BY PETE YOST
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON -- One day after Monica Lewinsky hinted to President Clinton that she might reveal their past relationship, the president scolded her for threatening him but then expressed his affection and said they'd make a "good team," according to prosecutor Kenneth Starr's report.
The president had broken off his relationship with the former White House intern five weeks before the meeting on July 4, 1997, despite Ms. Lewinsky's tearful efforts "to persuade the President not to end the sexual relationship," Starr's report states.
In a July 3 "Dear Sir" letter to the president, Ms. Lewinsky "obliquely threatened to disclose their relationship," the report said.
"If she was not going to return to work at the White House, she wrote, then she would 'need to explain to my parents exactly why that wasn't happening,"' Starr's report stated.
Her letter suggested "some explanation was necessary because she had told her parents that she would be brought back" to the White House after the election, the report said.
At the time, lawyers for Paula Jones were looking for other women who had had sexual relationships with Clinton.
In his grand jury testimony Aug. 17, "the president testified that he believed Ms. Lewinsky might disclose their intimate relationship once he stopped it," Starr's report said.
In Ms. Lewinsky's recollection, the July 4 meeting began contentiously, with the President scolding her by saying it was "illegal to threaten the President of the United States."
He then told her that he had not read her July 3 letter beyond the "Dear Sir" line; he surmised that it was threatening because his secretary, Betty Currie, looked upset when she brought it to him.
As the meeting went on, the president's mood changed and he was "the most affectionate with me he'd ever been," Ms. Lewinsky testified. He stroked her arm, toyed with her hair, kissed her on the neck, praised her intellect and beauty, Ms. Lewinsky told Starr's prosecutors.
Speaking of the future, Clinton told Ms. Lewinsky that "I might be alone in three years" and added that "I think we'd be a good team," Ms. Lewinsky told prosecutors.
Ms. Lewinsky testified that "I left that day sort of emotionally stunned," for "I just knew he was in love with me."
