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A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President
In A Vast Conspiracy , the best-selling author of The Run of His Life casts an insightful, unbiased eye over the most extraordinary public saga of our time -- the Clinton sex scandals. A superlative journalist known for the skillfulness of his investigating and the power of his writing, Jeffrey Toobin tells the unlikely story of the events that began over doughnuts in a Little Rock hotel and ended on the floor of the United States Senate, with only the second vote on Presidential removal in American history. This is an entirely fresh look at the scandal that very nearly brought down a president.
Packed with news-making disclosures and secret documents published here for the first time, Toobin unravels the three strands of a national scandal - those leading from Paula Jones, Kenneth Starr, and Monica Lewinsky - that created a legal, personal, and political disaster for Bill Clinton. A Vast Conspiracy is written with the narrative drive of a sensational (if improbable) legal thriller, and Toobin brilliantly explores the high principle and low comedy that were the hallmarks of the story. From Tripp to Goldberg, Isikoff to Hyde, the complex and tangled motivations behind the scandal are laid bare.
While misguided, outlandish behavior was played out at the very highest level, Toobin analyzes the facts and the key figures with a level of dignity and insight that this story has not yet received. The Clinton scandals will shape forever how we think about the signature issues of our day -- sex and sexual harassment, privacy and perjury, civil rights, and, yes, cigars. Toobin's book will shape forever how we think about the Clinton scandals.
Packed with news-making disclosures and secret documents published here for the first time, Toobin unravels the three strands of a national scandal - those leading from Paula Jones, Kenneth Starr, and Monica Lewinsky - that created a legal, personal, and political disaster for Bill Clinton. A Vast Conspiracy is written with the narrative drive of a sensational (if improbable) legal thriller, and Toobin brilliantly explores the high principle and low comedy that were the hallmarks of the story. From Tripp to Goldberg, Isikoff to Hyde, the complex and tangled motivations behind the scandal are laid bare.
While misguided, outlandish behavior was played out at the very highest level, Toobin analyzes the facts and the key figures with a level of dignity and insight that this story has not yet received. The Clinton scandals will shape forever how we think about the signature issues of our day -- sex and sexual harassment, privacy and perjury, civil rights, and, yes, cigars. Toobin's book will shape forever how we think about the Clinton scandals.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published January 11, 2000
261 people are currently reading
2222 people want to read
About the author
Jeffrey Toobin
29 books718 followersJeffrey Ross Toobin (J.D., Harvard Law School, 1986; B.A., American History and Literature, Harvard University) is a lawyer, blogger, and media legal correspondent for CNN and formerly The New Yorker magazine. He previously served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Brooklyn, New York, and later worked as a legal analyst for ABC News, where he received a 2001 Emmy Award for his coverage of the Elian Gonzales custody saga.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 100 reviews
June 13, 2020
This was interesting and well written in many ways. It is definitely biased. Also unbelievably sexist.
The author treats Monica and Paula very disrespectfully in the text.
He also is extremely dismissive of Clinton's behavior. He repeatedly strips it down to 'a middle aged man having sex with an office worker/co-worker.' That's not really what happened here at all. A more accurate comparison would be a company owner/CEO having sex with a significantly younger unpaid intern. For which the owner would be very much open to lawsuit.
First the author makes the argument that sexual harassment interferes with office hookups. Because the whole point of work isn't a career or paycheck, it's apparently for ease of hooking up. Sexual harassment workplace safety laws actually DON'T interfere with office hookups though, it interferes with UNEQUAL relationships. So bosses can't force their direct reports to date them or perform sexual favors by holding their job over their heads. Sexual harassment is incredibly difficult to prove and still happening all over. So the laws don't go far enough. In addition it's not just in work places where we acknowledge that relationships that have unequal power dynamics too easily turn into sexual coercion: teachers/profs can't date students, doctors and therapists can't date patients, so on and so forth.
The POTUS was 100% wrong for engaging in a sexual relationship with a young woman only a few years older than his daughter, who was placed in an unpaid government internship to learn about government. I don't care if she showed him her thong. He's a grown ass man who is constantly attended to. He should've had his staff looking out for crushes and REMOVING them from his direct staff to other positions. He should not have been having sex with a White House intern. There's no excuse for that bullshit.
Now I don't give a good goddamn about him being unfaithful to HRC. That's a private matter between them. The Commander In Chief fucking his staff and interns is the countries business. Those are OUR employees. He works for us. The world is FULL of women he should be smart enough to not shit where he sleeps. That he did not do that very much speaks to his basic character.
I voted for him twice. I found him charming and personable.
At the same time his bullshit 'tough on crime laws' directly lead to the current prison crisis. He knew Democrats have the black vote so he safely shafted my community.
This has caused irreparable harm to GENERATIONS.
He has to be held responsible for his actions.
As does Obama, the warmonger, who I also voted twice for.
Our politicians have to be held accountable.
This is how we got chump.
We never thought it would get this bad but we willfully ignored popular presidents bullshit policies.
To the detriment of the nation.
So this is nicely detailed and researched but all of the authors conclusions are sexist bullshit.🤷🏽♀️
The author treats Monica and Paula very disrespectfully in the text.
He also is extremely dismissive of Clinton's behavior. He repeatedly strips it down to 'a middle aged man having sex with an office worker/co-worker.' That's not really what happened here at all. A more accurate comparison would be a company owner/CEO having sex with a significantly younger unpaid intern. For which the owner would be very much open to lawsuit.
First the author makes the argument that sexual harassment interferes with office hookups. Because the whole point of work isn't a career or paycheck, it's apparently for ease of hooking up. Sexual harassment workplace safety laws actually DON'T interfere with office hookups though, it interferes with UNEQUAL relationships. So bosses can't force their direct reports to date them or perform sexual favors by holding their job over their heads. Sexual harassment is incredibly difficult to prove and still happening all over. So the laws don't go far enough. In addition it's not just in work places where we acknowledge that relationships that have unequal power dynamics too easily turn into sexual coercion: teachers/profs can't date students, doctors and therapists can't date patients, so on and so forth.
The POTUS was 100% wrong for engaging in a sexual relationship with a young woman only a few years older than his daughter, who was placed in an unpaid government internship to learn about government. I don't care if she showed him her thong. He's a grown ass man who is constantly attended to. He should've had his staff looking out for crushes and REMOVING them from his direct staff to other positions. He should not have been having sex with a White House intern. There's no excuse for that bullshit.
Now I don't give a good goddamn about him being unfaithful to HRC. That's a private matter between them. The Commander In Chief fucking his staff and interns is the countries business. Those are OUR employees. He works for us. The world is FULL of women he should be smart enough to not shit where he sleeps. That he did not do that very much speaks to his basic character.
I voted for him twice. I found him charming and personable.
At the same time his bullshit 'tough on crime laws' directly lead to the current prison crisis. He knew Democrats have the black vote so he safely shafted my community.
This has caused irreparable harm to GENERATIONS.
He has to be held responsible for his actions.
As does Obama, the warmonger, who I also voted twice for.
Our politicians have to be held accountable.
This is how we got chump.
We never thought it would get this bad but we willfully ignored popular presidents bullshit policies.
To the detriment of the nation.
So this is nicely detailed and researched but all of the authors conclusions are sexist bullshit.🤷🏽♀️
July 13, 2011
I know what I remembered, being a Democrat and Clinton fan, and not following it too closely in the papers...
Now I have a much better idea of how the Circus actually came to town, and I gotta say, I am even more disgusted than I was then. Toobin lays out the story with extensive sources in all its sordid detail. He is not a Clinton apologist, nor is he a Starr apologist. Mostly he lays out just the facts, as far as they can be known. There's a lot of facts, and his account is clear. And wretched. And revealing.
And well-written, pretty much a page turner, especially towards the end.
Overall, I am left with a feeling of sadness. And then I read today's papers, and the same self-interest trumping national interest dominates the action today.
Maybe I am alone in doing so, but I call these people traitors. Please go away, or at the very least, hang your heads in shame and let someone who is interested in governing the country do so.
Now I have a much better idea of how the Circus actually came to town, and I gotta say, I am even more disgusted than I was then. Toobin lays out the story with extensive sources in all its sordid detail. He is not a Clinton apologist, nor is he a Starr apologist. Mostly he lays out just the facts, as far as they can be known. There's a lot of facts, and his account is clear. And wretched. And revealing.
And well-written, pretty much a page turner, especially towards the end.
Overall, I am left with a feeling of sadness. And then I read today's papers, and the same self-interest trumping national interest dominates the action today.
Maybe I am alone in doing so, but I call these people traitors. Please go away, or at the very least, hang your heads in shame and let someone who is interested in governing the country do so.
May 3, 2018
Toobin's account of Clinton's legal problems in the 90's was supposed to be the topic of an up coming season of American Crime Story. Hence my interest in reading this book.
