The Clinton Impeachment | 1. Deal or No Deal

Summary

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Slow Burn: The Clinton Impeachment | Episode 1, "Deal or No Deal"

Podcast: Slow Burn (Slate Podcasts)
Air date: August 8, 2018
Host & Narrator: Leon Neyfak

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Overview

This first episode of the second season of Slow Burn launches a deep investigation of the Clinton impeachment, setting the scene with the fateful day in January 1998 when Monica Lewinsky—caught in her relationship with President Clinton—faced a wrenching, high-pressure choice: cooperate with Ken Starr's investigation or risk a decades-long prison sentence. Through archival clips and new interviews, host Leon Neyfak reconstructs the extraordinary events at the Ritz-Carlton, exploring how personal betrayals, prosecutorial tactics, and political high stakes collided, forever altering Lewinsky’s life and American politics.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Setup: Pentagon City Mall/FBI Confrontation ([01:01]-[04:52])

• Monica Lewinsky waits to meet Linda Tripp for lunch, but is instead confronted by FBI agents after Tripp delivers her to the investigation team.
• Agents present alarming allegations and push Lewinsky into a hotel room for questioning, using the existence of her sworn affidavit denying the affair as leverage.

Notable Quote:

“Monica, this is for your own good, she said. Just listen to them. They did the same thing to me.” – Linda Tripp, recalled by Leon Neyfak ([02:16])

2. The “Brace” and Starr’s High Stakes ([03:59]-[08:26])

• Bruce Udolph and others from independent counsel Ken Starr’s office attempt to "brace" Lewinsky, using threats of prison for perjury and obstruction.
• Udolph, a Democrat, recounts his doubts and discomfort with the tactic and the pivot from investigating Whitewater to focusing on an affair.

Quotes:

“This case involving Monica Lewinsky should have been dead on arrival, and it served no useful purpose.” – Bruce Udolph ([09:15])
“I went up there fully expecting to investigate a real estate deal... This is not necessarily something I signed up for, and it's not something that I feel terribly good about.” – Bruce Udolph ([08:06])

3. Interrogation Tactics and Fears ([10:29]-[13:58])

• Susan Schmidt describes the tension and logistical mistakes, such as allowing Tripp in the room, increasing Lewinsky's distress.
• Prosecutors lay out the legal threat: up to 27 years in prison for perjury, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice, seeking cooperation and asking Lewinsky to consider wearing a wire.

Lewinsky’s own words:

“Imagine, one minute I was waiting to meet a friend in the food court and the next I realized she had set me up as two FBI agents flashed their badges at me.” – Monica Lewinsky, recalling the event ([13:58])
“27 years. When you're only 24 yourself, that's a long time.” – Monica Lewinsky ([14:31])

4. High Pressure and Stalemate ([15:08]-[21:51])

• Lewinsky is emotionally overwhelmed, sobbing, confused, and desperate, at one point requesting to call her mother for support.
• Negotiators alternate between psychological tactics and attempts at empathy, but Lewinsky resists, making clear she doesn't want to be responsible for "bringing down the President."

Notable Exchange:

Monica’s mother: “You're going to tell these people everything they need to know...”
Monica: “I am not going to be the person who brings down the president of the United States.” ([24:15])

5. Humanizing Monica: Boredom, Defiance, and Small Acts ([21:04]-[24:15])

• During the long deadlock, small human moments break through: TV watching, a Crate & Barrel trip, Monica joking through tension.
• Lewinsky makes a failed, surreptitious call to Clinton’s secretary, Betty Currie, aiming to warn Clinton.

6. The Prosecutorial Dilemma and Fallout ([25:12]-[29:33])

• Starr’s team fails to “flip” Lewinsky in the crucial 11-hour standoff. Her refusal forces them into a long, difficult evidence hunt.
• Prosecutors reflect on the ethics—Udolph voices enduring moral and professional discomfort.

Quotes:

“What good does it serve to indict a 24-year-old girl for lying on an affidavit... What interest does the United States government have that are vindicated by that kind of prosecution?” – Bruce Udolph ([27:53])
“The humiliation and hurt to Monica Lewinsky. The hell with that. She's expendable. Is that something to be proud of?” – Bruce Udolph ([29:06])

7. The Broader Cultural and Political Impact ([29:33]-[32:31])

• Host Leon Neyfak reflects on the immense anger, confusion, and shifts in American political culture prompted by the scandal.
• The 90s’ emerging partisan warfare, sexual politics, and debate over privacy and character are all situated in this moment.
• Neyfak frames the season’s mission as understanding why people reacted as they did, and what the saga reveals about then and now.

