In a bombshell confession, Bill Clinton has told why he had a torrid affair with Monica Lewinsky: “Just because I could.”
“I did something for the worst possible reason – just because I could,” he said of his romps with Lewinsky. “I think that’s just about the most morally indefensible reason anybody could have for doing something – when you do it because you could,” a contrite Clinton told CBS newsman Dan Rather in an interview about his hotly anticipated memoir that airs Sunday on “60 Minutes.”
“And I thought about it a lot, and there are a lot of more sophisticated explanations, more complicated psychological explanations, but none of them are an excuse.
“Only a fool does not look to explain his mistakes.”
Clinton also called his Oval Office trysts with the Sexgate siren “a terrible moral error” that put him in the “doghouse” with wife Hillary and threatened to alienate daughter Chelsea.
The philandering 42nd president has publicly apologized numerous times for the scandal, which rocked the country and led to his impeachment in 1998 – but this is the first time he’s revealed what fueled his presidential peccadilloes.
Rather told The Post yesterday that the 57-year-old Clinton seemed genuinely remorseful about the salacious affair.
“He said it was a terrible mistake – indefensible morally,” Rather said.
In the wide-ranging interview, Clinton also said Hillary needed time to decide whether she would stay with him – and that only through counseling were they able to heal their fractured marriage.
“We’d take a day a week, and we did – a whole day a week every week for a year, maybe a little more, and did counseling,” said Clinton.
“We did it together. We did it individually. We did family work.”
Clinton called his impeachment fight a “badge of honor.”
“I don’t see it as a stain,” he said. “Because it was illegitimate.”
The “60 Minutes” interview is part of Clinton’s massive publicity blitz for “My Life,” the 957-page tome for which he was paid a $12 million advance.
The much-buzzed-about $35 book hits stores Tuesday – but come Monday, bookstores in New York and Washington are considering staying open until after midnight for the first official sales.
The book’s publisher, Knopf, will release 1.5 million copies of the memoir – the all-time record for a work of nonfiction.
“My Life” is broken into two parts – one chronicling his hardscrabble childhood in rural Arkansas to his election as president in 1992, and the second covering his White House years and the Sexgate scandal.
“I don’t try to settle a lot of scores in the book,” Clinton said recently.
“I don’t spare myself in the book.”
Meanwhile, Lewinsky declined comment about Clinton’s bombshell revelations when The Post caught up with her yesterday outside her posh West Village apartment building.
Clinton will appear in bookstores in New York Tuesday to autograph copies. Once it is released, Clinton will make the rounds on the news and talk shows.
For those who can’t wait until Tuesday to find out what’s in “My Life,” AOL – beginning tomorrow – will offer audio excerpts of the tome as read aloud by Clinton, and Infinity Broadcasting Corp. will air excerpts on the radio.