The author does a decent job at showing how the Paula Jones trial in Arkansas, the White Water Investigation by Special Counsel Kenneth Starr and the Monica Lewinsky deposition intertwined into the hot mess that plagued Capitol Hill in 1997-1998. I enjoyed reading the details about the many personalities' life, career and motives.
I would recommend the book to anyone who wants to sort out what happened in the 90's media frenzy over sex and the commander in chief . Bill Clinton was the very first president I was aware of (I was 10 during the impeachment trial). Back then I never quite understood why people were obsessed with cigars and blue dresses in the news. This book was helpful at putting all the pieces together.
The author does a decent job at showing how the Paula Jones trial in Arkansas, the White Water Investigation by Special Counsel Kenneth Starr and the Monica Lewinsky deposition intertwined into the hot mess that plagued Capitol Hill in 1997-1998. I enjoyed reading the details about the many personalities' life, career and motives.
I would recommend the book to anyone who wants to sort out what happened in the 90's media frenzy over sex and the commander in chief . Bill Clinton was the very first president I was aware of (I was 10 during the impeachment trial). Back then I never quite understood why people were obsessed with cigars and blue dresses in the news. This book was helpful at putting all the pieces together.
July 12, 2021
How ironic? Jeffrey Toobin, the man who got fired from The New Yorker after he got caught masturbating / exposing himself during a zoom call, wrote a book about the Clinton Sex Scandal. It's no wonder that this book is very biased. Pervert Jeffrey Toobin paints Monica Lewinsky in a very poor light and spends most of the book defending Bill Clinton. I'm not surprised Jeffrey Toobin is defending Bill Clinton's actions. They are both perverts and perverts stick up for one another. I'm willing to bet Jeffrey Toobin has coerced several interns at The New Yorker for sex. He and Bill Clinton are cut from the same cloth.
January 1, 2016
After reading the first two pages of "Vast Conspiracy," you will be hooked. Jeffery Toobin has crafted a political analysis that reads like a political thriller.
Yet in writing a fascinating, disturbing, and often wildly funny book, Toobin loses none of the objectivity, expertise, and standards that make him television's top legal analyst. Toobin's greatest achievement is walking the reader through the swirl of events step by step so the patterns and relationships become clear. He also displays a gift for explaining complicated legal issues in everyday terms. And, he brings a sense of history, a sympathetic understanding of people, and actual experience in an independent counsel's office to his stage.
For example, when discussing sexual harassment, he summarizes its history as a legal concept, explains in depth its role in the impeachment scandal, and even reveals when the term was coined. When discussing a principal character, he presents a biographical sketch illuminating that person as a three-dimensional human being with a past, beliefs, and values of his or her own, values that shaped and colored their actions.
Toobin expresses such concern for historical and human context throughout his book. The result is a work that does not narrowly focus on immediate events but instead examines the political and legal forces that stewed and fermented for decades before Monica Lewinsky was born and culminated in the Clinton impeachment trial.
To help readers keep track of the overlapping events and myriad of personalities involved, Toobin includes a chronology of events and a cast of characters. All this, and it's a great read too! Of all the works that have come out of the Clinton trial, this is the most accessible to a general audience and the most important. If you read only one book about the impeachment, it should be this one.
Yet in writing a fascinating, disturbing, and often wildly funny book, Toobin loses none of the objectivity, expertise, and standards that make him television's top legal analyst. Toobin's greatest achievement is walking the reader through the swirl of events step by step so the patterns and relationships become clear. He also displays a gift for explaining complicated legal issues in everyday terms. And, he brings a sense of history, a sympathetic understanding of people, and actual experience in an independent counsel's office to his stage.
For example, when discussing sexual harassment, he summarizes its history as a legal concept, explains in depth its role in the impeachment scandal, and even reveals when the term was coined. When discussing a principal character, he presents a biographical sketch illuminating that person as a three-dimensional human being with a past, beliefs, and values of his or her own, values that shaped and colored their actions.
Toobin expresses such concern for historical and human context throughout his book. The result is a work that does not narrowly focus on immediate events but instead examines the political and legal forces that stewed and fermented for decades before Monica Lewinsky was born and culminated in the Clinton impeachment trial.
To help readers keep track of the overlapping events and myriad of personalities involved, Toobin includes a chronology of events and a cast of characters. All this, and it's a great read too! Of all the works that have come out of the Clinton trial, this is the most accessible to a general audience and the most important. If you read only one book about the impeachment, it should be this one.
February 13, 2013
This was a book our book club chose, and I really wasn't that interested in rehashing all the sordid details from the Clinton scandals. However, reading this some 15 years later it is clear this president for whatever reason (zipper problems not withstanding) created the most personal hatred against a sitting president in our history. This was not political hatred, it was personal and his time in office gave a catapulted start to the divisive right wing media strongholds that persist today from Ann Coulter to the Drudge report. Clinton's sexual problems were shameful, but the loss of civility and the vicious personal attacks are nothing less than unAmerican. Question is, once the genie's out of the bottle how do you put it back in? Worth reading and discussing from a basis of how do we get to productive discourse.
October 7, 2017
This book felt like a marathon. I bet this book would be more entertaining if you were watching the news when this all went down. I didn't know all the characters so I spent a lot of time looking up who each person was. This is basically a testament that politicians and lawyers are dishonest. Their motivation is power and they don't care how they get it. I can't believe how much tax dollars were spent on investigating the Clintons which never turned up anything. I didn't like how the author wrote about Monica Lewinsky considering how young she was but she's not perfect. The author mentioned how tired the public was of hearing about this scandal and that's how I felt for most of the book. It was a witch hunt.
February 13, 2024
This is not a book for the prudish.
While author Jeffrey Toobin has written a deeply researched and (in my opinion) balanced account of the two sex scandals that enveloped President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s—Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky—there is a definite "ick" factor when reading this book. Ick. Ick. Ick.
The book was published in December 1999 and in a new introduction written in January 2020, Toobin admits what many now think: "Do the lessons of the #MeToo movement change our understanding of what happened between them and how we, as a society, responded to their affair? In a word, yes." Monica was not a victim of sexual harassment as she initiated most of their encounters, including the first one, but she was a victim of the media and public opinion. And no matter what, he was a powerful man—some would say THE most powerful man in the world—and she was an unpaid White House intern at first and then a low-level federal employee at the Pentagon.
This is a historical account and legal analysis of the events that led to the unsuccessful impeachment of Bill Clinton on December 19, 1998 on grounds of perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice. Translation: He had a sexual relationship and lied about it.
But even more than this, it is the story of individual people—from Monica Lewinsky to Linda Tripp, from attorneys on both sides who were either defending or trying to upend a presidency under the tawdriest of circumstances, and from a president and first lady whose marriage became the brunt of gossip and late-night TV jokes.
We see people at their worst in this political soap opera that quickly turned from a civil matter to a criminal one:
--Pathetic, lovestruck, and troubled Monica
--Meanspirited, duplicitous, and angry Linda Tripp
--Greedy, foolish, and unhinged Paula Jones
--Petty, conniving, and mean Lucianne Goldberg
--Biased, wrathful, and inept Kenneth Starr
--Lothario and compulsive liar Bill Clinton
--The dawn of Internet reporting, specifically The Drudge Report
--The media that capitalized over and over on the adage that sex sells.
This is a highly readable book with fair reporting on all sides, making it an excellent historical account—except for that "ick" factor.
Ick. Ick. Ick.
While author Jeffrey Toobin has written a deeply researched and (in my opinion) balanced account of the two sex scandals that enveloped President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s—Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky—there is a definite "ick" factor when reading this book. Ick. Ick. Ick.
The book was published in December 1999 and in a new introduction written in January 2020, Toobin admits what many now think: "Do the lessons of the #MeToo movement change our understanding of what happened between them and how we, as a society, responded to their affair? In a word, yes." Monica was not a victim of sexual harassment as she initiated most of their encounters, including the first one, but she was a victim of the media and public opinion. And no matter what, he was a powerful man—some would say THE most powerful man in the world—and she was an unpaid White House intern at first and then a low-level federal employee at the Pentagon.
This is a historical account and legal analysis of the events that led to the unsuccessful impeachment of Bill Clinton on December 19, 1998 on grounds of perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice. Translation: He had a sexual relationship and lied about it.
But even more than this, it is the story of individual people—from Monica Lewinsky to Linda Tripp, from attorneys on both sides who were either defending or trying to upend a presidency under the tawdriest of circumstances, and from a president and first lady whose marriage became the brunt of gossip and late-night TV jokes.
We see people at their worst in this political soap opera that quickly turned from a civil matter to a criminal one:
--Pathetic, lovestruck, and troubled Monica
--Meanspirited, duplicitous, and angry Linda Tripp
--Greedy, foolish, and unhinged Paula Jones
--Petty, conniving, and mean Lucianne Goldberg
--Biased, wrathful, and inept Kenneth Starr
--Lothario and compulsive liar Bill Clinton
--The dawn of Internet reporting, specifically The Drudge Report
--The media that capitalized over and over on the adage that sex sells.
