ANNOUNCER: Previously on "Clinton"... Today I proudly announce my candidacy for president of the United States of America.

(crowd applauding, cheering) I think he always had political ambition.

I think he was born with political ambition.

JOHN HARRIS: In his teen years, lots of people were saying, with total seriousness, they expected Bill Clinton to be president someday.

Now is a time for leadership, and the people are crying for it.

JAMES CARVILLE: I've never seen a candidate, never seen a human being, who can understand the dimensions, the parameters, the, the nuances, of any kind of a policy or political problem.

CONNIE CHUNG: Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton is denying a report of an extramarital affair.

How many times?

Where did you meet her?

How likely is she to talk?

You know, I'm not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.

He willed himself back into that race.

And I'll be there for you till the last dog dies.

(crowd applauding, cheering) There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

DAVID GERGEN: There was this joy and buoyancy.

He had so much promise about him.

"Wow, this is going to be really, really good for the country."

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: No governor ever elected to the presidency has ever understood what they were getting into.

Is there a teleprompter?

O'DONNELL: And he looked more unprepared than most.

What are we going to do about the teleprompter?

What...?

JONATHAN ALTER: Other presidents have not had the enemies that Bill Clinton had.

For whatever reason, they hated his guts and they would go to the end of the Earth to destroy him.

I had nothing to do with the management of Whitewater.

Hillary had nothing to do with it.

We didn't keep the books or the records.

BERNARD NUSSBAUM: We couldn't stop these attacks.

This is the nature of the game down here.

They want to kill you.

They want to, they want to take your blood out.

They want you to go to jail.

Our country needs health security that's decent, affordable, for every American.

If I wanted the first lady to be president, I'd vote for her for president.

This is real change.

This is a real revolution.

HARRIS: His presidency wasn't over, but at the time, it was not obvious how it would go forward.

He had to reinvent his presidency.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (helicopter blades whirring) (sirens wailing) BILL CLINTON: Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, my fellow Americans.

Again, we are here in the sanctuary of democracy, and once again, our democracy has spoken.

NARRATOR: On January 24, 1995, President Bill Clinton addressed Congress and the American people.

Two years into his presidency, and just months after suffering the worst midterm election defeat in modern history, he was chastened and humble.

And now all of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, must say, "We hear you.

We will work together to earn the jobs you have given us."

(audience applauding) ♪ ♪ MARK PENN: After the midterms, the president, I think, felt that he was almost a hostage in his own White House.

He was unhappy with the White House staff, he was unhappy with the policy direction, and so he actually began a very quiet operation to begin to change his administration.

NARRATOR: Beginning in early 1995, White House staffers began to notice a change in the president.

His speeches contained unfamiliar language and cadences.

In meetings, he'd get up abruptly and leave the room.

Many aides felt he was no longer listening to them.

ROBERT REICH: I recall a meeting that the president's economic advisers and political advisers were having about how he was going to spend the next three weeks, what themes he was going to emphasize.

And I remember somebody from the back of the room, I think it was Erskine Bowles, then the president's chief of staff, saying, "This is all irrelevant."

Irrelevant?

We're the staff.

We are the people who help the president.

Why are we irrelevant?

And he didn't exactly say.

He said there was some other force in the White House.

And again and again, there seemed to be instances-- it was almost like in astronomy, there's a black hole, and you can only tell it's there because planets begin moving into its gravitational orbit.

But you look and there's nothing there.

That was Dick Morris.

Dick Morris was the black hole.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Dick Morris, an abrasive political consultant from New York, had a history with the Clintons that went all the way back to Arkansas.

HARRIS: Other than Hillary Clinton, he was the most important political adviser that Bill Clinton had had over the course of his career.

He was there for the very first election to governor in 1978 and had been with Bill Clinton for most of the Arkansas gubernatorial years.

NARRATOR: Morris set up shop in the White House and began to chair weekly strategy meetings that were attended by most of the president's senior staff.

HAROLD ICKES: Clinton typically dominates any group or discussion that he's in.

In the meetings on the second floor of the residence, which we had every week, Clinton would literally sit there for an hour sometimes, hardly saying a word, listening to Morris.

MORRIS: When I first started to work for Clinton in the White House, he had two big negatives: a third of the country thought he was immoral and a third of the country thought he was weak, and I basically went to him and I said, "I can't do much about the immoral, but we sure can solve the weak."

And therefore we embarked on a conscious strategy of making sure people saw Clinton as strong.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: The heart of Morris's operation was his polling, which he used to diagnose where Clinton's weaknesses lay and how he could correct them.

HARRIS: Polling became absolutely central.

How do we present ourselves as an alternative to Newt Gingrich?

How are people seeing the president?

What sort of policies would make them feel better about Bill Clinton?

JOE KLEIN: They polled everything.

They polled every last word that came out of his mouth.

They polled where he should go on vacation.

Instead of going to Martha's Vineyard, that elite island off the coast of Massachusetts, they had him riding a horse in Wyoming.

I think Bill Clinton's allergic to horses.

But that's what the focus groups said would be more, a more acceptable vacation.

MORRIS: One of the big problems was the relationship between Bill and Hillary.

Voters thought that it was a zero-sum game, that for Hillary to be strong, Bill would have to be weak.

And as a result, the perception of Hillary's strength became a perception of Bill's weakness.

The polling made me understand that, and when I came back to work for Clinton, one of the first things I did was to tell Hillary, "You can be as influential as you want to be, "but do it in private.

"Don't sit in on the strategy meetings, "don't make the appointments, "don't make everybody be cleared with you.

"At the bedroom at night, tell him what to do, but don't let it be seen in public."

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Morris's advice hit home.

After the stunning defeat in the midterm elections, Hillary had received a large share of the blame.

ICKES: She was outspoken, she was smart, she was hard-driving, and some people resented her.

Remember, during the campaign, there was two for the price of one?

Well, people aren't electing two for the price of one.

They're electing the president.

GAIL SHEEHY: She had been caught out trying to be a co-president.

That just wasn't gonna fly, and that's when she had to begin to really re-examine, again, as she did as governor's wife, "What does the public want from me in this role?"

And to take on gradually a little bit more of the traditional role of first lady.

Well, welcome to the White House and to the beginning of the Christmas season here.

NARRATOR: Unsatisfied by her ceremonial role as first lady, Hillary began working on issues important to her, but not alarming to the public.

She began writing a book about children and traveled abroad with Chelsea to advocate for women's rights.

She wrote a weekly syndicated column, and even consulted a psychic in the White House.

But it wasn't enough.

SHEEHY: She felt, for one of the rare times in her life, completely depressed.

She said everything that she was doing wasn't working.

She just didn't know what to do anymore, because she really wanted to be in there right at Bill Clinton's side, fighting all the political battles that he was doing.

The president wants to defend Washington bureaucracy, Washington red tape, and Washington spending, and higher taxes to pay for less out of Washington.

NARRATOR: While the Clintons struggled to find their way back from the political wilderness, their rival, Republican speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, was dominating politics in Washington.

TRENT LOTT: I think Newt felt like he had led a great revolution and led the House-- and, and the Senate, for that matter-- to victory, and that he could... we could be the, you know, the driving force in this city, and that he was, in effect, comparable or equal to the president.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Gingrich and his newly elected army of Republican representatives quickly passed bill after bill from their "Contract with America."

Sensing his strength, Gingrich was intent on drawing Clinton into a political showdown that would determine, once and for all, who was in charge.

♪ ♪ In the spring of 1995, Gingrich picked his battleground.

I think the central issue that we challenged the Clinton administration on was on the budget.

We wanted to balance the budget.

We thought that was the most important domestic policy issue that existed in the country, and it was gonna be ugly, as all deficit fights inevitably are.

What you currently have is a system designed to be a centralized bureaucracy.

NARRATOR: In May, Gingrich unveiled a plan to eliminate the federal budget deficit in seven years through huge cuts in government spending.

Most of the cuts would be concentrated in two government health insurance programs: Medicare and Medicaid.

(cameras clicking) Gingrich had managed to shift the focus of power and media attention from Clinton to himself.

CHRIS JENNINGS: Washington and the media is all about the new flavor of the month.

And the new flavor of the month was not the Clinton administration.

You had Newt Gingrich.

I mean, he was a powerful, charismatic figure who had an answer to every question.

There are three themes that define where we are right now.

JENNINGS: And he not only wasn't afraid to talk, he longed to talk.

His problem was, over time, he talked too much.

NARRATOR: With Gingrich in the spotlight, Clinton seemed increasingly peripheral.

April 18, 1995.

Bill Clinton gives a press conference, and we're all over him about his lack of power.

Newt's running the town!

Newt's in control!

Yes, Jean.

REPORTER: President Clinton, Republicans have dominated political debate in this country since they took over Congress in January, and even tonight, two of the major television networks declined to broadcast this event live.

Do you worry about making sure that your voice is heard in the coming months?

Clinton is forced to say that the president is still relevant here.

The Constitution gives me relevance, the power of our ideas gives me relevance, the record we have built up over the last two years and the things we are trying to do to implement it give it relevance.

The president is relevant here.

DEE DEE MYERS: It was awful.

