Computer Users Flock To Internet To Pore Over Details

Just the table of contents sent most heads wagging.

The four pages read like a turgid Harlequin romance: “Emotional Attachment,” “Secrecy,” “Easter Telephone Conversations and Sexual Encounter.”

Mary Shepherd-Gustin, who lives in Rathdrum, Idaho, first paused her computer’s scroll at Roman numeral V, or “April-December 1996: No Private Meetings.”

“I don’t think I have enough time to read 500 pages,” said the Gonzaga University student, sitting in front of a computer in a school computer lab. “They really went into this, didn’t they?”

It’s 445 pages actually, filled with detailed allegations about President Clinton’s relationship with former intern Monica Lewinsky and the affair’s fallout. Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s report, released on the Internet Friday, caused a computer traffic jam, made readers cringe and gave new meaning to the word “salacious.”

“I’m just sitting back laughing at it,” said Dean Smith, the president of Icehouse Net Services, a Spokane Internet provider. “Talk about the hottest smut of the year.”

That is, if you could find it. The Internet ran wild Friday, with some sites jammed to a halt by people trying to find out about the cigar incident or the final gift or the Lewinsky-Tripp conversations.

Smith said he was rebuffed 95 percent of the 20 or 30 times he tried to get into the MSNBC site, which posted the report.

“Usage picked up at 4 p.m. today,” said Bob Bowman, regional manager for Internet On Ramp, one of the larger Internet providers in the area. “It’s real heavy right now. It’s pretty dramatic.”

The MSNBC site reported 26 servers working at full capacity - and more were being installed to meet demand. “It looks as though we’re going to double our highest day,” said spokeswoman Loren Pomerantz.

CNN’s Web site was getting more than 300,000 hits a minute even before the report was posted on the Internet, said spokesman Kerrin Roberts. He predicted the volume would be higher than the record 320,000 a minute Aug. 31 when the Dow Jones industrial average plunged.

People should avoid the government sites that first provided the report, Bowman said.

“I’m probably not going to try to get to it as soon as today,” he said Friday. “I’ll let everyone else wait. It’s like, I’m not going to be the first person in line to get my copy of ‘Titanic’ in the video store.”

But by mid-afternoon, media outlets had picked up the report. People at libraries across Spokane picked out certain details to read.

Michael Shaw, 20, rode the bus an hour from the Valley to the downtown Spokane Public Library to read the Starr report. He signed up for two hours at a library computer. He planned to come back until he had read all he could read.

“So far, I’ve seen nothing but - how should I put this - that he tried everything he could to block testimony and then lied under oath,” Shaw said.

One woman at Gonzaga’s Foley Library was checking out the report but didn’t want to be identified because of her political ties. She said she went to school with Lewinsky.

Tom Carter, associate dean of the Foley Library, checked out the report in between helping customers. “This is so embarrassing, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s so tawdry. And real specific.”

Shepherd-Gustin had thought Clinton was telling the truth. She worried the president wouldn’t get a fair break, especially considering the public’s appetite for scandal.

“I just want to read it to make my own decision,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.