Monica Lewinsky

Monica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973) is an American activist and writer.

Lewinsky’s parents divorced in 1988 and each has remarried.

The family attended Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and Lewinsky attended Sinai Akiba Academy, the school affiliated with the Temple.

For her primary education, she attended the John Thomas Dye School in Bel-Air.

A former White House intern, Lewinsky gained international celebrity status in the late 1990s as a result of the public coverage of a political scandal when U.S. President Bill Clinton admitted to having an affair with her during her days as an intern between 1995 and 1997.

The affair, and its repercussions (which included Clinton's impeachment), became known later as the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal.

She subsequently engaged in a variety of ventures that included designing a line of handbags under her name, serving as an advertising spokesperson for a diet plan, and working as a television personality.

Lewinsky attended Beverly Hills High School for three years before transferring to Bel Air Prep (later known as Pacific High School), graduating in 1991.

Following her high school graduation, Lewinsky attended Santa Monica College.

while working for the drama department at Beverly Hills High School and at a tie shop.

In 1992, she began a five-year affair with Andy Bleiler, her married former high school drama instructor.

In 1993, she enrolled at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, graduating with a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1995.

Lewinsky moved to Washington, D.C. and took up the position in July 1995.

She moved to a paid posting in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs in December 1995.

Lewinsky stated that she had nine sexual encounters with President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office between November 1995 and March 1997.

According to her testimony, these involved oral sex and other sexual acts, but not sexual intercourse.

Clinton had previously been confronted with allegations of sexual misconduct during his time as Governor of Arkansas.

Former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones filed a civil lawsuit against him alleging that he had sexually harassed her.

Lewinsky's name surfaced during the discovery phase of Jones' case, when Jones' lawyers sought to show a pattern of behavior by Clinton which involved inappropriate sexual relationships with other government employees.

In 1996, she wrote a "gossip biography", The Private Lives of the Three Tenors.

Lewinsky’s maternal grandfather, Samuel M. Vilensky, was a Lithuanian Jew, and her maternal grandmother, Bronia Poleshuk, was born in the British Concession of Tianjin, China, to a Russian Jewish family.

In April 1996, Lewinsky's superiors transferred her from the White House to the Pentagon because they felt that she was spending too much time with Clinton.

At the Pentagon, she worked as an assistant to chief Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon.

Lewinsky told co-worker Linda Tripp about her relationship with Clinton and Tripp began secretly recording their telephone conversations beginning in September 1997.

She left her position at the Pentagon in December 1997.

Lewinsky submitted an affidavit in the Paula Jones case in January 1998 denying any physical relationship with Clinton and she attempted to persuade Tripp to lie under oath in that case.

Tripp gave the tapes to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, adding to his ongoing investigation into the Whitewater controversy.

Starr then broadened his investigation beyond the Arkansas land use deal to include Lewinsky, Clinton, and others for possible perjury and subornation of perjury in the Jones case.

Tripp reported the taped conversations to literary agent Lucianne Goldberg.

She also convinced Lewinsky to save the gifts that Clinton had given her during their relationship and not to dry clean a blue dress that was stained with Clinton's semen.

Under oath, Clinton denied having had "a sexual affair", "sexual relations", or "a sexual relationship" with Lewinsky.

News of the Clinton–Lewinsky relationship broke in January 1998.

On January 26, 1998, Clinton stated, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" in a nationally televised White House news conference.

Lewinsky left the public spotlight in the mid-2000s to pursue a master's degree in psychology in London.

In an appearance on Larry King Live in 2000, she revealed that she started an affair with a 40-year-old married man in Los Angeles when she was 18 years old, and that the affair continued while she was attending Lewis & Clark College in the early 1990s; she did not disclose the man's identity.

With the assistance of a family connection, Lewinsky secured an unpaid summer White House internship in the office of White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta.

In 2014, she returned to public view as a social activist speaking out against cyberbullying, based on her experiences dealing with the media coverage regarding the scandal.

Lewinsky was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in an affluent family in Southern California in the Westside Brentwood area of Los Angeles and later in Beverly Hills.

Her father is Bernard Lewinsky, an oncologist, who is the son of German Jews who escaped from Nazi Germany, first moving to El Salvador and then finally to the United States when he was 14.

Her mother, born Marcia Kay Vilensky, is an author who uses the name Marcia Lewis.