Larry Nichols decided to drop his lawsuit

Despite some later coverage, the Flowers media circus was ending. I think the chief reason was that we had managed to put it in the right perspective on 60 Minutes. The public understood that I hadnt been perfect and wasnt pretending to be, but people also knew that there were many more important issues confronting the country. And a lot of people were repelled at the cash for trash aspects of the coverage. At about this time, Larry Nichols decided to drop his lawsuit, and he issued a public apology for, in his words, trying to destroy me: The media has made a circus out of this thing and now its gone way too far. When that Star article first came out, several women called asking if I was willing to pay them to say that they had had an affair with Bill Clinton. This is crazy. Questions were raised about the tapes that were played at Flowerss press conference. The Star declined to release the original tapes. A Los Angeles television station retained an expert who stated that while he didnt know that the tape was, in his words, doctored, it definitely had been selectively edited. CNN also ran some critical coverage, based on the analysis of its own expert. As Ive said, I first met Gennifer Flowers in 1977 when I was attorney general and she was a television reporter for a local station who often interviewed me. Soon afterward, she left Arkansas to pursue an entertainment career, I believe as a backup singer for country music star Roy Clark. At some point, she moved to Dallas. In the late eighties, she moved back to Little Rock to be near her mother and called to ask me to help her find a state job to supplement her income from singing. I referred her to Judy Gaddy on my staff, who was responsible for referring the many job seekers who asked for help with state employment to various agencies. After nine months, Flowers finally got a position paying less than $20,000 a year. Gennifer Flowers struck me as a tough survivor whod had a less-than-ideal childhood and disappointments in her career but kept going. She was later quoted in the press as saying that she might vote for me and, on another occasion, that she didnt believe Paula Joness allegations of sexual harassment. Ironically, almost exactly six years after my January 1992 appearance on 60 Minutes, I had to give a deposition in the Paula Jones case, and I was asked questions about Gennifer Flowers. I acknowledged that, back in the 1970s, I had had a relationship with her that I should not have had. Of course, the whole line of questioning had nothing to do with Joness spurious sexual-harassment claim; it was just a part of the long, well-financed attempt to damage and embarrass me personally and politically. But I was under oath, and of course, if I hadnt done anything wrong, I couldnt have been embarrassed. My critics leapt on it. Ironically, even though they were sure the rest of the deposition was untruthful, this one answer they accepted as fact. The fact is, there was no twelve-year affair. Gennifer Flowers still has a suit against James Carville, Paul Begala, and Hillary for allegedly slandering her. I dont wish her ill, but now that Im not President anymore, I do wish shed let them be.