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It was a lapse, but she says to his credit he tried to break it off, tried to pull away, tried to manage someone who was clearly a 'narcissistic loony toon; but it was beyond control, wrote Mrs Blair in a September 1998 note published yesterday by the conservative Washington Free Beacon webstie.

HRC insists, no matter what people say, it was gross inappropriate behavior but it was consensual (was not a power relationship) and was not sex within any real meaning (standup, liedown, oral, etc.) of the term.

The note, which recorded a phone conversation with Mrs Clinton, was in a trove of documents given to the University of Arkansas after Mrs Blairs death in 2000, but were only scrutinised and published by the conservative website this week.

The note appears to show Mrs Clinton accepting Mr Clintons own famously narrow definition of what constituted meaningful sexual contact in his now-infamous denial - I did not have sexual relations with that woman - that was given at a highly charged White House press conference.

Although now nearly 20 years ago, Republicans have made clear that the Lewinsky affair - and the Clintons controversial record in office - is far from forgotten and will resurface if she hits the campaign trail in 2016.

Last month Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican senator who is expected to run in 2016, referred directly to the Lewinsky incident to attack both the Clinton brand and challenge the notion that Democrats had a monopoly on the affections of women voters.

Mr Paul accused Mr Clinton of predatory behaviour for, as he termed it, taking advantage of a young girl in his office - a characterisation of the affair that Mrs Clinton seems to have rejected in her own mind both then and now.

The documents depict Mrs Clinton as a loyal friend, devoted mother, and a cutthroat strategist according to the Washington Free Beacon website, a portrait echoed in HRC, a new biography of the former secretary of state that is published today. The book says that Mrs Clintons senior aides are already conducting informal interviews to assemble a campaign staff for a 2016 bid, while Mrs Clinton continues to insist publicly that she has not yet decided whether to run for president again.

This is a campaign that is in full swing, said Jonathan Allen, one of the books authors. Its more a question of whether she stops running than whether she starts running.

Mrs Clintons staff are also strategising about how best to deploy her husband on the campaign trail. While he was a major asset to Mr Obamas re-election effort in 2012, he repeatedly courted controversy during her 2008 bid.

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Hillary Clinton accepted husband's definition of sex in Lewinsky affair, new papers suggest