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I said it was now clear to me that they didnt do so because they were no longer trying to get a damaging admission that they could leak to the pressInstead, they were working for StarrThey wanted the deposition to lay the basis for forcing my resignation, or impeachment, or perhaps even an indictmentSo they didnt ask follow-up questions because they were afraid I would give them a truthful answerThey were trying to set me up and trick meAnd now you seem to be complaining that they didnt do a good enough jobI confessed that I deplored what the Rutherford Institute lawyers had done in Joness namethe tormenting of innocent people, the illegal leaking, the pursuit of a bogus, politically motivated suitbut I was determined to walk through the minefield of this deposition without violating the law, and I believe I did I did acknowledge that I had misled everyone who asked about the story after it brokeAnd I said over and over again that I never asked anyone to lieWhen the agreed-upon four hours had expired, I had been asked many questions six or seven times, as the lawyers tried hard to turn my interrogation into admissions that were humiliating and incriminatingThats what the, to date, whole four-year $40 million investigation had come down to: parsing the definition of sex I finished the testimony at about six-thirty, three pink chanel bag replicas and a half hours before I was scheduled to address the nationI was visibly upset when I went up to the solarium to see friends and staff who had gathered to discuss what had just happened, including White House counsel Chuck Ruff, David Kendall, Mickey Kantor, Rahm Emanuel, James Carville, Paul Begala, and Harry and Linda ThomasonChelsea was there, too, and to my relief, at about eight, Hillary joined in We had a discussion about what I should sayEveryone knew I had to admit that I had made an awful mistake and had tried to hide itThe question was whether I should also take a shot at Starrs investigation and say it was time to end itThe virtually unanimous opinion was that I should notMost people already knew that Starr was out of control; they needed to hear my admission of wrongdoing and witness my remorseSome of my friends had given what they thought was strategic advice; others were genuinely appalled by what I had doneOnly Hillary refused to express an opinion, instead encouraging everyone to leave me alone to write my statement At ten oclock I told the American people about my testimony, said I was solely and completely responsible for my personal failure, and admitted misleading everyone, even my wifeI said I was trying to protect myself and my family from intrusive questions in a politically inspired lawsuit cartier pasha crono that had been dismissedI also said that Starrs investigation had gone on too long, cost too much, and hurt too many people, and that two years earlier, another investigation, a truly independent one, had found no wrongdoing by Hillary or me in WhitewaterFinally, I committed to doing my best to repair my family life, and I hoped we could repair the fabric of our nations life by stopping the pursuit of personal destruction and prying into private lives, and moving onI believed every word I said, but my anger hadnt worn off enough for me to be as contrite as I should have been The next day we left for Marthas Vineyard on our annual vacationUsually I counted the days until we could get away for some family time; this year, though I knew we needed it, I wished that I was working around the clock insteadAs we walked out to the South Lawn to get on the helicopter, with Chelsea between Hillary and me and Buddy walking beside me, photographers took pictures that revealed the pain I had causedWhen there were no cameras around, my wife and daughter were barely speaking to me I spent the first couple of days alternating between begging for forgiveness and planning the strikes on al QaedaAt night Hillary would go up to bed and I slept on the couch On my birthday General Don Kerrick, Sandy Bergers staffer, flew to Marthas Vineyard to prada backpacks go over the targets recommended by the CIA and the Joint Chiefsthe al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and two targets in Sudan, a tannery in which bin Laden had a financial interest and a chemical plant the CIA believed was being used to produce or store a chemical used in the production of VX nerve gasI took the tannery off the list because it had no military value to al Qaeda and I wanted to minimize civilian casualtiesThe hit on the camps would be timed to coincide with the meeting the intelligence indicated bin Laden and his top people would be havingI gave Sandy Berger the final order to proceed, and UNavy destroyers in the northern Arabian Sea launched cruise missiles at the targets in Afghanistan, while missiles were fired at the Sudanese chemical plant from ships in the Red SeaMost of the missiles hit the targets, but bin Laden was not in the camp where the CIA thought he would be when the missiles hit itSome reports said he had left the camp only a couple of hours earlier, but we never knew for sureSeveral people associated with al Qaeda were killed, as were some Pakistani officers who were reported to be there to train Kashmiri terroristsThe Sudanese chemical plant was destroyed After announcing the attacks in Marthas Vineyard, I flew back to Washington to speak to the American people for the second time in four days, rolex sport watch telling them I had ordered the strikes because al Qaeda was responsible for the embassy bombings, and bin Laden was perhaps the preeminent organizer and financier of international terrorism in the world today, a man who had vowed to wage a terrorist war on America with no distinction between military personnel and civiliansI said that our attacks were not aimed against Islam but against fanatics and killers, and that we had been fighting against them on several fronts for years and would continue to do so, because this will be a long, ongoing struggle Around the time I spoke of the long struggle, I signed the first of a series of orders to prepare for it by using all the tools availableExecutive Order 13099 imposed economic sanctions on bin Laden and al QaedaLater the sanctions were extended to the Taliban as wellTo date, we had not been effective in disrupting terrorists financial networksThe executive order invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which we had earlier used successfully against the Cali drug cartel in Colombia I had also asked General Shelton and Dick Clarke to develop some options for dropping commando forces into AfghanistanI thought that if we took out a couple of al Qaedas training operations it would show them how serious we were, even if we didnt get bin Laden or his top rolex fakes lieutenants