This is a highly readable book with fair reporting on all sides, making it an excellent historical account—except for that "ick" factor.
Ick. Ick. Ick.
November 16, 2021
This scandal was something you could not get away from no matter how hard you tried. By today's standards it's also a scandal that didn't age well and Clinton had definitely fallen off the pedestal he was on back in the 90's. Yes Ken Starr was relentless and to this day I'm still not quite sure what the hell the grounds for impeachment were except he lied which considering he's a politician should mean basically everyone in politics should be removed immediately. While well researched this book is dated painting the women in the story in an awful light despite the fact that the married president basically was going after anything in a dress and he was at least half to blame if not all to blame in the sexual assault cases. I mean considering that Kennedy was sleeping with Soviet spies this seems fairly tame by comparison but boy was it huge back in the day. Monica Lewinsky has seemed to come out okay in the end, Hillary Clinton probably lost the 2016 election and a lot of credibility because of this, not to mention the other shady dealings she and her husband were involved in, Linda Tripp vanished into obscurity as did Paula Jones and the fact that Chelsea has grown into a well adjusted adult is nothing short of a miracle. I only read this because I watched the latest season of American Crime Story which covers this story and am amazed that the American house and senate were once capable of bipartisanship. My how things have changed
November 28, 2021
The only reason I chose this book is because of the FX series "American Crime Story: Impeachment," which I thought was amazing. I remember Toobin's other work "The Run of His Life" for the "People vs OJ" in the same anthology being a lot more engaging. This book contains a lot of politicians, staffers, and legislators, none of which I really cared about, and more than one detailed description of Bill Clinton's penis, in which I was only moderately interested. The television show presented this saga in a more entertaining matter, but "A Vast Conspiracy" does provide an interesting perspective on the politicization of our legal system as a result of Bill's actions.
April 27, 2018
Even today, reading about the Clinton impeachment can feel like a tawdry activity. The public debate about impeachment was filled with intense discussions about penis shape, blow jobs, manual vaginal stimulation, and other sexual minutiae. It seems amazing that for over a year, the top political and media minds in the country debated little else.
Jeffrey Toobin, in this fine recounting of the impeachment, shows that the tawdriness touched and diminished almost everyone who came into contact with the case. Toobin is something of an advocate for Clinton, but he can't help but note how small and pitiful Clinton appeared after the conclusion of this case, with his lies in both the Paula Jones deposition and in the Kenneth Starr grand jury, his pettifogging and circuitous answers to questions about all aspects of his past and relationships, and his consistent denials, to his family, to the country, and to his close aides, that he had engaged in "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky (in one case he told his White House lawyers, such as Robert Bennett, that it would be outrageous for him to engage in adulterous sex during this presidency, just hours after Lewinsky had left the Oval Office).
Yet others were diminished even more than the President. Representative Henry Hyde, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, was celebrated by newspapers of all stripes when it was realized he would lead the impeachment hearings. He was considered a bipartisan and intelligent fact-finder with little prejudice. By the end, he would seem a zealot engaged in a foolish hunt for any information about Clinton's personal sex life. He had even organized a special "war room" in the Ford House Office Building where every salacious detail was kept. Kenneth Starr was formerly a respected federal appellate judge and solicitor general, whom everyone, from both parties, said was fair-minded, courteous and thoughtful. By the end of the case, when he was giving daily "Hefty-Bag" briefings to news reporters who came to see him take out his garbage, and when he had released to the House a 500-page report detailing every incident of oral sex engaged in by the President (many incidents were described in different sections of the report four or five times), he became the most hated man in the country. Toobin shows that Starr's supposed zealotry probably came from his inexperience in criminal matters and his deferral to his increasingly Clinton-hating staff, but it didn't matter. Starr's name too became mud.
Almost every decision by every player in the story was subject to national debate, from the decision of Judge Susan Webber Wright to allow Monica Lewinsky on the witness list for the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit to the Starr Independent Counsel's sequestering of Lewinsky in the Ritz-Carlton in Alexandria. Toobin tries to umpire each and every one of these debates, and although he clearly sides with Clinton and the Democrats on the whole, he makes fair calls about most issues. For instance, he argues that Wright's decision about Lewinsky was actually mandated by the broad evidence standards for sexual harassment in the Violence against Women Act, which Clinton himself had just signed in 1994, while the Starr team performed nothing untoward in questioning Lewinsky for hours in an admittedly comfortable location.
The real question is what if anything we can learn from this debacle. Toobin says it demonstrates how political questions in America have gradually been redefined by lawyers as legal questions, and that the legal profession's dominance of politics is the real "vast conspiracy" we have to worry about. That's probably true, but this case rarely rose above the nominally legal, and remained almost totally political, on all sides, at all times. I have to say that I've never read another political book where I actually felt dirty after finishing. But that's exactly how this case should feel.
Jeffrey Toobin, in this fine recounting of the impeachment, shows that the tawdriness touched and diminished almost everyone who came into contact with the case. Toobin is something of an advocate for Clinton, but he can't help but note how small and pitiful Clinton appeared after the conclusion of this case, with his lies in both the Paula Jones deposition and in the Kenneth Starr grand jury, his pettifogging and circuitous answers to questions about all aspects of his past and relationships, and his consistent denials, to his family, to the country, and to his close aides, that he had engaged in "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky (in one case he told his White House lawyers, such as Robert Bennett, that it would be outrageous for him to engage in adulterous sex during this presidency, just hours after Lewinsky had left the Oval Office).
Yet others were diminished even more than the President. Representative Henry Hyde, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, was celebrated by newspapers of all stripes when it was realized he would lead the impeachment hearings. He was considered a bipartisan and intelligent fact-finder with little prejudice. By the end, he would seem a zealot engaged in a foolish hunt for any information about Clinton's personal sex life. He had even organized a special "war room" in the Ford House Office Building where every salacious detail was kept. Kenneth Starr was formerly a respected federal appellate judge and solicitor general, whom everyone, from both parties, said was fair-minded, courteous and thoughtful. By the end of the case, when he was giving daily "Hefty-Bag" briefings to news reporters who came to see him take out his garbage, and when he had released to the House a 500-page report detailing every incident of oral sex engaged in by the President (many incidents were described in different sections of the report four or five times), he became the most hated man in the country. Toobin shows that Starr's supposed zealotry probably came from his inexperience in criminal matters and his deferral to his increasingly Clinton-hating staff, but it didn't matter. Starr's name too became mud.
Almost every decision by every player in the story was subject to national debate, from the decision of Judge Susan Webber Wright to allow Monica Lewinsky on the witness list for the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit to the Starr Independent Counsel's sequestering of Lewinsky in the Ritz-Carlton in Alexandria. Toobin tries to umpire each and every one of these debates, and although he clearly sides with Clinton and the Democrats on the whole, he makes fair calls about most issues. For instance, he argues that Wright's decision about Lewinsky was actually mandated by the broad evidence standards for sexual harassment in the Violence against Women Act, which Clinton himself had just signed in 1994, while the Starr team performed nothing untoward in questioning Lewinsky for hours in an admittedly comfortable location.
The real question is what if anything we can learn from this debacle. Toobin says it demonstrates how political questions in America have gradually been redefined by lawyers as legal questions, and that the legal profession's dominance of politics is the real "vast conspiracy" we have to worry about. That's probably true, but this case rarely rose above the nominally legal, and remained almost totally political, on all sides, at all times. I have to say that I've never read another political book where I actually felt dirty after finishing. But that's exactly how this case should feel.
March 21, 2024
The reluctance to settle had dramatic–and catastrophic– implications for the Clinton presidency, and it was rooted in the complex dynamics of the relationship between husband and wife
Time for my creaking bones to sit down and read some ancient history.
How, When, Why
Instead, it established a pattern that Starr’s team would follow straight through for the rest of the year–an obsession with meaningless atmospherics, and tendentious “signs” to their adversaries, an unhealthy interest in using the media to send messages, and a predilection for canine zeal over solid prosecutorial judgement.
The thing about the late 90s “sleaze” of the Clinton presidency was that it was all very confusing. The eventual focus on Monica Lewinsky simplified it significantly, but names and “gates” continued to circulate, and why they existed and how they were connected never clicked for me. A Vast Conspiracy solves that issue. From a legal perspective of the scandal, Toobin gives extremely clear retelling of what happened and why events were connected. There is also Toobin’s commentary on the conduct of individuals and the legal teams, including apparently critical blunders or decisions that hurt or saved Clinton, which adds colour and is fine from a matter of opinion point.
The political side is weaker (and at times boring) but I suspect that is because Toobin had access to fewer written sources and the major participants had their own book-writing careers to consider. Even then, it is fine and to re-emphasize, I understand how Whitewater led to Paula Jones to Lewinsky to the blue dress back to Paula Jones and so on.