You know, "The president is still relevant."

Um... Just the fact that he felt compelled to say those words says everything.

I am willing to work with the Republicans.

The question is, what happens now?

Yes.

(helicopter blades whirring, sirens wailing) NEWSCASTER: About a third of the building has been blown away.

♪ ♪ SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL: The next day, on April 19, the bomb went off at Oklahoma City.

(baby crying) It was the largest domestic terrorist event in American history.

♪ ♪ (crying) BLUMENTHAL: That changed everything.

(cameras clicking) The bombing in Oklahoma City was an attack on innocent children and defenseless citizens.

It was an act of cowardice and it was evil.

The United States will not tolerate it, and I will not allow the people of this country to be intimidated by evil cowards.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Within 48 hours of the incident, the FBI arrested 26-year-old Timothy McVeigh, a former soldier with a burning hatred for the government.

His massive truck bomb, detonated outside the Murrah Federal Building, killed 149 workers, along with 19 children.

Four days after the bombing, Clinton traveled to Oklahoma City to console the mourners.

DON BAER: I went with him down to Oklahoma City for that Sunday morning.

On the flight, we worked on the speech some more.

He was very focused on what to say.

I remember, we went into what I think they call the Cow Palace, and I've never been in a setting that was as eerily silent as that one was, except for the sound of sobbing.

♪ ♪ ROBERT McNEELY: He stood there for hours and met with every single person and talked to everybody.

It's kind of a throwaway line now, "I feel your pain," but he literally could.

I mean, he could take people and just hug them and connect to them in a way, and, and really listen to them.

CLINTON: You have lost too much, but you have not lost everything.

And you have certainly not lost America, for we will stand with you.

(audience applauding) PETER BAKER: He really found a way to embrace the country, to help them channel their grief, their confusion.

It gets him out of the mode of reacting to Congress and into the mode of being a national leader, a person that the country can look to for assurance and reliance and strength.

To all my fellow Americans beyond this hall, I say, one thing we owe those who have sacrificed is the duty to purge ourselves of the dark forces which gave rise to this evil.

MICHAEL WALDMAN: He spoke to the country as a unifying, a healing figure.

But, very subtly, and appropriately, he also drew attention to the fact that the rhetoric Timothy McVeigh was using was not all that different from the rhetoric that the talk show hosts and the militias and even some of the members of Congress were using.

Let us teach our children that the God of comfort is also the God of righteousness.

Those who trouble their own house will inherit the wind.

BAER: Here was a president who had been, by many people, deemed not to be strong, who suddenly was being viewed as both sensitive and strong, which was a great and very powerful combination.

At that moment, perhaps for the first moment, he inhabited the presidency.

(people talking in background) NARRATOR: Bill Clinton had begun to find his voice at home, but he commanded little respect on the international stage.

(people yelling, guns firing) NARRATOR: For two years, Clinton had stumbled through a series of foreign policy mishaps.

An ill-considered action in Somalia had cost the lives of 18 U.S. soldiers and deterred the president from asserting American military power around the world.

(explosion echoes) Without strong U.S. leadership, the world's problems were reaching a critical state.

In Central Europe, Bosnian Serbs had begun wiping out the largely Muslim population in their own country.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: In 1995, the massacres in Bosnia were in full swing.

Daily rivers of blood.

Really, it was appalling.

(gunfire rattling in distance) (fires) After two years of this kind of savagery, Bill Clinton had a disaster on his hands.

This was genocide in Europe.

NARRATOR: Since becoming president, Clinton had deferred to European countries with soldiers in Bosnia as part of the United Nations peacekeeping operation.

(explosion bangs) KOFI ANNAN: One has to understand that when you are in, in a peacekeeping operation, which is an international effort, one president cannot call the shots.

One president cannot take the decision.

Particularly when the president's country has no troops on the ground.

(child crying) NARRATOR: Clinton's reluctance to send American soldiers to Bosnia collided with growing calls for U.S. intervention.

Mr. President, I cannot not tell you something.

I have been in the former Yugoslavia.

We must do something to stop the bloodshed in that country!

MORRIS: The ongoing scenes of this horrific genocidal slaughter going on by the Serbs against the Muslims was just undermining Clinton's image day after day.

Clinton would complain, "The media's trying to force me into a war and I don't want it.

I'm not going to go into my own Vietnam."

And every night, these images came on the screen.

(fires) (gunfire rattling in distance, explosion bangs) NARRATOR: The violence in Bosnia reached a climax in the summer of 1995.

A new set of European leaders implored Clinton to act.

"The position of leader of the free world," complained French president Jacques Chirac, "is vacant."

Privately, Clinton had begun to rethink his policy.

Haunted by his failure to stop a genocide in Rwanda the previous year, he could no longer stand idly by.

MORRIS: Finally, the president set up a trip wire where, if the Bosnian Serbs attacked, it would trigger a massive NATO military response.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb soldiers overran the city of Srebrenica and murdered more than 8,000 defenseless men and boys.

♪ ♪ ANNAN: That was a real shock for everyone.

And then, and for that to happen in Europe, many decades after World War II, was something that nobody could sit back and swallow.

NARRATOR: For Clinton, the wire had been tripped.

On August 30, fighter planes from NATO bases across Europe, acting on the president's go-ahead, launched a massive attack against Serbs in Bosnia called "Operation Deliberate Force."

♪ ♪ RICHARD CLARKE: He didn't blink.

And there wasn't tension on him, there wasn't pressure on him, he wasn't sweating and worrying about, "Did I do the right thing?"

We knew then, we knew that day, that we had a commander-in-chief who was rational and comfortable with the use of force.

(crews talking in radio) NARRATOR: For the next two weeks, NATO pilots flew 3,500 sorties, as millions around the world watched the air war unfold on television.

REPORTER: The NATO action began early this morning, the harsh light of fires and explosions coloring the night sky.

Some people watched the bombardment from their houses, but after more than 10,000 deaths here in the last three years, most Sarajevans had given up any hope of outside intervention.

Last night, it came on a scale which could yet change the course of this war.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: On September 14, Serbian guns ringing Sarajevo fell silent.

Two months later, Clinton convened the warring parties in Dayton, Ohio, to negotiate an end to hostilities.

The parties have agreed to put down their arms and roll up their sleeves and work for peace.

AMANPOUR: Finally, when you got tough and you said, "Enough already, "we don't accept genocide at the end of the 20th century in our backyard," they got serious, and it stopped.

And then the United States-- not the Europeans-- led the Dayton peace process.

And to this day, imperfect as it may be, it has held.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: The Dayton Peace Accords were a triumph for Clinton's foreign policy and restored his standing as leader of the free world.

The same month, he visited the troubled country of Northern Ireland, where crowds hailed him as a peacemaker.

The young people-- Catholic and Protestant alike-- made it clear to me not only with their words, but by the expressions on their faces, that they want peace.

(crowd cheering) NARRATOR: After three years as president, he had developed a new vision of America's interests abroad.

It would come to be known as the "Clinton Doctrine."

CLINTON: It's easy to say that we really have no interests in who lives in this or that valley in Bosnia, or who owns a strip of brushland in the Horn of Africa, or some piece of parched earth by the Jordan River.

But the true measure of our interests lies not in how small or distant these places are, or in whether we have trouble pronouncing their names.

The question we must ask is, what are the consequences to our security of letting conflicts fester and spread?

We cannot, indeed, we should not, do everything or be everywhere.

But where our values and our interests are at stake, and where we can make a difference, we must be prepared to do so.

♪ ♪ WESLEY CLARK: There was a Clinton Doctrine, but it wasn't purely a military doctrine.

It was a national security doctrine.

President Clinton thought the United States is an indispensable nation.

You can't do things without the United States.

It may not be only the United States, and it's certainly not doing it alone, but it's the United States that brings the decisive edge in being able to get things done.

And that where you can make a difference, you should.

♪ ♪ In the latest poll I saw, 86% of the American people said, "Balance the budget now.

Don't wait, don't postpone, don't give us promises."

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Even as Clinton brought peace to Europe, the ideological war at home was heating up.

Speaker Newt Gingrich was standing by his balanced budget proposal, daring the president to veto it.

Once again, Clinton hoped to use his powers of persuasion to end the impasse.

LEON PANETTA: He was thinking, "What I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna capture these guys.

"Because A, I'm smarter than they are, "and B, that's my whole life's learning, "is how to capture people.

"And I'm gonna do it through sheer force of personality.

"I can sit down with Newt Gingrich, I can sit down with the devil himself, and I can cut a deal."

NARRATOR: Gingrich would not yield to Clinton's charms.

Unless the president agreed to huge cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, Congress would refuse to appropriate money for the federal government, shutting it down.

BLANKLEY: The one thing that the House of Representatives has is the power of the purse.

They can deny money.

It is the only thing that the House of Representatives alone can do-- it can refuse to vote an appropriation.

So, inevitably, whatever the fight was going to be, it was going to come down to us denying the, the White House money.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Clinton seemed caught between two toxic political choices.

If he opposed Gingrich's balanced budget plan, he would be portrayed as a defender of big government deficits; if he gave in, he would effectively cede control of the government to Gingrich and the Republicans.

