Intern was Starr's best witness

Hundreds of pages of grand jury testimony, personal notes and e-mail exchanges released yesterday reveal a deeply vulnerable young woman whipsawed by emotions during her affair with President Clinton. The man she nicknamed "Handsome" and referred to in gushy letters as "so heavenly" and "simply delicious" was also a "big creep" and "that shmucko" in notes to friends.

She felt jilted, perhaps emotionally on edge as the relationship slipped away.

"Please do not do this to me," Lewinsky said in a handwritten June 1997 letter to Clinton that had all seven words underlined. "I feel disposable, used and insignificant."

"I believe the time has finally come for me to throw in the towel," she wrote in a note found on her computer. "I give up. You let me down, but I shouldn't have trusted you in the first place."

Lewinsky circled dates in her calendar each time she met or talked with Clinton. Her home computer's memory was filled with undelivered letters to the president and e-mail exchanges with friends. She blabbed to several pals, including Linda Tripp, about the White House trysts.

Those actions gave prosecutors mountains of evidence - without or without her cooperation. By the time she appeared before a grand jury, prosecutor Kenneth Starr had a detailed chart outlining, in Lewinsky's words, "some of the highlights of my relationship with the president."

n "Pizza night," a Nov. 17, 1995: An encounter that included sex.

n "Thank you note" from Sept. 5, 1996: 'Tie is really beautiful.'

n "Conversation, including job talk and phone sex": Feb. 8, 1997.

n "Private encounter. Christmas kiss": Dec. 28, 1997.

Even without a chart, Lewinsky's wide range of emotions were evident throughout the thousands of pages of documents released yesterday.

She was in love.

"Bill, I love you with all my heart," she wrote. In an e-mail, she said, "I want to hug him so bad right now I could cry." She testified, "I fell in love."

Lewinsky said Clinton had a "beautiful soul. I just thought he was just this incredible person and when I looked at him I saw a little boy and - I don't know what the truth is anymore."

She was in lust.

"We were very compatible sexually," Lewinsky testified. "I've always felt that he was sort of my sexual soulmate." Asked if the relationship was love or sexual obsession, she said, "more love with a little bit of obsession. But definitely love."

She feared losing him.

"Please be nice to me," she wrote. "Please be my friend."

She was angry.

"In some way, I hope I never hear from him again because he'll just lead me on because he doesn't have the (guts) to tell me the truth." She called him a vulgarity beginning with "f" in one e-mail to a friend. She broke down and cried in one grand jury session, saying, "I hate Linda Tripp" for tipping Starr to the affair.

She was poignant.

"It's just hard thinking my dad might see this," she said during an embarrassing stage of testimony. After Clinton confessed to the nation about their affair on Aug. 17, with nary a mention of her, she testified, "I had wanted him to say that I was a nice, decent person and that he was sorry this had happened."

09-22-98