Quote:

“Monica Lewinsky's refusal to succumb to Ken Starr saved Bill Clinton's presidency.” – Summarized by Leon Neyfak ([31:32])

8. Aftermath and Lewinsky’s Fallout ([32:31]-[33:57])

• The story leaks to the press (first on The Drudge Report), leading to Lewinsky’s global infamy and relentless media attention.
• Small details, like her apology letters to Watergate neighbors, humanize her amidst the media circus.

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “She just said no. I think there's an honesty perhaps under everything else… She doesn’t disguise herself. I just think that’s admirable.” – Renata Adler ([32:03])
• “Reporters started staking out Lewinsky’s apartment at the Watergate. One day, her neighbor Bob Dole... brought the reporters a box of donuts.” ([33:11])

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• Monica Lewinsky’s ambush and the setup: [01:01]-[05:49]
• The Whitewater to Lewinsky pivot: [06:06]-[08:26]
• Inside the “brace” — emotional breakdowns and legal threats: [14:10]-[19:22]
• The failed push for cooperation, Monica's resistance: [24:15]-[25:12]
• Udolph’s reflection on prosecutorial ethics: [27:53]-[29:33]
• Reflections on historical impact, and Monica’s courage: [31:32]-[32:03]

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Closing Thoughts

"Deal or No Deal" sets the tone for a thoughtful revisiting of the Clinton impeachment, highlighting the deeply personal cost to Monica Lewinsky and the complex, often troubling legal and ethical choices shaping the national drama. Neyfak’s approach combines empathy, skepticism, and insight, setting up a season geared not just to retell history, but to reconsider its meaning in light of present-day debates about sex, power, and political warfare.

Next episode preview: A look back at Clinton’s tumultuous first year, and the scandals that foreshadowed his eventual undoing.

Transcript

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[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Monica Lewinsky didn't know it, but her lunch meeting with Linda Tripp was never going to happen. Lewinsky was waiting for a trip at the food court inside a shopping mall In Pentagon City, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. it was a typical suburban mall, brightly lit, with a movie theater, a Macy's, and white tiles on the floor. Lewinsky had come from the gym. She was still in her exercise clothes, and she was reading a magazine while she waited for her friend. It was Friday, January 16, 1998. Lewinsky was 24 years old. About two years earlier, she'd become involved in a precarious relationship with the President of the United States. As Lewinsky later told her biographer, her relationship with Bill Clinton had come to overwhelm her life. She found it hard to think about anything else. Standing there at the Pentagon City Mall, Lewinsky looked up from her magazine and she saw Linda Tripp heading towards her on an escalator.

[Renata Adler]

Suddenly she gestures. I mean, Linda Trump is coming down on the escalator and gestures towards some men behind her.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

That's journalist Renata Adler. She wrote about Monica Lewinsky and what happened to her on this day in 1998 for Vanity Fair and the LA Times.

[Renata Adler]

And suddenly these guys apprehend her and they keep saying that she's already in steep trouble with the law and it can only get more steep unless she does as they ask.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

The two men who approached Lewinsky were wearing dark suits and carrying badges. They said they were with the F and that the Attorney General of the United States had authorized a criminal investigation into her actions. The FBI agents invited lewinsky to follow them to a room in a nearby ritz carlton hotel. Though they told lewinsky that she was not under arrest and was free to leave at any time, she agreed to go with them. Later, she said she went because she wanted to protect the president, that she was thinking, I have to fix this. As the scene in the food court unfolded, Linda tripp tried to give lewinsky a hug. Monica, this is for your own good, she said. Just listen to them. They did the same thing to me. But like so much of what tripp had said to lewinsky, that was a lie. While I was working on this show, I discovered that not everyone knows who Linda tripp is. Twenty years ago, trippe was a world famous supervillain. Her name was synonymous with treachery and manipulation. Tripp worked in the same office as Monica lewinsky for much of 1996 and 1997, and during that time, lewinsky spilled her guts to her colleague about the affair she was having with clinton. Eventually, tripp started recording her conversations with lewinsky. And then, after making fake lunch plans with her at the pentagon city mall, Trippe delivered her friend to the FBI. The agents led Lewinsky to the 10th floor of the Ritz Carlton and into room 1012. It was a standard unit, furnished with a dresser, a television set, a bed, and a chair. There, lewinsky met two men from the office of the independent counsel. One of them was a prosecutor named Bruce udolph.

