President Clinton's political future looked bleak last night as the United States learned the full details of his tawdry sexual affair with Ms Monica Lewinsky, his lies and his attempts to hide it from his family and colleagues. The full report was given instant worldwide distribution on the Internet.
But as the President was accused in the Starr report of lurid sex acts with Ms Monica Lewinsky and of perjury and tampering with witnesses, the White House fought back.
The President's lawyers rushed out their 73-page rebuttal even before the massive 435-page Starr report was released.
The White House document said "the disclosure of lurid and salacious allegations can only be intended to humiliate the President and force him from office".
The Starr report says: "The President has pursued a strategy of deceiving the American people and the Congress since January 1998, delaying and impeding the criminal investigation for seven months, and deceiving the American people and Congress in August 1998."
The report set out 11 grounds for the impeachment of President Clinton arising from his affair with Ms Lewinsky but found no wrongdoing in connection with the failed Whitewater property development which sparked off the original investigation in 1994.
Mr Starr says the President can be impeached by Congress for offences including perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and abuse of presidential power in his effort to conceal a relationship with Ms Lewinsky. The sexual details were included because the President swore twice that he did not have a "sexual relationship" as defined by lawyers.
Ms Lewinsky testified to 10 sexual encounters with the President, in graphic detail, faithfully recorded in Mr Starr's report.
The White House rebuttal, written by the President's personal lawyer, Mr David Kendall, and the White House counsel, Mr Charles Ruff, said "impeachment is a matter of incomparable gravity. Even to discuss it is to discuss overturning the electoral will of the people".
The lawyers wrote: "We do not believe the OIC (Office of Independent Counsel) can identify any conduct remotely approaching the impeachment standard."
In the debate on Capitol Hill to authorise the release of the Starr report, angry Democrats accused the Republican majority of treating the President unfairly by not allowing him an advance copy. But most Democrats voted for the resolution which released the report and set out the ground rules for the first stage of the impeachment process.
It remains to be seen if their reading of the report over the weekend will persuade them that it would be better for the President to resign rather than subject the country to a long-drawn-out impeachment process. The Democrats fear the effects of the report on their prospects in the November election.
President Clinton began the day with a prayer breakfast at which he said he had asked the forgiveness of Ms Lewinsky and her family as well as his own family and friends. But sources close to the former intern said there had been no direct contact with the President.
In the evening he received an award for his work for the Northern Ireland peace process at a ceremony at the White House attended by hundreds of Irish-American supporters.
But the main event of the day was the war of words between the White House and the allegations in the Starr report which included graphic details of sexual encounters and phone sex involving the President and Ms Lewinsky. The report said there was a DNA genetic match between the President's blood sample and a stain on Ms Lewinsky's dress.
The report cites Ms Lewinsky saying that during one sexual encounter the President continued speaking on the telephone to a member of Congress. She said they never had full sexual intercourse.
The Starr report points out that Ms Lewinsky was distressed in testifying against the President, saying "harming the President is the last thing in the world I want to do".
The White House said the President had acknowledged "a serious mistake" in his relationship with Ms Lewinsky. "This private mistake does not amount to an impeachable action," the rebuttal insisted. It pointed out that the Starr report was based "entirely on allegations obtained by the grand jury" which "are not designed to search for the truth".
The White House has strongly contested the Starr accusation that Mr Clinton tried to tamper with witnesses like his personal secretary, Ms Betty Currie.
According to Ms Lewinsky, the President sent Ms Currie to retrieve gifts he had given her. The White House claims Ms Lewinsky took the initiative in returning the gifts.