Week In Review A Look Back At The Top Stories From The Last Week

NATION

White House in crisis

Facing the most serious allegations ever leveled against him, President Clinton on Wednesday denied he had an affair with a 21-year-old White House intern or asked her to lie about it under oath.

“There wasn’t improper relations; I didn’t ask anybody to lie,” Clinton told National Public Radio. He also said he was “furious” with the charges, but would fully cooperate with any investigation.

While the White House reeled under the latest allegations, sources confirmed that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, already investigating Clinton for the Whitewater land transactions, received permission from a three-judge panel to investigate whether Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky, now 24, when she was an unpaid intern at the White House in 1995.

Starr will concentrate, however, on whether Clinton and his longtime friend Vernon Jordan Jr., urged Lewinsky to lie about the relationship to lawyers for Paula Jones, who is suing Clinton for sexual harassment.

If Clinton is found to have urged Lewinsky to lie, he could face prosecution for suborning perjury and obstruction of justice, which could trigger a constitutional crisis and potentially lead to his impeachment.

Unabomber pleads guilty

When Theodore Kaczynski finally stood up in court Thursday and confirmed his identity as the Unabomber, it was the logical conclusion to a legal drama.

Kaczynski’s plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, a resolution envisioned by many since he was first arrested nearly two years ago in the Montana wilderness, contained obvious benefits for everyone involved.

For Kaczynski, it avoided the prospect of being put to death and confronting the government’s overwhelming evidence. For prosecutors, it avoided a snarled legal odyssey that promised to stretch for nearly as long as the original 18-year manhunt for the Unabomber. And for the families, it provided a guarantee that Kaczynski will spend the rest of his life in a federal prison cell.

“The Unabomber’s career is over,” said Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Cleary, the Justice Department’s lead prosecutor in the case.

A beef with Oprah

Texas panhandle cattlemen brought talk show diva Oprah Winfrey to trial last week, alleging in a civil suit in Amarillo that Winfrey’s April 16, 1996, program on mad-cow disease was designed to scare viewers away from eating beef.

“This was a show that was intended to be a scary show because the truth is not as interesting as a scary show,” David Mullin, attorney for Amarillo cattleman Paul Engler, said during opening arguments to the jury.

Charles Babcock, Winfrey’s lead attorney, told jurors that the program accurately and fairly explored the question of whether mad-cow disease, which struck Great Britain, could strike America, too.

“I don’t know if it’s here or not,” he said. “But it seems to me that Oprah Winfrey and people like her have the right to ask the question.”

WORLD

Communism and communion

“Bless us Father for we have sinned, it has been 39 years since our last confession.”

In the first visit to Cuba by any pope, John Paul II sharply criticized the country’s moral decline since the 1959 revolution.

He appealed for the reopening of Roman Catholic schools, decried rampant promiscuity and abortion among the nation’s young people and tied these moral and social ills to the government’s atheistic doctrine.

But while Cuba received a whole lot of penance earlier in the week, Friday it was the United States’ turn.

“Economic embargoes,” the pope said, “are always deplorable because they hurt the most needy.”

The pope has long opposed the 35-year-old trade ban, which is aimed at forcing political change in Cuba.

SPOKANE

DiBartolo sentenced

A Spokane judge sentenced Tom DiBartolo to 26 years in prison for killing his wife, Patty, on Nov. 2. 1996.

Judge Neal Rielly said he had no legal basis to hand the former sheriff’s deputy a longer prison term than the law allows, despite an emotional plea from DiBartolo’s children for a harsher sentence.

“I don’t understand how anyone can cause this much pain to his family,” Nicholas DiBartolo, 18, told the judge.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by news editor Kevin Graman from staff and wire reports.