I do also note that Toobin tries promote the idea that there was a broader swing fromd:
- resolving matters politically; to
- going to courts to make decisions in your favour,
Apparently this shift in strategy started with the Civil Rights movement, but was then picked up by the right wing. I am willing to entertain that, but the subject of the book is too focused to really run this argument to ground. Toobin occasionally refers back to this idea but never properly ties off. I do not really have a problem with this though, as it was not really what motivated me to read the book.
I have seen accusations that the book is biased towards the Clintons and… …maybe? I agree Toobin stretches to make Hillary Clinton’s reference to a right wing conspiracy sound plausible, and I do set out some character issues below. You also might have issues with the Toobin’s portrayal of members of Kenneth Starr’s team as zealots, though the did not exactly cover themselves in glory based on the results. I cannot give a determinative answer on bias, partly because I agree with the conclusion that impeachment was not the appropriate penalty, so I guess read some other books and make your own call.
Character Assassination
Yet once she became famous, Lewinsky did little but dwell on her supposed privations–that her parents divorced, that a mean boy had called her “Big Mac,” that she lacked “self-esteem.” Before she became obsessed with the president of the United States, her only other serious interest in life was dieting.
I read the 2020 edition of A Vast Conspiracy, where Toobin in a new introduction acknowledges the #MeToo movement changed perspectives of power differentials and admits he was probably too harsh on Lewinsky. I guess kudos for appreciating that, though it reads as if he is trimming his sails to the new understanding rather than an in-depth reflection on the contents of the book.
My main issue is that I felt Toobin described various actions (and background history) of Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones as forming significant parts of their characters, whereas for Clinton they were moral failings – damnable certainly, but a portion of the man. Toobin sees Clinton’s sexual peccadillos as a separate element from his life:
These relationships were simply the way he lived. One part of his life never interfered with the other–as long as he didn’t get caught.
Toobin also expressly rejects the contention that Bill Clinton could have been a sex addict. Considering the information available at the time, it’s a bold call to make, though it perhaps reflected cultural norms at the time of men behaving badly without necessarily being “bad”. Since the original publication, Clinton’s continued straying well into late middle age makes that judgement weaker, and something Toobin doesn’t confront in his 2020 introduction, preferring to debate the concept of positions of power. If we are to judge Lewinsky and Jones on their actions, then Clinton’s post 2000 ones should be too!
There is also an issue of the author himself, which in this case is directly relevant to his character judgements. A child out of wedlock (which he initially denied) and an unfortunate Zoom call suggest that Toobin does have issues with portraying intimate relationships, particularly secret ones.
However… …while the reputations of a number of the women in A Vast Conspiracy do deserve rehabilitation, I am marginal on whether it would dramatically change the story. The shading of events would be different, and perhaps Toobin would conclude an impeachment would be more justified. Yet it is still hard to escape the conclusion that, to the extent that Clinton lied, it was on a personal matter that did not rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, and even if his interactions with Lewinsky would potentially be considered sexual harassment today, would not be enough to overturn the will of the voters. Nor would a rewriting of A Vast Conspiracy realistically change that Jones’ case was weak, at least on the evidence presented in the book.
He was impeached for what? The answer will honor neither the president nor his times.
Feel free to judge the weaknesses in A Vast Conspiracy. They are real. Despite that, the book is a clear explanation of how it all played out and I would recommend it as a starting point, even if you intend to dive deeper into the issues.
Time for my creaking bones to sit down and read some ancient history.
How, When, Why
Instead, it established a pattern that Starr’s team would follow straight through for the rest of the year–an obsession with meaningless atmospherics, and tendentious “signs” to their adversaries, an unhealthy interest in using the media to send messages, and a predilection for canine zeal over solid prosecutorial judgement.
The thing about the late 90s “sleaze” of the Clinton presidency was that it was all very confusing. The eventual focus on Monica Lewinsky simplified it significantly, but names and “gates” continued to circulate, and why they existed and how they were connected never clicked for me. A Vast Conspiracy solves that issue. From a legal perspective of the scandal, Toobin gives extremely clear retelling of what happened and why events were connected. There is also Toobin’s commentary on the conduct of individuals and the legal teams, including apparently critical blunders or decisions that hurt or saved Clinton, which adds colour and is fine from a matter of opinion point.
The political side is weaker (and at times boring) but I suspect that is because Toobin had access to fewer written sources and the major participants had their own book-writing careers to consider. Even then, it is fine and to re-emphasize, I understand how Whitewater led to Paula Jones to Lewinsky to the blue dress back to Paula Jones and so on.
I do also note that Toobin tries promote the idea that there was a broader swing fromd:
- resolving matters politically; to
- going to courts to make decisions in your favour,
Apparently this shift in strategy started with the Civil Rights movement, but was then picked up by the right wing. I am willing to entertain that, but the subject of the book is too focused to really run this argument to ground. Toobin occasionally refers back to this idea but never properly ties off. I do not really have a problem with this though, as it was not really what motivated me to read the book.
I have seen accusations that the book is biased towards the Clintons and… …maybe? I agree Toobin stretches to make Hillary Clinton’s reference to a right wing conspiracy sound plausible, and I do set out some character issues below. You also might have issues with the Toobin’s portrayal of members of Kenneth Starr’s team as zealots, though the did not exactly cover themselves in glory based on the results. I cannot give a determinative answer on bias, partly because I agree with the conclusion that impeachment was not the appropriate penalty, so I guess read some other books and make your own call.
Character Assassination
Yet once she became famous, Lewinsky did little but dwell on her supposed privations–that her parents divorced, that a mean boy had called her “Big Mac,” that she lacked “self-esteem.” Before she became obsessed with the president of the United States, her only other serious interest in life was dieting.
I read the 2020 edition of A Vast Conspiracy, where Toobin in a new introduction acknowledges the #MeToo movement changed perspectives of power differentials and admits he was probably too harsh on Lewinsky. I guess kudos for appreciating that, though it reads as if he is trimming his sails to the new understanding rather than an in-depth reflection on the contents of the book.
My main issue is that I felt Toobin described various actions (and background history) of Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones as forming significant parts of their characters, whereas for Clinton they were moral failings – damnable certainly, but a portion of the man. Toobin sees Clinton’s sexual peccadillos as a separate element from his life:
These relationships were simply the way he lived. One part of his life never interfered with the other–as long as he didn’t get caught.
Toobin also expressly rejects the contention that Bill Clinton could have been a sex addict. Considering the information available at the time, it’s a bold call to make, though it perhaps reflected cultural norms at the time of men behaving badly without necessarily being “bad”. Since the original publication, Clinton’s continued straying well into late middle age makes that judgement weaker, and something Toobin doesn’t confront in his 2020 introduction, preferring to debate the concept of positions of power. If we are to judge Lewinsky and Jones on their actions, then Clinton’s post 2000 ones should be too!
There is also an issue of the author himself, which in this case is directly relevant to his character judgements. A child out of wedlock (which he initially denied) and an unfortunate Zoom call suggest that Toobin does have issues with portraying intimate relationships, particularly secret ones.
However… …while the reputations of a number of the women in A Vast Conspiracy do deserve rehabilitation, I am marginal on whether it would dramatically change the story. The shading of events would be different, and perhaps Toobin would conclude an impeachment would be more justified. Yet it is still hard to escape the conclusion that, to the extent that Clinton lied, it was on a personal matter that did not rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, and even if his interactions with Lewinsky would potentially be considered sexual harassment today, would not be enough to overturn the will of the voters. Nor would a rewriting of A Vast Conspiracy realistically change that Jones’ case was weak, at least on the evidence presented in the book.
He was impeached for what? The answer will honor neither the president nor his times.
Feel free to judge the weaknesses in A Vast Conspiracy. They are real. Despite that, the book is a clear explanation of how it all played out and I would recommend it as a starting point, even if you intend to dive deeper into the issues.
January 4, 2026
Their similarities were considerable, starting with their ages (Monica was twenty-two, Paula twenty-four) and their personalities--both bubbly, outgoing, and friendly. They also lacked talent, learning, wit, great beauty, interest in the outside world, or knowledge of politics. The most important thing they shared was an apparent sexual availability. Clinton told his trooper Danny Ferguson that Paula had "that come-hither look." Lewinsky just said to Clinton, Come hither.
A Vast Conspiracy has not aged well.
It would be wrong to say that this is a bad book. The first few chapters are painfully dry, but once Toobin (yes, that Toobin) reaches Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, the story finds it's footing and begins to fly by. At about the halfway mark, Toobin finally gets sick of Clinton's chronic, borderline-sociopathic lying and takes a more objective approach towards covering the 42nd president. Prior to then, A Vast Conspiracy has a strongly partisan good guys vs. bad guys narrative. The good guys are the Clintons and their supporters. The bad guys are anyone who oppose the Clintons (i.e. Republicans) or have damaged their image in some way (Monica). If anything, A Vast Conspiracy is as much a review of the Clinton impeachment scandal as it is a monument to how liberals viewed the whole ordeal (something Toobin alludes to himself in the 2018 intro).