[Bruce Udolph]

The only thing we knew about Monica was from the tapes, and we had heard her voice, but we didn't know what to expect, how she was going to behave or act or anything. We assumed that she was not going to be a very submissive person, but we were not prepared for her personality and what happened at all when she got there.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Udolph and his colleague were working for Ken starr, the independent counsel who had been investigating clinton for more than three years. They were there to put Monica lewinsky in a brace. That's what prosecutors call it when they confront a potential witness in a criminal probe. At issue was something lewinsky had a sworn affidavit in which she claimed that she had never had a sexual relationship with bill clinton. The point of putting lewinsky in the brace was to scare her into telling the truth and to convince her to help Ken Starr go after the person he was really interested in, the president.

[Renata Adler]

So they take her into this room and they say, you've committed this crime. You signed a false affidavit, and it puts you in such trouble, you may go to jail for 27 years.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Yudolf's colleagues suggested to Lewinsky that she could make some of that prison time go away if she agreed to work with Starr's office. All she had to do was take part in an undercover operation designed to catch the President committing a crime. Monica Lewinsky had a choice to make. Should she cooperate with the Starr investigation or remain loyal to the President and risk a decades long prison sentence? On January 16, 1998, Lewinsky weighed that choice for 11 mind bending hours. It was a choice that would set the course for the rest of her life. It also put the fate of the Clinton presidency on her shoulders. This is Slow Burn. I'm your host Leon Nayfak.

[Host/Commentator]

In the long history of the American presidency, there's never been anything like this.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Sex, lies and constitutional duty.

[Host/Commentator]

These kind of issues are not private matters. Congress is rushing to overthrow the commander in chief. What has happened in this town? Where is the decency?

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Over the next two months, I'll be your guide to everything you never know knew about the impeachment of Bill Clinton. How did a turbulent series of sexual encounters between the President and a White House intern go from being a secret to an all consuming national obsession? How did the ensuing scandal change our politics and shape the world we live in now? What did Americans think about and talk about that they were forced to pick sides? And what did they miss in the process? Episode 1 Deal or no Deal. When Bruce Udolph joined the independent counsel's office in mid-1997, Ken Starr's investigation was focused almost entirely on money. Starr was interested in the Clinton's financial history, specifically something called Whitewater, the Arkansas.

[Host/Commentator]

Real estate deal that has dogged President and Mrs. Clinton since they arrived in Washington. A special prosecutor has been looking into this case.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Udolph was 46 years old when he was recruited to join the Star team. He was an accomplished investigator. He built up an impressive record going after public corruption in Florida.

[Host/Commentator]

Many of the lawyers working for Starr are some of the toughest prosecutors in the nation. Bruce Udolph nailed more than a dozen judges, mayors and cops for corruption while U.S. attorney in Miami.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Most of the politicians Udof went after in Florida were Democrats. But Yudof didn't join up with Starr for partisan reasons or because he wanted to get Bill Clinton. Udolph was a Democrat himself. He had voted for the President. What attracted him to the Starr probe were the stakes.

[Bruce Udolph]

I mean to work on a case involving allegations of corruption on the part of the President of the United States. I mean it doesn't if you're looking to have an impact, it doesn't get more impactful than that.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

But within six months of yudof's arrival in Washington, Starr's team had received an astonishing tip from Linda Tripp. It caused the investigation to swerve into questions of presidential adultery and deception. Udolph was skeptical about this new direction.

[Bruce Udolph]

I mean, I went up there fully expecting to investigate the president's involvement or alleged involvement in a real estate deal that had failed. Basically a white collar investigation. This is not necessarily something I signed up for, and it's not something that I feel terribly good about.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Yudolf wasn't crazy about the idea of putting Lewinsky in a brace. Although he mostly kept his doubts to himself, some of the more hard charging prosecutors on the team already thought he was a softie. Later, they would put up a jokey chart on the wall of their office where he was labeled commie wimp. When Yudolf suggested that it wasn't a good idea to confront Lewinsky with a group of men and no women, he was told that none of the women in the office were available. Yudolf is in his mid-60s now. He lives outside Fort Lauderdale and works as a white collar defense attorney. And he has a hard time talking about the Monica Lewinsky investigation. When I spoke to him in his office earlier this year, his face would toggle between friendly, cautious and agonized. And he fidgeted with any small object he could get his hands on as he answered my questions. There were times when Yudof would stop and think for a full 10 seconds, searching for the right words.

