XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX 06:11 UTC SUN JAN 18 1998 XXXXX

NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN

BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT

**World Exclusive** **Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**

At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!

The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president's sexual preference. Reports of the relationship spread in White House quarters and she was moved to a job at the Pentagon, where she worked until last week.

The young intern wrote long love letters to President Clinton, which she delivered through a delivery service. She was a frequent visitor at the White House after midnight, where she checked in the WAVE logs as visiting a secretary named Betty Curry, 57.

The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that tapes of intimate phone conversations exist.

The relationship between the president and the young woman become strained when the president believed that the young woman was bragging about the affair to others.

NEWSWEEK and Isikoff were planning to name the woman. Word of the story's impeding release caused blind chaos in media circles; TIME magazine spent Saturday scrambling for its own version of the story, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. The NEW YORK POST on Sunday was set to front the young intern's affair, but was forced to fall back on the dated ABC NEWS Kathleen Willey break.

The story was set to break just hours after President Clinton testified in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case.

Ironically, several years ago, it was Isikoff that found himself in a shouting match with editors who were refusing to publish even a portion of his meticulously researched investigative report that was to break Paula Jones. Isikoff worked for the WASHINGTON POST at the time, and left shortly after the incident to build them for the paper's sister magazine, NEWSWEEK.

Michael Isikoff was not available for comment late Saturday. NEWSWEEK was on voice mail.

The White House was busy checking the DRUDGE REPORT for details.

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Now is a good time to review how the fictitious "Walter Scott" of Parade magazine tried to neutralize the continuing scandal of Willie's bad case of satyriasis back on Feb. 26, 1995:

Q: How much truth is there to those stories coming out of Washington that Bill Clinton is still an incurable womanizer?--K.C., New York, NY.

A: If there were any hard evidence that the President of the U.S. was womanizing, you can be certain it would have appeared by now in the media. The days when the White House Press corps respected a President's privacy and ignored his extracurriculur activities--as with JFK--are long gone. Insiders say the salacious rumors about Bill Clinton often can be traced to Secret Service agents, who may be feuding with the First Lady. She reportedly suspects that some of the agents are snoops and tries to keep them at a distance. One agent recently spread a story that Mrs. Clinton had become so tired of her husband's wandering ways that she threatened to seek a divorce and run against him in 1996. No one believes that outlandish tale, but unfortunately it has made its way through the Washington gossip mill. (end of excerpt)

Parade is owned by S.I. Newhouse. He also owns Random House Publishing, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Details, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, and much else. Sidney Blumenthal on August 9, 1993, had published in the New Yorker the earliest major magazine cover-up story on Vincent Foster's death. Blumenthal is now a White House aide. Bringing the comment full circle, Blumenthal is suing Matt Drudge for an earlier Isikoff-developed story that Drudge ended up running with.