Former US President Bill Clinton called his fight against impeachment a "badge of honour" and his affair with White House intern Ms Monica Lewinsky "morally indefensible" in a CBS television interview.
In the hour-long interview to air on CBS' 60 Minutesto be broadcast on Sunday, two days before publication of his memoir, My Life, Mr Clinton said he was proud of his successful fight against impeachment, the network said in excerpts released today.
"I didn't quit, I never thought of resigning and I stood up to it and beat it back," he said.
"The whole battle was a badge of honour. I don't see it as a stain, because it [the impeachment process] was illegitimate," added Mr Clinton, who called the process "an abuse of power."
Former US President, Bill Clinton
Mr Clinton's 957-page memoir will be in bookstores from next Tuesday. He was reportedly paid a $10 million advance for the book.
He told 60 Minutesthat high on his list of regrets was his affair with Ms Lewinsky, which he called "a terrible moral error".
Mr Clinton said his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and daughter, Chelsea, were able to overcome the effect of the revelation of the affair through counselling. The former president said his wife, now a Democratic senator from New York, needed time with him to decide whether she would stay married to him.
"We'd take a day a week, and we did - a whole day a week every week for a year, maybe a little more - and did counselling," said Mr Clinton. "We did it together. We did it individually. We did family work."
Mr Clinton said there was no rational explanation for his adulterous behaviour. "I did something for the worst possible reason. Just because I could . . . I think that's just about the most morally indefensible reason anybody could have for doing anything."
Mr Clinton cited the record economic expansion during his eight years in the White House as his greatest domestic achievement.
He also cited the day the war in Kosovo ended as one of the high points of his foreign policy. "The day that Kosovar war ended and I knew [former Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic's days were numbered was a great day," he said.
The inability to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in his final days in office was a big disappointment, he said.