As the impeachment trial of President Clinton begins what is expected to be its final week, the eagerly-awaited testimony of Ms Monica Lewinsky on videotape provided no surprises.
Both Republican prosecutors and the White House defence team played lengthy extracts from her testimony to bolster their arguments, often using the same clips but with different interpretations.
For the first time since the news of her affair with Mr Clinton burst into public view over a year ago, Americans were able to watch the former White House intern give her version of events on camera. She came across as a confident but wary young woman who was able to handle any questions put to her by the prosecution.
Wearing a black suit highlighted by a pearl necklace, and with her coiffed black hair framing her face, Ms Lewinsky gave careful answers which often referred back to her grand jury testimony and provided little new ammunition to the prosecutors.
But the White House lawyer, Ms Nicole Seligman, was able to use Ms Lewinsky's own words to rebut the prosecution efforts to prove that Mr Clinton conspired to make her file a false affidavit about their affair in the Paula Jones lawsuit.
Mr Vernon Jordan, the President's friend and influential Washington lawyer, was shown strongly denying that his efforts to find a job for Ms Lewinsky were part of a conspiracy to buy her silence on her affair with Mr Clinton.
A White House aide, Mr Sidney Blumenthal, repeated his testimony that Mr Clinton told him Ms Lewinsky had made sexual overtures to him which he rebuffed and that she was known as a "stalker".
Mr Blumenthal testified that he did not know how these views on Ms Lewinsky were made known to the media, but Mr Christopher Hitchens, a British journalist, swore last week in an affidavit that Mr Blumenthal had said these things to him at a lunch last March.
In a surprise move, Senator Robert Byrd (Democrat, West Virginia) said yesterday that there was "no doubt about it in my mind" that the charges against the President rose to "high crimes and misdemeanours". Two weeks ago Senator Byrd, who is regarded as a father-figure in the Senate, boosted White House morale when he introduced a motion to have the trial dismissed.
Senator Byrd who was speaking on ABC television did not say, however, how he would actually vote later this week, but it would be "very difficult to stand up and say `not guilty'."
Behind the scenes, a small group of Democrats and Republicans is working on a draft motion of censure which would rebuke Mr Clinton for his conduct with Ms Lewinsky in the White House and his misleading of the country by his denials. The draft calls the President's conduct "shameless, reckless and indefensible" and points out that he is still liable to "criminal and civil actions" when his term ends.
Also going on behind the scenes is a bipartisan attempt to open up to the public the final Senate debate on the impeachment vote. Under existing rules, the senators deliberate on their votes in private and then emerge to vote in public.
The trial resumes today with final arguments by the prosecution and defence. If the proposal to make their deliberations public fails, the senators will go behind closed doors for up to two days.