President Clinton revealed how much the threat of impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky affair was "tearing me apart" following a dinner in Washington to honour Northern Ireland political leaders, according to a new book about the tumultuous events of two years ago.
The book also says that when Mr Clinton decided he would have to tell the grand jury and the nation about his affair with Ms Lewinsky, "he had not been able to bring himself to break the news to his own wife". Instead he sent his personal lawyer, Mr David Kendall, to Mrs Hillary Clinton "to pave the way for him". As the Republican majority in the House of Representatives moved closer to voting to impeach the President on charges of perjury, he met Congressman Peter King of New York at the dinner in December 1998 to honour the leaders of all the Northern Ireland political parties who had worked for the Belfast Agreement.
Although Mr King was a Republican, he supported Mr Clinton for his work on Northern Ireland and was trying to avoid his impeachment by his colleagues in Congress.
In a private meeting after the dinner, Mr King told the President he would have to find a way to reach out to the undecided Republicans. According to Mr King's version of the meeting, the President became emotional. "Don't the people in Congress realise what I have gone through the last three months?" he asked, grabbing Mr King's knee for emphasis.
"Do they think this has been a walk in the park? I'm not just trying to save my ass. Just because I come to work every day and keep my head up doesn't mean this isn't tearing me apart. I have to act that way because I am the President."
The book, called The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton by Peter Baker, a reporter on the Washington Post, says that during the investigation of the Lewinsky affair by Mr Ken Starr, the President was "sometimes so preoccupied that he appeared lost during meetings".
Aides would "occasionally find him in the Oval Office, absently moving things around on his desk or playing with the old campaign buttons he kept in the hallway leading to his private dining room". On another occasion the head of the World Bank, Mr James Wolfensohn, "left a meeting with the President and later called a White House official to say, `It's like he isn't there'."
The book details the demoralisation of White House staff after the Lewinsky story broke.
The White House Chief-of-Staff, Mr Erskine Bowles, was presiding over a damage-control meeting "when he abruptly got up from his chair" saying: "I think I'm going to throw up." He "bolted from the room, never to return to the meeting."
The book also claims that a former deputy chief-of-staff, Mr Harold Ickes, who is now an adviser to Mrs Clinton's Senate campaign, began sounding out key Democrats about Mr Clinton resigning.
"This might be an honourable way out," he told them. If Clinton really was in danger of being removed by Congress, Ickes said, this would avoid a divisive ending and put Vice-President Gore into the Oval Office early enough to let him repair the damage to the party and "give him a fighting chance in 2000".
Mr Ickes also sounded out Mr John Sweeney, leader of the AFLCIO labour federation and influential in the Democratic Party, but he advised: "Let's wait and see, Harold. Let's see how this unfolds."