Monica tells TV show: 'I want to be anonymous'

Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern whose sexual fling with Bill Clinton led to a presidential impeachment, tomorrow reveals that she yearns for anonymity.

Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern whose sexual fling with Bill Clinton led to a presidential impeachment, tomorrow reveals that she yearns for anonymity.

Speaking on British television for the first time since a gagging order was lifted, Ms Lewinsky claims she bitterly regrets her notoriety, despite earning a living from it.

Ms Lewinsky, 28, who has already collaborated on a book with royal biographer Andrew Morton, was paid by television producers to take part in the programme.

But, she complains, "I didn't choose to become a public person. The way I came into the public spotlight was pretty tragic for me and for my family and my friends.

"I would do anything to have my anonymity back. I know that may be a conflict to some people because here I am sitting here in front of cameras doing a show."

The theme of contradiction runs through the 90-minute documentary True Stories: Monica in Black and White, screened on Channel 4 tomorrow night.

On one hand, the well-groomed woman, fielding questions from the stage at New York's Cooper Union, claims to be the victim in a torrid affair. But on the other, as she struggles to control her emotions, her naivety, in believing that she was in love with the President of the United States, seeps through.

According to Ms Lewinsky, she first made eye contact with Mr Clinton at a presidential departure ceremony in August 1995 and it escalated from there. Three months later they had their first encounter.

"At that point it was sort of obvious to me there was this mutual thing going on," she said. "Then I sort of blurted out: 'I have a crush on you.' He smiled and said: 'Do you want to come into the back office?'" she added to shrieks of laughter from the audience.

And yet in the next breath, she defends herself against accusation of provocation: "How do you throw yourself at the President of the United States of America? How do you throw yourself at someone who has people protecting them? The only way the people who are protecting him leave is if he tells them to."

Ms Lewinsky also talks about why she confided in Linda Tripp, who worked with her at the Pentagon, after she lost her job at the White House. "She fed my misguided hope for the relationship working out... It was just a sick relationship.

"I don't think I'm the only person in the world who could have been misled by Linda Tripp. But I don't think there are that many people who could have been misled to the degree that I was. And I think that mainly had to do with the emotional state that I was in at that time." She also tries to justify signing a false affidavit in January 1998 in the Paula Jones case and being apprehended by the FBI nine days later.

"It's such a natural inclination to lie about sex. You may even argue that it's almost a perjury trap to ask someone about their sex life." However, it was when Ms Lewinsky was questioned about her confrontation with Kenneth Starr's prosecutors on 16 January 1998 that she finally broke down.

Sobbing as she described how she was threatened with 27 years in jail, if she didn't wear a wire to entrap the president, she said she could only think of protecting him.

Finally she admitted her hurt that Bill Clinton had refused to admit the nature of their relationship. "There is a big part of me that is so incredibly offended by the way he described what happened.

"He testified that I serviced him... that didn't change a lot of people's image of me being a whore."

'True Stories: Monica in Black and White' is on Channel 4 on Monday at 10.35pm.