But there was a third option.

Dick Morris had been polling the Republicans' proposed budget cuts and believed he had found an opening.

MORRIS: I did a poll for Clinton where I tested each of those cuts and its impact.

And I said to him, "Do you want the four-hour briefing or the one-word briefing?"

And he said, "Start with the one word."

I said, "Medicare."

I said, "You, none of the other cuts are nearly as important as the cut they're proposing in Medicare."

NARRATOR: The public supported a balanced budget, Morris argued, but not at the expense of their most cherished federal program.

MORRIS: I said that what's important is that you take away from the Republicans the balanced budget issue.

If you can show how you can balance the budget without cutting Medicare, but by cutting everything else, then you can call their bluff.

And then all of a sudden, it becomes a question of, "What do we cut?"

not "Do we cut?"

NARRATOR: Morris called his strategy "triangulation."

Clinton seized on it as a way to regain the initiative from the Republicans.

In June, over the strong objections of liberals on his staff, he announced his own balanced budget plan, protecting Medicare and Medicaid.

There is an alternative, a way to balance this budget.

It's not that we shouldn't balance the budget.

We should balance the budget.

I strongly support it; we ought to do that.

I believe we're going to do that.

But we don't have to do it in a draconian way that hurts the American people.

You know, whether or not to balance the budget, we can't win that fight-- we're going to lose.

Once you accept that we're going to balance the budget, now let's have a fight about what we're going to cut and what we're going to protect.

That's a fight we can win.

Are you going to protect Medicare?

Are you going to protect Social Security?

You want to shut down the government over that?

Let's, let's go.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: In mid-November, with the issue of Medicare cuts still dividing the two sides, the federal government ran out of money and shut down.

Nearly a million federal employees were instantly furloughed; government offices closed; all but the most essential services ground to a halt.

VOICEMAIL MESSAGES: The Washington Passport Agency is closed for lack of funding.

Due to the shutdown of the federal government, Social Security... Library of Congress...

The National Park Service... ...is closed indefinitely.

If it ends soon, the shutdown will have been a temporary inconvenience.

But if prolonged, it could cost the country a lot of anguish and many millions of dollars.

BAKER: Clinton took a gamble, the biggest gamble of his presidency to that point, in saying, "No, I'm going to let the government shut down rather than accept the cuts that you're proposing here."

REPORTER: Day three and nobody moves, least of all the 800,000 federal workers forced to stay home.

The American people should not be held hostage anymore to the Republican budget priorities.

PROTESTERS: Work, work, put the government back to work.

NARRATOR: Through a first shutdown in November and then a longer one in December, neither Clinton nor Gingrich blinked.

It was high-stakes poker.

Whichever side was blamed for the shutdown would probably lose the next presidential election.

BLANKLEY: Our conviction was, ultimately, a president is held responsible for his government.

And that if we didn't blink, at some point, the public would say, "The president needs to get this government functioning."

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: The pressure on the president was enormous.

Every day, the political damage mounted.

Almost a billion dollars in lost wages; new Medicare and Social Security claims going unprocessed; the federal government unable to discharge even its most basic functions.

And the confrontation played out on television every night.

Day 13 of the federal budget crisis and the shutdown that's brought parts of the government to a dead stop.

The major players were all assembled in Washington today, and they were talking, but not to each other.

Now, one of the major problems we have in America is, we have a president who doesn't mind playing, he doesn't mind talking, but he seems to hate working.

We're working.

This was all sui generis, this was completely new.

Nobody knew the temperament of the country, how it was going to play out.

And it was literally hour by hour, certainly day by day.

♪ ♪ JENNINGS: There was a fear by many Democrats, even some within the White House, who just thought, "You know, he's not going to be able to say 'no' to them.

"He wants to get along with them.

He thinks that's the way to save his presidency."

NARRATOR: With the government closed, Clinton prowled the empty halls of the White House, deprived of the human contact he craved.

Among the few people permitted to come to work were the White House interns, including a 22-year-old named Monica Lewinsky.

The daughter of a Beverly Hills doctor and his socialite wife, Lewinsky was a graduate of Oregon's Lewis & Clark College.

She had an air of confidence, even boldness, that set her apart from her fellow interns.

♪ ♪ On November 15, the second day of the shutdown, Clinton and Lewinsky struck up a conversation in which Lewinsky confessed, "I have a huge crush on you."

There were almost these sparks flying between them from that first moment when, when they saw each other, and, as Monica said, "He gave me the full Bill Clinton and undressed me with his eyes."

NARRATOR: Hours later, the two had their first sexual encounter.

WILLIAM CHAFE: It's almost as though there was a part of Bill Clinton that he had no control over.

That whenever it had the opportunity to come out, it was gonna come out.

And with no forethought, with no calculation, with no sense of the consequences, it was simply gonna happen.

And that's terrifying.

♪ ♪ REPORTER: At this hour, U.S. president Bill Clinton is meeting with top Congressional leaders in another attempt to resolve their budget standoff.

NARRATOR: As Clinton recklessly pursued his affair with Lewinsky, he and Gingrich were locked in their own high-wire embrace.

The president offered compromise after compromise, but Gingrich would not budge.

Unless Clinton agreed to his formula of budget and tax cuts, he would keep the government closed.

BLUMENTHAL: They believed that he was soft, that he could be pushed around, and that they could have their way.

They believed that he lacked the confidence to stand up to them.

They believed they understood his psychology, and they thought that they had the political upper hand.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: But Clinton sensed that his political enemies had overreached and were out of step with the American people.

PENN: It was our theory that we were gonna win if it got to this point.

The polling showed it, we felt confident about it.

We thought we had a winning hand.

People don't really hate the government; they just don't want the government spending too much money.

They want the government doing the right things.

And they don't want the government shut down.

As long as they insist on plunging ahead with a budget that violates our values, in a process that is characterized more by pressure than constitutional practice, I will fight it.

I am fighting it today, I will fight it tomorrow.

I will fight it next week and next month.

(audience applauding) I will fight it until we get a budget that is fair to all Americans.

(crowd cheering and applauding) PANETTA: There is a moment I will never forget in the Oval Office.

We had been going through negotiations on the budget.

And there were some of us that were nervous that President Clinton might go too far, that he might want to go so far in compromising that he might hurt himself politically.

And so we kept putting different offers on the table, and they kept coming back and saying, "Not good enough, not good enough."

And we finally reached a day where he wanted to do one more compromise, one more step.

Newt Gingrich said, "No."

And Bill Clinton basically looked at them and said, "You know, Newt, I can't do what you want me to do.

"I don't believe it's right for the country.

And it may cost me the election, but I can't do it."

And my first reaction was, he's drawn a line that he had to draw.

He understood that he would have to take a risk of not winning, and winning was what he was always about.

From that moment, I think, in many ways, it became a renewal of Bill Clinton in terms of who he was, both within himself and with the American people.

PROTESTERS (chanting): We want to work!

We want to work!

As of last night, the public appeared to be more sympathetic to Mr. Clinton's position.

46% blamed the Republicans, 27% Mr. Clinton.

PETER KING: Many traditional Americans, including some Republicans, were outraged that a speaker of the House would shut down the government.

You know, Newt Gingrich is not the president.

He shouldn't be acting like he's the president.

Suddenly, Bill Clinton became the embodiment of traditional America.

He's the president of the United States.

Whether you agree with him or not, no one has the right to shut down the government when he's the president.

NARRATOR: Finally, Senator Bob Dole, worried that the shutdown would hurt his presidential campaign, corralled the necessary votes in the Senate to reopen the government.

Clinton had won.

(audience applauding) In the weeks that followed, Clinton staked out a middle ground between the two parties with a vision of government that was neither enemy nor savior.

The era of big government is over.

(audience applauding and cheering) But...

But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.

(audience applauding and cheering loudly) WALDMAN: It was a real change in his vision of how the presidency could work.

He had started with this heroic notion of the presidency-- passing big laws, doing grand things-- and then the public just rejected it.

It hit a brick wall of what the public thought of government.

And he realized that he had to change how he was president, and he had to rebuild that public trust in government.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Capitalizing on his momentum, Clinton announced a stream of initiatives designed to show middle-class Americans that he understood, and could improve, their lives.

MORRIS: After the government shutdown, we adopted a political strategy based on one word-- values.

And our concept was that we would help you raise your child better.

We have worked very hard to help communities fight crime.

MORRIS: "I'll provide you with drug-free school zones, school uniforms, medical leave for your children."

Reduce teen smoking by raising the price of cigarettes, putting into place tough restrictions on advertising... MORRIS: "I'll give you all of these weapons to raise better children."

This is a V-chip, and it will be required to be put in all new television sets.

NARRATOR: Not even the Republicans could stand in Clinton's way.

LOTT: After trying to move heaven and earth, big swaths in his first two years, he started feeding us up small pieces of bills.

And he'd get into our knickers with ideas that we really could not vote against: a hundred thousand cops on the street.

A Republican gonna vote against more law enforcement officers?

(audience applauding) NARRATOR: It was a politics of the possible-- not the things he dreamed of doing, but the things he could do.

