Report: Lewinsky mistreated by officials

When one-time White House intern Monica Lewinsky broke her silence with a major speech this week, one subject brought her nearly to tears.

Speaking at the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia, Lewinsky's voice cracked as she recalled the moment in January 1998 when she was first confronted by FBI agents and lawyers working for Kenneth W. Starr's Office of Independent Counsel, who threatened her and her mother with criminal prosecution if she did not agree to wear a wire against President Bill Clinton.

Lewinsky, now 41, has long felt she was mistreated by authorities in the 12-hour marathon session, which began as a sting at the food court at the Pentagon City mall and then moved to a hotel room at the mall's adjoining Ritz-Carlton hotel.

As it turns out, so did government lawyers who conducted a comprehensive review of the incident in 2000, two years after the encounter. Their findings are contained in a report - recently obtained by the Washington Post through a request under the Freedom of Information Act to the National Archives - that key players had long believed was under court-ordered seal.

According to the report, a prosecutor who confronted Lewinsky "exercised poor judgment and made mistakes in his analysis, planning, and execution of the approach." The report, written by two lawyers appointed to investigate the matter by Robert W. Ray, Starr's successor as independent counsel, concluded the "matter could have been handled better."

The report also laid out the encounter in detail, suggesting that it quickly spun out of control as a shocked and hysterical Lewinsky asked for the opportunity to consult a lawyer or a parent - even as prosecutors grew increasingly determined to persuade her to agree on the spot to cooperate against the president.

The confrontation was one of many memorable elements of a scandal that remains a subject of fascination for many Americans 16 years after it threatened to bring down a president.

The existence of the report, as well as its general conclusions, were first revealed in the 2010 book The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr, an exhaustive study of the Lewinsky investigation by Duquesne University law school dean Ken Gormley.

However, the report has not before been in wide circulation.

"One person people seem to forget a lot about during this crisis for our country was Monica Lewinsky," said Gormley, who extensively interviewed Lewinsky, Starr, Bill Clinton, and other key players for his book. "She was just this foil in the clash between Clinton and Starr. . . . I have observed that as more information has gotten into the public domain, that people grow more sympathetic with her position, which was unwinnable."

Why the report has remained out of sight for nearly 14 years is not clear. Gormley said the central players - including Lewinsky - believed that it had been sealed by the court.

"This is one piece of the whole Clinton-Starr battle," Gormley said, "that had remained a mystery."