Lewinski's Former Lover Questioned -- High-School Teacher Says She Boasted About Having Sexual Relations

Investigators for independent counsel Kenneth Starr traveled to Portland today to question a man who once was Monica Lewinsky's lover.

Andy Bleiler, 32, a high-school drama teacher who said he had five-year affair with the former White House intern, said she had boasted of having sexual relations with a "high-ranking person in the White House" in telephone calls to him.

Bleiler, who presented the details of his years with Lewinsky through his attorney, said there was no indication of whom Lewinsky was referring to, although his wife, Kathy, said that when Lewinsky first left for Washington, she indicated she wanted to have sexual relations with the president.

"She never used President Clinton's name at any time. She did use the term `creep' to describe this person," said Terry Giles, a Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., attorney who recounted the Bleilers' story at a news conference in the couple's front yard.

Giles said Lewinsky never claimed to have had anything but oral sex with the White House official.

Giles said his meetings with the Bleilers had made him "a lot less certain" that Lewinsky is telling the truth about her encounters with the president.

"Kathy and Andy would both describe Monica during the time they knew her as having a pattern of twisting facts, especially to enhance her own version of her own self-image," he said.

Lewinsky's lawyer, William Ginsburg, did not dispute Bleiler's depiction of the affair. But Ginsburg criticized him for making the comments publicly.

"I'm not denying that she had a relationship with this man. Yes, she did. But so what?" he said.

Starr is investigating Lewinsky's claims, secretly recorded by a colleague, that she had a sexual relationship with Clinton and that the president and adviser Vernon Jordan urged her to lie about it in legal procedings. In those tapes, she also reportedly made reference to "the creep."

Giles said the Bleilers also will turn over a series of documents that Lewinsky sent them from the White House that may or may not be relevant to Starr's investigation.

"There are a series of papers and photographs that were sent to them that they kept," Giles said. "Do they have any significance? Maybe, maybe not. We're a small piece of the puzzle."

Although they could prove significant in shedding light on Lewinsky's story, which Clinton has forcefully denied, they also may be a window to her past, drawing a picture of a young woman the Bleilers said was "obsessed" with sex and who terrorized Bleiler by threatening to reveal their affair.

Giles said the affair began in 1992, a year after Lewinsky graduated from high school. Bleiler, Giles said, wanted to end the liaison a year later but was unable to do so until 1997 because Lewinsky had insinuated herself into their family and threatened to tell his wife.

Lewinsky moved to Portland to enter Lewis and Clark College in 1993, and the Bleilers moved there a year later.

Bleiler, 32, and his wife, 40, were prevented by Giles from discussing anything but their own backgrounds before their interview with Starr's representative.

After she started her new job, Lewinsky communicated with the Bleilers regularly, sometimes with as many as four or five telephone calls a day, Giles said.

Material from the Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press is included in this report.