MORRIS: He crafted a whole new view in American politics, literally a third way, a moderate way, and achieved the results the American people wanted.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Three years into his first term, Clinton had pulled one of the greatest Houdini acts in presidential history.

With approval ratings on the rise, he could once again call himself the Comeback Kid.

But as with nearly every Bill Clinton comeback, it was soon followed by yet another scandal.

Yesterday, a trove of documents from Mrs. Clinton's old law firm that various investigators issued subpoenas for months ago were suddenly discovered in the office of one of the Clintons' aides.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: In January 1996, a sheaf of Hillary's old billing records was discovered in the private residence of the White House.

The documents showed that she had done legal work for her old friend Jim McDougal while he was engaged in fraudulent real estate deals in Arkansas.

The Whitewater inquiry, which had receded from the front pages, suddenly came roaring back.

REPORTER: There's the issue of why it took the White House so long to turn up the billing records.

This is a pattern: delay, deception, withhold.

KEN GORMLEY: The discovery of the billing records for Hillary Clinton's work for Jim McDougal and Madison Guaranty was explosive.

Everyone had been looking for those billing records.

There were subpoenas all over the place to turn those over.

And then all of a sudden, they just show up.

Our job is to get at the truth and the truth will speak for itself, so thank you very much.

NARRATOR: The Whitewater inquiry was now in the hands of a new independent counsel.

Kenneth Starr had been appointed by a panel of conservative judges to replace Robert Fiske.

Starr was a respected jurist and former official in the Bush administration.

At first, his appointment caused little consternation in the White House.

ICKES: The jury was out initially, because Starr had quite a sterling reputation.

He was well known in judicial circles.

He was not rabid.

He was considered a very good conservative, a very good court of appeals justice, so people were hopeful.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: In fact, however, Starr would prove to be a far more aggressive independent counsel than his predecessor.

Unlike Fiske, who determined to finish his work quickly, Starr would follow his investigation wherever it led, no matter the cost in time or money.

MAX BRANTLEY: I came to believe it was a persecution, not a prosecution.

It was, it was an investigation in search of a crime, which is not how investigations are supposed to work.

♪ ♪ They were not investigating an allegation of a crime, they were looking for a crime.

NARRATOR: To Starr, the sudden appearance of Hillary's billing records seemed anything but accidental.

STARR: The discovery of the Rose Law Firm records was a very significant event.

It was a significant event because there had been a subpoena outstanding for those law firm records for a long, long time.

And the Rose Law Firm said, "We don't have them, and they were taken away."

And there were issues as to, well, why would law firm records leave the law firm?

They weren't individual records, they were law firm records.

So, why wouldn't they be there?

Where are they?

♪ ♪ REPORTER: Mrs. Clinton!

Good morning, how are you all?

REPORTER: Mrs. Clinton, how important is this week in terms of turning your image around?

Oh, I think it's important to talk about the book I've written about America's children, and that's what I'm going to try to do, plus answer all the questions.

NARRATOR: The discovery of her missing billing records undermined Hillary's efforts to recede from the public spotlight.

MAN: The Rose Law Firm records were found in the living quarters of the White House in August.

NARRATOR: As she set out on a national tour to promote her book on children, she could not escape questions about Whitewater.

MAN: It's an important question, Mrs. Clinton, because Republicans on the Senate banking committee... SHEEHY: She was totally under siege.

So was the president, but he allows this kind of thing much more easily to roll off his back.

Hillary becomes obsessed.

She has an enemy, the enemy is the special prosecutor, and it's, one or the other is going to be killed.

I think so, and we'll continue to do that.

NARRATOR: In Ken Starr, though, Hillary had met her match.

Behind his avuncular smile, he was relentless and implacable.

On January 19, Starr subpoenaed Hillary, the only first lady ever to have been forced to testify before a grand jury.

♪ ♪ Rather than take her testimony in the White House, he insisted that she come to the federal courthouse in downtown Washington.

I think the idea that they would make her come to the courthouse and to the grand jury was intended to humiliate her.

REPORTER: Would you rather have been somewhere else today?

Oh, about a million other places today, indeed.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: In the end, Hillary's billing records proved little.

They showed that she had represented Jim McDougal, but didn't prove she'd known he had used fraudulent loans to prop up the failing Whitewater development.

Though many urged him to drop the investigation, Starr redoubled his efforts.

PODESTA: He re-opened all the files that Fiske had closed; he chased down and challenged every privilege that had been afforded not just to President Clinton, but to previous presidents.

He decided to re-interview everybody, bring them all back to the grand jury.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: The independent counsel focused on finding witnesses in Arkansas who could testify to the Clintons' participation in fraudulent real estate deals 15 years before.

BRANTLEY: People at the lowest level were hurt.

People's lives were ruined.

People were left in debt that they took years to get out of.

They broke people.

I mean, investigators invaded high school campuses to put the thumbscrews on high school kids for information.

NARRATOR: In May, Starr was able to convict Jim McDougal of loan fraud.

Under the threat of imprisonment, McDougal agreed to cooperate.

Suddenly, he claimed that Bill Clinton had known about his illegal loans.

GORMLEY: After Jim McDougal is convicted, everything changes.

Up until that point, he never pointed the finger at the Clintons.

He never indicated that they were involved in wrongdoing.

But once he's convicted, all of a sudden, he begins coming up with stories that implicate the Clintons.

NARRATOR: McDougal's testimony was confused and contradictory; few believed him.

Unable to find other credible evidence, Starr felt stymied and increasingly determined to find something that would stick to the president.

GORMLEY: There's no question at all that at this point, the Starr prosecutors believe that the Clintons are hiding evidence and lying when they deny that they had involvement in some of McDougal's enterprises.

And conversely, the White House thinks that these Starr prosecutors have shifted, and now all they're doing is a president hunt.

(crowd cheering) NARRATOR: As Starr scoured the president's past for evidence of crimes, Clinton's prospects for the future were looking brighter than ever.

BAKER: By the time that he is heading into summer, looking toward the fall for his reelection, President Clinton is a new man again.

He's no longer the figure of ridicule, the weak figure he had become in 1994.

He's standing strong again with the public.

And his, his opponents are looking weak.

NARRATOR: Clinton's Republican opponent in the presidential election that fall was Kansas senator Robert Dole.

With the economy strong and Clinton resurgent, Dole could do little but characterize the president as a free-spending liberal.

The federal government is too big and it spends too much of your money-- your money.

NARRATOR: To force the issue, the Republican Congress in August sent Clinton a welfare reform bill he had already vetoed twice.

Welfare reform had been a key part of Clinton's "New Democrat" philosophy, but he was aware of how much liberals in his own party hated the bill.

HARRIS: Bill Clinton authentically believed in welfare reform.

That's welfare reform in the abstract.

He wasn't being asked to sign welfare reform in the abstract.

And so the question was, do you sign it and proclaim a victory knowing that to do so is to leave many in your own party's base hugely demoralized?

Or do you veto it and accept the consequences of vetoing popular legislation just a few months before the election?

It was an agonizing choice for Bill Clinton.

Good afternoon.

NARRATOR: In August, the president signed the welfare reform bill.

When I ran for president four years ago, I pledged to end welfare as we know it.

I have worked very hard for four years to do just that.

Today, the Congress will vote on legislation that gives us a chance to live up to that promise.

NARRATOR: Clinton's decision was the last straw for many on the left.

Several of his closest political allies resigned in protest.

O'DONNELL: It made him someone who was capable of anything.

And it no longer mattered what party he was in.

You couldn't tell what he would do and what he, what he would be willing to go along with.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: With welfare reform behind him, Clinton solidified his grip on the race.

Deprived of his last best campaign issue, Bob Dole waged an anemic race.

Clinton, meanwhile, campaigned with gusto.

We will together build a bridge to the 21st century wide enough and strong enough to take us to America's best days.

Will you do that?

(crowd cheering and applauding) ICKES: He was in his element.

He was shorn of this great burden that had been over him in '94.

He was out making the case in the best, most positive, and toughest way he could, and he was loving it.

KING: Clinton was no longer the issue.

People weren't asking how he became president, or, "This guy's illegitimate."

He was now looked upon as the president.

(crowd cheering and applauding) NARRATOR: In November, Clinton won by a margin that had once seemed inconceivable, taking 31 states and 70% of the electoral votes.

I, William Jefferson Clinton, do solemnly swear... That I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States.

That I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States.

BAKER: The reelection in 1996 is obviously one of the great comebacks in American politics.

A president who had been written off as, as roadkill just two years earlier managed to come back to a very convincing, uh, reelection in 1996, the first Democrat to win a second term since Franklin Roosevelt.

(crowd cheering) NARRATOR: Clinton had survived, some believed by selling his soul; others, by finding it again.

As he gave his second inaugural address, Bill Clinton sought to turn the page on the ugly partisan battles of the last four years.

The American people returned to office a president of one party and a Congress of another.

Surely they did not do this to advance the politics of petty bickering and extreme partisanship they plainly deplore.

BAER: The one part of that speech that I think mattered more to him than any other was his reference to the scriptural phrase to be the repairer of the breach, from Isaiah.

