A Noisy, Determined Monica

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

September 17, 1998 / 7:05 PM EDT / CBS

After Bill Clinton ended their relationship, Monica Lewinsky apparently decided if the president wasn't in love with her, he was certainly in debt to her. CBS News Correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports on an emerging profile of the White House intern.

Ken Starr's report says Lewinsky "felt the president owed her a job." The report says the president promised Lewinsky his help, and paints a picture of a woman who wouldn't go away and who pestered and threatened until she got it.

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"It's inappropriate the way she reacted" says Naomi Wolf, who writes on women's issues. "Women are no longer playing by the script of 'ok, you know, you can use me, I'll hope for the best but if I don't get what was promised for me I'll just be silent.'"

Lewinsky started to make noise after being transferred from her White House job to the Pentagon. She wanted to come back -- very badly. According to Starr, Lewinsky sent the President a "peevish letter" that "took the President to task" for not helping her enough.

There was an ominous part of that letter, according to Starr, who writes that Ms. Lewinsky also obliquely threatened to disclose their relationship. If she was not going to return to work at the White House, she wrote, then she would need to explain to her parents exactly why that wasn't happening.

"I think it's not surprising that if they played hardball with her she's gonna play hardball back," says Wolf. "It's indefensible in my view. In my view she should have severed her ties professionally with her lover."

The day after the threatening letter, Ms. Lewinsky was invited to the Oval Office. It was July 4th, hours before the President went to a fireworks display with his wife.

Starr says Lewinsky remembers their meeting began contentiously, with the President scolding her that "it is illegal to threaten the President of the United States."

According to Starr, the former intern continued to pressure the president, at one point demanding a job in New York within three weeks. Starr says she knew how to get what she wanted.

It was reportedly her idea to get Clinton confidant Vernon Jordan to make calls on her behalf. She appears to know Mr. Clinton could be criticized if he used White House officials to help her.

In a note to the president quoted by Starr, Lewinsky wrote that "the most important things to me are that I am engaged and inteested in my work, I am not someone's administrative/executive assistant and my salary can provide me a comfortable living in New York."

"Look, unfortunately the Starr report looks like a clear case of people using each other," Wolf says, "but the person who had the power and the person who was the boss is the person who is ultimately responsible, and that's the guy in charge."

Monica Lewinsky got her job in New York, but of course she never actually started work. The job offer was rescinded when the scandal broke.

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