Lewinsky interview `won't make Clinton look good'

MONICA LEWINSKY is to describe to a British television audience for the first time how she had "effectively been raped by the American constitution" during the past 13 months.

In an interview for Channel 4, to be broadcast next week, Ms Lewinsky gives a candid and "moving" account of the "Zippergate" affair.

Jon Snow, the veteran Channel 4 newsreader, has interviewed everyone from heads of state to suspected war criminals, but yesterday he admitted that he had been very nervous about meeting Ms Lewinsky.

Mr Snow spent eight hours interviewing the former White House intern at her mother's New York penthouse and said it had been a gripping experience. Although prevented by the special prosecutor Kenneth Starr from asking about the day she was arrested and detained by the FBI for 12 hours, Mr Snow said he was satisfied that he had been able to get her true story. "It was unbelievably harrowing and very moving. Her story is amazing," he said. "It ranges from the salacious to the constitutional." Mr Snow said they had discussed her feelings for the President then and now as well as Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. "It will not make him look any better."

Mr Snow first met Ms Lewinsky on Friday night prior to the interview on Sunday. "She was quite nervous and I think a bit wary and I was too," he said. "She had prepared very well for the interview - I glimpsed a stack of notelets that she had on the bottom of her bed and she was looking at them before [the interview]."

Despite having been through endless questioning about her relationship with President Bill Clinton, Mr Snow said Ms Lewinsky was very spontaneous and not formulaic in her replies. "She laughs a lot, she is very emotional and thoughtful.

"When I was first asked to interview her I thought how will we sustain an hour, but I thought we could have done 24 hours and it would have been interesting," he said admitting that personally he would have been happy to pay double the pounds 400,000 for the interview.

But he denied that he had fallen for Ms Lewinsky's charms: "I am not besotted. She has very obvious shortcomings that will come out in the interview. She is not little Miss Perfect."

He was, however, struck by her resilience and how well she looked under the circumstances: "She has come through hell and it would have been much more convenient for all if she had had a breakdown and ended up in a unit somewhere. She has come through an ordeal that it is impossible to conceive of.

"She had every prop kicked away because anyone who spoke to her got subpoenaed and she was exceedingly isolated."

Asked if Ms Lewinsky was bitter about the events of the past year, Mr Snow said she was fired up and bursting to tell her side of the story. "She feels incredibly aggrieved about the picture of her that emerges. I have been chastened by what I found, which was the appalling abuse of a young woman's rights, and it is very painful to listen to."

The interview will be broadcast on Thursday 4 March, at 9.30pm.