They call all us instead to be repairers of the breach.

BAER: He really felt like he had come through this trial by fire and storm, and that the country had, too, and that now we could repair the breach and move forward together.

He felt, he really believed, that he had this chance to build this bridge to the 21st century, and that we had to do certain things that would help all people to get there.

(crowd cheering) NARRATOR: As Clinton strode triumphantly down Pennsylvania Avenue flush with victory, there was no hint that he had already set in motion events that would soon divide the country as never before and nearly destroy his presidency.

(crowd cheering) Buoyed by his convincing reelection, Bill Clinton sailed confidently into his second term.

The economy was booming, lifting millions of people into better jobs, better homes, and better lives.

We have much to be thankful for.

With four years of growth, we have won back the basic strength of our economy.

With crime and welfare rolls declining, we are winning back our optimism, the enduring faith that we can master any difficulty.

NARRATOR: Around the world, American prestige and power had never been higher.

Even Clinton's longing to "repair the breach" with Republicans seemed possible.

♪ ♪ KING: It was two different worlds.

1997, beginning of Bill Clinton's second term, was totally different from the first term.

It was American politics the way it should be: a Republican Congress working with a Democratic president, trying to find areas they would agree on.

The hatred toward Bill Clinton was gone.

The hatred toward Hillary Clinton was gone.

Things had finally quieted down.

♪ ♪ But in Bill Clinton's life, things never stay quiet for long.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: By early 1997, at great risk to himself and his presidency, Bill Clinton had been carrying on his affair with Monica Lewinsky for over a year.

REICH: I've asked myself a number of times why he put himself and his presidency in jeopardy in such a careless way.

The presidency is probably the loneliest office in America.

Regardless of your friends, regardless of how good your marriage is, regardless of anything, you are alone there at the top.

And maybe Bill Clinton, who so much needed and wanted to be loved, couldn't say no to someone who was going to give him affection and wanted affection back.

MARLA CRIDER: There is something in his being that needs that adoration.

And she was forthcoming with it.

And she, Monica Lewinsky, just gave him something that he needed at that time: to be adored.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: The previous spring, Lewinsky's superiors in the White House had begun to notice her attraction to the president.

Quietly, she was transferred to a job across town at the Pentagon.

There, Lewinsky befriended a career civil servant named Linda Tripp.

Like Lewinsky, Tripp had come to the Pentagon after years working at the White House, first in the Bush administration, and then, less happily, in Clinton's.

JEFFREY TOOBIN: Linda Tripp didn't like the Clinton people.

She didn't like their politics, she didn't like their personalities, she didn't like their social lives, and she simmered with resentments.

And she finds this young woman a couple of cubicles away, Monica Lewinsky, who decides to cry on her shoulder.

LUCIANNE GOLDBERG: It was very much a big sister-little sister, mother-daughter relationship.

Monica would tell her everything.

Linda genuinely cared about Monica, but there was one overriding emotion, and that was what Bill Clinton was doing.

And...

I'm telling you, this was an angry woman.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Shortly before meeting Lewinsky, Tripp had approached conservative literary agent Lucianne Goldberg about writing a tell-all book on the Clinton White House, but the project had gone nowhere.

In the fall of 1997, she contacted Goldberg with a new project: the true story of an ongoing affair between a White House intern and the president of the United States.

GOLDBERG: She called me and she said, "He's having an affair with a girl who's 23 years old."

And I said, "Yeah, yeah."

You know, the kind of agenting that I did, I heard a lot of wild stuff, and people have to prove things.

So she said, "No, I'm not kidding you, he's, "he's having an affair with a... And I know the girl and I talk to her every day."

And I said, "Well, can you prove this?

"Do you have pictures, do you have, "is she willing to step forward, is she willing to go on the 'Today' show and say...?"

And she said, "Well, no, I'm sure she wouldn't.

This is a big secret."

I said, "Well, you've got to... "You got to do something to prove to me, "so I can prove to a publisher that this... this wild story is true."

And I said, "You say you talk to her every day.

How about taping your phone conversations?"

And she agreed that that would be a cool idea, and she went to RadioShack and bought a tape recorder and plugged it into her phone.

LEWINSKY (on recording): Linda, I don't know why I have these feelings for him.

I never expected to feel this way about him.

And the first time I ever looked into his eyes close up and was with him alone, I saw somebody totally different than I had expected to see.

And that's the person I fell in love with.

GOLDBERG: Linda wanted the world to know about this, and I think the motivation was no... you know, no deeper, no more shallow than that.

That was it.

She wanted the world to know about this relationship.

GORMLEY: She came to believe that fate did call her to expose these defects in this president to the country.

On the other hand, she becomes entwined in a scandal that she helped to create.

LEWINSKY (on recording): He was supposed to call me again.

I wasn't home and I was afraid to call.

TRIPP (on recording): What happened?

LEWINSKY: I don't know.

I saw him for 60 seconds.

TRIPP: So how was it?

LEWINSKY: I mean, he's, we hug, and I gave him the paperweight.

TRIPP: So, what did you wear?

GOLDBERG: I knew if the story broke huge, that people would start calling Linda, and Linda would say, "Call my agent."

And they would call her agent, and her agent would make a book deal, and it would make some money, and she would get a little money and I would get ten percent of it, and, and that's the way the world works.

NARRATOR: Goldberg suggested Tripp reach out to "Newsweek's" Michael Isikoff.

Before long, the two were having regular conversations.

ISIKOFF: She would kind of tease me, and she told me early on that there was a woman, who had been an intern, and that she was having an ongoing affair with Bill Clinton.

I was taken aback, as anybody would be.

So, I wanted to get Linda Tripp to tell me as much as she could.

And so I kept talking to her.

NARRATOR: Linda Tripp was not just talking to Isikoff.

She had also begun sharing her story with the independent counsel investigating the Clintons.

Remains to be seen.

NARRATOR: By 1997, after more than two years, Kenneth Starr's investigation into Whitewater had stalled.

Short on evidence or reliable witnesses, he had too little to bring charges against the president or first lady.

We know that they were running out of gas, and running out of rope, and had just about completely failed, until Monica came along.

NARRATOR: In early January 1998, Starr's office received a phone call from Tripp.

She revealed the existence of her tape recordings of Monica Lewinsky.

At first, Starr saw little value in the tapes.

A presidential affair, no matter how sordid, was not illegal.

But there was something in Tripp's story that caught Starr's attention: the president had asked his friend Vernon Jordan to help find Lewinsky a job in the private sector.

Could this be an attempt, Starr wondered, to buy Lewinsky's silence?

LEWINSKY (on recording): I'm just, I'm starting to get a little nervous about Vernon.

TRIPP (on recording): Why?

LEWINSKY: I think, just, I just want everything to be easy.

I want him to call me and say, you know, "How does this amount of money, doing this here, sound?"

And I say, "That sounds great."

He says, "Okay, consider it a done deal."

NARRATOR: Clinton had good reason to worry about whether Lewinsky would keep their affair secret.

She had just been subpoenaed to testify in a sexual harassment lawsuit against the president brought by a former Arkansas state worker named Paula Jones.

MAN: What sort of trial date are you going to ask for?

NARRATOR: Tipped off to the affair, Jones's lawyers believed the president's relationship with Lewinsky would demonstrate a pattern of behavior.

JAMES FISHER: I thought it showed President Clinton's proclivity to make sexual advances to extremely young, low-level employees, and President Clinton had obtained jobs for Monica Lewinsky as part of his effort to control her.

Highly relevant to Paula Jones' case.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Ken Starr was watching the Jones lawsuit with great interest.

If Clinton was trying to influence Lewinsky's testimony, he would be committing a major crime.

Suddenly, Starr glimpsed a bridge from Whitewater to a potentially more fruitful area of investigation.

GORMLEY: The bridge is that the president and those close to him may be encouraging Monica to lie in the Paula Jones case, and, and therefore suborning perjury.

That's the little connection they make.

It's tenuous at this point, but they go for it.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: With Starr's determined efforts, three seemingly unrelated threads from Clinton's past and present-- Whitewater, Paula Jones, and Monica Lewinsky-- had suddenly come together in one potentially devastating investigation.

And a single reporter threatened to upend the whole thing.

ISIKOFF: I knew we had a blockbuster of a story.

And, of course, I had to call Starr's team.

And fair to say that when I did, they freaked out.

They realized that were I to publish a story, it would blow their investigation wide open.

NARRATOR: Starr hoped to convince Lewinsky to secretly tape-record the president before Isikoff's story tipped him off.

On January 16, he sent Linda Tripp to meet with Lewinsky at a food court at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Before the friends sat down, FBI agents swooped in.

TOOBIN: The FBI grabs Monica in front of the Cinnabon and takes her upstairs in the Ritz-Carlton and tries to get her to flip.

But Monica basically just drives them crazy with her histrionics, with her refusal to talk.

They felt like one of these scenes in a movie where a bunch of grown men are trying to change the diapers of a baby and don't know how to do it.

Monica's crying, she's kind of wailing out loud.

What they weren't counting on, what they hadn't figured out is, "So what do we do when Monica is not going to tell us whether she had an affair with Bill Clinton?"

