BACKGROUND | IMPEACHMENT | PLAYERS | TIMELINE

Profile: Monica Lewinsky Monica Lewinsky Monica Lewinsky is from Brentwood, Calif., the fashionable Los Angeles suburb made famous by another former resident -- O.J. Simpson. Her father, Bernard Lewinsky, is a doctor in nearby Van Nuys. Lewinsky, 25, came to Washington in 1995, after graduating from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., where she earned a bachelor of science degree in psychology. THE PLAYERS Betty Currie Lucianne Goldberg Paula Jones Vernon Jordan Monica Lewinsky Kenneth Starr Linda Tripp In the summer of 1995, Lewinsky began an unpaid internship in the office of Leon Panetta, a former California congressman who was then White House chief of staff. In December 1995 she was given a paying job, handling correspondence in the Office of Legislative Affairs. She lived in the Watergate Apartments. In early 1996 she took a job at the Defense Department as secretary to Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon. There, Lewinsky told her then-friend Linda Tripp about her affair with President Clinton. Tripp secretly taped the conversations, then turned the tapes over to independent counsel Kenneth Starr. But in a Jan. 7 affidavit to lawyers for Paula Jones, Lewinsky said, "I have never had a sexual relationship" with the president. Lewinsky left her Pentagon job in December 1997 and moved to New York City, where two months earlier she had interviewed for a job with Bill Richardson, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Richardson offered her "a junior public affairs position," but she turned it down. Instead, Lewinsky accepted a job offer from Revlon, the New York cosmetics company. Vernon Jordan, Clinton's close friend and confidante, is a member of Revlon's board of directors. Revlon later rescinded the job offer "in light of … events." Lewinsky resisted cooperating with Starr until late summer, when she was offered immunity for her testimony before a grand jury. At first Clinton denied having a sexual relationship with Lewinsky, but in August he admitted to a grand jury that the two engaged in an improper relationship. By Scripps Howard News Service