While acknowledging personal faults, Condit could find no error in his conduct during the investigation. He has held four interviews with the police and FBI. "How can I have any regrets when I have cooperated with all the authorities?" he says. "I have done everything they've asked me to do. I answered every question that law enforcement asked me in every interview. I answered every question truthfully. I had nothing to do with the disappearance of Chandra Levy." He adds, "I took the DNA test for them. I did the polygraph for them. They had no probable cause, but I let them search my house." As for taking a lie detector test arranged by his lawyers and refusing to take one supervised by the FBI, he says, "We found the best (tester)....We thought that he would meet the objective that the police and the FBI wanted."

Although Condit has not been named as a suspect, police take a slightly more jaundiced view of his level of cooperation. "We didn't have a full accounting from the congressman until the third interview," says D.C. Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance Gainer. "The accuracy of his statement lies in the eyes of the beholder. Getting information from him has been time-consuming to us. But that in itself is not necessarily criminal."

Condit feels that it is time that police looked elsewhere. "Do I think that they ought to focus on different areas? Yes," he says. He says that he is especially frustrated by the media coverage: "If the media want to make things up and print rumors and innuendos and misstatements, I can't do a lot about that." Given the chance to respond to the many rumors and allegations that have fueled the press frenzy, he declined to answer in any depth.

Flight attendant Anne Marie Smith, for instance, who claimed to have had an affair with Condit, told investigators that the congressman had phoned her in early May and said, "'I'm going to have to disappear for a while. I think I might be in some trouble.'" Condit's response? "I might have returned her call," he says. "And I might have said I'm going to be gone for the weekend. I might have said something like that." But trouble? "No." As for Smith herself, who has asserted that Condit told her to lie to investigators about their relationship, Condit says, "I'm just puzzled by people who interject themselves into something that's not -- it just puzzles me. She does this for her own publicity. Anne Marie Smith has nothing to do with Chandra Levy. Not one thing."

He was even more dismissive about one of the more puzzling aspects of the case: the Tag Heuer watch case that a man claimed to have seen Condit dump in a trash can in a park in Alexandria, Va., hours before police searched his Washington condo on July 10. Joleen McKay, who worked as a staff assistant for Condit in 1994, has told investigators that she gave the watch to Condit while they were having an affair. "The watch box has nothing to do with Chandra Levy, and I took nothing out of my apartment before the search," Condit says. "I took nothing out of my apartment after the search."