PRESIDENT Clinton's wife, Hillary, held the "relentless and unforgiving glare" of the Washington media to account yesterday for the "unbelievably sad" suicide of Mike Boorda, 56, the US Navy's top admiral, who shot himself in the chest last week.

She hoped that by the time her daughter, Chelsea, had grown up, "we will have come to our senses". It might be a time when "the truth" was not put into "eight or 10" second television sound bites, and when people gave each other "the benefit of the doubt a little more" rather than ripping reputations apart "regardless of the truth or the evidence".

Mrs Clinton said a friend had told her he thought that "we now live in an evidence-free world". Speaking of her own problems, she said: "I feel like I should wear a flak suit and a hard hat." She said her mother had been insulted by a newspaper writer calling President Clinton a liar. "She took it personally."

Mrs Clinton quoted her mother as telling her: "When you were growing up, you never gave your father or me a sleepless night. Now that you and Bill are in the White House, we hardly ever sleep at night." The First Lady said: "It's painful sometimes. It does upset me. I'm not going to sit here and say that when people come up with all these charges, that they just roll off my back. But I just, you know, deal with them the best I can and go on."

Her remarks came amid new argument over whether the admiral acted with courage or cowardice. The Right-wing Washington Times carried a column saying that, while Adml Boorda was a man of splendid character and moral stature, he was "over his head" in the "pool of ego and ambition" that has always characterised the capital.

Mrs Clinton's impression of the admiral was completely different. She said that the nation had lost "a great guy". The admiral was "the kind of person who just would light up a room and make you feel at ease". He would come to the White House "sometimes alone, sometimes with his wife, Betty" and "would be sure to say hello and thank-you to all the people who worked there". She said: "I think it's a great loss for everybody."

Mrs Clinton compared the admiral's death to that of her friend, Vincent Foster, the White House lawyer who was found in a park three years ago with wounds from the same type of .38 revolver. Mr Foster left a note saying: "I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here, ruining people is considered sport."

Adml Boorda sent a last message to "the sailors" voicing fears that a Newsweek investigation of his honour would damage the institution to which he had devoted his life. Reporters had discovered that he wore ribbons for valour in Vietnam, although he had never faced enemy fire.

'A lie is halfway around the world before the truth can get out of someone's mouth'

Before attending a memorial service at Washington Cathedral for Adml Boorda, Mrs Clinton spoke of a climate in Washington of "apathy and cynicism" because of "all the negativity that's out there". It appeared "no one" would accept the sailor's explanation that wearing the ribbons was "an honest mistake". She said Adml Elmo Zumwalt, the former Chief of Naval Operations in Vietnam, had insisted "there wasn't even a mistake", adding that he thought the admiral was entitled to the "V pins" because he was in a combat zone.

Mrs Clinton snapped: "But in today's atmosphere, which is so highly charged, a lie is halfway around the world before the truth can get out of someone's mouth." In such an atmosphere, "I think people are reluctant to believe anything or anybody".

There was no way of getting used to it. "You just grow as thick a skin as you possibly can and you try to take criticism seriously but not personally." She said: "But sometimes that's difficult, especially for people who have had a whole life and a whole career where they have been lauded and successful.

"All of a sudden they get into this arena where the rules really are different than they are anywhere else, and to be criticised for the first time. I think unless you've had some getting used to it, it could be devastating." As happened "when our friend Vince took his life", Mrs Clinton said she was stunned. "I don't know that any of us who are left will ever know all the reasons why."

There were always "underlying issues of depression or vulnerability". But much of the blame lay in "the extraordinary scrutiny everybody is under". A close friend of Adml Boorda, William Perry, the Defence Secretary, said the medal affair was a "relatively unimportant technical violation" of military law.

"I cannot understand myself what the news value is in pursuing that in light of all the other major defence issues. I don't see why in the last few days, why this is the big story about Boorda's life . . . I just loved that man and it just absolutely shattered me to see this happen."

Reply to Electronic Telegraph

Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc