Ms. Lewinsky testified that she and the President "enjoyed talking to each other and being with each other." In her recollection, "We would tell jokes. We would talk about our childhoods. Talk about current events. I was always giving him my stupid ideas about what I thought should be done in the administration or different views on things."(53) One of Ms. Lewinsky's friends testified that, in her understanding, "[The President] would talk about his childhood and growing up, and [Ms. Lewinsky] would relay stories about her childhood and growing up. I guess normal conversations that you would have with someone that you're getting to know."(54)

The longer conversations often occurred after their sexual contact. Ms. Lewinsky testified: "[W]hen I was working there [at the White House] . . . we'd start in the back [in or near the private study] and we'd talk and that was where we were physically intimate, and we'd usually end up, kind of the pillow talk of it, I guess, . . . sitting in the Oval Office . . . ."(55) During several meetings when they were not sexually intimate, they talked in the Oval Office or in the area of the study.(56)

Along with face-to-face meetings, according to Ms. Lewinsky, she spoke on the telephone with the President approximately 50 times, often after 10 p.m. and sometimes well after midnight.(57) The President placed the calls himself or, during working hours, had his secretary, Betty Currie, do so; Ms. Lewinsky could not telephone him directly, though she sometimes reached him through Ms. Currie.(58) Ms. Lewinsky testified: "[W]e spent hours on the phone talking."(59) Their telephone conversations were "[s]imilar to what we discussed in person, just how we were doing. A lot of discussions about my job, when I was trying to come back to the White House and then once I decided to move to New York. . . . We talked about everything under the sun."(60) On 10 to 15 occasions, she and the President had phone sex.(61) After phone sex late one night, the President fell asleep mid-conversation.(62)

On four occasions, the President left very brief messages on Ms. Lewinsky's answering machine, though he told her that he did not like doing so because (in her recollection) he "felt it was a little unsafe."(63) She saved his messages and played the tapes for several confidants, who said they believed that the voice was the President's.(64)

By phone and in person, according to Ms. Lewinsky, she and the President sometimes had arguments. On a number of occasions in 1997, she complained that he had not brought her back from the Pentagon to work in the White House, as he had promised to do after the election.(65) In a face-to-face meeting on July 4, 1997, the President reprimanded her for a letter she had sent him that obliquely threatened to disclose their relationship.(66) During an argument on December 6, 1997, according to Ms. Lewinsky, the President said that "he had never been treated as poorly by anyone else as I treated him," and added that "he spent more time with me than anyone else in the world, aside from his family, friends and staff, which I don't know exactly which category that put me in."(67)

Testifying before the grand jury, the President confirmed that he and Ms. Lewinsky had had personal conversations, and he acknowledged that their telephone conversations sometimes included "inappropriate sexual banter."(68) The President said that Ms. Lewinsky told him about "her personal life," "her upbringing," and "her job ambitions."(69) After terminating their intimate relationship in 1997, he said, he tried "to be a friend to Ms. Lewinsky, to be a counselor to her, to give her good advice, and to help her."(70)