WASHINGTON -- As Monica Lewinsky fell in love with President Clinton, she began to believe that she had entered an exclusive circle of those he trusted, and understood "the sweet little boy" in him in a way most of the world would never see.

In segments of the 2,800 pages of documents released by the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, Lewinsky emerges as a self-described "good girl" -- desperate to please everyone from the grand jury to Clinton himself. Alternately, she calls herself a "sexual soul mate" who believed that as her relationship with the president progressed she gained great access to his emotional life.

The documents speak for a Monica Lewinsky whose voice has yet to be heard in public. She emerges as both too young and too old for her years.

In interviews with investigators, Lewinsky said Clinton had told her, "My life is empty," and was gripped by periods of deep remorse and times when he missed his dead mother. She described him as torn between his "Saturday night personality," where he indulged his sexual impulses, and a "Sunday personality," where he regretted his actions and went to church.

But if Lewinsky believed she could see past the layers of the presidential Clinton -- "I thought he had a beautiful soul," she told the grand jury -- the president's view of Lewinsky was far more clinical. He suggested that the former White House intern, dubbed "The Stalker" by certain administration regulars, was a decent person, but a handful.

"She got upset from time to time," he told the grand jury. "I was upset about her conduct." Clinton called her "basically a good girl with a good heart and a good mind." But he added, "I think she is burdened by some unfortunate conditions of her, her upbringing."

He said he knew she would not remain silent after their relationship ended: "It was a part of her psyche."

Throughout the documents, Lewinsky can sound like the class drama queen. "I want to hug him so bad right now I could cry," she wrote in an e-mail. It was as though she had snagged the guy voted most popular by the rest of the world, noting, "Everybody was enamored with him."

Despite what she suspects is her better judgment, Lewinsky cannot help but fuel the rich fantasy life that her relationship with Clinton created.

"I loved you with all my heart, Bill," she wrote in a draft e-mail. "I wanted to be with you all of the time. Most recently in London, I walked the streets thinking how content I would be to walk the streets at your side while you spoke of things past -- filled the air and my soul with your knowledge of history."

She hardly shrinks from power. She submits a written "wish list" of dream jobs to the president, which includes a job as an assistant producer at any of the networks, an MTV staffer or "anything at George," a hip political magazine. In her testimony, she states, the president "certainly owed me" help in seeking a new job and added that she deserved an apology from Clinton after her family refrained from attacking him when the dalliances were revealed.

At the same time, she also appears as a naive young woman looking for wisdom from the powerful men around her. She is obedient, not complaining after getting smacked on the backside by Clinton confidant Vernon Jordan after one of their meetings, according to transcripts of her interviews with investigators.

Lewinsky occasionally combines sexual affairs, personal insecurities and national events in the same thought. She recalled that she may have sent Clinton sunglasses, an erotic postcard and note about education reform all on the same day -- Oct. 16, 1997.

With equal detail, she complains about "a bad hair day" that kept her in her infamous DKNY beret during an encounter with the president, and attempts to comfort the president after the death of the first soldier in Bosnia. Lewinsky gives the fullest account yet of the day last January when prosecutors from independent counsel Kenneth Starr's team and FBI investigators cornered her in the Pentagon City mall and took her to a room at the Ritz Carlton hotel to interrogate her. She describes feeling terrified that she would be immediately sent to jail if she left.

"I was scared to death," she told the grand jurors. Lewinsky said she repeatedly turned to Psalm 21 during this ordeal, which opens, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me, far from my prayer, from the words of my cry?"

Lewinsky testified that investigators told her she couldn't call her then-lawyer Frank Carter, who was recommended by Jordan, for fear that word of their investigation would get back to Clinton's circle. They also tried to keep her from calling her mother, who was in New York, Lewinsky said. When she insisted, she said Starr's deputy, Jackie Bennett, told her, "You're 24, you're smart, you're old enough, you don't need to call your mommy."

Lewinsky said she later burst into tears when remembering the threats that her mother would be prosecuted. When she finally called her mother from a Nordstrom, prosecutors waited nearby and even searched for her when she disappeared in a Macy's to use the restroom, she said.

Initially, Lewinsky believed confidante Linda Tripp had been as surprised as she was by the sting, since Tripp had told Lewinsky the investigators had "done the same thing to her" and tried to hug Lewinsky during the Ritz Hotel episode, Lewinsky said.

But ultimately, she said she learned about Tripp's role in the investigation from news reports. At one point, Lewinsky told the grand jurors simply, "I hate Linda Tripp."

Equally painful were Lewinsky's accounts of her own depression as she saw her relationship with Clinton slipping away. "I believe the time has finally come for me to throw in the towel," Lewinsky wrote in a note to the president found in her computer. "I give up. You let me down, but I shouldn't have trusted you in the first place."

Lewinsky told investigators she believed Clinton tore up her cards and letters and flushed them down the toilet, in an effort to conceal their affair. In her testimony, she refers to the May 24, 1997, as "Dump Day" -- the day Clinton told her he would not see her anymore.

Even with the caution and angst associated with the relationship, Lewinsky remained emboldened by it. Her work computer was filled with detailed logs of her encounters, some of which were kept at Tripp's suggestion, and draft letters and notes in her day book were kept at her home, according to the documents.

And she was equally brazen in ensuring that she could see Clinton when the affair was in bloom. White House aide Nancy Hernreich, who frequently objected to the sight of the young woman near the Oval Office, was away on Tuesday nights at her yoga classes, Lewinsky noted, as if to clear the way for greater access on those evenings.

The affair was perhaps never as painful as when Lewinsky

recounted it before the grand jury. Lewinsky, who was taking medication at the time of her testimony and said it could affect her short-term memory, had told investigators that she was on Prozac and Zoloft -- both anti-depressants.

At times in delicate questioning, Lewinsky asked if she could close her eyes, rather than look right at members of the grand jury. Unlike the prosecutors, who at times drove Lewinsky to tears, the jurors tried to bond with Lewinsky. They told her not to hold a grudge against Tripp forever, and not to blame herself too deeply for the explosive scandal.

"There's work that I need to do on myself," Lewinsky told the grand jury. "A single young woman doesn't have an affair with a married man because she's normal, quote-unquote."

Later, one juror responded: "Can I just say -- I mean, I think I should seize this opportunity now, that we've all fallen short. We sin every day."

At the end of one day of testimony, the jurors brought Lewinsky to tears with their wishes of support and good luck.

"Monica, none of us in this room are perfect," a grand juror told her. "We all fall and we fall several times a day. The only difference between my age and when I was your age is now I get up faster. If I make a mistake and fall, I get up and brush myself off. I used to stay there a while after a mistake. That's all I have to say."

Pub Date: 9/22/98