A Fast Start   

Everyone knows the story: Presidential flack Mike McCurry tells the Chicago Tribune the public might not get a "simple, innocent explanation" for the commander in chief's relationship with Monica Lewinsky .

It was Roger Simon 's big scoop, a mere five weeks into his tenure as the Trib's White House correspondent. "I always wanted to do well on a new job," says Simon, 49.

Although Simon didn't expect such a blockbuster story so quickly into his Tribune job, he knew it would be a good time to cover the president.

Simon spent the last couple of years as a syndicated columnist while writing "Show Time: The American Political Circus and the Race for the White House," a book about the 1996 campaign. Then he decided he was ready to go back to being part of the show full time. "There's a rush to doing this stuff," he says. "There's nothing quite like pursuing the daily story." Late in 1997, the Trib offered him the job.

"I thought it would be challenging and exciting to try," says Simon, who during the past two decades has written for the Chicago Sun-Times , the Baltimore Sun and America Online . "I knew Clinton's second term was not going to be boring."

It hasn't been. Simon was at the White House after midnight January 21, when a panicked administration was arming itself for the Lewinsky outbreak. Nine days into his position as a White House correspondent, Simon knew he would not, as expected, be writing the "long, thoughtful pieces on the presidency."

Then came the McCurry interview. "It's funny," says Simon. "Obviously it was such a furor [later]. But at the time, the skies did not open, and there was no lightning bolt."

Simon originally planned to write a profile of McCurry, including how he operates during a major presidential crisis. Armed with a tape recorder, he interviewed the press secretary in person on Friday, February 13. He didn't recognize the sig-nificance of McCurry's comments until transcribing them later.

"President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky could end up being a 'very complicated story' that will not be easy to explain to the American people," the story began. " 'Maybe there'll be a simple, innocent explanation,' White House spokesman Mike McCurry said. 'I don't think so, because I think we would have offered that up already.' "

The story ran on February 17, and the press jumped all over it. "It was a good story whose timing was serendipitous for us," says Washington Bureau Chief James Warren . "People in Chicago were fascinated by it."

Simon credits the Tribune for giving him a shot at the White House beat. "Not a lot of newspapers are hiring 49-year-old reporters these days," he says.

"Getting a good story after being hired ? in other words, not having to go through a learning curve ? provided some justification for hiring the older, more experienced reporter every now and again," he says, adding, "I felt good about that."