[Bruce Udolph]

This case involving Monica Lewinsky should have been dead on arrival, and it served no useful purpose.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Yudolf really hates that the Clinton Lewinsky investigation happened. He hates what it put the country through, and he hates thinking back on that long, tumultuous day in the Ritz Carlton hotel that kickstarted the whole thing. Looking at Monica Lewinsky. That afternoon, Udof saw a young woman dressed in spandex and a t shirt fighting back tears and biting her fingernails. Prosecutors in the office of the independent counsel referred to the January 16th Lewinsky operation as prom night. Bruce Udolph, despite his reputation as a dove, was one of the two attorneys in charge of persuading Lewinsky to flip. The other was a prosecutor from Los Angeles named Michael Emick. Emick, who died in 2015, was known in the office as something of a charmer. Here's reporter Susan Schmidt, who co wrote a book about the Starr investigation called truth at Any cost.

[Susan Schmidt]

He was, you know, the nice guy in the office, Very good looking guy, very personable.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Schmidt covered the white house for the Washington post. In fact, she helped write the first major newspaper story about Lewinsky. A few days after all this happened.

[Susan Schmidt]

Other people were in the next room listening and down the hall, you know, so it was a very carefully thought through interaction with her. But it all went haywire very quickly.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

The first mistake came when the FBI agents who brought Lewinsky into the hotel room for some reason allowed Linda Tripp to join everyone inside. Lewinsky, who understood immediately that Trippe had betrayed her, stared at her former friend with rage in her eyes. Before someone finally thought to get trippe out of the room, Lewinsky remembers saying, make her stay and watch. I want that treacherous bitch to see what she's done to me. Speaking in a soft, even voice, Emek explained to Lewinsky why the independent counsel's office had summoned her. It had to do with a lawsuit, he said, a sexual harassment lawsuit that had been filed in 1994 by a woman named Paula Jones. Lewinsky knew all about it.

[Host/Commentator]

There has been a legal cloud over the Clinton administration ever since Arkansas native Paula Jones made sexual harassment allegations against the president.

[Susan Schmidt]

Paula Jones, a former Arkansas clerical worker who claims that she was sexually harassed by the president. How damaging.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

You'll hear more about Paula Jones story in future episodes. The short version is that she worked for the state of Arkansas while Bill Clinton was governor.

[Host/Commentator]

Jones alleges that in 1991, then Governor Clinton lured her to a private room at this little Rock hotel during a state conference and made unwanted sexual advances.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Here's what you need to understand about how all this fits together. Basically, three separate storylines converged to put Bill Clinton's presidency in peril. The first was Ken Starr's investigation into the Clinton's financial history in Whitewater.

[Host/Commentator]

The president's biggest headache, Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

The second was Paula Jones sexual harassment suit.

[Host/Commentator]

Paula Jones sexual misconduct allegations against president Clinton continue to wreak havoc among members of the White house staff.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

The third was Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. We'll trace the origins of these three threads later in the series. For now, I'll just say that they started coming together in the fall of 1997 when Paula Jones's lawyers found out that Clinton was carrying on a secret relationship with a former White House intern. For Jones legal team, that made Lewinsky a very useful witness. If she testified that she had begun an affair with Clinton while working in the white House, it would Help establish that he had a habit of pursuing his female subordinates, A pattern of behavior that would make Jones harassment claim more credible. And so on December 19, 1997, Jones lawyers served Lewinsky with a subpoena. She responded by signing a sworn affidavit in which she denied having a sexual relationship with Clinton and stated that he had always behaved appropriately in her presence. Not long after Ken Starr's office learned about Monica Lewinsky and the false affidavit she had signed, that affidavit gave them leverage over her. And that's how she found herself being marched into a Pentagon city hotel room by the FBI.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Imagine, one minute I was waiting to meet a friend in the food court and the next I realized she had set me up as two FBI agents flashed their badges at me.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

That's Monica Lewinsky speaking on stage at a forbes event in 2014. Lewinsky declined to be interviewed for this podcast. She has only spoken publicly about her ordeal on a handful of occasions. Pretty much every time she has talked about it, she has made a point of describing the fear she felt. On January 16, 1998, I was threatened.

