would not videotape my secret testimonyHe refused; I suspected that he wanted to send the videotape to Congress, where it could be released without getting him into more hot water

The grand jury was watching the proceedings on closed-circuit television back at the courthouse while Starr and his interrogators did their best to turn the videotape into a pornographic home movie, asking me questions designed to humiliate me and to so disgust the Congress and the American people that they would demand my resignation, after which he might be able to indict meSamuel Johnson once said that nothing concentrates the mind as much as the prospect of ones own destructionMoreover, I believed that a lot more was at stake than what might happen to me

After the preliminaries, I asked to make a brief statementI admitted that on certain occasions in 1996 and once in 1997 I engaged in wrongful conduct that included inappropriate intimate contact with Monica Lewinsky; that the conduct, while morally wrong, did not constitute sexual relations as I understood the definition of the term that Judge Wright accepted at the request of the Jones lawyers; that I took full responsibility for my actions; and that I would answer to the best of my ability all the OICs questions relating to the legality of my actions, but would not say more about the specifics of what had happened

The principal OIC interrogator then took me through a long list of questions dealing with the definition of sexual relations that Judge Wright had imposedI acknowledged that I had not been trying to be helpful to the Jones lawyers because they, like the OIC, had engaged in repeated unlawful leaks, and since they knew by then that their case had no merit, I believed that their objective in the deposition was to elicit damaging new information from me for the purpose of leaking itI said that of course I didnt know that by the time I testified Starrs office had already become heavily involved

Now Starrs lawyers were trying to capitalize on the setup by getting me on videotape discussing things in graphic louis vuitton backpacks detail that no one should ever have to talk about publicly

When the OIC lawyer continued to complain about my deposition answers on the sex questions, I reminded him that both my lawyer and I had invited Joness attorneys to ask specific follow-up questions, and that they declined to do soI said it was now clear to me that they didnt do so because they were no longer trying to get a damaging admission that they could leak to the pressInstead, they were working for StarrThey wanted the deposition to lay the basis for forcing my resignation, or impeachment, or perhaps even an indictmentSo they didnt ask follow-up questions because they were afraid I would give them a truthful answerThey were trying to set me up and trick meAnd now you seem to be complaining that they didnt do a good enough jobI confessed that I deplored what the Rutherford Institute lawyers had done in Joness namethe tormenting of innocent people, the illegal leaking, the pursuit of a bogus, politically motivated suitbut I was determined to walk through the minefield of this deposition without violating the law, and I believe I did

I did acknowledge that I had misled everyone who asked about the story after it brokeAnd I said over and over again that I never asked anyone to lieWhen the agreed-upon four hours had expired, I had been asked many questions six or seven times, as the lawyers tried hard to turn my interrogation into admissions that were humiliating and incriminatingThats what the, to date, whole four-year $40 million investigation had come down to: parsing the definition of sex

I finished the testimony at about six-thirty, three and a half hours before I was scheduled to address the nationI was visibly upset when I went up to the solarium to see friends and staff who had gathered to discuss what had just happened, including White House counsel Chuck Ruff, David Kendall, Mickey Kantor, Rahm Emanuel, James Carville, Paul Begala, and Harry and Linda ThomasonChelsea was there, too, and to my relief, at about eight, Hillary joined in

We had a discussion about what I should sayEveryone knew I had to admit that I had made an awful mistake and had tried to hide itThe question was whether I should also take a shot at Starrs investigation and say it was time to end itThe louis vuitton back pack virtually unanimous opinion was that I should notMost people already knew that Starr was out of control; they needed to hear my admission of wrongdoing and witness my remorseSome of my friends had given what they thought was strategic advice; others were genuinely appalled by what I had doneOnly Hillary refused to express an opinion, instead encouraging everyone to leave me alone to write my statement

At ten oclock I told the American people about my testimony, said I was solely and completely responsible for my personal failure, and admitted misleading everyone, even my wifeI said I was trying to protect myself and my family from intrusive questions in a politically inspired lawsuit that had been dismissedI also said that Starrs investigation had gone on too long, cost too much, and hurt too many people, and that two years earlier, another investigation, a truly independent one, had found no wrongdoing by Hillary or me in WhitewaterFinally, I committed to doing my best to repair my family life, and I hoped we could repair the fabric of our nations life by stopping the pursuit of personal destruction and prying into private lives, and moving onI believed every word I said, but my anger hadnt worn off enough for me to be as contrite as I should have been

The next day we left for Marthas Vineyard on our annual vacationUsually I counted the days until we could get away for some family time; this year, though I knew we needed it, I wished that I was working around the clock insteadAs we walked out to the South Lawn to get on the helicopter, with Chelsea between Hillary and me and Buddy walking beside me, photographers took pictures that revealed the pain I had causedWhen there were no cameras around, my wife and daughter were barely speaking to me

I spent the first couple of days alternating between begging for forgiveness and planning the strikes on al QaedaAt night Hillary would go up to bed and I slept on the couch

On my birthday General Don Kerrick, Sandy Bergers staffer, flew to Marthas Vineyard to go over the targets recommended by the CIA and the Joint Chiefsthe al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and two targets in Sudan, a tannery in which bin Laden had a financial interest and a chemical plant the CIA believed was being used to produce or rolex datejust store a chemical used in the production of VX nerve gasI took the tannery off the list because it had no military value to al Qaeda and I wanted to minimize civilian casualtiesThe hit on the camps would be timed to coincide with the meeting the intelligence indicated bin Laden and his top people would be havingI gave Sandy Berger the final order to proceed, and UNavy destroyers in the northern Arabian Sea launched cruise missiles at the targets in Afghanistan, while missiles were fired at the Sudanese chemical plant from ships in the Red SeaMost of the missiles hit the targets, but bin Laden was not in the camp where the CIA thought he would be when the missiles hit itSome reports said he had left the camp only a couple of hours earlier, but we never knew for sureSeveral people associated with al Qaeda were killed, as were some Pakistani officers who were reported to be there to train Kashmiri terroristsThe Sudanese chemical plant was destroyed

After announcing the attacks in Marthas Vineyard, I flew back to Washington to speak to the American people for the second time in four days, telling them I had ordered the strikes because al Qaeda was responsible for the embassy bombings, and bin Laden was perhaps the preeminent organizer and financier of international terrorism in the world today, a man who had vowed to wage a terrorist war on America with no distinction between military personnel and civiliansI said that our attacks were not aimed against Islam but against fanatics and killers, and that we had been fighting against them on several fronts for years and would continue to do so, because this will be a long, ongoing struggle

Around the time I spoke of the long struggle, I signed the first of a series of orders to prepare for it by using all the tools availableExecutive Order 13099 imposed economic sanctions on bin Laden and al QaedaLater the sanctions were extended to the Taliban as wellTo date, we had not been effective in disrupting terrorists financial networksThe executive order invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which we had earlier used successfully against the Cali drug cartel in Colombia

I had also asked General Shelton and Dick Clarke to develop some options for dropping commando forces into replica rolex submariner Afghanist