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By Root 1968 0

enough trust that the finished product would be fair and balanced that she eventually opened up and provided a wealth of information, for which she did not receive a single cent. Ms. Lewinsky also shared documents—we sat on folding chairs inside a storage facility in Greenwich Village, reviewing personal papers that brought back disturbing memories and clearly upset her but allowed me to recount this piece of the story with rich detail that otherwise would have been lost. Monica’s parents, Marcia Lewis and Bernie Lewinsky, also cooperated in this project from the start. Her lawyer, Plato Cacheris, a true son of western Pennsylvania, urged his client to contribute to this historical endeavor and reassured her that law professors from Pittsburgh were generally harmless.

In writing the impeachment chapters, President Clinton’s lawyer David Kendall was instrumental in allowing me to reconstruct the pieces. Kendall’s mastery of the record and his inexhaustible talents as a lawyer were humbling for this former litigation attorney. Most important, he helped to facilitate the meetings with President Clinton and to ensure that they were carried out efficiently and professionally. Finally, as I sat in the chair that Kendall had occupied during the Senate impeachment trial, Kendall recounted those events with clarity and accuracy that was invaluable in writing the final chapters.

Representative Henry Hyde, legendary chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and manager who led the prosecution of President Clinton in the Senate, met with me numerous times in Washington and Illinois, even handing over a good Dominican cigar on occasion. One of my few regrets in writing the compact impeachment chapters was that it was impossible to fully capture Hyde’s disarming wit, openness, and friendly demeanor. Although I came to disagree with the course taken by Chairman Hyde during the failed impeachment effort, I never came to dislike or hold in disrespect this icon of the United States Congress. As well, Hyde’s burly and scrappy chief counsel from Chicago, David Schippers, provided boxes of documents relating to the impeachment trial and treated the author to one of the best lunches in years (at Portillo’s Hot Dogs in Chicago).

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who sadly became sick and passed away before I could interview him for this book, helped at many stages—most important, he arranged for me to obtain videotapes of the entire House and Senate impeachment proceedings, which in turn allowed me to view hundreds of hours of tapes in my study at home, in order to describe the impeachment scenes with far richer detail than if I had simply read those proceedings on paper. Senators Trent Lott (Republican) and Tom Daschle (Democrat), who managed the impeachment trial for their respective parties, provided a wealth of additional information, as did Bob Dove, the Senate parliamentarian.

Friends and family of both President Clinton and Ken Starr were an enormous help in navigating the previously foreign terrain of Arkansas and Texas, where portions of the story played out. Marge Mitchell, a best friend of Bill Clinton’s mother, shuttled me around Hot Springs in her Cadillac and took me to nursing homes to meet former teachers and octogenarian admirers of Bill Clinton. Joe Purvis, one of Clinton’s childhood friends, took me to fish on the White River in order to see the site of the failed Whitewater investment; then we dined on rainbow trout fried in peanut oil, an unexpected perk of the project. Clinton’s stepfather, Dick Kelley, welcomed me into his cottage on the lake in Hot Springs to tell the story from the perspective of his late wife, Virginia Clinton Kelley. As well, countless Clinton friends from every corner of the country rallied to provide support for the proposition that William Jefferson Clinton—despite Ken Starr’s effort to derail him—remains one of the great presidents in American history.

Ken Starr, too, had many unwavering admirers. His high school teacher Roberta Mahan drove me down gravel-covered roads in San Antonio to point out where