Monica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973) is an American activist. She became internationally known in the late 1990s after U.S. president Bill Clinton admitted to having had an affair with her during her days as a White House intern between 1995 and 1997. The affair and its repercussions (which included Clinton's impeachment) became known as the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal.
Following the scandal, Lewinsky designed a line of handbags under her name, served as an advertising spokesperson for a diet plan, and worked as a television personality. She obtained a master's degree in psychology from the London School of Economics in 2006. In 2014, Lewinsky began speaking out as an activist against cyberbullying.
Monica Samille Lewinsky was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in an affluent family in Los Angeles, California. She lived in Brentwood, and later Beverly Hills. Her father is Bernard Lewinsky, an oncologist, who is the son of German Jews who emigrated from Germany in the 1920s, first moving to El Salvador and then finally to the United States when he was 14. Her mother, born Marcia Kay Vilensky, is an author who uses the name Marcia Lewis. In 1996, she wrote a "gossip biography", The Private Lives of the Three Tenors. Lewinsky’s maternal grandfather, Samuel M. Vilensky, was a Lithuanian Jew, and her maternal grandmother, Bronia Poleshuk, was born in the British Concession of Tianjin, China, to a Russian Jewish family. Lewinsky’s parents divorced in 1988 and each has remarried.
The family attended Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and Lewinsky attended Sinai Akiba Academy, the school affiliated with the Temple. For her primary education, she attended the John Thomas Dye School in Bel-Air. Lewinsky attended Beverly Hills High School for three years before transferring to Bel Air Prep (later known as Pacific Hills School), graduating in 1991.
Following her high school graduation, Lewinsky attended Santa Monica College while working for the drama department at Beverly Hills High School and at a tie shop. Andy Bleiler, her former high school drama instructor, alleged they began a five-year affair in 1992.
In 1993, she enrolled at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, graduating with a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1995.
With the assistance of a family connection, Lewinsky secured an unpaid summer White House internship in the office of White House chief of staff Leon Panetta. Lewinsky moved to Washington, D.C., and took up the position in July 1995. She moved to a paid posting in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs in December 1995.
Lewinsky stated that she had nine sexual encounters with President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office between November 1995 and March 1997. According to her testimony, these encounters involved oral sex and other sexual acts, but not sexual intercourse.
Clinton had previously been confronted with allegations of sexual misconduct during his time as Governor of Arkansas. Former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones filed a civil lawsuit against him alleging that he had sexually harassed her. Lewinsky's name surfaced during the discovery phase of Jones' case, when Jones' lawyers sought to show a pattern of behavior by Clinton which involved inappropriate sexual relationships with other government employees.
In April 1996, Lewinsky's superiors transferred her from the White House to the Pentagon because they felt that she was spending too much time with Clinton. At the Pentagon, she worked as an assistant to chief Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon. In September 1997, after Lewinsky told co-worker Linda Tripp about her relationship with Clinton, Tripp began to secretly record their telephone conversations. Lewinsky left her position at the Pentagon in December 1997, and in January 1998 submitted an affidavit in the Paula Jones case denying any physical relationship with Clinton. Though she attempted to persuade Tripp to lie under oath in that case, Tripp gave the tapes to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, adding to his ongoing investigation into the Whitewater controversy. Starr then broadened his investigation beyond the Arkansas land use deal to include Lewinsky, Clinton, and others for possible perjury and subornation of perjury in the Jones case. Tripp reported the taped conversations to literary agent Lucianne Goldberg. She also convinced Lewinsky to save the gifts that Clinton had given her during their relationship and not to dry clean a blue dress that was stained with Clinton's semen. Under oath, Clinton denied having had "a sexual affair", "sexual relations", or "a sexual relationship" with Lewinsky.
News of the Clinton–Lewinsky relationship broke in January 1998. On January 26, 1998, Clinton stated, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" in a nationally televised White House news conference. The matter instantly occupied the news media, and Lewinsky spent the next weeks hiding from public attention in her mother's residence at the Watergate complex. News of Lewinsky's affair with Andy Bleiler, her former high school drama instructor, also came to light, and he turned over to Starr various souvenirs, photographs, and documents that Lewinsky had sent him and his wife during the time that she was in the White House.
Clinton had also said, "There is not a sexual relationship, an improper sexual relationship or any other kind of improper relationship" which he defended as truthful on August 17, 1998, because of his use of the present tense, arguing "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is". Starr obtained a blue dress from Lewinsky with Clinton's semen stained on it, as well as testimony from her that the President had inserted a cigar into her vagina. Clinton stated, "I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate", but he denied committing perjury because, according to Clinton, the legal definition of oral sex was not encompassed by "sex" per se. In addition, he relied on the definition of "sexual relations" as proposed by the prosecution and agreed by the defense and by Judge Susan Webber Wright, who was hearing the Paula Jones case. Clinton claimed that certain acts were performed on him, not by him, and therefore he did not engage in sexual relations. Lewinsky's testimony to the Starr Commission, however, contradicted Clinton's claim of being totally passive in their encounters.
Clinton and Lewinsky were both called before a grand jury. Clinton testified via closed-circuit television, while Lewinsky testified in person. She was granted transactional immunity by the Office of the Independent Counsel in exchange for her testimony.
Lewinsky's immunity agreement restricted what she could talk about publicly, but she was able to cooperate with Andrew Morton in his writing of Monica's Story, her biography which included her side of the Clinton affair. The book was published in March 1999; it was also excerpted as a cover story in Time magazine. On March 3, 1999, Barbara Walters interviewed Lewinsky on ABC's 20/20. The program was watched by 70 million Americans, which ABC said was a record for a news show. Lewinsky made about $500,000 from her participation in the book and another $1 million from international rights to the Walters interview, but was still beset by high legal bills and living costs.
In June 1999, Ms. magazine published a series of articles by writer Susan Jane Gilman, sexologist Susie Bright, and author-host Abiola Abrams arguing from three generations of women whether Lewinsky's behavior had any meaning for feminism. Also in 1999, Lewinsky declined to sign an autograph in an airport, saying, "I'm kind of known for something that's not so great to be known for." She made a cameo appearance as herself in two sketches during the May 8, 1999, episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live, a program that had lampooned her relationship with Clinton over the prior 16 months.
In September 1999, Lewinsky began to sell a line of handbags bearing her name, under the company name The Real Monica, Inc. They were sold online as well as at Henri Bendel in New York, Fred Segal in California, and The Cross in London. Lewinsky designed the bags—described by New York magazine as "hippie-ish, reversible totes"—and traveled frequently to supervise their manufacture in Louisiana.