Toobin is not as antagonistic towards Kenneth Starr as I expected him to be (certainly less than the Slow Burn podcast was). His major criticism, beyond being a Clinton-hater, is that in his haste to humiliate and delegitimize the president, Starr's investigation and final report was essentially softcore porn, grossly obsessed with sharing every lurid detail of Clinton's affair with Monica. Yet in doing so, Toobin merely repeats said-details, stretching from excessive to downright irrelevant. Toobin and his publishers may have been on Team Clinton, but they were clearly just as entranced by the smut as Starr was.
Unlike American Crime Story: Impeachment, which led me here, A Vast Conspiracy gives very little voice to the women involved in this case. This may have seemed natural at the time, since the focus of the book is on Clinton and the political ramifications of his actions, but given the nature of this case--which started off as an accusation of sexual harassment--it was a huge oversight. As the quote above makes clear, Toobin does not think highly of either Monica Lewinsky or Paula Jones, only showing them sympathy when one of the bad guys takes advantage of them (ex. Linda Tripp secretly recording her and Lewinsky's phone calls). Monica is a flighty, obsessive, groveling fangirl in his eyes, and worst of all, she's described as basically worthless. She offers nothing of value to the world beyond free sex. (This is a stark contrast to ACS, which depicts Monica as so angelic that you half-expected her to sprout wings and fly). Although Toobin does appear to find the age gap between her and Clinton somewhat sleazy--as did many other Democrats, by the sound of it--he is able to brush it under the rug because she was nevertheless a legal adult (the fact that Lewinsky looked a solid decade older than she was probably didn't help). What should be clear to anyone reading this story--and certainly should have been clear to Bill Clinton--was that Lewinsky was not only young but also extremely emotionally immature and desperate for affection (this may help explain why she glommed on to Linda Tripp, whom she said was like a mother to her), and Bill, despite eventually trying to amend their relationship to make it more platonic, never tried to completely end it. There's no mention of the absurd level of public shaming that Monica faced for the affair, which destroyed her life far more than it did Bill Clinton's.
Toobin's approach to Paula Jones is arguably even worse. Toobin postulates that rather than being sexually harassed, Jones and Clinton had a consensual hotel fling, Jones got angry that Clinton ignored her afterwards, and that after a Spectator article identified her as one of Clinton's ladies, she made up the sexual harassment story in order to placate her jealous husband and weasel some money out of the president. His reasoning for believing this? Jones apparently waited a few hours after the incident before telling one of her friends about it rather than immediately afterwards. Yeah. (He later makes essentially the same excuse for Juanita Broaddrick). Even by 1990s standards, this is an absurd argument.
This brings us to the new 2018 introduction, which is more aggravating than the rest of the book put together. Toobin discusses the #MeToo movement and power imbalances, acknowledges the hell that Lewinsky was put through by the media, and claims he would have depicted Monica "less harshly" if he were writing this story today (no mea culpa is offered to Paula Jones). Then Toobin launches into a rant about Trump and the evils of Fox News. All throughout Trump's tenure in office, I wrote in my reviews that the obsession with Trump would prematurely date any history and political books that capitalized on it. Here, a mere three years later, we're already seeing this prediction come true. No one who picks up this book now or in the future is looking to read an argument about how The Federalist Papers prove that Trump is actually way worse than Clinton (yes, really). Trump wasn't president in 1998; if we wanted to read a book about his impeachment trials, we would. At one point, Toobin segues from talking about the women whose lives Bill Clinton ruined to how Trump invited them to his 2016 debate with Hillary, and declares it an example of his and America's misogyny. Not mentioned: Hillary's role in silencing the women who accused Bill, nor what her decision to stay with him says about her own judgement.
The most obnoxious part, and the greatest indicator that Toobin doesn't actually register how the political landscape has changed across generational lines, is how he describes the partisan reactions to the #MeToo movement:
Blue America (to use a simplified term) has self-consciously changed since #MeToo, and has become less tolerant of all forms of sexual oppression. Red America (exemplified by Trump) continues to see #MeToo as part of an epidemic of 'political correctness,' in which self-appointed elites police the behavior of ordinary Americans.
Aside from being a grossly simplistic overview, Toobin fails to understand that #MeToo was as much a conservative movement as it was a progressive one. Although conservatives did disagree with how #MeToo accusations were handled (which is a more common opinion now), they already believed in much of what #MeToo stood for. Conservatives already believed that having a sexual relationship with an employee was unacceptable in the 1998. Young people today are catching up to them rather than the other way around. As Chuck Klosterman wrote in The Nineties, "Clinton made mistakes. As years have passed and society has shifted, those mistakes seem worse and worse. There's growing evidence that his overall legacy will be closer to the portrait painted by Gingrich, radio host Rush Limbaugh, and other conservative critics widely viewed as obsessive and unfair for most of the nineties." No matter how hypocritical many of these conservative critics turned out to be, the sentiments they espoused about the Clinton affair have become the consensus. And ultimately, Bill Clinton's legacy won't be judged through the prism of Newt Gingrich or Ken Starr, neither of whom any young person today particularly cares about or has even heard of. The excuses don't matter. All that matters are Clinton's own choices, and what they say about him as a person and as a leader.
A Vast Conspiracy has not aged well.
It would be wrong to say that this is a bad book. The first few chapters are painfully dry, but once Toobin (yes, that Toobin) reaches Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, the story finds it's footing and begins to fly by. At about the halfway mark, Toobin finally gets sick of Clinton's chronic, borderline-sociopathic lying and takes a more objective approach towards covering the 42nd president. Prior to then, A Vast Conspiracy has a strongly partisan good guys vs. bad guys narrative. The good guys are the Clintons and their supporters. The bad guys are anyone who oppose the Clintons (i.e. Republicans) or have damaged their image in some way (Monica). If anything, A Vast Conspiracy is as much a review of the Clinton impeachment scandal as it is a monument to how liberals viewed the whole ordeal (something Toobin alludes to himself in the 2018 intro).
Toobin is not as antagonistic towards Kenneth Starr as I expected him to be (certainly less than the Slow Burn podcast was). His major criticism, beyond being a Clinton-hater, is that in his haste to humiliate and delegitimize the president, Starr's investigation and final report was essentially softcore porn, grossly obsessed with sharing every lurid detail of Clinton's affair with Monica. Yet in doing so, Toobin merely repeats said-details, stretching from excessive to downright irrelevant. Toobin and his publishers may have been on Team Clinton, but they were clearly just as entranced by the smut as Starr was.
Unlike American Crime Story: Impeachment, which led me here, A Vast Conspiracy gives very little voice to the women involved in this case. This may have seemed natural at the time, since the focus of the book is on Clinton and the political ramifications of his actions, but given the nature of this case--which started off as an accusation of sexual harassment--it was a huge oversight. As the quote above makes clear, Toobin does not think highly of either Monica Lewinsky or Paula Jones, only showing them sympathy when one of the bad guys takes advantage of them (ex. Linda Tripp secretly recording her and Lewinsky's phone calls). Monica is a flighty, obsessive, groveling fangirl in his eyes, and worst of all, she's described as basically worthless. She offers nothing of value to the world beyond free sex. (This is a stark contrast to ACS, which depicts Monica as so angelic that you half-expected her to sprout wings and fly). Although Toobin does appear to find the age gap between her and Clinton somewhat sleazy--as did many other Democrats, by the sound of it--he is able to brush it under the rug because she was nevertheless a legal adult (the fact that Lewinsky looked a solid decade older than she was probably didn't help). What should be clear to anyone reading this story--and certainly should have been clear to Bill Clinton--was that Lewinsky was not only young but also extremely emotionally immature and desperate for affection (this may help explain why she glommed on to Linda Tripp, whom she said was like a mother to her), and Bill, despite eventually trying to amend their relationship to make it more platonic, never tried to completely end it. There's no mention of the absurd level of public shaming that Monica faced for the affair, which destroyed her life far more than it did Bill Clinton's.
Toobin's approach to Paula Jones is arguably even worse. Toobin postulates that rather than being sexually harassed, Jones and Clinton had a consensual hotel fling, Jones got angry that Clinton ignored her afterwards, and that after a Spectator article identified her as one of Clinton's ladies, she made up the sexual harassment story in order to placate her jealous husband and weasel some money out of the president. His reasoning for believing this? Jones apparently waited a few hours after the incident before telling one of her friends about it rather than immediately afterwards. Yeah. (He later makes essentially the same excuse for Juanita Broaddrick). Even by 1990s standards, this is an absurd argument.
