Henry Hyde, a crusty Republican who heads the House Judiciary Committee that is set to roast Clinton, was flushed out into the open after the Internet magazine Salon published a picture and accounts of his youthful indiscretions.

Hyde was a lawmaker in Illinois, married and in his late thirties, when he had a four year long affair in 1965 with another married woman with three children. Salon was apparently tipped off about the affair by a friend of the woman's ex-husband.

Republicans blamed the President's ``attack dogs'' for what many are calling a Scorched Earth policy. In recent weeks, prominent conservative Republicans, including Indiana Congressman Dan Burton, and a extreme Right Utah Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth, have been forcedto acknowledge affairs in their past following exposes in the media.

Hyde put up a typically legislative defence. ``The statute of limitations has long since passed on my youthful indiscretions...The only purpose for this being dredged up now is an obvious attempt to intimidate me, and it won't work. I intend to fulfill my constitutional duty and deal judiciously with the serious felony allegations presented to Congress in the Starr report,'' he said in a statement.

Salon, which was accused of being a Democratic mouthpiece, said it had decided to run the Hyde story because ``Clinton's enemies have changed the rules.''

``Does the fact that Henry Hyde engaged in an adulterous affair, and tried to keep it hidden from his family and constituents, mean he is not fit to hold public office? Absolutely not. The same is true of President Clinton,'' editors of the magazine argued.

Meanwhile, rained down with questions on the sex scandal by the media in his first press conference since the release of theStarr Report, President Clinton brushed aside the possibility of his resignation and said he would concentrate on repairing ties with his family and doing the work of the people.

Offering no defence or explanations for his mistakes, a subdued Clinton suggested that the American people had already made up their minds - they wanted him to put behind the sex scandal and continue with his work.

But a persistent media trained most of their questions on the sex scandal even as the President tried to move out to the arena of issues in the joint press conference with visiting Czech President Vaclav Havel. A mystified Havel, who saw almost the entire event being hijacked by the sex scandal (even Czech journalists began asking if their friendship was affected by the scandal), said there are some things about America he did not understand.

``The American nation is fantastic, big body with... many very different faces. I love most of these faces. There are some which I don't understand. I don't like to speak aboutthings which I don't understand,'' Havel, a playwright, said in an acute observation of the current American obsession with the sex scandal. Havel, 61, recently married Dagamar Veskrnova, a woman some 20 years younger, after his first wife died of cancer in 1996.