Mr Clinton criticised the lawyers ranged against him in the Paula Jones case as being politically motivated and funded by his political opponents.
In a swingeing attack on them, he said they had a "lousy case" against him. As a result, "they proceeded to cross the country and try to turn up whatever they could."
He claimed they were funded by his political opponents and used a "dragnet of discovery" to uncover damaging information. There was a flash of anger at Mr Robert Bittman, the lawyer who questioned him before the grand jury, when he tried to interrupt Mr Clinton. The President pointed his finger at him, saying: "Let me finish. . . you brought this up."
The President went on: "What they wanted to do. . . was to find any negative information they could on me whether it was true or not, get it in the deposition and then leak it even though it was illegal to do so. They did it repeatedly. That was their strategy and they did a good job of it and they got away with it. Their real goal was to hurt me."
He said he believed the lawyers' aim was to "pummel him" so he would settle in the civil case: "They just thought they could take a wrecking ball to me and see if they could do some damage."
Mr Clinton said that at the time of the Jones case, the question of his relationship with Ms Lewinsky had not been uppermost in his mind and that he had therefore forgotten many of the details of what happened.
Speaking with annoyance in his voice, Mr Clinton told his questioner: "From the tone of your voice and the way you are asking questions here, it is obvious that (it seems to you that) this is the most important thing in the world and that everyone was focused on the details at that time.
"That is not the way it worked."
The independent counsel's questions suggested that Mr Starr's team had been working with the Jones lawyers in an effort to set up the President, said Mr Clinton.
"You seem to be criticising me because they didn't ask better questions. As if you didn't prepare them well enough to set me up here. . . Keep in mind that at this time, until this date (of the Jones deposition) when it is obvious that something funny is going on here and there is some sort of a gotcha game going on in this deposition, until this date I didn't know that Ms Lewinsky's affidavit was not going to be sufficient to stop her testifying.
"There were a lot of other things going on at the time this was going on. This was not the most important thing in my life - this was just another thing in my life. I gave the best answer I could, based on the best memory I had at the time of the deposition."
Mr Clinton said: "I felt very strongly that Ms Lewinsky and everybody else that didn't know anything about Paula Jones or sexual harassment were themselves being harassed for political purposes in the hope of getting damaging information that the Jones lawyers could unlawfully leak. I think that what they were trying to do to her was outrageous, just so they could hurt me politically."
Mr Clinton said that Miss Jones' lawyers' tactics had not led him to believe that he could lie in his deposition. "In the face of their illegal leaks, their constant unrelenting illegal leaks in a law suit that I knew - and by the time this deposition started they knew - was a bogus suit in the law and a bogus suit in the facts, in the face of that I knew I still had to behave lawfully.
"I wanted to be legal without being particularly helpful. That is what I was trying to do and you are the first person that has ever suggested to me that I should have been doing their lawyers' work for them."
Mr Clinton said that it seemed that Ms Jones's lawyers had been working with the Starr team and with Ms Lewinsky's confidante, Mrs Linda Tripp, to set traps for him to fall into.
He said: "It now appears that there had been some communication between you and Mrs Tripp and them and they were trying to set me up and trick me and now you seem to be complaining that they didn't do a good enough job."
The President added: "Did I want this to come out? No. Was I embarrassed about it? Yes. Did I ask her to lie about it? No. Did I believe there could be a truthful affidavit? Absolutely. That's all I want to say about this."
Mr Clinton said he deplored what the Jones lawyers were doing. "I deplored it, but I was determined to walk through the minefield of this deposition without violating the law, and I believe I did."
Adopting a more conciliatory tone, he told his questioners: "All of you are intelligent people, you've worked hard on this, you've gotten all the facts, you've seen evidence I haven't seen.
"It's an embarrassing and personally painful thing, the truth about my relationship with Ms Lewinsky. So the natural assumption is, that while all this was going on, I must have been focused on nothing but this.
"All I can tell you is, I was concerned about it, I was glad she saw a lawyer, glad she was doing an affidavit, but there were a lot of other things going on, I don't know if I can remember it all."
Mr Bittman returned again and again to the definition of a sexual relationship and apparent differences between Mr Clinton and Ms Lewinsky's testimony to the grand jury. The President compared his position to that of Judge Clarence Thomas when he was accused of sexual harassment by Ms Anita Hill at the time of his appointment to the Supreme Court.
Although their testimonies were contradictory, Mr Clinton said he believed that both honestly thought they were telling the truth. Two people caught up in a sexual situation could have widely different subjective impressions of it, and contradictions between their recollections did not necessarily mean that one of them was lying, he said.
Mr Clinton said: "You are dealing with, in some ways, the most mysterious area of human life. I am doing the best I can to give you honest answers.
"Maybe Ms Lewinsky believes she is telling the truth."
He said he did not hold it against Ms Lewinsky that she had decided to tell the Starr investigation about her relationship with him.
"I am glad she got herself and her mother out of trouble. I am glad that you gave her that sweeping immunity. It breaks my heart that she was ever involved in this."
He said he already realised that she was likely to talk about their affair but not because she was a "bad person".
Mr Clinton said she was "burdened with some unfortunate conditions of her upbringing but basically she is a good person".