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Unable to secure Lewinsky's cooperation against the president, Starr still had a card to play.

The next day, January 17, 1998, Clinton was scheduled to give his deposition under oath in the Paula Jones lawsuit.

If he lied about his affair with Lewinsky, Starr would be able to bring a charge of perjury.

GOLDBERG: He was about to testify, and they knew he was going to lie about Monica.

And that was, that was, if you want to call it, the trap.

"And when a man is asked about this, "a married man is asked about this, "he's going to lie.

"And once he lies, we got him.

We got him!"

The whole purpose is to get the president.

If you're not out to get the president, you should say to the president, "You know, you're going to testify in this lawsuit.

"You know, we know about your relationship with Monica Lewinsky."

They're trying to trap him into committing perjury.

WOMAN: You may show the witness definition number one.

NARRATOR: Barred from questioning the president himself, Starr had to rely on Paula Jones's lawyers.

Lead attorney Jim Fisher began the deposition by introducing a definition of sexual relations taken from a federal statute.

FISHER: In an effort to avoid ambiguity, I thought I would use a definition that was well grounded in federal law.

So I thought there could be no doubt that these were unambiguous definitions for which the law had a well-recognized meaning.

NARRATOR: Fisher's efforts to avoid ambiguity had the opposite effect, leaving Clinton a loophole through which to escape.

FISHER: So the record is completely clear, have you ever had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky as that term is defined in deposition Exhibit 1?

I, I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.

I've never had an affair with her.

If they had simply asked him, "Did Monica Lewinsky ever perform oral sex on you?

", the gig would have been up.

Instead, they gave him this ridiculously complicated, hard-to-understand definition of sex, which allowed him to parse.

If I could have done it over again, I would have just asked the salacious questions.

I would have let him have it.

I was trying to be respectful, and I paid a price for it.

Having said that, he, he clearly didn't answer the questions honestly.

FISHER: If she told someone that she had a sexual affair with you beginning in November of 1995, would that be a lie?

It's, it's certainly not the truth.

It would not be the truth.

The turning point was when I started to ask him about gifts that he had given to her and she had given to him.

And I described some of them quite specifically.

♪ ♪ There was a book of poetry by Walt Whitman, for example.

I thought his mood changed visibly at that point.

His face became bright red.

There was tension in his face.

GORMLEY: He knew at this point there was a mole.

There was a rat in the woodpile.

Someone has given all of this damning information to these people.

He was in trouble.

NARRATOR: Clinton's secret affair with Monica Lewinsky was now hurtling toward public exposure.

The very day that the president was deposed in the Jones lawsuit, Michael Isikoff filed his story on the Lewinsky affair.

But at the last minute, his editors at "Newsweek" backtracked and decided to kill the story.

ISIKOFF: Obviously, we had an enormous scoop here that was going to shake Washington.

Some of my colleagues and some of the editors agreed, but at the end of the day, the brass at "Newsweek" just were not willing to pull the trigger.

Michael told me.

He said, "They aren't going to run with it.

"They're afraid of it, they don't like it.

Nasty stuff, they don't want to do it."

And I said, "Well, what am I going to do?

I'm sitting on this thing."

NARRATOR: In her frustration, Goldberg turned to an Internet gossip columnist named Matt Drudge.

GOLDBERG: A couple of people said, "Call Matt Drudge," or...

I said, "Well, tell him to call me."

So at 11:00 that night, he called me, and that was it.

It went kaboom!

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

REPORTER: The allegations that the president had an illicit affair with a 21-year-old intern and then attempted to cover it up blasted through the White House today.

This scandal could unravel the administration.

NARRATOR: Over the next 72 hours, the story made its way around the world.

(speaking French) (speaking German) Monica Lewinsky.

NARRATOR: Caught unawares, Clinton's cabinet members rushed to his defense.

I believe that the allegations are completely untrue.

I'll second that.

BAKER: Aides who had worked for him for five, six years at this point are, are just on the floor.

They can't figure out what they're supposed to think about this, much less what they're supposed to do about this.

REICH: I was convinced that Bill Clinton had been set up.

He's got all these enemies who are out to get him.

He wouldn't be so stupid as to jeopardize his entire presidency.

For what?

No, that was not the Bill Clinton I knew.

NARRATOR: Clinton did confide in the one person he knew would not judge him.

MORRIS: When the Lewinsky scandal broke, the president paged me, and I returned the call.

And he said, "Ever since I got here to the White House, "I've had to shut my body down-- sexually, I mean-- "but I screwed up with this girl.

"I didn't do what they said I did, but I may have done so much that I can't prove my innocence."

And I said to him, "The problem that presidents have is not the sin, "it's the cover-up, and you should explore just telling the American people the truth."

He said, "Really, do you think I could do that?"

And I said, "Let me test it, let me run a poll."

So I took a poll and I tested popular attitudes on that, and I called him back and I said, "They will forgive the adultery, but they won't easily forgive that you lied."

JIM LEHRER: Mr. President, welcome.

Thank you, Jim.

NARRATOR: Clinton disregarded Morris's advice.

In interviews days after the story broke, he continued to hide his relationship with Lewinsky.

The news of this day is that Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, is investigating allegations that you suborned perjury by encouraging a 24-year-old woman, a former White House intern, to lie under oath in a civil deposition about her having had an affair with you.

Mr. President, is that true?

That is not true.

That is not true.

I did not ask anyone to tell anything other than the truth.

There is no improper relationship.

And I intend to cooperate with this inquiry.

But that is not true.

He says, quite indignantly, "There is no relationship with Monica Lewinsky."

And people begin to focus on the words.

"He said 'is,' didn't he?

He didn't say 'was.'"

What is he trying to say here?

Is he parsing here?

MIKE McCURRY: I didn't notice the peculiar tense issue until later.

But I did think to myself, I said, "Boy, there's got to be a stronger denial of this."

And I, and I think some group of us said, "Look, you're denying this, you've got to be strong.

"You've got to get out there and say, you know, how outrageous this is."

And, of course, I think that was dreadful advice, in retrospect.

I want you to listen to me.

I'm going to say this again.

I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

Ms. Lewinsky.

I never told anybody to lie.

Not a single time, never.

These allegations are false.

And I need to go back to work for the American people.

Thank you.

GOLDBERG: I was watching with a friend in my office and I said, "That is it, this man is dead meat.

"That is it, because I know that he's lying, "and if I know that he's lying, then the rest of the world is going to know he's lying."

FISHER: When he went on the air and shook his finger and said, "I never had sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky," and we knew he had, we realized then that this had the potential to literally change the course of American history.

STARR: The one thing that we can't deal with are lies.

Lies are impossible to deal with, so please, simply tell us the truth.

The truth has a very powerful way of coming out, so let's get it out.

But clearly, that was not the road that we, that we were on.

NARRATOR: Having set off on a course of deception, there was no turning back.

Clinton continued to press his lie, even to Hillary.

BAKER: He tells her it's not true.

He tells her that Monica Lewinsky was a troubled young woman, that he had just tried to be nice to her, to mentor her in some ways.

And that's a story that Hillary Clinton hangs onto like a life raft.

NARRATOR: The day after Clinton's denial, Hillary appeared on national television.

I just think that a lot of this is deliberately designed to sensationalize charges against my husband, because everything else they've tried has failed.

She focused her energy and her anger and her ire at the external enemies-- at Ken Starr, at the press, at the Republicans in Congress.

They were the ones who were doing this, not her husband.

The great story here, for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it, is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.

BAKER: She says, "This is all about the vast right-wing conspiracy," and in that moment sort of sets the tone for the defense of the president against these charges.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: To the Clintons, the Lewinsky scandal was just the latest front in a war waged by their political enemies to destroy them.

PENN: The Lewinsky scandal was not really the Lewinsky scandal.

It was really an attempt by the Republican Party to have a coup d'état based on having discovered the president's personal behavior.

NARRATOR: This time, however, even some allies of the Clintons found their protestations hollow.

O'DONNELL: You can never blame your enemies for doing what your enemies will predictably do.

You can only blame yourself for what you have given to your enemies.

If you've given them absolutely nothing, guess what they're going to be able to do.

Nothing.

NARRATOR: As the scandal raged around him, Clinton did his best to focus, he said, "on the job the American people hired me to do."

BAKER: He's coming to work every day, he says, and he's going to, he's going to do the job that's in front of him.

Privately, behind the scenes, it's a completely different story.

Of course he's obsessed by this.

Of course he's consumed by this.

Of course he is distracted.

He has a meeting with the head of the World Bank, for instance, who goes back to his office, and then calls Clinton's chief of staff and says, "It's like he wasn't even there."

NARRATOR: The president swung wildly between emotional extremes, from fear to fury.

KLEIN: I think that there was always a part of him that wondered about the dark side, and about whether he was really a bad person and whether he was going to be taken down.

But he also had-- and it's possible to have these two feelings simultaneously-- an overpowering sense of his own righteousness.

NARRATOR: "I feel like a character in the novel 'Darkness at Noon,'" Clinton told an aide.

