New York, June 05: The publisher of Hillary Clinton`s memoir wanted people guessing about her revelations before publication, but those plans were spoiled as some of the book`s most colorfull details were splashed around the US media. Simon Schuster paid 8 million dollars for Clinton`s inside look at eight tumultuous white house years and planned a media blitz next Monday for its release. It gave no advance media copies. But late Tuesday those plans went awry when a news agency ran a story that quoted ``Living History`` extensively, winning play across the country. ``Hillary`s Agony -- She reveals bill`s betrayal,`` the New York Post`s front page read yesterday, referring to the former president`s affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.


The story quotes Hillary Clinton as saying in the book said the former president lied to her about his affair for seven months, finally admitting his dalliance days before he was to testify to a grand jury.

``As a wife, I wanted to wring Bill`s neck,`` Clinton, now a US Senator for New York, revealed in the book.

Yesterday Clinton told local news station NY1 that the book is about more than the Lewinsky debacle. ``This is a story about an extraordinary time in my life and the life of our country,`` she said. ``I touch on the good times, the not-so-good times and try to explain what that experience was like for me.``

In the book, she recalls Aug 15, 1998, when her husband ``told me for the first time that the situation (with Lewinsky) was much more serious than he had previously acknowledged.``

``He now realized he would have to testify that there had been an inappropriate intimacy,`` she wrote. ``he told me that what happened between them had been brief and sporadic.``

Bureau Report