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When it was revealed that the man accused of blackmailing Letterman, Robert (Joe) Halderman—a CBS News producer—had shared a house in Connecticut with Birkitt, the connection to Stephanie as one of the in-house paramours was easy to make. Much of Halderman’s information on Dave had come from Birkitt’s diary, which he later admitted to reading.

Letterman, stated in his chat on that night of Thursday, October 1, that he would have nothing more to say on the subject. But between the boss-employee relationship and the age difference, the scandal sent out some potent tentacles. So he had to return to it on his next taping, the following Monday. (Friday’s show had been in the can for a week, as usual.)

Letterman didn’t flinch in the monologue, putting the incident stage center.

Referring to the sex scandal involving Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina, Letterman said, “Right now I would give anything to be hiking on the Appalachian Trail.”

And: “It’s fall in New York. I spent the weekend raking my hate mail.”

Then he took his place at the desk and again announced that he had some serious business to attend to. His almost offhand reference to multiple affairs with staff members, he explained, had caused many of the women he employed to be chased by the press, looking for confessions of office passion.

“I’m terribly sorry that I put the staff in that position,” Letterman said. “The staff here has been wonderfully supportive to me, not just through this furor, but through all the years that we’ve been on television and especially all the years here at CBS, so, again, my thanks to the staff for, once again, putting up with something stupid I’ve gotten myself involved in.”

And then there was Regina. As his monologue implied, the revelation of the affair with Birkitt had put his recent marriage at serious risk. Letterman, who still felt overwhelming guilt about the breakup of his first marriage, twenty-five years earlier, to his college sweetheart, Michelle Cook, had obviously wrestled for years with his reluctance to marry again. The decision to go through with his marriage to Regina related directly to his commitment to Harry, now five, and the prospect of this family breaking up—and his losing daily contact with Harry—over “something stupid” he’d gotten himself into was clearly wrenching for him.

So, again, in front of a national television audience, Dave apologized, abjectly. Of Regina, he said, “She has been horribly hurt by my behavior, and when something happens like that, if you hurt a person and it’s your responsibility, you try to fix it. At that point, there’s only two things that can happen. Either you’re going to make some progress and get it fixed, or you’re going to fall short and perhaps not get it fixed. So let me tell you, folks, I got my work cut out for me.”

As the days went by, no other women came forward (with the exception of one who admitted to a brief fling with Letterman more than a decade earlier, one she had only fond memories of). One associate who had observed Dave up close for years said, “This is where Dave is brilliant; he knows the kind of girl who isn’t going to betray him.” Still, no one at the show minimized the implications of the revelations. Some were thankful Dave had steered clear of product endorsements, so they were spared the litany of high-minded companies saying Dave could no longer speak for their razor/car/beer/tires.

But overall, according to one of the show’s producers, “It was tense. It was scary.” The biggest break was having a villain to point to so Dave didn’t catch all the heat. Dave was a victim, after all, as well as a perpetrator of “terrible things.” And to his credit, he didn’t pay, but willingly exposed himself to public flogging rather than give in to blackmail.

As the producer put it, “Dave didn’t buckle. This guy had no idea who he was dealing with. You can’t exert power over Dave that way. He is not the right guy for that.”

The timing was hardly ideal. While Dave did become the talk of the country