This brings us to the new 2018 introduction, which is more aggravating than the rest of the book put together. Toobin discusses the #MeToo movement and power imbalances, acknowledges the hell that Lewinsky was put through by the media, and claims he would have depicted Monica "less harshly" if he were writing this story today (no mea culpa is offered to Paula Jones). Then Toobin launches into a rant about Trump and the evils of Fox News. All throughout Trump's tenure in office, I wrote in my reviews that the obsession with Trump would prematurely date any history and political books that capitalized on it. Here, a mere three years later, we're already seeing this prediction come true. No one who picks up this book now or in the future is looking to read an argument about how The Federalist Papers prove that Trump is actually way worse than Clinton (yes, really). Trump wasn't president in 1998; if we wanted to read a book about his impeachment trials, we would. At one point, Toobin segues from talking about the women whose lives Bill Clinton ruined to how Trump invited them to his 2016 debate with Hillary, and declares it an example of his and America's misogyny. Not mentioned: Hillary's role in silencing the women who accused Bill, nor what her decision to stay with him says about her own judgement.
The most obnoxious part, and the greatest indicator that Toobin doesn't actually register how the political landscape has changed across generational lines, is how he describes the partisan reactions to the #MeToo movement:
Blue America (to use a simplified term) has self-consciously changed since #MeToo, and has become less tolerant of all forms of sexual oppression. Red America (exemplified by Trump) continues to see #MeToo as part of an epidemic of 'political correctness,' in which self-appointed elites police the behavior of ordinary Americans.
Aside from being a grossly simplistic overview, Toobin fails to understand that #MeToo was as much a conservative movement as it was a progressive one. Although conservatives did disagree with how #MeToo accusations were handled (which is a more common opinion now), they already believed in much of what #MeToo stood for. Conservatives already believed that having a sexual relationship with an employee was unacceptable in the 1998. Young people today are catching up to them rather than the other way around. As Chuck Klosterman wrote in The Nineties, "Clinton made mistakes. As years have passed and society has shifted, those mistakes seem worse and worse. There's growing evidence that his overall legacy will be closer to the portrait painted by Gingrich, radio host Rush Limbaugh, and other conservative critics widely viewed as obsessive and unfair for most of the nineties." No matter how hypocritical many of these conservative critics turned out to be, the sentiments they espoused about the Clinton affair have become the consensus. And ultimately, Bill Clinton's legacy won't be judged through the prism of Newt Gingrich or Ken Starr, neither of whom any young person today particularly cares about or has even heard of. The excuses don't matter. All that matters are Clinton's own choices, and what they say about him as a person and as a leader.
August 26, 2018
Fascinating to read a detailed account of this massive political controversy that dominated the news in the late 90s. I remember so much and yet so little about it—I’m glad to know all the facts behind it, as sad as it all was.
October 25, 2018
A VERY detailed account of the whole messy affair. Good supplemental material for the podcast 'Slow Burn.'
January 29, 2025
bro wrote a book abt a sex scandal and then had his own sex scandal.. book was okay, made an interesting story pretty boring
May 4, 2020
A surprisingly engaging book for which mainly revolves around American politics and law, a subject that I know not too much about. I had to concentrate quite a bit too, so I guess I’m a bit of a dumb boy.
The conclusions are a bit suspect, where the author seems to dismiss Paula Jones’ claims and also doesn’t really explore the irresponsibility and shadiness of Clinton’s actions. The most powerful man in the world was sleeping with a young public-hired intern, but it comes across as simply an extramarital affair.
It does present a good tear down of the republican frenzy that overtook the party in their goals to unseat Clinton. But barring Lewinsky, no one comes out looking good, despite the author’s attempt to side the reader with the president.
Overall a good insight into the whole debacle but draws some questionable conclusions that are growing out of fashion in today’s political and social climate.
The conclusions are a bit suspect, where the author seems to dismiss Paula Jones’ claims and also doesn’t really explore the irresponsibility and shadiness of Clinton’s actions. The most powerful man in the world was sleeping with a young public-hired intern, but it comes across as simply an extramarital affair.
It does present a good tear down of the republican frenzy that overtook the party in their goals to unseat Clinton. But barring Lewinsky, no one comes out looking good, despite the author’s attempt to side the reader with the president.
Overall a good insight into the whole debacle but draws some questionable conclusions that are growing out of fashion in today’s political and social climate.
December 1, 2012
I will admit it was a little difficult to put out of my mind that that author of this book has been involved in a sex scandal of his own and fathered a child outside of his marriage. The man I used to call "The Smart and Dreamy Jeffrey Toobin" was tarnished in my eyes a bit.
That being said, I enjoyed this well-reported telling of the Clinton Sex Scandal. The peek behind the scenes and the spelling out of all the times the situation could have been defused if it weren't for egos and ambition out of control was fascinating. And thank goodness SOMEONE took the time to read through all the documentation.
There was a whiff of misogyny in the way Toobin portrays some of the women who played key roles, they were pathetic and needy while the men were acting on ambition and yes, probably thinking with the wrong head at times but did not come across as weak.
That being said, I enjoyed this well-reported telling of the Clinton Sex Scandal. The peek behind the scenes and the spelling out of all the times the situation could have been defused if it weren't for egos and ambition out of control was fascinating. And thank goodness SOMEONE took the time to read through all the documentation.
There was a whiff of misogyny in the way Toobin portrays some of the women who played key roles, they were pathetic and needy while the men were acting on ambition and yes, probably thinking with the wrong head at times but did not come across as weak.
September 5, 2020
Sex, lies and audiotape…
Every detail you ever wanted to know about the whole Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, and several that you didn’t. This is more than a salacious recounting of the affair that nearly brought down a President, however. Jeffrey Toobin argues convincingly that politicians on both sides of the aisle had gradually been using the courts more and more to decide political questions, and that the Clinton scandal was a clear indication that the balance of power had shifted, and that the legal system was from now on to be the arbiter of all political questions in the US. He also suggests that it was the beginning of the sordid game beloved by politicians and the media (but not so much by the public, he implies) of dragging political opponents down, not by dissecting their poor performance as politicians, but by pretended moral outrage over their private behaviour.
The book was originally published in 2000, so long before the MeToo movement but at a time when questions of sexual abuse in the workplace were being raised by feminist groups. In his introduction, Toobin admits that he may have treated Lewinsky differently had he been writing now, when terms like “power imbalance” are part of the everyday lexicon. To be honest, I’m glad he wrote it when he did then, for two reasons. Firstly, my opinion then (when I was a youngish, ambitious, working woman) and now is that a 22-year-old woman is a grown adult, perfectly capable of making her own decisions, and therefore morally responsible for her own behaviour. There was never a suggestion that Clinton forced himself on Lewinsky – quite the reverse – so while I think he’s a disgusting and rather pathetically inadequate adulterous pig, I’m not willing to see her as his victim. (Her treatment later, by her tape-recording “friend” and the lawyers investigating Clinton, seems to me far more abusive than anything Clinton did to her.) Secondly, because Toobin wrote it in the heat of the moment, more or less, it gives a much clearer picture, I think, of the attitudes prevalent at that time than any later history, trying hard to tell the story through the filter of a 2020 lens, could ever do. Although Toobin is pretty tough on Lewinsky, he also shows no mercy to Clinton, so this is in no way an apologia.
Toobin spares us none of the intimate detail, and I fear I learned far more than I wanted or needed to about Clinton’s anatomy and sexual preferences, not to mention Lewinsky’s underwear and performative techniques. (It made me realise that, back in the day, although the case was reported on at extremely boring length over here too, our dear BBC must have decided to leave out the most salacious details, for which I belatedly thank them.) However, in terms of the book I do think it was necessary to include them, because part of Toobin’s argument is exactly that public interest arguments shouldn’t justify this level of intrusion into the minutiae of sex between consenting adults. This case opened the door to the constant diet of sleaze that is now common currency in what we laughably call political debate. Does the public have the right to know their President paid a porn star for her silence about their affair? Probably – it goes to questions of character and vulnerability to blackmail. But do we really need a detailed account of the act complete with anatomical measurements? I think not.
The bulk of the book, however, is about the Starr investigation, and how incestuous the whole relationship between the legal and political systems of the US has become, with partisan lawyers and judges acting to down political opponents and circumvent the laws of the land, rather than behaving as impartial administrators of justice. This provides a lot of insight for outsiders, and I expect for many Americans too, on why the most important agenda item for many politicians seems to be to pack the courts with their own appointees. One only has to see the reaction of the left to the appointment of Kavanaugh (who plays a bit part in the Clinton story), or the desperation with which the Democrats are praying that Ginsberg will be able to remain in her role until next January, or the disgust of Republicans that Chief Justice Roberts has “betrayed” the right in a couple of recent judgements to know that this politicisation of the legal system is corrupting even the Supreme Court. Toobin shows us the origins of this, and the collusion of all sides in allowing it to happen. There were several chapters where, had the names been omitted, the book could as easily have been about Trump, Mueller, and the biased and polarised media of today’s America.
