Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, admitted yesterday that he was cheating on his own wife when he led the Republican charge to impeach Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Mr Gingrich made his confession in an interview with James Dobson, one of America’s most powerful Christian conservatives, in an apparent attempt to clear the decks with the religious right ahead of a presidential bid.

“The honest answer is yes,” Mr Gingrich told Mr Dobson, the Focus on the Family founder, in a carefully choreographed interview broadcast last night. “There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There’s certainly times when I’ve fallen short of God’s standards.”

Reports of extra-marital affairs have dogged the thrice-married Mr Gingrich for years, but until now he has refused to discuss them publicly.

The man who masterminded the Republican and conservative revolution that swept Congress in the 1994 mid-term elections was one of Mr Clinton’s most ferocious opponents during the 1990s, and spearheaded the move in the House to impeach the former President over the Lewinsky scandal.

But Mr Gingrich, 63, who frequently espoused the importance of family values, said yesterday that he was engaged in an extra-marital affair at the height of the impeachment proceedings in 1998. He divorced his second wife, Marianne, in 2000 after his lawyers acknowledged his relationship with his current wife, Callista Bisek, a former congressional aide more than 20 years his junior.

Mr Gingrich rejected the notion that he was a hypocrite for hounding Mr Clinton over his infidelity. “The President of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge,” Mr Gingrich said, referring to the impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice that the House bought against Mr Clinton over dishonest courtroom testimony.

“I drew a line in my mind that said, ‘Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the Government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept . . . perjury in your highest officials’.” Mr Clinton was impeached by the House in December 1998, he was acquitted two months later by the Senate.

Under normal rules of US political life, Mr Gingrich’s philanderings would make him a far from satisfactory candidate for conservatives. But he is not a normal politician. He is still a heroic figure on the Right.

His confession comes as the Republican right voices growing dissatisfaction with the three leading party presidential candidates — John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney — over their conservative credentials. That it was Mr Dobson who gave Mr Gingrich the chance to come clean suggests even the Religious Right might be willing to overlook his past.

The rivals

Rudy Giuliani Married three times. First wife was his second cousin; second learnt she was being divorced when Giuliani announced it at press conference; present wife barely on speaking terms with his children

John McCain Married twice; has admitted that he was unfaithful to his first wife

Mitt Romney Mormon married to childhood sweetheart

Times Recommends

• Would you live on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall?
• Wish you were here, says Iraq tourist board
• Russian policeman’s corruption plea to Putin