[Monica Lewinsky]

With up to 27 years in jail for denying the affair in an affidavit and other alleged crimes. 27 years. When you're only 24 yourself, that's a long time.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Mike Emick, the nice guy on Starr's team, told Lewinsky there was evidence that she'd committed perjury, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. That she had not only lied on her affidavit, but that she had encouraged other people, including Lynda Tripp, to lie on her behalf. Did Lewinsky commit these crimes? Technically, she might have.

[Steve Binhack]

Look, I can have empathy for someone as a human being and anybody can. But what she did was wrong and she got caught.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

This is attorney Steve Binhack. He served on the star team as a prosecutor alongside Bruce Udof and Mike Emick. He passed through room 1012 several times on January 16th.

[Steve Binhack]

So she was confronted with her conduct by federal prosecutors, FBI agents, and in no uncertain terms, Mike and Bruce told her that she had violated the law and that there was criminal case that could be made against her readily.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Again, all that may be technically true, but in reality, no jury was ever going to convict a 24 year old woman for lying about an adulterous affair. Even the hardliners on Ken Starr's team had to know this. Plus, they knew they didn't have much evidence on Lewinsky.

[Bruce Udolph]

Here's at that particular point, it was not necessarily known to Us that this relationship was not a figment of a young, impressionable girl's mind.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

The lack of evidence didn't stop the prosecutors from telling lewinsky that she faced grave consequences unless she agreed to cooperate with them. They told her that if she wanted to make a deal, she would have to move fast because her value as a witness would only go down. Lewinsky had a guess as to why the prosecutors were in such a hurry.

[News Reporter]

Good evening.

[Host/Commentator]

There's never been anything quite like it before. A president of the united states in the same room with a woman who has accused him of sexual harassment.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

As lewinsky, and just about everyone else in america knew Bill clinton was set to give a deposition in the paula jones lawsuit the following day. Jones's lawyers were going to ask clinton all kinds of intimate questions about his personal life. It was a very big deal.

[News Reporter]

This is a historic first. Never before as a sitting president, had to give sworn testimony in a court case where he is the defendant.

[Host/Commentator]

And it happens tomorrow morning in washington.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Lewinsky was right that the starr prosecutors were aware of clinton's deposition when they decided to schedule prom night for the day before. Given that lewinsky's name was on the paula jones witness list, Starr could be pretty sure that clinton would be asked about the affair, and it seemed likely that he would lie about it. Here again is reporter sue schmidt, the star.

[Susan Schmidt]

People were thinking, just let him go into the deposition, and he's free to tell the truth or not. If he's going to lie, you know, so be it.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Clinton's deposition was one thing hanging over the proceedings in room 1012, but the prosecutors had another reason to try to hurry things along. A reporter from newsweek was getting ready to publish an article saying that starr was looking into her affair with the president. The reporter had reached out to the starr team, and he had told them that his piece would be going to press that weekend. The prosecutors wanted to secure lewinsky's cooperation before that happened, because once her name was out in the world, she would be significantly less useful to them as a witness. What would cooperation look like? First, lewinsky would have to tell the prosecutors everything about her relationship with clinton, and she would have to agree to testify about it under oath. That was the easy part. The prosecutors also wanted her to wear a wire. As lewinsky understood it, her mission would be to carry out controlled calls to two of clinton's associates, his friend vernon jordan and his personal secretary betty curry, and possibly to the president himself. The goal was for lewinsky to get confirmation on tape that clinton and his cronies had encouraged her to lie under oath in response to questions from Paula Jones's lawyers. When she heard Emick's pitch, Lewinsky panicked. She began shaking and sobbing so loudly that a member of Starr's team could hear her from the hallway.

[Bruce Udolph]

I thought she was petrified. I thought she was intimidated. I thought she was angry. I thought she was confused. And at times she seemed hysterical.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Lewinsky cried out that her life was ruined, and she wondered aloud about what would happen if she threw herself out the window. Here's Renata Adler again.

[Renata Adler]

There are these guys, they're official guys. They're saying to her, we have enough to send you to jail. I mean, you say that to anybody, they're going to be terrified. I mean, who would not be scared by that?

