CARVILLE: I was pretty pissed off about the whole thing if you want to know the truth. All of this goofy land deal, it was all crap and now it’s something in a civil deposition — I just thought it was way, way beyond anything that had anything to do with being president.

APPERSON: Ken disclosed before the testimony the existence of the blue dress and the semen stain and that the positive DNA test had confirmed it was the president. I believe that no reasonable prosecutor would ever have done that — no ethical requirement to do that and it would be contrary to everything we know as a prosecutor. And yet Ken did that. I have criticism of him doing that as a prosecutor, but my God it speaks to his thorough decency and belies this notion that he was out to get the president.

STARR: Maybe other prosecutors would make a different kind of judgment and think of it more tactically. I thought of it in more historic terms. This was an unfortunately unhappy episode on American history and we needed to bring it to conclusion as quickly as possible. I think we owed the president an extra measure of respect.

WISENBERG: I was kind of obsessed with what his lawyer had done. His lawyer had actually tried in the Paula Jones deposition — Robert Bennett — had tried to keep questions from being asked at all about Monica Lewinsky. Bennett stood up and said: “We object to this. It’s in bad faith. We have an affidavit here [from Ms. Lewinsky] that says there is no sex of any kind going on.” I’m not quoting verbatim. [I asked Clinton about it.] He says, “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” His point being that because Bennett’s statement was in the present tense that there was nothing technically wrong with Bennett’s statement. The idea was basically that, “Since I wasn’t having sex with Ms. Lewinsky during the deposition in front of Susan Webber Wright, that Mr. Bennett hadn’t said anything untruthful.”

STARR: I think we all took note of it. I certainly wasn’t startled. I don’t recall looking up. I was just listening and taking it all in.

WISENBERG: On the performance level, I thought he was doing very well and was pretty much kicking our [butt] until that statement. He was giving very narrative answers, getting his side out. I thought it was very effective. I mean, he’s a great politician.

STARR: I was taking a lot of notes. I was not making it a point to read body language or glance at his lawyers. I’m a note taker.