Monica Lewinsky Led Quiet Life Of Private Schools, Government Jobs

She couldn’t be more unlike Paula Corbin Jones, the other woman whose name has been linked to President Clinton’s this week.

Monica Lewinsky, the young woman at the center of an alleged White House sex scandal and cover-up, has led a life of prep schools and private universities, able to accept an unpaid internship in Washington, then live in a luxury apartment building on the modest salary she later earned.

Lewinsky, 24, drew notice as a diligent employee along the way. But nothing in her past appears to point to the notoriety that has suddenly attached itself to her name. Along with Jones, she has forced Clinton to speak publicly about the most private of matters.

At Pacific Hills School, a $12,500-a-year college preparatory school in Bel-Air, Calif., Headmaster Rich Makoff remembered Lewinsky simply as a “good kid,” a “nice girl” who kept to herself. Lewinsky transferred to the school, then known as Bel-Air Prep, after two years at Beverly Hills High School and graduated in 1991.

Afterward, Lewinsky attended Santa Monica College for two years, then earned a bachelor’s degree at Lewis & Clark in Oregon. The 1995 graduate made the dean’s list at least once, said spokeswoman Jean Kempe-Ware, but joined no student organizations or other clubs at the $18,500-a-year liberal arts college.

The daughter of a writer and a radiologist who is also an assistant clinical professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, Lewinsky arrived in Washington as an intern soon after college graduation. For six months, she worked without pay in the office of then-White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta before moving to a paid position handling correspondence in the Office of Legislative Affairs.

Now she has been accused of having an affair with Clinton during her time at the White House, and later lying about it at his request when asked to testify about the relationship by attorneys in Jones’s sexual harassment lawsuit.

“She is a very lovely young lady, a very bright, together, astute young lady,” said William H. Ginsburg, a Los Angeles attorney who began representing Lewinsky after her original attorney, Francis Carter, ceased representing her for unexplained reasons on Monday.

After the White House, Lewinsky’s next job was at the Defense Department, where she was earning $32,736 a year as a public-affairs assistant to spokesman Kevin Bacon when she left last month.

Lewinsky, who apparently now lives with her mother and younger brother in Washington, gave notice in November, saying that she had accepted a job in corporate public affairs in New York.

At the same time, she was also offered a job in public affairs at the U.S. Mission to the United States, after being interviewd by Ambassador Bill Richardson and his chief of staff. Richardson Wednesday said that the decision to hire her was based on Lewinsky’s “qualifications, initiative, and reputation as a hard worker,” and not “on any other factors.”

Graphic: The White House intern scandal