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

It was about two hours into prom night when Lewinsky said she needed to call her mom. By this point, it was starting to look like Mike Emick's good cop approach wasn't going to work. To ratchet up the pressure, one of the star team's most combative prosecutors came into the room and told Lewinsky to knock it off with the indecisiveness. Lewinsky remembers him telling her, monica, we know you're smart. You're 24 years old. You don't need to call your mommy. But lewinsky insisted. If Starr's guys wanted her to make a deal, they had to let her make up her mind on her terms. Lewinsky's mother, Marsha Lewis, lived in New York. As it happened, she was something of an aspiring gossip columnist. She had even published a juicy book about the world of opera called the private lives of the three tenors. For months, Lewis had been hearing about her daughter's relationship with the president. It worried her when she picked up the phone and heard Lewinsky say through tears that she was in trouble with the FBI. Lewis said she'd be on the next train to Washington. The train ride would take at least three and a half hours. In the meantime, all the occupants of room 1012 could do was wait. Soon, the tension in the room gave way to boredom and restlessness. Someone turned on the tv.

[Susan Schmidt]

They're watching some Ethel Merman movie. Because every channel had cop shows, and emick didn't want her to see these cop shows because they all involved snitches. He was thinking that that's going to, you know, queer their efforts at cooperation.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

As evening fell, lewinsky told the prosecutors she was feeling claustrophobic and that she wanted to stretch her legs. Emick and one of the FBI agents agreed to accompany her back to the pentagon city mall where they could wander around a bit and get some semblance of fresh air. And so the three of them went shopping. The first stop on the excursion was crate and barrel, where lewinsky looked at household goods and tried to lighten the mood by cracking jokes.

[Susan Schmidt]

It was a very strange juxtaposition of this sort of bristling law enforcement operation going on, you know, upstairs, and then this sort of carefree browsing in crate and barrel because they were waiting for her mother and it was taking hours.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

After crate and barrel, lewinsky said she needed to use the bathroom, and she headed towards the ladies room at macy's while emick and the FBI agent waited for her. When lewinsky was confident she was out of their sight lines, Emmett. She did something bold. She went to a payphone and dialed the number for clinton's secretary, betty curry. Curry was one of the two people starr's prosecutors wanted lewinsky to set up. But lewinsky thought of curry as an ally. If she could get her on the phone, curry could then get a message to clinton and warn him about starr so he wouldn't risk perjuring himself in his deposition the next day. As lewinsky put it later, betty was the only one that I knew. I could call for two seconds and say something cryptically that I knew would get to the president. But as fate would have it, Betty curry didn't answer the phone that day. Looking back on that moment, it's hard not to wonder how everything might have turned out if she had. If curry had told clinton the ten star knew about the affair, would he have told the truth in his deposition the next day and avoided the accusation of perjury? But curry did not pick up, and so lewinsky deflated, met back up with emick and the FBI agent. By this point, it was almost 7 o', clock, and since there was still more time to kill and everyone was getting hungry, the trio got dinner at a restaurant at the mall called mozzarella's american grill. While they ate, lewinsky asked emick to explain one more time why she was facing 27 years in prison. He ticked off the crimes she could be charged with on his fingers. Perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering. What he didn't tell her was how profoundly unusual it would be for the federal government to prosecute someone for covering up an affair in a civil lawsuit. At the end of the meal, lewinsky made a point of paying for her own food, as if to signal that she didn't want to be in the prosecutor's debt. Then the group headed back to the hotel room and watched some more TV. Finally, a little after 10pm a woman in a fur coat rang the doorbell. Lewinsky's mother had arrived. The first thing Marcia Lewis did after she got to the Ritz Carlton was hug her daughter. The two of them went into the hallway, where they spoke alone for a few short minutes. I can't do this, lewinsky remembers saying. I can't wear a wire. I can't tape record phone calls. Steve Binhack, one of Star's prosecutors, caught a snippet of the conversation.

[Steve Binhack]

And it just so happened I walked out in the hallway while Monica and her mother were talking, and I overheard Monica's mom say to Monica, you're going to tell these people everything they need to know, and we're going to be done with this. And Monica said, I am not going to be the person who brings down the president of the United States.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

The prosecutors told Lewis that if her daughter cooperated, they were prepared to grant her immunity, meaning no charges would be filed against her and she wouldn't face any prison time. Lewis listened, but didn't feel sure that she could trust the prosecutors. If they wanted to talk about a deal, she said, they would have to speak to her ex husband, Monica's father. From Yudolf and Emick's perspective, this was yet another obstacle to getting the deal done quickly and cleanly. As Lewis called her ex husband in California and briefed him on the situation, the prosecutors began to accept that Lewinsky was not going to flip before the end of the night.

