Clinton: Impeachment Charges Were 'False'

Ex-president Bill Clinton is backing away from the deal he made with Independent Counsel Robert Ray four years ago, which required him to admit that he gave false testimony under oath to a federal grand jury.

In an explosive interview with NBC's Brian Williams broadcast Wednesday night, Clinton insisted that articles of impeachment passed by the House in 1998 - which included the accusation that he lied under oath - were false.

"The charges that the House sent to the Senate were false," Clinton claimed for the first time since signing off on his 2001 plea bargain with Ray. "So I did a bad thing. I made a bad personal mistake. I paid a big price for it. But I was acquitted because the charges were false."

On December 19, 1998, the House passed two out of four articles of impeachment against Clinton. Article One, charging that he committed perjury before the grand jury, passed 228 to 206. Article Two, perjury in the Paula Jones civil case, was defeated, 229 to 205. Article Three, obstruction of justice, passed 221 to 212, and Article Four, abuse of power, was defeated, 285 to 148.

On January 19, 2001, after hammering out a plea bargain that allowed him to avoid prosecution and possible jail time, Clinton issued a carefully worded statement to meet Independent Counsel Ray's terms:

"I tried to walk a fine line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely," Clinton said in a statement read by his then-press secretary, Jake Siewert. "But I now recognize that I did not fully accomplish that goal and that certain of my responses to questions about Ms. Lewinsky were false."

In his Wednesday night interview with NBC, however, the ex-president blasted the press for covering the Monica Lewinsky investigation without telling his side of the story, which included the fact that he'd been impeached on false charges.

"People in your business [liked the Lewinsky investigation] very much," Clinton told Brian Williams. "And they like what Ken Starr did because they thought it made good ink.

"[But] they didn't do a very good job of reporting for years all the innocent people he persecuted and indicted because they wouldn't lie and the assault on the American Constitution that he waged or that I was acquitted.

"And that the charges that the House sent to the Senate were false. So I did a bad thing. I made a bad personal mistake. I paid a big price for it. But I was acquitted because the charges were false."