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Lewinsky's mother worried Clinton was 'using' her daughter

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, October 2) -- Monica Lewinsky's mother, Marcia Lewis, testified in February that her daughter did not tell her about an affair with President Bill Clinton, but Lewis began suspecting otherwise after Lewinsky said she loved Clinton.

After her suspicions were heightened, Lewis testified that she agonized over the situation and pleaded with her daughter to leave Washington.

"I begged her to get another job. I begged her to date other people and start a different life," Lewis told Independent Counsel Ken Starr's grand jury. "But there was no way and nothing I could have done at that time and no one I could have said this to, because it would have been unbelievable."

Prosecutors asked Lewis: "Do you know if the president used Monica sexually?

"I do not," Lewis answered.

"Do you believe the president used Monica sexually?" prosecutors asked.

"There have been times that I believed that. Yes," Lewis admitted.

During her two days of testimony, less than a month after news of the affair erupted, Lewis depicted herself as a loving, caring parent, but said she was not the casual confidante sometimes depicted in the news media.

"In my way of thinking, I am very close," she testified. "I'm not close the way they say in the newspapers. I'm not that kind of close. I think I'm close as a mother is to her daughter."

Lewis said Lewinsky never told her she was intimate with the president, but that a number of factors led her to believe the relationship was physical, including the fact that Lewinsky and the president exchanged messages and gifts, and that her daughter had placed an anonymous Valentine's Day message to Clinton in The Washington Post.

She said her suspicions also were raised by her daughter's comment that she felt "used" by the president.

Asked why she felt the president "used" Lewinsky, Lewis answered: "Because there were times that I couldn't imagine what else was going on, why she was going there."

Lewis said she agonized over the situation, but didn't share her concerns with anyone else.

"It was very hard to share it with anyone because I don't think anybody would have believed it anyway and it's also embarrassing and not very pleasant and not what you would like people to think about your daughter," Lewis confessed

After Lewinsky was transferred to the Pentagon, Lewis testified, she did not want her daughter to return to the White House.

"I tried to get her to join groups in Washington where they had charity groups for young professionals. I tried to get her to meet young men her own age. I asked her all kinds of things," Lewis testified. "I did what mothers do when they're trying to get a grown-up child off a bad course. But I, myself, could not control this situation. I tried to. I could not control it."

In response to questions, Lewis acknowledged that she had once reminded her daughter about Mary Jo Kopechne, the young woman who was killed in a car being driven by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D- Massachusetts).

"What did you mean?" a prosecutor asked Lewis.

"That it is dangerous for foolish young women to -- to -- to -- to get involved in things that are not --not where they should be involved," Lewis answered.

"And that the better course would be to deny any sexual relationship?" prosecutors responded.

"No sir," Lewis answered. "The better course would be not to do it."

Lewis testified that she never asked her daughter -- point blank -- if the relationship was sexual.

Even after prosecutors confronted Lewinsky about the relationship and questioned mother and daughter at a Virginia hotel room, the two did not discuss the physical nature of the affair, Lewis told the grand jury.

"I don't -- I don't think you could imagine what condition Monica has been in since that meeting, as you call it, in the hotel that night. So we did not have any discussions of any substance from that night to today," Lewis said.

Lewis's second day of testimony, February 11, evidently was emotionally draining for Lewis. During a seemingly innocuous question about family nicknames, Prosecutor Soloman Wisenberg stopped and asked Lewis if she was alright, according to the hearing transcript.

In another document, a court official wrote that Lewis's left the courtroom crying loudly and exclaiming, "I can't take it, I can't take anymore, I can't stand it."

Lewis's attorney asked the marshals to summon medical aid. The courthouse nurse arrived about five minutes later and spoke briefly to Lewis, who declined to have her blood pressure taken and left the courthouse with her attorney.


Investigating the President

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Friday, October 2, 1998

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