Former White House intern, Ms Monica Lewinsky, has testified that President Clinton's personal secretary retrieved his gifts to her even though they had been subpoenaed in a court case, US media said yesterday.
In her second appearance on Thursday before Mr Kenneth Starr's grand jury, according to the New York Times, Ms Lewinsky also gave a more detailed account of her sexual contacts in the White House than the President's.
Ms Lewinsky told the grand jury in the White House sex-and-perjury inquiry that Ms Betty Currie, Mr Clinton's secretary, came to her apartment last December to collect the gifts that had been subpoenaed by lawyers in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit, the Times reported.
Ms Currie had telephoned Ms Lewinsky earlier that day saying, "I hear you have something for me," the Times said, adding that Ms Lewinsky told the grand jury she assumed Mr Clinton's secretary was referring to the gifts.
Ms Currie arrived at Ms Lewinsky's luxury Watergate complex apartment the day after the former intern told Mr Clinton of the subpoena demanding the gifts he had given her.
Quoting lawyers familiar with Mr Clinton's unprecedented testimony to the grand jury on Monday, the Times said the President testified to the grand jury he had told Ms Lewinsky she had no choice but to turn the gifts over to the grand jury.
The Washington Post said yesterday that Ms Lewinsky told the grand jury she believed Ms Currie came to fetch the gifts under orders from the President.
Ms Currie, who testified earlier in the Lewinsky investigation, is expected to be called back to the grand jury by Mr Starr's prosecutors.
The jury is part of Mr Starr's investigation into whether Mr Clinton lied under oath about a sexual relationship with Ms Lewinsky (25) and obstructed justice by asking her to lie about it, too.
In a dramatic reversal of his earlier assertions, Mr Clinton said in a nationally televised address on Monday that he had had a relationship that was "not appropriate" with Ms Lewinsky, who was 21 when she worked as an unpaid intern in the White House.
In her second appearance on Thursday before Mr Starr's grand jury, according to the Times, Ms Lewinsky also testified the President caressed her breasts and touched her genitals during several encounters in the White House.
In his testimony on Monday, Mr Clinton would not give prosecutors details of their encounters, possibly in an attempt to avoid a perjury trap. When Mr Clinton testified in January in the now-dismissed Paula Jones civil suit against him, he denied any sexual affair with Ms Lewinsky under a specific definition of sexual contact approved by the judge.
That definition spells out sexual relations as: "contact with the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person".
Mr Starr is reportedly trying to establish the physical specifics of their encounters to determine whether Mr Clinton lied under oath about the relationship.
The Times said Mr Starr's prosecutors have obtained a sample of Mr Clinton's genetic material to determine whether it matches a semen stain on a dress Mr Lewinsky gave to the investigation as part of her immunity from-prosecution deal.
Citing a presidential adviser, the Times said Mr Clinton gave the DNA sample last weekend in advance of his grand jury testimony, the first by a sitting president who is the object of a criminal investigation.
The investigation has been shifted from the spotlight by US missile strikes against Sudan and Afghanistan, but is likely to resume centre stage when Mr Starr sends his expected report on potentially impeachable offences by Mr Clinton to Congress.