So despite all the sleazy details, I found this a fascinating and illuminating scrutiny of the modern American political system. It also surprised me that so many of the political players back then are still influential now – Kavanaugh, George Conway, Ann Coulter were all linked to the Starr investigation, while many of the Senators and members of Congress on both sides, mostly not young or junior even back then, were trotting out opposite arguments during the Trump impeachment two decades later. It made me wonder why the US seems to have stuck – these same people have been running it, badly, for decades. Maybe it’s time for a generational shift, though since the major question in this year’s election seems to be which of the candidates is less senile I’m not expecting it to happen soon. Recommended to Americans who want to understand how and why their system fails them, and to Brits and others as a stark warning not to follow them down the road of giving lawyers and judges more power than our elected politicians. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, William Collins.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Every detail you ever wanted to know about the whole Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, and several that you didn’t. This is more than a salacious recounting of the affair that nearly brought down a President, however. Jeffrey Toobin argues convincingly that politicians on both sides of the aisle had gradually been using the courts more and more to decide political questions, and that the Clinton scandal was a clear indication that the balance of power had shifted, and that the legal system was from now on to be the arbiter of all political questions in the US. He also suggests that it was the beginning of the sordid game beloved by politicians and the media (but not so much by the public, he implies) of dragging political opponents down, not by dissecting their poor performance as politicians, but by pretended moral outrage over their private behaviour.
The book was originally published in 2000, so long before the MeToo movement but at a time when questions of sexual abuse in the workplace were being raised by feminist groups. In his introduction, Toobin admits that he may have treated Lewinsky differently had he been writing now, when terms like “power imbalance” are part of the everyday lexicon. To be honest, I’m glad he wrote it when he did then, for two reasons. Firstly, my opinion then (when I was a youngish, ambitious, working woman) and now is that a 22-year-old woman is a grown adult, perfectly capable of making her own decisions, and therefore morally responsible for her own behaviour. There was never a suggestion that Clinton forced himself on Lewinsky – quite the reverse – so while I think he’s a disgusting and rather pathetically inadequate adulterous pig, I’m not willing to see her as his victim. (Her treatment later, by her tape-recording “friend” and the lawyers investigating Clinton, seems to me far more abusive than anything Clinton did to her.) Secondly, because Toobin wrote it in the heat of the moment, more or less, it gives a much clearer picture, I think, of the attitudes prevalent at that time than any later history, trying hard to tell the story through the filter of a 2020 lens, could ever do. Although Toobin is pretty tough on Lewinsky, he also shows no mercy to Clinton, so this is in no way an apologia.
Toobin spares us none of the intimate detail, and I fear I learned far more than I wanted or needed to about Clinton’s anatomy and sexual preferences, not to mention Lewinsky’s underwear and performative techniques. (It made me realise that, back in the day, although the case was reported on at extremely boring length over here too, our dear BBC must have decided to leave out the most salacious details, for which I belatedly thank them.) However, in terms of the book I do think it was necessary to include them, because part of Toobin’s argument is exactly that public interest arguments shouldn’t justify this level of intrusion into the minutiae of sex between consenting adults. This case opened the door to the constant diet of sleaze that is now common currency in what we laughably call political debate. Does the public have the right to know their President paid a porn star for her silence about their affair? Probably – it goes to questions of character and vulnerability to blackmail. But do we really need a detailed account of the act complete with anatomical measurements? I think not.
The bulk of the book, however, is about the Starr investigation, and how incestuous the whole relationship between the legal and political systems of the US has become, with partisan lawyers and judges acting to down political opponents and circumvent the laws of the land, rather than behaving as impartial administrators of justice. This provides a lot of insight for outsiders, and I expect for many Americans too, on why the most important agenda item for many politicians seems to be to pack the courts with their own appointees. One only has to see the reaction of the left to the appointment of Kavanaugh (who plays a bit part in the Clinton story), or the desperation with which the Democrats are praying that Ginsberg will be able to remain in her role until next January, or the disgust of Republicans that Chief Justice Roberts has “betrayed” the right in a couple of recent judgements to know that this politicisation of the legal system is corrupting even the Supreme Court. Toobin shows us the origins of this, and the collusion of all sides in allowing it to happen. There were several chapters where, had the names been omitted, the book could as easily have been about Trump, Mueller, and the biased and polarised media of today’s America.
So despite all the sleazy details, I found this a fascinating and illuminating scrutiny of the modern American political system. It also surprised me that so many of the political players back then are still influential now – Kavanaugh, George Conway, Ann Coulter were all linked to the Starr investigation, while many of the Senators and members of Congress on both sides, mostly not young or junior even back then, were trotting out opposite arguments during the Trump impeachment two decades later. It made me wonder why the US seems to have stuck – these same people have been running it, badly, for decades. Maybe it’s time for a generational shift, though since the major question in this year’s election seems to be which of the candidates is less senile I’m not expecting it to happen soon. Recommended to Americans who want to understand how and why their system fails them, and to Brits and others as a stark warning not to follow them down the road of giving lawyers and judges more power than our elected politicians. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, William Collins.
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September 16, 2021
This book has clearly been extensively researched, much of the detail is presented to us, but rather than it being a readable gathering of what happened os we can draw our own conclusions. We have endless ramblings and assertions that are clearly shaped by the author's own views. It is clear in this book that he has a sexist view of women, he shows the same fascination for salacious detail that figured so heavily in the way this case was presented in the media, which is disappointing. It is a shame there is a good story in here fighting to get out.
With thanks to the publisher and netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
With thanks to the publisher and netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
February 15, 2019
I love Toobin, but this was not his best. Just a four hundred page love letter to the clintons, the nicest people in the world.
June 26, 2020
I mean. Wow. So, I apparently was too busy with high school and that time immediately after high school when you're trying to be an adult and wasn't TRULY paying attention (and wasn't adult enough to pay CLOSE attention) to the Clinton scandals/impeachment hearings. So, much like the time I went back to learn about the Iran hostage crisis, I bought myself a book and got down to work.
I'm giving this review 4 stars and I'm telling you that in advance because, this is clearly a bit left-leaning (Clinton supporting) by the author - although I think he wrote as unbiased as possible (or at least was obvious about his own personal opinion when that came into play instead of trying to hide/lie about it.) But anyway, full disclosure and all that.
Although this was left leaning, I felt the writing was much more unbiased than I'd anticipated, and lots of that is because it was highlighting what the media was writing at the time, actual transcripts, and the black and white facts as much as possible throughout. And boy, howdy, if you want to believe the media like to hype things up and is soft on liberals - go back and explore this time and what happened. They drug Clinton through the mud like the biggest whore in history, and to be fair, Clinton is definitely a whore and a scoundrel and a cheat and then he was a liar. But honestly, if you look back at it - everything was about sex and embarrassing the president and his family, and nothing was about national security or a truly impeachable offense. It's pretty embarrassing for the country that it happened the way that it did (not to mention extremely expensive).
Clinton is NOT a sympathetic character, he's a cheater and a liar when it comes down to it, masked in southern charm, but he has brought a lot of this all down upon himself. But it's not like he handed out the nuke codes or colluded with a foreign country, etc. But, I did find it fascinating how this all played out, learned more about the impeachment process to begin with, learned more about some well known political figures and how they figured into everything back then as well.
The biggest take away is truly feeling badly for Monica Lewinsky. No one got drug through the mud more than she did, and she really didn't deserve that. She wasn't even attention seeking, never wanted this to be public, never wanted to testify against the president or have her name in the papers. I feel like we all need to pass around a card to sign that says, "Sorry, we were all assholes in the late 90s and I hope you forgive us."
I'm giving this review 4 stars and I'm telling you that in advance because, this is clearly a bit left-leaning (Clinton supporting) by the author - although I think he wrote as unbiased as possible (or at least was obvious about his own personal opinion when that came into play instead of trying to hide/lie about it.) But anyway, full disclosure and all that.
Although this was left leaning, I felt the writing was much more unbiased than I'd anticipated, and lots of that is because it was highlighting what the media was writing at the time, actual transcripts, and the black and white facts as much as possible throughout. And boy, howdy, if you want to believe the media like to hype things up and is soft on liberals - go back and explore this time and what happened. They drug Clinton through the mud like the biggest whore in history, and to be fair, Clinton is definitely a whore and a scoundrel and a cheat and then he was a liar. But honestly, if you look back at it - everything was about sex and embarrassing the president and his family, and nothing was about national security or a truly impeachable offense. It's pretty embarrassing for the country that it happened the way that it did (not to mention extremely expensive).
Clinton is NOT a sympathetic character, he's a cheater and a liar when it comes down to it, masked in southern charm, but he has brought a lot of this all down upon himself. But it's not like he handed out the nuke codes or colluded with a foreign country, etc. But, I did find it fascinating how this all played out, learned more about the impeachment process to begin with, learned more about some well known political figures and how they figured into everything back then as well.
