(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-20 14:58

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Rodham Clinton was home in the White House on at least seven days when her husband had sexual encounters there with intern Monica Lewinsky, according to Sen. Clinton's schedule, released Wednesday among 11,000 pages of papers from her years as first lady.

The words of the schedules are dry, but they take on emotional weight when coupled with revelations about the sex scandal that eventually came to light. A year later, the schedules show her pressing ahead and showing her face at public events as revelations about the scandal upended her life and threatened Bill Clinton's presidency.

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., coughs as she conducts a roundtable discussion at the Yale Child Study Center in New Haven, Conn., Monday, Feb. 4, 2008. [Agencies]

The papers also shed light on her struggle for health care reform early in the Clinton administration, her scaling back when that effort failed, her travels abroad and the legal woes that dogged the Clintons in the White House.

She also was an early champion of the North American Free Trade Agreement that she now criticizes in her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The papers show her holding at least five meetings in 1993 aimed at helping win congressional approval of the deal.

It's unlikely she would be surprised at this late date to learn that the president was cheating on her while she was home in the White House. But the release of the documents reminds voters anew about Bill Clinton's affair and the impeachment proceedings that brought Washington to a halt for a year.

The private crisis came at the most public of times for the first lady.

She had speeches scheduled, at home and abroad. She appeared by President Clinton's side at an education event where he angrily dismissed the reports of having sex with Lewinsky.

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton addresses supporters during a campaign stop in Charleston, West Virginia March 19, 2008. [Agencies]

Her schedule has her choosing flowers for a black-tie dinner, congratulating "Guns Aren't Cool" award winners and reading to kids in the week in January 1998 when allegations of the scandal begin coming out. She denounced a "vast right-wing conspiracy" in a TV interview.

Almost a year earlier, the schedules show, she was home on Feb. 28, 1997, the day the report by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr says Bill Clinton had a sexual encounter with Lewinsky in an Oval Office bathroom in the early evening, staining her blue dress.

Mrs. Clinton had "drop by" events or meetings in the Map Room and Diplomatic Reception Room between 11 am and 12:30 pm that day, according to her schedule. It also lists plays that night and a concert, but it's not clear whether she attended.

More than a year earlier, on Nov. 15, 1995, the first lady went to a mid-afternoon "meet & greet" photo opportunity at the White House with Nobel Laureates and their families. That night, Lewinsky had what she later said was her first sexual encounter with the president, in the private study off the Oval office.

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