Actress Admits Affair With Clinton

As White House personnel officers testify before a Washington grand jury investigating President Clinton, an actress in New York says she had sex with Mr. Clinton when he was Arkansas governor but it was consensual.

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This is the fourth time that Hernreich, a long-time friend of Mr. Clinton who is now director of Oval Office operations, has appeared before the grand jury convened by independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

Another White House staff member, Marsha Scott, also was expected to testify Tuesday. A friend of Clinton's from his days in Arkansas, Scott is now White House personnel chief.

The Daily News in New York reported Tuesday that actress Elizabeth Ward Gracen has denied allegations by a former friend that Clinton forced her into sex in the back of a limousine in 1982.

Gracen, 37, who plays the role of an immortal warrior on the TV series Highlander, previously denied any sexual liaison with Clinton, the Daily News said.

"The lies gain credibility every day that I don't address them," Gracen was quoted as saying in the newspaper. "I had to put a stop to it. It's become a three-ring circus. This is something I don't want to talk about at all."

Gracen's former friend Judy Stokes has given a sworn deposition in the Paula Jones case , saying Gracen tearfully told her in the mid-1980s that Clinton forced her into sex in 1982.

Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, is suing the president for sexual harassment. Mr. Clinton has denied her accusations.

"That never happened. It's completely false," Gracen told the Daily News. Gracen said she met Mr. Clinton at an apartment in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1983. They had previously met socially. They were both married and it was the year after Gracen's reign as Miss America.

"I was never a government employee, he never acted improperly, he never asked me to lie, he never gave me a job," Gracen said.

In another newspaper report, a conservative Chicago fund-raiser says he spent $80,000 to help orchestrate disclosure of sexual misconduct allegations against President Clinton.

Investment banker Peter Smith told the Chicago Sun-Times he was motivated by a desire to help re-elect then-President George Bush and was not part of any so-called Right Wing conspiracy to discredit r. Clinton.

"It was an independent effort to have the untold story told by the mainstream press," Smith told the Sun-Times in a copyright article published today.

Smith said his money included payments to two Arkansas state troopers and to a conservative reporter who broke the story of allegations that Mr. Clinton used state troopers to procure women for him, including Paula Jones, when he was governor of Arkansas.

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