The biggest take away is truly feeling badly for Monica Lewinsky. No one got drug through the mud more than she did, and she really didn't deserve that. She wasn't even attention seeking, never wanted this to be public, never wanted to testify against the president or have her name in the papers. I feel like we all need to pass around a card to sign that says, "Sorry, we were all assholes in the late 90s and I hope you forgive us."
October 21, 2020
A prescient book given the current political situation, A Vast Conspiracy lays out the facts of the impeachment of then President, Bill Clinton. Clinton was riding a wave of popularity but there had long been rumours about his dalliances with women other than his wife, Hillary. It was also rumoured that there was something more sinister to these extra marital encounters and that they weren’t entirely consensual. Clinton’s quite mind boggling decision to start a physical affair with intern, Monica Lewinsky, opened the door for his impeachment and the near collapse of his presidency. In a new introduction the author notes that attitudes have changed over the years and Lewinsky shouldn’t be seen as some kind of temptress who seduced the president. It’s clear there was an abuse of power from Clinton’s side at the very least, whether he realised it or not. It’s a really fascinating read and shows just how hard it is for an impeachment to be successful. It appears to be a mixture of rock solid evidence, perfect timing and the all important numbers in the house. It’s interesting that one of the main reasons behind the failure of the Clinton impeachment was the lack of a smoking gun, the prosecutors fell into the rabbit hole of the long running conspiracies about the Clintons, convinced that there was a bigger crime hidden out there. This book is a must read, a snapshot of history that still fascinates today.
I received a ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for a fair review.
I received a ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for a fair review.
October 20, 2019
I read this for two reasons: first, because of the planned season for American Crime Story based in part on this book. Second, having been alive during this time period, I was interested in how it was written.
This is about the Clinton impeachment. And as I read, I remember how it unfolded in the media; I remembered what I thought at the time. I learned things I didn't know, had a better grasp of what was and was not going on.
I'd read that Monica Lewinsky is a producer for the planned season, and I'll say this: this book is not always kind to her. So that she is involved in this makes me respect her all the more: and I do respect the hell out of her, for what she's gone through, and what she's done since.
Back to the book: I'm impressed with how much research was done, and how many people the author talked to, to get so much information, and then to put it together in a narrative that makes sense. If, like me, you're old enough to remember this, it's worth the read to discover what you didn't know. Or, also, to see if as time has passed, any of your judgments have changed.
And if this is "history" to you, it's worth it to read, because what happened then didn't end then. It's helped shape today's political landscape.
This is about the Clinton impeachment. And as I read, I remember how it unfolded in the media; I remembered what I thought at the time. I learned things I didn't know, had a better grasp of what was and was not going on.
I'd read that Monica Lewinsky is a producer for the planned season, and I'll say this: this book is not always kind to her. So that she is involved in this makes me respect her all the more: and I do respect the hell out of her, for what she's gone through, and what she's done since.
Back to the book: I'm impressed with how much research was done, and how many people the author talked to, to get so much information, and then to put it together in a narrative that makes sense. If, like me, you're old enough to remember this, it's worth the read to discover what you didn't know. Or, also, to see if as time has passed, any of your judgments have changed.
And if this is "history" to you, it's worth it to read, because what happened then didn't end then. It's helped shape today's political landscape.
July 2, 2017
Ah the good ol days when a President having an extramarital affair with a consenting adult was our nation's biggest scandal.
Toobin is good at breaking down legalese for the rest of us. As he did in Run Of His Life, he shows the maneuvering of powers that converged in an unlikely way for a trial that descended into farce. But unlike the OJ Simpson trial, which took time to get there, Clinton's was ridiculous from the beginning.
There are numerous people here, each with their own agenda and Toobin lends honesty and clarity to each of them. There were no winners in this scandal; everyone came off bad (except, perhaps for Monica Lewinsky who was used for her body by the President and harassed and bullied by his desperate adversaries in the Starr office). Though Toobin cuts through the bs to show that Clinton was railroaded, he also gives equal measure to Clinton's hubris and that of his lawyers. It's as evenhanded of a portrayal as one can expect.
Toobin is good at breaking down legalese for the rest of us. As he did in Run Of His Life, he shows the maneuvering of powers that converged in an unlikely way for a trial that descended into farce. But unlike the OJ Simpson trial, which took time to get there, Clinton's was ridiculous from the beginning.
There are numerous people here, each with their own agenda and Toobin lends honesty and clarity to each of them. There were no winners in this scandal; everyone came off bad (except, perhaps for Monica Lewinsky who was used for her body by the President and harassed and bullied by his desperate adversaries in the Starr office). Though Toobin cuts through the bs to show that Clinton was railroaded, he also gives equal measure to Clinton's hubris and that of his lawyers. It's as evenhanded of a portrayal as one can expect.
October 3, 2020
I felt quite sick reading this in places as everyone was either after money or power. I always thought Monica Lewinsky was an innocent party in all of this but in fact she was the instigator of the affair but that does not mean that Bill Clinton should have reacted the way he did to her behaviour! However by the end I did feel sorry for her as she did not deserve to be treated the way she was.
The book was rather long-winded and I didn't really understand a lot about the voting side of things. However the author has clearly done his research. There were also a long list of characters, interestingly Brett Kavanagh is mentioned who would later get a taste of his own medicine! I think if you are American and followed this fairly closely at the time it will be a fascinating read. But for me, being British and only really remembering 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman' it was a bit of marathon read.
The book was rather long-winded and I didn't really understand a lot about the voting side of things. However the author has clearly done his research. There were also a long list of characters, interestingly Brett Kavanagh is mentioned who would later get a taste of his own medicine! I think if you are American and followed this fairly closely at the time it will be a fascinating read. But for me, being British and only really remembering 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman' it was a bit of marathon read.
September 26, 2025
This book contains a well-researched and relatively clear explanation of the content of and motivations behind the sex scandal that nearly ended Clinton's presidency. The author critiques Clinton to some degree, but mostly hand-waves Clinton's behavior as he is very clearly a Clinton partisan and even describes the President as someone who respects women.
The author makes some strange comments regarding Vernon Jordan's race in the 4th to last section in chapter 20 (pg. 420, 2020 paperback edition). He also unduly criticizes Lewinsky by calling her dumb, untalented, etc., but then immediately contradicts himself by noting how well she handled herself around federal agents and comments on her near perfect memory.
Overall, this is a good report of what happened. But, I don't agree with some of the author's opinions.
The author makes some strange comments regarding Vernon Jordan's race in the 4th to last section in chapter 20 (pg. 420, 2020 paperback edition). He also unduly criticizes Lewinsky by calling her dumb, untalented, etc., but then immediately contradicts himself by noting how well she handled herself around federal agents and comments on her near perfect memory.
Overall, this is a good report of what happened. But, I don't agree with some of the author's opinions.
November 10, 2021
I read this book because of the new season of American Crime Story and that I really enjoyed reading Toobin’s other book that ACS was based on. This book was super informative around the events of this scandal and I felt it was especially eye opening since I wasn’t old enough to follow it at the time and didn’t learn any details later on. It’s almost shocking how many people were involved in one way or another and that made it difficult to follow. Because it’s difficult to follow it was hard to stay engaged. However, the real reason for the lower rating is even with Toobin’s updated opening, he is downright awful to Monica Lewinsly who was the real victim in all this. Regardless, I definitely recommend season 3 of ACS.
August 23, 2017
There's no doubt that Toobin is a sophisticated writer and an engaging storyteller, but ultimately all the legal erudition and political savvy couldn't rescue the book from the tabloid-y gossip in which it wallows.
The book does provide quite a bit of insight into the political machinations and personal vendettas that fueled this scandal, but I couldn't escape without feeling like too much brainpower had been expended on the topic.
Still, this was the dominant political scandal of my childhood, and, thanks to A Vast Conspiracy, I now have a pretty strong grasp of it.
The book does provide quite a bit of insight into the political machinations and personal vendettas that fueled this scandal, but I couldn't escape without feeling like too much brainpower had been expended on the topic.
Still, this was the dominant political scandal of my childhood, and, thanks to A Vast Conspiracy, I now have a pretty strong grasp of it.
August 26, 2019
Read mostly for the Congressional/ impeachment-related details, but but it helped to fill in some details of the scandal for me. (I was a teen at the time and turns out my memories of the scandal were VERY distorted by pop culture/ whatever filtered down to that level. And of course, we didn't learn about it in history class.)
Oh yeah, and when Jeffrey Toobin described Lindsey Graham as someone who "liked being the center of attention as much as he cared about ideological purity" I fully lost my mind.
Oh yeah, and when Jeffrey Toobin described Lindsey Graham as someone who "liked being the center of attention as much as he cared about ideological purity" I fully lost my mind.
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