For Matt Drudge - gossip-monger, journalist and Internet maverick - it was the ultimate revenge. His 18-month-old Drudge Report website has been irritating Americans in much the same way as the satirical magazine Private Eye offends the British establishment.
However, his latest scoop may not only deliver a crushing blow to the credibility of a president for whom he has little respect, but also undermine the journalistic establishment which he holds in disdain.
While Newsweek's editors fiddled and Washington's ears burned with unsubstantiated rumours that President Clinton had had an affair with Ms Monica Lewinsky and encouraged her to lie about it, Drudge published it on his website and was duly damned.
"I've maintained that the White House is uncomfortable with independent reporting. . . I think the Internet's going to lead the way on this," Drudge said on the day the story appeared in the Washington Post.
By this stage his prophecy had already been fulfilled. Three days earlier, the Drudge Report website (www.drudgereport.com) had informed the world that Newsweek had "killed" the story that was "destined to shake official Washington to its foundation". A day later he had published Ms Lewinsky's name, a resume and the fact that, in a sworn affidavit, she had denied having an affair with the US President.
When a conservative commentator tried to mention Drudge's story on ABC's political programme the next day, Mr George Stephanopoulos (a former White House aide) cut him off: "And where did it come from? The Drudge Report. You know we've all seen how discredited. . ."
Mr Stephanopoulos has a point. Drudge has a serious credibility problem. The 31-year-old California-based Internet editor admits he gets his facts right only "80 per cent of the time". This is the man who claimed Netscape was going to be bought by Microsoft and that the film Independence Day was going to be an unmitigated failure.
He currently faces a $30-million libel suit after he repeated unfounded allegations that Mr Sidney Blumenthal, the White House communications aide, was a wifebeater. It was an accusation he was forced to retract within 24 hours, admitting that he had been tricked by politicians to "broadcast dirty laundry".
But he has also scored some notable hits. Thanks to his high-level sources in Washington's beau monde, he was first with the story that Mr Jack Kemp had been named as Mr Bob Dole's vicepresidential candidate in the 1996 campaign.
So irritated were Clinton's officials with the havoc he was wreaking that the White House deputy press secretary called the opinion page editor of USA Today to complain about a column which supported Drudge.
His latest efforts, however, undoubtedly mark his greatest triumph. For in this case his perceived weakness - his eagerness to put stories on the Web regardless of whether he has establised their authenticity - was his strength.
A Newsweek reporter, Michael Isikoff, had the story for almost a week before it broke, but the magazine declined to publish it. When Newsweek was scooped by its own story in the mainstream media, it published its findings on the Net anyway. Isikoff has accused Drudge of "poisoning the atmosphere of real reporting. He was reckless and irresponsible and did a disservice to everybody involved . . . He disposes of all the journalistic conventions and simply recycles the most sensational gossip that's going around." To Drudge, most of that would sound like a compliment. He refers to himself as a "reporter" rather than a journalist. He describes his relationship with the mainstream media as "a turf war with the establishment press that has gotten too cozy with the people they cover".
The Drudge Report, which scores around 40,000 hits a day, is a magpie's nest of information, gleaned from everything from obscure press agencies to police scanners and White House insiders; it has quirky headlines and humorous asides. The sheer volume of Clinton-smears he is prepared to distribute has left him feted by conservatives.
But despite his recent achievement, most in the American media are unlikely to welcome Drudge with open arms. Drudge is unconcerned. "They just don't know what to do with it. But they're going to have to start accepting it," he says.