Michael Isikoff - Uncovering Clinton; Uncovering Clinton; A reporter’s story

Acclaim for Michael Isikoffs
UNCOVERING CLINTON

Isikoff has written a lively, highly readable and attention-holding account, with much that is new, about how one of the strangest episodes in the history of the American presidency came about.

Elizabeth Drew, Los Angeles Times

Uncovering Clinton reads like a detective novel in which almost everyone is partially guilty.

Chicago Tribune

Here is a yarn to keep the juices flowing Isikoffs tale is serpentine in two senses of the word: sinuous in its course and writhing with snakes in human guise an impressive feat of investigative reporting.

Boston Globe

Michael Isikoff has been the Woodward and Bernstein of the Clinton era. We loved [Uncovering Clinton] because it made us look at a story that we thought we knew far too well already in a completely different light. We found something startling on almost every page. We loved it for its narrative drive, its outlandish cast of characters, its Dickensian coincidences, and we suspect it will still be read as such long after Monica Lewinsky and Kenneth Starr are distant memories.

Book-of-the-Month Club

Uncovering Clinton is a stunning, suspenseful, marvelous and completely convincing rendering of William Jefferson Clintons messy life and its corrosive effect on the American presidency. a book of power and fairness that offers deep insights into Clinton, his victims, the grimy baseness of politics in Washington and provides what will surely be the first book historians of the next century turn to when they want to understand the Clinton impeachment.

Buffalo News

Isikoff, like all great reporters, is just as good at telling a story as getting it. The book is well-written throughout, but the last fourth of it, dealing with Starrs fateful entry into the case, is absolutely gripping. Isikoff deserves a wide audience. Sometimes the most important thing is not the story itself, but how and why it came out.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Isikoff writes smoothly and without malice. This is by no means a Clinton-hating book. For that reason, it is all the more devastating.

Lars-Erik Nelson, New York Daily News

Isikoffs book is important because he, more than any other reporter, saw this story from the ground up.

USA Today

Spectacular The most compelling and important first-person big story narrative any reporter has written since All the Presidents Men.

The Weekly Standard

A no-holds-barred, definitive record of events told by a reporter with no political ax to grind.

Virginian-Pilot

A penetrating look at the most explosive presidential scandal since Watergate.

Associated Press

Surely the best exposition so far of the Clinton crisis, filled with new revelations and insights. a first-person whodunit depicting a demi-world of betrayal and mendacity.

Robert Novak, National Review

An excellent, fast-moving, behind-the-scenes account

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Uncovering Clinton is an extremely important book. It is an account of how things work inside the Beltway, and how events areand are notreported. It is a multileveled tale of deceit, duplicity, and corruption, and how they spread from the top down. I know this sordid tale inside and out, chapter and verse, and I still couldnt put Uncovering Clinton down.

Bookreporter

For sheer readability and thoroughness, it will probably be many years before anyone tops Isikoffs tale of lAffair Monica. His book becomes the absolutely essential narrative on the scandal, with revelations that no one would have thought possible in the aftermath of such a heavily reported story.

Journal News, Westchester County, NY

This isnt just journalism. This is history a fascinating, powerful and candid account of [Isikoffs] scandal-mongering at the Washington Post and Newsweek. the definitive book on the most serious and surreal crisis since Watergate.

Madison (Wis.) Capitol Times

Briskly written, revealing and insightful. essential reading for anyone interested in the press, Clinton, and his presidency.

American Spectator

Copyright 1999, 2000 by Michael Isikoff

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Three Rivers Press, New York, New York. Member of the Crown Publishing Group.

Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland
www.randomhouse.com

Three Rivers Press is a registered trademark and the Three Rivers Press colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover by Crown Publishers in 1999.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Isikoff, Michael.
Uncovering Clinton : a reporters story / Michael Isikoff. 1. Clinton, Bill, 1946 Sexual behavior. 2. Clinton, Bill, 1946 Relations with women. 3. Political corruptionUnited StatesHistory20th century. 4. United StatesPolitics and government1993 I. Title.
E886.2.I85 1999
973.929092dc21 99-13056

eISBN: 978-0-307-81398-5

v3.1

For Lisa and Willa

This is, in almost every respect, the same book as was originally published by Crown in hardcover in March 1999. A few small mistakes are corrected. A few new details are added toward the end of the narrative, mostly involving the handling of Linda Tripps audiotapes in January 1998. This new material is derived from public testimony during pretrial hearings on Linda Tripps indictment for violation of the Maryland wiretapping statute in December 1999.

A new Afterword also has been included, covering developments since the hardcover edition went to press.

Hey, Isikoff, you might not want to go out that way.

It was Tom Sherwood, my old colleague from The Washington Post, now a local television ace, offering me a friendly heads-up. We were standing in a hallway of the NBC Washington bureau, just a few minutes after the taping of Meet the Press. I poked my head out the glass doorway to the lobby and saw the crowdan unruly crush of TV cameramen, photographers and disgruntled correspondents stuck with Sunday stakeout duty.

So this was what they meant by the jackals of the press.

Whats that all about? I asked Sherwood. Who are they waiting for?

You, he said.

Oh, for Gods sake, I said. This is ridiculous. Sherwood agreed, and we both sort of laughed. I was used to chasing newsmakers, not being one. There was a rough form of justice to this, of course: The hunter learns what it is like to be hunted. But it also seemed, like so much else that morning, surreal and extremely absurd.