Excerpt: 'Monica' From Ken Starr's Forthcoming Memoir 'Contempt'

The excerpt follows some background information provided by NPR.

The series of investigations that eventually led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton began in a New York Times story that questioned some of his business dealings back in Arkansas. This was in 1992, when he was still a candidate for president.

The allegations continued in his first year in office, leading him to direct Attorney Gen. Janet Reno to appoint an independent counsel to investigate. Early in 1994, Reno named Robert Fiske, Jr., who was tasked with looking into a failed land development deal (Whitewater) in Arkansas and the bankruptcy of a savings-and-loan there, Madison Guaranty. But Fiske was allowed to widen his scope, which would come to include the death of Clinton's first White House counsel, Vince Foster, and matters related to Hillary Clinton's law practice.

Later that same year, the independent counsel law was revised and renewed by Congress, creating an opportunity for a panel of three federal judges to replace Fiske. They chose Ken Starr,