Clinton says he wouldn't be interested in a pardon

"I don't want one," he said. "I'm prepared to stand before any bar of justice I have to stand before."

Again admitting a "terrible personal mistake," Mr. Clinton said he was glad that he had fought the two articles of impeachment by the House stemming from Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. The Senate voted last year, mostly along party lines, to acquit him.

"I'm proud of what we did there because I think we saved the Constitution of the United States," he said. "I'm not ashamed of the fact that they impeached me. That was their decision, not mine, and it was wrong."

The president made his comments during a question-and-answer session at the annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The pardon issue first was raised Wednesday during a similar session with Vice President Al Gore, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

"Once again, President Clinton is way ahead of you on this," Mr. Gore told the editor who had asked about a pardon. "He said publicly some time ago he would neither request nor accept a pardon. And that's the answer to that question."

On Thursday, however, deputy White House press secretary Jake Siewert said aides could find no public dismissal of a pardon by the president, only a statement by former White House counsel Charles Ruff.

Asked directly Thursday whether he would "request or accept such a pardon," Mr. Clinton said, "Well, the answer is I have no interest in it. I wouldn't ask for it. I don't think it would be necessary."

He then went further and said: "The answer is no. I don't have any interest in that. I don't want one."

Earlier, White House press secretary Joe Lockhart dismissed the possibility the president might pardon himself before he leaves office Jan. 20.

"Why don't we change the subject," Mr. Lockhart said, facing a barrage of pardon questions. "This is ridiculous speculation."

Mr. Lockhart was responding to reports that independent counsel Robert Ray, who succeeded Kenneth Starr, was still investigating the president's relationship with former White House intern Lewinsky.

The questions to Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton followed.

"I won't be surprised by anything that happens, but I'm not interested in being pardoned," Mr. Clinton said Thursday, complaining to the editors that "no one has yet written the full story" on his financial transactions involving the Whitewater land development in rural Arkansas.

"I would like just once to see someone acknowledge the fact that this Whitewater thing was a lie and a fraud from the beginning, and that most people with any responsibility over it have known it for years," the president said, obviously irritated.

"Next question," he said, eager to move on.

Then, asked if there would be a wing in his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., dedicated to his impeachment, he said: "Yeah, we'll deal with it. And I will deal with it. We'll have to deal with it. It's an important part of it."

But he added, "You have to understand I consider it one of the major chapters in my defeat of the [Republican] revolution," led by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

It would have "taken this country in a very different direction than it's going today," Mr. Clinton said. "And it also would have changed the Constitution forever in a way that would have been very destructive to the American people."

In the House, where the president was impeached, Sam Stratman, a spokesman for House Judiciary Committee Henry Hyde, R-Ill., said, "I don't think there's very much in these events for the president to be proud of."

Answering the editors' questions, Mr. Clinton reiterated that he was grateful that the "American people stuck with me." And that, he said, "has nothing to do with the fact that I made a terrible mistake, of which I am deeply regretful."

"I struggled very hard to save my relationships with my wife and my daughter," he said. "I've paid quite a lot."

Still, there are legal implications for the president.

The independent counsel still might seek to indict him on perjury and obstruction charges after he leaves office, and the Arkansas bar is considering revocation of his law license.

"Enough is enough," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. , who voted to acquit Mr. Clinton in the Senate last year.

"What the president did should not be lightly or easily forgiven," Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor Thursday. "But it should not be blown out of proportion either."