Video: 'Hillary Clinton's first 60 Minutes interview'

(Sunday, January 26, 1992, 10:34 p.m. EST; during the 1992 Democratic Party presidential primaries) — In a bold gamble to shield his presidential candidacy from allegations of marital infidelity, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton asked the American people tonight to set aside questions about what he called “wrongdoing” in his marriage and not allow the news media to turn the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign into “a game of ‘gotcha.'”

Clinton, in an extraordinary interview on CBS News’s 60 Minutes shown after tonight’s Super Bowl game, denied allegations by Gennifer Flowers, an Arkansas state employee and part-time cabaret singer, that the two had engaged in a 12-year affair.

The charges, for which Flowers was paid an undisclosed sum, were carried in the supermarket tabloid Star.

But in denying Flowers’s allegation, Clinton admitted that his marriage had not been without problems.

“I have acknowledged wrongdoing,” Clinton said, seated next to his wife, Hillary, in a hotel suite in Boston. “I have acknowledged causing pain in my marriage. I have said things to you tonight and to the American people from the beginning that no American politician ever has.”

Clinton and his wife refused to answer pointed questions from correspondent Steve Kroft about their marriage, and the governor appealed for fairness from the national television audience and the news media. Asked whether he had ever committed adultery, Clinton said, “I’m not prepared tonight to say that any married couple should ever discuss that with anyone but themselves.” But he did not deny it.

In a deposition in January 1998, Clinton admitted that he had a sexual encounter with Flowers. In his 2004 autobiography My Life, Clinton acknowledged testifying under oath that he had a sexual encounter with Flowers. He stated it was only on one occasion in 1977.