[Bruce Udolph]

You didn't have to be a seer to know where this was headed. This was going to be one huge mess.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Lewinsky's father put his daughter in touch with a family lawyer who specialized in medical malpractice law. When the lawyer got on the phone with Mike Emick, he told him that his client would not be making an immunity deal with anybody, at least not yet. Then he told Lewinsky and her mother to go home. So that's what they did. More than 11 hours after Lewinsky was first approached in the food court, she and Lewis got into Lewinsky's SUV and drove to her apartment. As it happened, Lewinsky lived at the Watergate complex in an apartment owned by her mother, not far from where Richard Nixon's team of burglars broke into the Democratic national committee headquarters in 1972. Lewinsky later recalled worrying that her apartment might be bugged. For a second, she and Lewis talked about maybe fleeing the country. But they ruled it out because they figured they'd be stopped at the airport. Lewinsky said she wanted to try to call Betty Curry again so that she could warn Clinton about what was happening. But Lewis made her daughter promise that she wouldn't. When they got home, Lewis was so worried that her daughter would try to hurt herself that she made her leave the bathroom door open while she took a shower. Meanwhile, Ken Starr's prosecutors wallowed in defeat.

[Susan Schmidt]

They were extremely depressed. At the end of the night. They felt like their whole plan had failed. I mean, she'd gotten away. They didn't have a deal. The deposition was the next morning, and they came so close. Emick was cursing himself and so upset that he had not closed the deal. I just don't think they expected it to go the way it did.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

In the end, January 16 could have turned out a lot worse for the prosecutors. For one thing, they managed to keep their investigation under wraps until after Clinton's deposition. And when Paula Jones's lawyers asked Clinton about Lewinsky, he lied, just like the hardliners on Starr's team had suspected he would. But Lewinsky's refusal to cooperate and to wear a wire meant that the office of the independent counsel would have to spend months trying to prove that the intern and the president actually did have an affair. They would interview scores of witnesses, dig through phone records, and pore over White House visitation logs. It was obvious right away that this process would irreparably transform Lewinsky's life. Not long after that day at the Ritz Carlton, Bruce Udolph ended up leaving the office of the independent counsel, in part because the disagreements between him and and the rest of the team ran so deep. Twenty years later, he still feels queasy when he thinks about his former colleagues actually building a criminal case against Monica Lewinsky.

[Bruce Udolph]

One would have to ask themselves, what good does it serve to indict a 24 year old girl for lying on an affidavit in a civil case, which probably would represent the first time in the history of that jurisdiction where someone was indicted for such an offense. What good would it do to try someone like that? What interest does the United States government have that are vindicated by that kind of prosecution? Because to me, if you were to prosecute that case, you wouldn't need to have Monica Lewinsky flip. Your goal would have been served by having a very public humiliation of the president of the United States.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Udolph told me he'd heard that one of his former colleagues from the star team had recently said in an interview that he was proud of the work the office had done on the Lewinsky case. The guy apparently said he felt vindicated by the MeToo movement. The world had caught up to the idea that powerful men shouldn't take advantage of young women and that Bill Clinton deserved to be taken down. Udall finds that line of reasoning appalling.

[Bruce Udolph]

The humiliation and hurt to Monica Lewinsky. The hell with that. She's expendable. Is that something to be proud of? Does that vindicate one for advocating that kind of position? I don't think so.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

