Astonishing 'confession' of former Gov.

(New York-WABC, May 21, 2006) (WABC) -- It was the announcement that caught the attention of the nation. Jim McGreevey, Governor of New Jersey, husband, and father, telling the world he was gay and involved in an extra marital affair with a man. 21 months later, the former governor is going public again with a book titled "The Confession."

Eyewitness News' Jeff Rossen takes a look.

This is a tell-all book in every sense of the word. Former Governor Jim McGreevey doesn't appear to hold anything back. In the book, he writes about his life as a gay man in power and how he lied to everyone. The book comes out in September. The publisher just released 16-pages of excerpts.

"The truth is that I am a gay American," said former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey in August of 2004.

It was a personal truth aired in public. Now, McGreevey goes even further. In his new book, "The Confession", McGreevey speaks about meeting anonymous men at rest stops for sexual trysts. "As the years went on," McGreevey writes, "I became as avid a womanizer as anybody else on the New Jersey political scene, but my attraction was largely artificial. My sexual performance a triumph of mind over matter."

This is a tell-all book in every sense of the word. Former Governor Jim McGreevey doesn't appear to hold anything back. In the book, he writes about his life as a gay man in power and how he lied to everyone. The book comes out in September. The publisher released 16-pages of excerpts at a book expo in Washington D.C. Saturday. McGreevey made his first public appearance since the summer of 2004 at the expo.

McGreevey writes, "As glorious and meaningful as it would have been to have a loving and sound sexual relationship with another man, I knew I'd have to undo my happiness step by step as I began chasing my dream of a public career and the kind of 'acceptable' life that went with it. So instead, I settled for the detached anonymity of bookstores and rest stops. A compromise, but one that was wholly unfulfilling and morally unsatisfactory."

In the excerpts, McGreevey doesn't say when the encounters started. Nor does he mention his two marriages to women. He comes off as a man in great pain, in great conflict. "I knew I would have to lie for the rest of my life, and I knew I was capable of it," he writes. "The knowledge gave me a feeling of terrible power."

McGreevey will get $500,000 for writing the book and he's already a scheduled guest on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" for his first interview since the announcement. That interview will air next fall during Oprah Winfrey's new season right here on Channel 7.

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