President Bill Clinton ended his sexual encounters with Ms Monica Lewinsky not because of fears that he was about to be found out, but because "he knew they were wrong", his defence team said yesterday.
In a 73-page rebuttal of independent counsel Mr Kenneth Starr's report to the US Congress on his investigation, Mr Clinton's lawyers said the President did not carry on an 18month affair with Ms Lewinsky, but rather, had "improper conduct" with her on "certain occasions" in early 1996 and once in early 1997.
"These encounters did not consist of sexual intercourse, and they did not consist of `sexual relations' as he understood that term to be defined" in his testimony last January in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against him, the rebuttal said.
But he did have "inappropriate intimate contact" with Ms Lewinsky.
"These inappropriate encounters ended, at the President's insistence, in early 1997, not because of the imminence of discovery, not because of the Jones case . . . but because he knew they were wrong," the rebuttal said.
It continued that after the relationship ended, Mr Clinton remained in touch with Ms Lewinsky and tried to help her, but "none of this help was improper or conditioned on her behaving (or testifying) in any particular way.
"Impeachment is a matter of incomparable gravity. Even to discuss it is to discuss overturning the electoral will of the people," President Clinton's personal and White House lawyers wrote.
White House spokesman, Mr Joe Lockhart, said the rebuttal, sent to a half-dozen political leaders, was not based on any advance sight of the Starr report. "We don't know what's in the report, but we can read the newspapers," he said.
The White House document said Mr Clinton had acknowledged "a serious mistake" in his relationship with Ms Lewinsky.
"This private mistake does not amount to an impeachable action," the report argued.
It continued that the Starr report was based "entirely on allegations obtained by the grand jury" and added that grand juries "are not designed to search for the truth".
Denying all the allegations of criminal misconduct, the report asserted: "This means that the OIC report is left with nothing but the details of a private sexual relationship, told in graphic details with the intent to embarrass."