"I am surrounded by an oppressive force "that is creating a lie about me, and I can't get the truth out."

In fact, the truth was closing in.

All he can do is buy time.

All he can do is hope Starr doesn't have the goods, doesn't have the evidence, that there's no physical evidence that could prove it.

NARRATOR: Before long, Starr had his physical evidence.

In July, Monica Lewinsky reached a deal to give her testimony in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

As part of the deal, she turned over a blue dress stained with Clinton's semen.

The next day, seeing no way out, Clinton himself agreed to answer questions before Starr's grand jury.

Before the president faced Starr, however, he had to face Hillary.

That morning, Clinton awoke the first lady from a deep sleep.

Pacing the room, he finally confessed he had lied.

It was...

It was probably the most shattering moment in her life.

He'd lied to her and he'd used her.

He'd let her go out and essentially make alibis for him.

And it not only jeopardized everything they'd worked for all their lives, but totally humiliated her and Chelsea.

And, you know, she couldn't trust him anymore.

(people talking in background) NARRATOR: Later that day, Clinton's deposition was scheduled to take place in the Map Room of the White House.

The president's lawyers had won an important concession from Ken Starr: the interrogation could not last longer than four hours.

MAN: Good afternoon, Mr. President.

Good afternoon.

MAN: Could you please state your full name for the record, sir?

William Jefferson Clinton.

GORMLEY: Bill Clinton's strategy was to run out the clock.

And so, he would start talking about little stories from Arkansas.

He would, you know, take an aside and give a lecture about justice and, and the American dream.

And all along, the, the clock is ticking out.

Let me begin with the correct answer: I don't know for sure.

Well, it would depend upon the facts.

I think, on the whole, people in the uniformed civil, civil service... Actually circled number one-- this is my circle here.

I remember doing that so I could focus only on those two lines...

It depends upon what the meaning of the word "is" is.

GORMLEY: The Starr prosecutors walked out of that grand jury testimony totally demoralized.

They knew they had been clobbered by President Clinton.

And even though it was just obvious what he was doing, it was a masterful performance on Clinton's part.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: If Clinton could finagle his way out of Starr's legal trap, he could not, he knew, escape the judgment of the American people.

DIRECTOR: And we've got about 45.

NARRATOR: That night, President Bill Clinton addressed the nation in one of the most unusual and anticipated broadcasts in American history.

Stand by.

Five seconds... Good evening.

This afternoon, in this room, from this chair, I testified before the Office of Independent Counsel and the grand jury.

I answered their questions truthfully, including questions about my private life, questions no American citizen would ever want to answer.

Still, I must take complete responsibility for all my actions, both public and private.

And that is why I am speaking to you tonight.

Indeed I did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was not appropriate.

In fact, it was wrong.

NARRATOR: For many of those closest to Clinton, this was the first time they'd heard him admit the affair, and they were deeply hurt.

ICKES: People just shook their heads.

They couldn't believe it.

They literally could not believe it.

What a squandering of talent and promise and possibility.

Yes, I felt betrayed.

He lied to me, you know.

(chuckling): He lied to a lot of people about that, not least of whom was himself.

♪ ♪ BAKER: The morning after his grand jury testimony and his speech to the nation, he and Hillary and Chelsea head off to Martha's Vineyard for their annual vacation.

(chuckling): It may be the worst-timed family vacation in the history of the world, but there they are, heading out to the helicopter on the South Lawn.

And the staff is sitting in the White House thinking, "What are we going to do about the walk to the helicopter?"

They decide they can't do anything.

They can't orchestrate it, they can't spin it; they are powerless to affect it.

And in the end, it falls to Chelsea Clinton, a teenager, to take both of their hands, on her own initiative, take her father's hand in one, her mother's hand in another, and walk across the lawn, literally the bridge between her parents at this moment of crisis between them.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: As the Clintons spent a tense vacation on Martha's Vineyard, Washington was abuzz with talk of resignation or even impeachment.

GORMLEY: At this moment, he was in maximum peril.

Clinton's advisers were acutely aware that President Nixon was driven out of office not by the opposing party, but by his own party, when the Republicans came to him and said, "Enough, you have to leave."

That's when President Nixon resigned.

And so there was real concern that Democrats were going to begin bolting, and they were not returning President Clinton's calls.

They were not happy with this.

There was a real concern that that, this could be the beginning of the end.

NARRATOR: It had been a quarter of a century since Richard Nixon had resigned the presidency rather than endure an impeachment.

Now, many were urging Clinton to do the same.

But Clinton had no such intentions.

ISIKOFF: There were the inevitable comparisons between Nixon and Clinton.

I always thought there was a fundamental difference.

Both Nixon and Clinton were convinced that it was their political enemies that were responsible for all their troubles.

The difference is that Nixon always suspected that his political enemies were better than him.

Clinton hated his political enemies and were convinced they were beneath him.

And that was the reason, at the end of the day, Clinton was never going to do what Richard Nixon did, which was to give in to them and resign.

Yes, go ahead... REPORTER: Mr. President, all these questions about your personal life have to be painful to you and your family.

At what point do you consider that it's just not worth it and do you consider resigning from office?

(all laughing softly) Never.

You know, I was elected to do a job.

I think the American people know two or three things about me now that they didn't know the first time this kind of effort was made against me.

They, I think they know that I care very much about them, that I care about ordinary people who... Voices aren't often heard here.

And I think they know I have worked very, very hard for them.

NARRATOR: Hard work had always been Clinton's salvation in moments of vulnerability.

Now, as he sought to show the American people he could still function, he bore down on a suddenly violent foreign policy crisis.

(explosion echoes, sirens wailing) (people yelling) NARRATOR: Early on the morning of August 7, 1998, two truck bombs exploded simultaneously outside U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

The death toll reached 200, with another 5,000 injured.

Within hours, the FBI had pegged responsibility to a little-known terrorist organization called Al Qaeda.

Clinton soon ordered his national security team to hunt down and destroy Al Qaeda and its elusive leader, Osama Bin Laden.

(people talking in background) CLARKE: The C.I.A.

had information-- it thought it was reliable information-- that Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership were going to come together at a certain camp, in Afghanistan, at a certain date, at a certain time.

We went to the president and said, "We want to be able to land cruise missiles at that camp while they're there."

NARRATOR: The order would have huge political risks.

Clinton knew that it would be widely seen as an attempt to distract the public from his own personal problems.

CLARKE: Somebody said something about, "Well, you know, we have to take into account the political realities in the United States at the moment."

Which was sort of code words for, "You've got this Monica Lewinsky scandal going on."

And he snapped.

He just very quickly and sharply said, "You don't think about that.

"You think about national security.

"You give me the national security advice "you would give me if this were not going on.

You let me worry about that."

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: On August 20, Clinton ordered a series of missile strikes against Al Qaeda, targeting training camps in Afghanistan and a plant in Sudan that the administration claimed was involved in making chemical weapons.

The missiles narrowly missed their main target.

CLARKE: We didn't kill Bin Laden.

We didn't have that to show for the attack.

And people, frankly, a lot of people in the Congress and in the media said this was just an attempt to "wag the dog."

The timing of all of this is more than coincidental, and I think it may very well, uh, run the risk...

The president may run the risk of having a, an even more cynical view of his behavior.

CLARKE: He knew that.

He knew that was going to happen.

He knew it would make it worse for him to do this.

But he launched the attack because he thought it was the right national security thing to do.

That's what we told him.

And he said, "I'll do it anyway, even though it makes it worse for me."

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Things were deteriorating quickly for the president.

On September 9, Kenneth Starr finally delivered to Congress the long-awaited results of his investigation.

In 450 pages of sometimes salacious detail, Starr laid out his case against Clinton for perjury, obstruction of justice, and abuse of office in the Lewinsky affair, while dropping almost all reference to his original investigation of Whitewater.

STARR: Lawyers are thorough.

Good lawyers are thorough.

There could be absolutely no gap whatsoever between the facts and then a reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the facts.

The case had to be proven.

REPORTER: The House sergeant at arms officially unsealed the document at mid-afternoon.

It had been advertised as steamy, and you could almost see the steam rising as the boxes came open.

REPORTER: According to the sources, the report focuses almost entirely on the president's relationship with Lewinsky.

However this turns out, it is a turning point in Mr. Clinton's presidency.

It is not an exaggeration to say that he has less control of his destiny than at any time since he was elected.

NARRATOR: The Starr report was a turning point, but not in the way the independent counsel or his Republican supporters had expected.

Polls showed that after four years and $40 million, most Americans believed the investigations against Clinton were more persecution than prosecution.

ICKES: The Republicans had so undercut their own credibility in the way they were going after him that people, although they deplored what he had done and thought it was stupid, and it demeaned the office of the presidency and tarnished the presidency, tarnished him, and had been a devastating blow to Hillary and Chelsea, and all those things that went through people's minds, they looked at the Republicans, and they had enough already.

(people talking in background) NARRATOR: After the release of Starr's report, Clinton appeared in the Rose Garden to offer his first full-throated apology to the American people.

I am profoundly sorry for all I have done wrong in words and deeds.

I never should have misled the country, the Congress, my friends, or my family.

