Working on leads for nearly a year, correspondent Michael Isikoff had done a remarkable job of piecing together much of the story, largely on an off-the-record and background-only basis. When he confronted Starr’s people for comment on Thursday morning, the prosecutors argued that the magazine was in danger of destroying the investigation and pleaded for a day to persuade the former intern, Monica Lewinsky, to be their witness. Since the outcome of that effort would help determine the dimensions of the story, NEWSWEEK agreed to pause. Early Saturday morning the magazine was given access to a tape of conversations between Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, in which Lewinsky talked in detail about her alleged affair with the president.

So why didn’t NEWSWEEK print the story? The magazine was fully prepared to disregard any objections from the prosecutors and publish. But two aspects of the story troubled Editor-in-Chief and President Richard M. Smith and other editors. Contrary to expectations, the 90-minute tape the magazine heard neither confirmed nor disproved the most explosive legal allegation–obstruction of justice. Apart from Tripp’s accusations, the magazine had no independent confirmation of the basis for Starr’s inquiry on that subject. Second, the editors were concerned that while the magazine had heard a great deal about Monica Lewinsky from Tripp, its reporters had never seen her, talked with her or done enough independent reporting to assess the young woman’s credibility. Before putting her name in print for the first time and publishing a story that would inevitably change her life forever, the editors felt they needed to know more about her and the motives of the other players.

In the end, time ran out. After a long discussion in which the editors raised their concerns and Isikoff argued calmly and forcefully to print, Smith decided to hold off writing the story and to continue the reporting. “If we had been working at a daily newspaper, I have no doubt we would have said, “Let’s give this another day or two of reporting’,” said Smith. As a weekly with a Saturday-night deadline, the magazine didn’t have that luxury, and the story broke in The Washington Post on Tuesday. “It hurt like hell, and I felt especially bad for Mike,” said Smith. “But given the magnitude of the allegations and the information we had at the time, I’m convinced we acted responsibly.”