Lewinsky is set for deal to `tell all'

THE MONICA Lewinsky affair bounded back into the Washington limelight yesterday following new revelations about her alleged relationship with President Bill Clinton and a report that she is ready to "tell all" to save herself from prosecution.

The disclosures came less than a week before President Clinton embarks on his most important foreign visit of the year - a nine-day trip to China - which was already threatened with partial eclipse in the United States by the multiple scandals dogging the White House.

The most striking disclosure came in the weekly magazine, US News & World Report, which has so far left the running in the Lewinsky scandal to Newsweek, the New York Times and the Washington Post. The magazine quotes from tape-recordings made by Ms Lewinsky's erstwhile confidante, Linda Tripp, to show Ms Lewinsky, a former White House trainee, as naive and immature, with a probably unrequited crush on President Clinton.

Far from the self-confident "vixen" she appears from photographs published recently in Vanity Fair, the reporter - Elise Ackerman - says "the Lewinsky in these tapes is insecure, apologetic, vulnerable, whiny and immature". She is said to come across as "a desperate romantic, teetering on the edge of an emotional collapse, obsessively focused on the unobtainable".

Ms Ackerman quotes Ms Lewinsky as saying: "The first time I looked in his eyes, I saw something I didn't expect to see." And she says she was clearly upset and bitter when the relationship was over. By mid-October, she says, Ms Lewinsky was telling Ms Tripp: "I want to kick him in the balls so that they turn into two flat pancakes."

Ms Ackerman's account is based on two hours of recordings. Altogether, there are known to be more than 20 hours of tape recordings, all made by Ms Tripp between October 1997 and January 1998, and now in the possession of the independent prosecutor, Kenneth Starr.

The Monica Lewinsky scandal broke last January after Newsweek obtained transcripts of some of the tapes, in which Ms Lewinsky appeared to claim to have had an 18-month affair with Mr Clinton while she was a White House trainee.

The contents of the tapes prompted Mr Starr to open an investigation to establish whether there was sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against Ms Lewinsky and the President for perjury. Both had denied under oath that they had had an affair. There was also the question of whether Mr Clinton put pressure on Ms Lewinsky to commit perjury - a charge that could lead to Mr Clinton's impeachment.

Ms Ackerman argues that the sections of the tapes made public before were pre-selected by a New York publisher-friend of Ms Tripp's, with a view to causing maximum damage to Mr Clinton. The tapes she has heard, she says, give a different impression.

She says Ms Tripp seems "at times egging Lewinsky on to produce graphic recollections", encouraging her to think of herself as the President's "girlfriend" and use her special relationship with him to obtain a job in New York.

Ms Ackerman notes that Ms Lewinsky's attempts to persuade Mr Clinton to find her a job date from well before January. According to witnesses, Mr Starr has tried to prove a link between Ms Lewinsky's job hunting and her summons to give evidence in the sexual harassment suit brought against Mr Clinton by Paula Jones. If it can be proved that the job search began earlier, the charge that her silence was being bought becomes hard to sustain.

In yesterday's other disclosure, the Washington Post reported that Ms Lewinsky was prepared to admit to a sexual relationship with Mr Clinton in return for being granted immunity from prosecution.

She would not, however, say that Mr Clinton had put pressure on her or induced her to lie. This was the deal that her former lawyer, William Ginsburg, had reportedly hoped to strike with Mr Starr three months ago. Now, it seems, her new lawyers - Washington insiders, Plato Cacheris and Jacob Stein - have made a similar offer.

The sudden return to prominence of the affair has led to speculation about where the reports have originated from, and why. To some, the tapes represent a new salvo in a campaign to discredit Ms Lewinsky as an immature fantasist. This would be a precaution just in case the second disclosure is correct: that she will admit a sexual relationship with the President - so contradicting his celebrated denial: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinsky."