Monica Lewinsky breaks decade-long media silence

The one-time White House intern whose affair with President Bill Clinton led to his impeachment in the US Senate has broken her long silence in the media.

In Vanity Fair magazine, Monica Lewinsky, 40, writes that she deeply regrets the fling.

The president “took advantage” of her, she writes, though she describes their relationship as consensual.

In 1998, Republicans failed in their effort to oust him from office on the grounds he had lied about the affair.

But with Mr Clinton’s wife Hillary said to be mulling a 2016 run for the presidency, the Lewinsky matter has re-emerged in US political discourse, in part because Republicans are eager to wield it against her.

In an advance excerpt from the article released by Vanity Fair, Ms Lewinsky writes she hopes to reclaim her story and says she is still recognised every day and sees her name thrown about in pop culture and the news media.

“I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton,” she writes.

“Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened.”

Ms Lewinsky writes that she suffered abuse and humiliation after the scandal broke in 1998, in part because she was made a “scapegoat” to protect the president.

“The Clinton administration, the special prosecutor’s minions, the political operatives on both sides of the aisle, and the media were able to brand me,” she wrote.

“And that brand stuck, in part because it was imbued with power.”

Since leaving the Clinton administration, she worked briefly as a handbag designer and as the host of a US reality dating show.

Ms Lewinsky then moved to London for a graduate degree, but said she has had difficulty gaining employment in the US because of her past. Source: BBC