President Clinton is likely to appeal against a court ruling that his conversations with senior aides about the Monica Lewinsky affair are not privileged. The aides had pleaded "executive privilege" when questioned by a grand jury.
The last US president to ask the Supreme Court to protect his private conversations was Richard Nixon, at the height of the Watergate controversy in the summer of 1974. The court ruled that he had to turn over the tapes of his Oval Office conversations to the special prosecutor. Mr Nixon resigned soon afterwards.
Federal Judge Norma Holloway Johnson has now rejected Mr Clinton's claim that his conversations with senior aides concerning the Lewinsky matter are covered by executive privilege. The judge followed the Nixon decision in ruling that this privilege does not apply when there is a criminal investigation and national security is not involved.
The White House has not said if the President will appeal. That would further delay the efforts by the independent counsel, Mr Kenneth Starr, to wind up his investigation into whether Mr Clinton lied about having a sexual relationship with the former White House intern and encouraged her to commit perjury.
Mr Starr won another victory recently when Judge Holloway Johnson ruled that Ms Lewinsky had not been promised full immunity from prosecution in return for co-operating with his investigation.
But some relief was given to the beleaguered White House this week when the grand jury in Little Rock, Arkansas, investigating the Whitewater fraud, ended its deliberations after four years without indicting Mrs Hillary Clinton.
Mr Starr has been investigating if she was involved in fraud when she was working as a lawyer in Little Rock on property developments.
The independent counsel is continuing to work, however, with a grand jury in Washington which is mainly investigating the Lewinsky matter. Yesterday he brought back Ms Betty Currie, the President's private secretary, for further questioning.
Mr Clinton has refused to answer questions about his relationship with Ms Lewin sky, while denying that it was sexual.
Ms Lewinsky has also denied in a sworn affidavit that she had a sexual relationship with Mr Clinton or that he encouraged her to lie about it as part of a cover-up. But in tapes of her conversations with a former colleague, Ms Linda Tripp, Ms Lewinsky talks about a 17month sexual affair with Mr Clinton.
Mr Starr has yet to decide whether to call Ms Lewinsky before the Washington grand jury. But his hand has been strengthened by the dismissal of the claim by her lawyer, Mr William Ginsburg, that a deal had been done to give her full immunity in exchange for her testimony.