President Clinton has achieved the unenviable status of becoming the third president in American history to be subjected to an impeachment inquiry.
The US House of Representatives last night voted for the Republican resolution ordering the Judiciary Committee "to investigate fully and completely" whether Mr Clinton has committed impeachable offences.
Richard Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment in 1974, and in 1868 Andrew Johnson was impeached in the House but acquitted by one vote in the Senate.
Some 31 of the 206 Democrats voted for the Republicans' formula for the investigation yesterday. The White House was relieved that the number of defectors was so low. Some estimates before the vote had put the figure at 50 or higher.
But in an earlier vote, 195 Democrats had supported their own more tightly-worded resolution for an impeachment inquiry with a time limit of the end of the year. This resolution was rejected by the Republican majority, but the two votes showed that virtually every member of the House supports an impeachment inquiry of some kind.
The latest USA Today/CNN poll by Gallup shows that 53 per cent oppose impeachment hearings while 44 per cent favour them.
President Clinton, speaking to journalists at the White House, said he would co-operate with the impeachment investigation, which he hoped would be "fair and timely", but the matter was "ultimately in the hands of God and there is nothing I can do about it."
A few seconds later, when asked if he would testify in the new investigation, to challenge Ms Lewinsky's version of their relationship, Mr Clinton said this was "ultimately in the hands of Congress" and he had "trust in the American people".
The president had told Democrats they should vote according to their consciences but in private lobbying he and Mrs Hillary Clinton had argued that the allegations in the Starr report were not impeachable offences and did not warrant an impeachment inquiry.
The vote came after a two-hour debate during which the Democrats complained that the Republican open-ended resolution was unfair and would mean that Congress could spend the next two years going into the often tawdry details of the report of the independent counsel, Mr Kenneth Starr.
The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Mr Henry Hyde, said the Republican resolution was modelled on the Watergate inquiry into President Nixon in 1974, which was opposed then by only four members of the House.
Mr Hyde insisted the inquiry would not be a "fishing expedition". But Mr Starr has told the committee he cannot rule out sending new material about impeachable offences. He did not indicate whether such material would be about the Monica Lewinsky scandal or the earlier Whitewater investigation.
One of the severest critics of the president was a Democratic member, Mr Paul McHale, who has already called for his resignation. Another Democrat, Mr Paul Wexler, said: "The president betrayed his wife. He did not betray the country. God help this nation if we fail to recognise the difference."
Reuters adds from Little Rock: US District Judge Susan Webber Wright yesterday ordered the release - on October 19th - of President Clinton's deposition and other potentially embarrassing files in Ms Paula Jones's sexual harassment lawsuit against him.