Saying that he had misled his wife and the public, President Clinton admitted in a solemn and grim-faced address tonight that he had had an intimate relationship at the White House with an intern. He also acknowledged the relationship in testimony to a Federal grand jury.
''It was wrong,'' the President said, speaking defiantly from the same straight-backed chair from which, hours earlier, he had carried on an even more combative exchange with prosecutors. ''It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.'' [Transcript, page A12.]
After seven months of emphatic denials of a sexual relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky, the former intern, Mr. Clinton found himself addressing among the most personally painful of matters -- adultery -- in the most public forum imaginable. Speaking just after 10 P.M., he tried to wrest political forgiveness from personal embarrassment, issuing a proud, even angry demand for his privacy back.
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