PRESIDENT Clinton faces a difficult week as the Supreme Court hears a sexual harassment case against him and a book by his former political adviser is published.
The Supreme Court hearing. today is not concerned with the details of the charges Ms Paula Jones has made against Mr Clinton but on whether her case should be postponed until after he leaves office. Nevertheless, the hearing means that the media are giving extensive publicity to what she says happened in a Little Rock hotel in 1991 when he was Governor of Arkansas.
She alleges that while she was an employee of the state government, she was summoned to Mr Clinton's hotel room by his police bodyguard. She claims Mr Clinton then fondled her and asked her to perform oral sex. Ms Jones said that she rejected his advances and that he asked her not to tell anybody.
She is suing Mr Clinton for $700,000 in damages, claiming that he engaged in sexual harassment and assault, conspired with a state trooper to entice her into a sexual liaison and defamed her in later remarks to the media.
Mr Clinton has denied her charges but at one stage his lawyers were said to be ready to agree to a statement in which he would say he had "no recollection" of meeting her in a hotel room but "I do not challenge her claim that we met there and I may very well have met her in the past".
The President's draft statement also said that Ms Jones "did not engage in any improper or sexual conduct. I regret the untrue assertions which have been made about her conduct which may have adversely challenged her character and good name".
This attempt at a settlement fell through when Ms Jones accused aides of Mr Clinton of telling CNN that she was delaying her suit because she had a weak case.
According to a book, Behind the Oval Office, by Mr Clinton's former political adviser, Mr Dick Morris, the President commended to him the writings of St Patrick on the virtues of Christian forgiveness. This allegedly happened several weeks after Mr Morris resigned last August when his year long affair with a Washington call girl, Ms Sherry Rowlands, was revealed in the media.
Mr Morris admits in his book that he allowed Ms Rowlands to listen to a telephone conversation he was having with the President.
Mr Clinton takes issue with Mr Morris's claim that he called his election rival, Mr Bob Dole, "an evil, evil man".
Mr Morris describes occasions when Mr Clinton would fly into rages and "derisively refer to his staff as `the children who got me elected'."