President Clinton may go before the American people this weekend to try and kill off the allegations of extra-marital sex and perjury which are threatening to force his resignation and lead to impeachment.
He told members of his cabinet yesterday that the allegations were untrue and urged them to stay focussed on their jobs. Four of them came out of the meeting to tell the media that they supported the President.
The Vice President, Mr Al Gore, has also publicly expressed support and said that he does not believe the allegations.
White House advisers are urging Mr Clinton to reject the charges vigorously in a specially called press conference or televised interview with journalists before the State of the Union address next Tuesday where he will lay out his programme for the coming year.
But the President's personal lawyers are urging caution until he is properly prepared to answer probing questions about his relationship with a former White House intern, Ms Monica Lewinsky (24).
Ms Lewinsky is now being threatened with indictment for perjury by the special counsel, Mr Kenneth Starr, arising from the contradiction between her two versions of her relations with Mr Clinton while she worked in the White House and later in the Pentagon.
She has revealed in taped conversations with a colleague, Ms Linda Tripp, that she had an 18month affair with the president and that he told her to deny it, but she has also sworn an affidavit denying she had "a sexual relationship" with him. According to some sources, the tapes show that she and the President exchanged gifts and that he left messages for her.
Her lawyer, Mr William Ginsburg, said yesterday that Ms Lewinsky was "devastated, concerned, upset and fearful" and had been "squeezed" by the independent counsel lawyers to cooperate with them.
She has now been told that she is a "target" in the legal sense for indictment by Mr Starr in his investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing by Mr Clinton and his influential adviser and top Washington lawyer, Mr Vernon Jordan.
Mr Ginsburg has been discussing a grant of immunity to Ms Lewinsky in return for her co-operation but the independent counsel first wants to know what she will tell him about her relations with the president and Mr Jordan.
A grant of immunity for Ms Lewinsky would mean added danger for Mr Clinton as she would be free to retract her affidavit denying an affair with him and leave him open to a perjury charge as he has sworn he did not have an affair. Her attorney refused to answer a direct question in an interview as to whether she had an affair with the President.
Ms Lewinsky was to have given sworn testimony yesterday to the lawyers of Ms Paula Jones who is accusing Mr Clinton of sexual harassment in a Little Rock hotel in 1991. But Judge Webber Wright postponed her deposition indefinitely to give Ms Lewinsky more time to consider her position as to possible perjury.
The New York Times in an editorial yesterday, headed "Tell the Full Story, Mr President", urged Mr Clinton to give a televised evening speech to answer the questions raised by the present crisis. "Mr Clinton needs to tell his story not in bits and pieces but holistically with the complete context that only he knows."
The editorial said: "The nation has heard enough from press secretaries and lawyers. This is a Presidential-scale task". The televised evening speech "has been used by every modern President at times when the nation was riven by doubts about the quality of its leadership", the paper said.
Washington stunned as floodgates open; Powerful man behaving badly; The women behind the claims; The President's loyal fixer: reports and analyses, Pages 10 and 11.