We decided to send the vice chairman of the Joint...
We decided to send the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Ralston, to have dinner with the top Pakistani military commander at the time the attacks were scheduledRalston would tell him what was happening a few minutes before our missiles invaded Pakistani airspace, too late to alert the Taliban or al Qaeda, but in time to avoid having them shot down or sparking a counterattack on India

My team was worried about one other thing: my testimony before the grand jury in three days, on August 17They were afraid that it would make me reluctant to strike, or that if I did order the attack, I would be accused of doing it to divert public attention from my problems, especially if the attack didnt get bin LadenI told them in no uncertain terms that their job was to give me advice on national securityIf the recommendation was to strike on the twentieth, then thats what we would doI said I would handle my personal problemsTime was running out on that, too

O n Saturday morning, August 15, with the grand jury testimony looming and after a miserable, sleepless night, I woke up Hillary and told her the truth about what had happened between me and Monica LewinskyShe looked at me as if I had punched her in the gut, almost as angry at me for lying to her in January as for what I had doneAll I could do was tell her that I was sorry, and that I had felt I couldnt tell anyone, even her, what had chanel replica handbag happenedI told her that I loved her and I didnt want to hurt her or Chelsea, that I was ashamed of what I had done, and that I had kept everything to myself in an effort to avoid hurting my family and undermining the presidencyAnd after all the lies and abuse we had endured from the start of my presidency, I didnt want to be run out of office in the flood tide that followed my deposition in JanuaryI still didnt fully understand why I had done something so wrong and stupid; that understanding would come slowly, in the months of working on our relationship that lay ahead

I had to talk to Chelsea, tooIn some ways, that was even harderSooner or later, every child learns that her parents arent perfect, but this went far beyond the normalI had always believed that I had been a good fatherChelseas high school years and her freshman year in college had already been clouded by four years of intensely personal attacks on her parentsNow Chelsea had to learn that her father not only had done something terribly wrong, but had not told her or her mother the truth about itI was afraid that I would lose not only my marriage, but my daughters love and respect as well

The rest of that awful day was dominated by another terrorist actIn Omagh, Northern Ireland, a breakaway faction of the IRA that did not support the Good Friday accord murdered twenty-eight people in a crowded shopping section of the city with a car bombAll black and white chanel handbag the parties to the peace process, including Sinn Fein, denounced the bombingI issued a statement condemning the butchery, extending my sympathy to the victims families, and urging the parties of peace to redouble their effortsThe outlaw group, which called itself the Real IRA, had about two hundred members and supporters, enough to cause real trouble, but not enough to disrupt the peace process: the Omagh bombing showed the utter insanity of going back to the old ways

On Monday, after spending what time I could preparing, I went downstairs to the Map Room for four hours of testimonyStarr had agreed not to bring me down to the courthouse, probably because of the adverse reaction he got when he made Hillary do itHowever, he insisted on videotaping my testimony, allegedly because one of the twenty-four grand jurors couldnt attend the sessionDavid Kendall said the grand jury was welcome to come to the White House if Starr would not videotape my secret testimonyHe refused; I suspected that he wanted to send the videotape to Congress, where it could be released without getting him into more hot water

The grand jury was watching the proceedings on closed-circuit television back at the courthouse while Starr and his interrogators did their best to turn the videotape into a pornographic home movie, asking me questions designed to humiliate me and to so disgust the Congress and the American people that they wholesale gucci messenger bag would demand my resignation, after which he might be able to indict meSamuel Johnson once said that nothing concentrates the mind as much as the prospect of ones own destructionMoreover, I believed that a lot more was at stake than what might happen to me

After the preliminaries, I asked to make a brief statementI admitted that on certain occasions in 1996 and once in 1997 I engaged in wrongful conduct that included inappropriate intimate contact with Monica Lewinsky; that the conduct, while morally wrong, did not constitute sexual relations as I understood the definition of the term that Judge Wright accepted at the request of the Jones lawyers; that I took full responsibility for my actions; and that I would answer to the best of my ability all the OICs questions relating to the legality of my actions, but would not say more about the specifics of what had happened

The principal OIC interrogator then took me through a long list of questions dealing with the definition of sexual relations that Judge Wright had imposedI acknowledged that I had not been trying to be helpful to the Jones lawyers because they, like the OIC, had engaged in repeated unlawful leaks, and since they knew by then that their case had no merit, I believed that their objective in the deposition was to elicit damaging new information from me for the purpose of leaking itI said that of course I didnt know that by the time I testified d&g buying fake Starrs office had already become heavily involved

Now Starrs lawyers were trying to capitalize on the setup by getting me on videotape discussing things in graphic detail that no one should ever have to talk about publicly

When the OIC lawyer continued to complain about my deposition answers on the sex questions, I reminded him that both my lawyer and I had invited Joness attorneys to ask specific follow-up questions, and that they declined to do soI said it was now clear to me that they didnt do so because they were no longer trying to get a damaging admission that they could leak to the pressInstead, they were working for StarrThey wanted the deposition to lay the basis for forcing my resignation, or impeachment, or perhaps even an indictmentSo they didnt ask follow-up questions because they were afraid I would give them a truthful answerThey were trying to set me up and trick meAnd now you seem to be complaining that they didnt do a good enough jobI confessed that I deplored what the Rutherford Institute lawyers had done in Joness namethe tormenting of innocent people, the illegal leaking, the pursuit of a bogus, politically motivated suitbut I was determined to walk through the minefield of this deposition without violating the law, and I believe I did

I did acknowledge that I had misled everyone who asked about the story after it brokeAnd I said over and over again that I never asked anyone to fake tiffany heart drop earrings l