Quite simply, I gave in to my shame.

I have been condemned by my accusers with harsh words, and while it's hard to hear yourself called deceitful and manipulative, I remember Ben Franklin's admonition that our critics are our friends, for they do show us our faults.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: If Clinton was willing at last to take responsibility, the American people were willing to forgive him.

MYERS: He disappoints them every time on some level, but he always gets up and tries to make it better.

You know, what else can you ask from a sinner, right?

I mean, he's a... That's how he would define himself, "I'm a sinner.

"And I try to be better every time, and I learn from my mistakes and I go forward."

And I think the American public, um, is pretty forgiving of a guy who sees himself as a sinner.

(crowd cheering) NARRATOR: Weary of the attacks on Clinton, Americans punished Republican candidates in the Congressional elections in November.

Upsetting precedent, Democrats actually gained seats in Congress.

(crowd cheering) I think the message the American people sent was loud and clear: "We want progress over partisanship and unity over division."

NARRATOR: Blamed for the defeat, Newt Gingrich resigned his post as speaker of the House of Representatives.

♪ ♪ To the frustration of his Republican opponents, Clinton seemed to have won over the American people again.

LOTT: There are two or three things that I have witnessed in my political career that I never could figure out.

The fact that a lot of people didn't think that that was a serious problem that he, you know, perjured himself in his testimony, and that he'd had a relationship with that woman Monica Lewinsky.

That did shock me, and I've never quite figured out how in the world could that be that he'd come out the back end of it pretty much where he was at the beginning.

It just, uh, it's one of those things I've never quite figured out.

BLANKLEY: We should have seen that, "Okay, we're personally offended, that's our condition.

"But if the public isn't"-- and clearly they weren't-- "then get over it."

And we never got over it-- we never got over it.

We still haven't got over it.

(chuckles) ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Determined to punish the president, House Republicans, led by Texas congressman Tom DeLay, played their last card: impeachment.

A resolution impeaching William Jefferson Clinton, president of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

The Republicans were gripped by just unreasoning hatred of Bill Clinton.

They just despised the man and could not stand that he was going to get away with this.

MAN: "Article one: In his conduct "while president of the United States, "William Jefferson Clinton, "in violation of his constitutional oath "faithfully to execute the office "of president of the United States, "has willfully corrupted and manipulated the judicial process of the United..." NARRATOR: On Saturday, December 19, the House of Representatives voted along party lines to impeach the president on two of four counts involving obstruction of justice and perjury.

RAY LAHOOD: On this vote, the yeas are 228, the nays are 206.

Article one is adopted.

NARRATOR: Bill Clinton had become only the second president in American history, and the first in more than a century, to be impeached by the House.

♪ ♪ GEORGE GEKAS: The American people, I call them to my side here at the podium to verify to you that the president committed falsehoods under oath.

NARRATOR: Republican leaders moved the proceedings to the Senate, where a two-thirds majority was required to convict the president and remove him from office.

(gavel pounding) The Senate will convene as a court of impeachment.

We are here today because President William Jefferson Clinton decided to put himself above the law.

This is not about sex.

This is about obstruction of justice.

This is about a pattern, this is about a scheme, this is about a lot of lies.

NARRATOR: For three long weeks, with little hope of success, 13 Republican congressmen pressed the case against Clinton.

This is not about sexual misconduct any more than Watergate was about a third-rate burglary.

(people talking in background) NARRATOR: Finally, Arkansas Democratic Senator Dale Bumpers rose to express the sentiments felt by many in the chamber and the country as a whole.

We are here today because the president suffered a terrible moral lapse.

A marital infidelity.

Not a breach of the public trust, not a crime against society.

It is a sex scandal.

H.L.

Mencken said one time, "When you hear somebody say, 'This is not about money,' it's about money."

(others laughing) And when you hear somebody say, "This is not about sex," it's about sex.

♪ ♪ WILLIAM REHNQUIST: The Senate adjudges that the respondent, William Jefferson Clinton, president of the United States, is not guilty as charged in the first article of impeachment.

NARRATOR: What had begun with a sexual indiscretion more than three years earlier and mushroomed into a full-scale constitutional crisis was finally over.

This time, however, there was no triumph, no crowing about "The Comeback Kid."

Bill Clinton knew that this time, both he and the country had paid a heavy price.

HARRIS: Bill Clinton, in his second inaugural address, said it was his ambition during the second term to be, quoting scripture, a repairer of the breach.

That ambition was not realized in his second term and it effectively died in 1998, the year of scandal.

MYERS: The fact that the president was impeached will always be part of his story, part of his legacy.

It consumed a tremendous amount of energy.

It undercut his standing and, I think, limited his ability to accomplish anything outside of surviving for almost two years.

And, you know, that's tragic.

♪ ♪ DAVID MARANISS: Clinton created many of his own problems, but his enemies exaggerated, enhanced, mythologized, lied, were utterly hypocritical in their attacks on him.

You know, to the extent that I believe that every human being is responsible for their own lives, he holds the responsibility for it.

To the extent that, that context shapes a life, uh, his enemies have a lot to answer for.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Clinton had survived, but the impeachment ordeal seemed to have sapped much of his drive and ambition.

BAKER: President Clinton has more than 700 days left in office after he is acquitted by the Senate, and he promises to use every single one of them to its fullest.

But the constraints were enormous at that point.

The big aspirations were gone.

The chances of, of reinventing Social Security or reinventing Medicare just proved too elusive.

He had a Congress which had just literally put him on trial, and it was not willing to do a lot of business with him.

NARRATOR: In 2000, Clinton came tantalizingly close to the great historical achievement for which he had yearned, but a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians broke down in the 11th hour.

The same year, after decades of budget deficits, the federal budget had a surplus of nearly $240 billion, an accomplishment for which Clinton was given much credit.

♪ ♪ It was only as her husband was preparing to leave the stage that Hillary finally stepped front and center, ready at last to take her star turn.

BAKER: The day the Senate votes to acquit President Clinton on impeachment charges, Hillary Clinton is meeting in the White House residence with Harold Ickes to plot a campaign for the very same United States Senate.

Literally, the end of his crisis is the birth of her new phase.

♪ ♪ SHEEHY: She said, "I want to be independent.

I want to be judged on my own merits."

And she finally released herself from, you know, the, the shadow of Bill Clinton over her, and began making her own decisions.

(crowd cheering) SHEEHY: He then came to her support, and there was nobody more of a champion for her Senate race than Bill Clinton.

He was behind her all the way.

So even if I didn't know her better than anybody in this room, I'd be for her.

(crowd cheering) NARRATOR: That November, as Vice President Al Gore lost the closest presidential election in American history, Hillary Clinton easily won the Senate seat in New York.

I am profoundly grateful to all of you for giving me the chance to serve you.

(glasses clink) NARRATOR: In his final round of goodbye speeches, Bill Clinton even bid farewell to the Washington press corps.

You know, I, I read in the history books how other presidents say the White House is like a penitentiary, and that every motive they have is suspect.

Even George Washington complained he was treated like a common thief.

And they all say they can't get away, can't wait to get away.

I don't know what the heck they're talking about.

(audience laughs) I've had a wonderful time.

It's been an honor to serve and fun to laugh.

I only wish that we'd even laughed more these last eight years, because power's not the most important thing in life and only counts for what you use it.

♪ ♪ BAKER: Bill Clinton loved being president.

He had to literally be dragged out of there, clawing the, the floors, to get him out of there on January 20, 2001.

In fact, when the Bushes show up, the movers are still desperately trying to move everything.

Literally, they're taking drawers from the cabinets and just dumping them into boxes, because Bill Clinton has wanted to milk every last minute of his presidency, right up to the end.

HARRY THOMASON: Listen, this guy loved being president.

He even loved being president when it was tough.

And a lot of times I would say, "How does he smile?

"How does he keep laughing?

How does he keep going through this?"

But it was because he got the energy back from the people.

Whatever you think of the man, he wanted to do the right thing for the people of his county, his state, his country, and that never changed about him.

NARRATOR: Clinton departed the White House for the last time on Saturday, January 20, 2001.

In the end, he left much as he had come: a man loved by his friends and loathed by his enemies; a politician who had achieved a great deal, yet left behind a curious sense of unfulfilled promise.

HARRIS: I believe he's an argument without end, that there will be people discussing and debating the significance of Bill Clinton for a long time.

♪ ♪ CHAFE: Bill Clinton will be remembered as one of our best presidents in the 20th century, who accomplished an enormous amount, and he'll be remembered because of his personal recklessness.

And that is tragic, because so much more could have happened.

REICH: Did Bill Clinton help the country, and was the country better for having him as president?

I think unquestionably yes.

But are there elements of tragedy here, as well?

Huge elements of tragedy in terms of failures and opportunities lost, and risks made that didn't have to be made?

Undoubtedly.

KLEIN: I know a lot of people think that Clinton's presidency was a wasted opportunity.

But he came to office in 1992 and left a stronger country in 2000.

I don't know if you can say of a president who served us well and improved our material good that it was a wasted opportunity.

And it was sure a lot of fun to watch.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: "American Experience: Clinton" ♪ ♪