It was on January 21st, 1998, that America and the world first heard that President Clinton might have had an affair with a former White House intern called Monica Lewinsky and lied under oath to cover it up.
It was staggering news and brought TV anchormen scurrying back from covering Pope John Paul's visit to Cuba, but was it true? The President issued several denials on television culminating in the finger-wagging: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman - Ms Lewinsky."
Mrs Hillary Clinton told TV viewers her husband was the victim of a "vast right-wing conspiracy".
Leaks were spouting all over about what Ms Lewinsky might have said in taped telephone conversations with her older friend, Linda Tripp. But only Newsweek had actually heard some tapes.
No matter how sensational the story was with its salacious details about oral sex, phone sex and a stained dress, nobody could have foreseen the year ahead.
Such as: the parade of witnesses, including Secret Service agents, before a grand jury culminating in Monica Lewinsky herself, who would tell in graphic detail about her 18-month affair with the President; his own testimony from the White House followed by a televised admission of "an inappropriate relationship"; the release of the Starr Report with its "salacious" details.
A chastened President and his humiliated wife and daughter, Chelsea, departed for a low-key holiday on Martha's Vineyard. But within days the President donned his Commander-in-Chief hat and ordered cruise missile strikes on alleged terrorist sites in Sudan and Afghanistan.
Then came the worldwide televising of the videotape of the Clinton grand jury testimony, as he was simultaneously addressing the UN General Assembly. But his favourable poll ratings surged even higher.
The action switched to the House of Representatives, where the Judiciary Committee began its impeachment investigation into the charges by Independent Counsel, Ken Starr, of perjury, witness tampering, obstruction of justice and abuse of presidential power.
Americans got increasingly fed up with the spectacle. In the midterm elections in November, Republicans, instead of hammering the Democrats over the Lewinsky scandal, found they almost lost their majority in the House. The once mighty Newt Gingrich was forced to resign as Speaker - the first major casualty of what was supposed to be the disgrace of the President.
As US missiles and bombers pounded Baghdad, the House within a week of Christmas voted the first impeachment of a President in 130 years. Gingrich's successor, Bob Livingston, launched a political bombshell when he announced on the House floor he was stepping down following the revelations of his marital infidelity by Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt.
As commentators noted with incredulity: "A Democratic President sins, Republicans do the penance."
Amid increasing calls for the unpopular impeachment process to be halted and for Republicans and Democrats to agree instead on a motion censuring the President for "reckless, shameful, reprehensible" behaviour, the Senate impeachment trial got under way last month, coming up to the first anniversary of the start of the saga.
Its outcome was known from day one. The two-thirds majority needed to convict the President of perjury or obstruction of justice was not there. Even if all 55 Republicans voted to remove the President from office (and this was not certain) they would still need 12 Democratic senators to vote with them.
And so William Jefferson Clinton will be duly acquitted even if he will go into the history books as the second US President to be impeached. The first, Andrew Johnson in 1868, was also acquitted.
How did it all get so out of hand? Why did a consensual sexual affair between adults end up in an impeachment trial?
The answer is Ken Starr. Since August 1994 he had been investigating as an Independent Counsel appointed by the Attorney General, Janet Reno, whether the Clintons had broken laws through their involvement in a failed property development scheme back in the 1970s in Arkansas called Whitewater.
Mr Starr's Whitewater investigation had produced no incriminating evidence against the Clintons. But when Ms Tripp turned her tapes over to him, Mr Starr believed there was prima- facie evidence of the President and his close friend, Vernon Jordan, conspiring to interfere with Ms Lewinsky as a witness in the Paula Jones civil action against Mr Clinton.
Mr Starr got permission from Ms Reno to extend the scope of his Whitewater investigation to the President's relationship with Ms Lewinsky. Specifically Mr Starr would try to prove: that the President encouraged her to deny their affair under oath to the Jones lawyers; that he obstructed justice by having his secretary hide gifts he had given Ms Lewinsky; and that he tried to silence her by arranging for a job in New York with Mr Jordan's help.
The President, as we know, denied everything until in July, Mr Starr struck an immunity deal with Ms Lewinsky and she turned over her blue dress bearing incriminating DNA traces. She also testified to the grand jury about 11 sexual encounters with Mr Clinton but she insisted "no one told me to lie".
The President in his testimony to the grand jury denied witness tampering and would not concede he had lied to the Jones lawyers when he denied having had "sexual relations". He offered the now infamous defence that "it depends on what `is' is".
Polls continued to show that most people (up to 80 per cent) believed Mr Clinton had lied under oath but that he should not be impeached and removed from office. The Republicans were outraged and pressed forward with the impeachment charges while saying they could only succeed on a "bipartisan" basis with the support of Democrats.
Republicans pointed back to Watergate when they had supported impeaching a Republican President and forcing his resignation. But Mr Clinton's popularity in the country and the shaky nature of the perjury and obstruction of justice charges ensured that the Democrats mounted strong opposition to a process they derided as a "Republican witch-hunt".
Bipartisanship vanished. When the House voted to impeach, only five Democrats crossed party lines to vote with the Republicans.
When the Republican "managers" came from the House to the Senate to prosecute the President, they got a cool reception even from their own senators who flinched from having to try such a popular President on charges linked to a tawdry sexual affair.
When during the trial the defendant came to Capitol Hill to deliver the State of the Union message, the Democrats cheered as never before while Republicans looked on with frozen faces. As one Republican social critic, William Bennett, wrote resignedly: "The hard truth is that many Americans are not merely tolerating Mr Clinton; they are embracing him."
When the managers tried to call Ms Lewinsky and a dozen other witnesses, they were shot down. In the end they got three videotaped testimonies which added virtually nothing to what everyone had known for months.
As the senators argued over procedures, a man shouted down from the public gallery: "God Almighty, take the vote and get it over with."
Amen, said America. But it will be months, perhaps years, before the United States can count the cost of Monicagate.