You don't have to agree with Bruce Udolph, but it's worth dwelling on his anger for a minute, because he's not the only one who's angry. A lot of people who played a role in the Clinton Lewinsky saga get angry when they think about it, for all kinds of different reasons. Some are angry that Clinton's presidency survived. Others are angry that the political forces that aligned against him were. Were so effective at crippling his administration. And there are also a lot of people who are angry on behalf of Monica Lewinsky. I was in middle school when the scandal broke. I remember it sort of. I remember being confused about why Clinton got to stay president even though he'd been impeached. And I remember that as a child of Democrats, I took Clinton's side and believed sort of vaguely and ambiently that Ken Starr was in the wrong. I'd like to think that I felt sympathy for Monica Lewinsky, but I honestly don't know if I did. A lot of people didn't. That's part of what I want to examine on this season of Slow Burn. I want to get into the minds of people who followed the scandal and talked about it and argued about it. And I want to try to figure out why they reacted to it the way they did. I want to think about how I would have reacted to it if I'd been able to process it then as the person I am now. I want to excavate the ideas that swirled around the Clinton saga. Ideas about sex and power and privacy and character. And I want to consider how those ideas have changed since the 1990s. Are we more enlightened now, or is there something we're not appreciating about what it was like to live through this story in real time? The 90s were a transformative period in American politics, A time when the culture of no holds barred partisan warfare that we're all used to now first took hold in Washington. January 16, 1998, represented a turning point in that era. You could argue that it determined everything that happened next. If monica lewinsky had agreed to cooperate that day, it's likely ken starr would have been able to seize the moment, and he would have sent an impeachment referral to congress very quickly. Instead, it took him the better part of a year, and by that point, the shock of the scandal had worn off. It's possible that if the impeachment process had started sooner than while public outrage at clinton's conduct was at its peak, the president would have been forced out of office. For renata adler, this is the part of the story that gets forgotten that Monica lewinsky's refusal to succumb to ken starr saved bill clinton's presidency. Scared as she was on that Friday afternoon, Lewinsky was unwilling to get wired up and sent off to spy on the president.

[Renata Adler]

That is where she comes through. I mean, as I can't imagine anybody else would she. She just said no. I think there's an honesty perhaps under everything else that there is in the way Monica lewinsky presents herself. She doesn't disguise herself. I just think that's admirable. I just persist in thinking that's admirable. She didn't do it.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Not that it helped lewinsky very much, though. The newsweek story that was supposed to come out that weekend got held up by the magazine's editors. The affair soon became public knowledge anyway, thanks to a story on a previously obscure website called the drudge report. From there, lewinsky rapidly became famous around the world.

[Host/Commentator]

The president, the intern, the accusations, and the denials.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Tuesday overnight, explosive news about the president. The center of the controversy, Monica lewinsky.

[Susan Schmidt]

Lewinsky has been described by a number of sources as flirtatious and mildly obsessed with the president.

[News Reporter]

One law enforcement source put it this way, quote, we're going to dangle an indictment in front of her and see where that gets us tonight.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

The fate of this administration, how it will go down in history, is in her hands. Reporters started staking out lewinsky's apartment at the watergate. One day, her neighbor bob dole, the republican senator from kansas who had run against Clinton in 96, brought the reporters a box of donuts. Later, when lewinsky moved out of the building, she sent letters to all the other residents, written on blue stationery, in which she apologized for any inconvenience she might have caused. Next week on slow burn, we'll go back to bill clinton's chaotic first year in office, revisiting the strange, forgotten scandals and conspiracy theories that lay the groundwork for his eventual undoing.

[Susan Schmidt]

They just kept on being their own worst enemies, and their actual worst enemies.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

Were more than happy to take their missteps and exploit them for all they were worth. Slow Burn is a production of Slate plus, Slate's membership program. You can sign up for Slate plus to hear a bonus episode of the show this week and every week for the next two months. Our first bonus episode features a behind the scenes discussion about the making of our new season and why it was so much harder than making the first one. The bonus episode also includes a fabulous interview I did with Jerome Hague and Lily Morata, creators of a fictionalized mini series about Monica Lewinsky that imagines her life after the scandal. She had started a handbag design company, right?

[Will]

Yes, which are incredible objects if you think about it, because they really are a product of trauma.

[Narrator (Leon Neyfak)]

This episode of episode of Slow Burn was co produced by me and Andrew Parsons, editorial direction by Josh Levine and Gabriel Roth. Our researcher is Madeline Kaplan, our theme song is by Spatial Relations and this episode featured music by Wet, whose album Still Run is out now. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at chipsny. TJ Raphael is Senior Producer of the Slate Podcast Network. Steve Lichtai is the Executive Producer of Slate Podcast. On our show page you can check out a bibliography with all the books, articles and documentaries we consulted during the making of this episode. Special thanks to the NBC News Archive, CBS News and C Span for the archival audio you heard in this episode. For script notes and all kinds of other help, we want to thank Ava Lubel, Faith Smith, Chow Tu, June Thomas, Ben Frisch, Mary Wilson, Allison Benedict, Mike Pesca, Jeff Friedrich, Willa Paskin, Carrie Baker, Alice Gregory, Camilla Hammer, Johnny Dock, Ben Koala, John Liu, Mark Feeney, Todd Lippy, Ellen Horn, Avi Zentelman and Julia Turner. See you next.