Bill Clinton's worst day in office came when he admitted to his wife the affair with a White House intern that would threaten his marriage and his presidency, the former president said in a television interview promoting his memoirs on Sunday.
His confession to Hillary Clinton came two days before Clinton was to testify before a grand jury in August 1998 in an investigation that would lead to his impeachment, he said in an hour-long interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" that featured emotion-laden visits to his childhood haunts in Arkansas.
"I had a sleepless night and woke her up and sat down on the side of the bed and just told her. And it was awful," Clinton said. The interview was the first to air on television to promote the book "My Life."
"She looked at me as if I had punched her in the gut," Clinton wrote.
The renewed focus on the White House sex scandal may be starting to test Clinton's patience.
London's Sunday Telegraph reported that Clinton lost his temper when repeatedly asked about his affair during a BBC program to air on Tuesday.
The Telegraph quoted an unnamed BBC executive who saw the interview as saying Clinton "is visibly angry."
"As outbursts go, it is not just some flash that is over in an instant," the executive is quoted as saying. "It is something substantial and sustained."
Clinton has kicked off a full-throttle publicity campaign to sell his 957-page memoir, which goes on sale on Tuesday.
The launch includes high-profile interviews, a lavish book party for a thousand guests in Manhattan on Monday and non-stop book signings and television appearances throughout the week.
While publisher Alfred A. Knopf has received more orders than the 1.5 million copies of the book's first printing, early reviews were tough on the former president's effort.
In a front-page review, The New York Times called it "sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull - the sound of one man prattling away."
"In many ways, the book is a mirror of Mr. Clinton's presidency: lack of discipline leading to squandered opportunities; high expectations, undermined by self-indulgence and scattered concentration," the Times wrote.
Clinton described the book as unprecedentedly revealing.
"I think I've honestly tried to say more about my life than I believe any public figure ever has," he said on "60 Minutes." "And probably more than anyone ever should."
The memoirs touch on everything from poignant childhood memories to glitzy meetings with heads of state to sleeping on a couch after his wife learned of his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Casting the infidelity as a failed "struggle with my old demons," he wrote that he was furious at special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's efforts to turn his videotaped grand jury testimony into a "pornographic home movie."
Clinton's recollections of foreign affairs during his presidency ranged from weighty to witty.
US President George W. Bush, he said, should have let UN inspectors finish hunting for weapons of mass destruction before he launched the Iraq war.
"I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the UN inspections were over," he told Time magazine.
Among his greatest failures, he said, were a failure to capture al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and to broker a peace between Israelis and the Palestinians.
Clinton recounted with a chuckle how he made sure Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat did not give him or Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin a traditional kiss in 1993 when the three leaders shook hands to mark a peace agreement.
Clinton practised grabbing Arafat's elbow so that he had to keep a distance and could not lean in to offer a kiss.
Clinton was reportedly paid a $10 million advance for the book published by Knopf, a division of Bertelsmann AG's Random House unit.
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