Flashback: 1 day into last shutdown, Clinton-Lewinsky had first 'encounter'

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Washington Examiner:

The White House may be quietly hoping that a federal government shutdown slams the political prospects of the Republican Party like it did during the last crisis in 1995, but something else happened at the start of that shutdown that nearly destroyed the presidency: the sordid Oval Office sex affair between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton began.

 

As that shutdown began November 14th after Clinton and Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich stopped negotiating, the White House was forced to slash its staff of 430 to a skeleton crew of 90, with unpaid interns helping out too.

 

One such intern was Lewinsky, then a chatty 22-year-old intern. She had been on the job since July and was tasked with answering phones and running errands for former Chief of Staff Leon Panetta.

 

While she had met Clinton twice before, including the famous rope line scene where she wore a black beret, author Sally Bedell Smith's 2007 joint biography of Bill and Hillary Clinton, “For Love of Politics,” reports that it was one day into the shutdown, November 15, when the duo got cozy -- and more.

 

It was then that Lewinsky and Clinton made eye contact outside Panetta's office, where the president visited four or five times that day.

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Ah, memories...