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26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A well written account, June 4, 1999
By A Customer
Finally there is a definitive book on the events of the past year. Isikoff has written a thoroughly engrossing book that will be used for generations to come to explain why Bill Clinton was impeached. There is a lot to hate in this book if you are a die-hard partisan. Clinton supporters can react with righteous indignation about the conduct of Tripp and Goldberg while Clinton haters can relish in the accounts of the preditory womanizing and probable sexual assault of the President. There is a lot to learn in this book that has not been reported before. If the reader can take off the polital blinders for a moment and read this wonderfully written book objectively they will understand why the president deserved to be impeached and why Linda Tripp deserves to go to jail. This book finally establishes that: 1) Paula Jones is totally vindicated and deserves the most sympathy. No one deserves to be treated the way she was first by Clinton, then by the feminists and finally by the media. 2) Kathleen Willey was almost certainly assaulted by the President. 3) The President used private detectives to smear and intimidate women with whom he had sexual contact (consentual or not). Abuses of power that should disturb even the most strident Clinton defender. 4) Linda Tripp illegally and immorally set up Monica Lewinsky and the president. She and Goldberg's actions should disturb even the most rabid Clinton-hater. 5) The investigation by the Office of the Independent Counsel was probably beyond their scope and should be looked into further. There seem to be no heros in this book but very clear villains. In the end I think Clinton and Tripp deserve each other.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Way, way, way Inside-the-Beltway look at Clinton scandal., May 10, 2001
It doesn't get any more in depth than this folks. Michael Isikoff, the Newsweek reporter largely acknowledged as having broken the Monica Lewinsky scandal, gives all the sordid details, and not just about Monica... The book lays out the pre-scandal hub-bub. Closed door editorial meetings in New York. The ins-and-outs of how cyber journal-hound Matt Drudge dredged up the story. The checking and rechecking of facts and sources. Sure it's a riveting story. Sure, we all know how it ends. But if you're into the muckety-muck of Inside-the-Beltway politics and Big Journalism, 'Uncovering Clinton' will not disappoint. Years after the fact, the whole affair seems almost surreal.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterful chronicle of low life in high places, May 29, 1999
By A Customer
Isikoff's book provides a detailed blueprint to events we are all, regretfully, too familiar with, showing with great clarity the incestuous links and synergies between the known and lesser known players in all sides of this historical melodrama. Nobody looks good: yes, there was a right wing cabal squaring Chicago, Arkansas, Philadelphia and Washington DC; yes, in all probability Starr&staff had a political agenda in pursuing his loose legal mandate; yes, Paula Jones was probably telling the truth; yes, Paula Jones was used by the right wing and thoroughly betrayed by organized feminism; yes, Linda Tripp was every bit the Wicked Witch of the West, gossip and schemer long before Monica entered the picture; yes many of the "pundits" we would see on cableTV were in fact were players in the melodrama, with ties to one faction or another; yes, Clinton was manipulative and sleazy; yes Clinton was lucky in his choice of enemies, particularly in the House of Representatives, a pathetic bunch more interested in scoring political low-points than addressing an issue (which explains in some way how ineffective they were in persuading the American people of the appropriateness of their course); yes Clinton was lucky in his choice of friends who with enormous zeal would put their own reputations on the line and viciously attack that of others to defend allegations which they themselves, as most Americans at the time, probably believed to be more plausible than not; yes, organized feminists in particular behaved hypocritically in dealing with the women in this tale.....no allegation brought forth in the Anita Hill controversy came close to what happened here. During Watergate the villains were clearly villanous and their actions brought forth dignified and patriotic behavior in Congress. Clinton's scandals seem to have soiled everyone who has come in contact with them on all sides of the story. Indeed, the American people have a right to paraphrase Shakespeare and say "a plague to ALL their houses!!!" One of this book's several virtues is Isikoff's perspective as the prime investigative reporter so close to center of events as to feel, at times, drawn into the conflict as a participant. His struggle to maintain personal and professional integrity in the earnest pursuit of an ever tawdrier story provides a rich counterpoint to the telling of this sorry episode. I, like all Americans were indeed part of this tale, so I think it's unfair to finish without sharing where I find myself today: I am glad that Clinton was not convicted.....a conviction would have set a worse precedent than acquittal; I can hardly wait for his term to end. Both the White House and the House of Representatives are in dire need of thorough housecleaning.
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