Clay Aiken's encounter regrets revealing

The man who claimed to have had a one-night stand with Clay Aiken now says he’s sorry he blabbed.

John Paulus, the former Green Beret who took his tale to the National Enquirer, isn’t retracting the story — but he now says he “regrets” going public with it.

“I regret defying the trust of Clay;” Paulus writes on his blog. “I regret hurting him, his family and his fans; I regret that I started a blog that ridiculed him. ... I apologize to Clay for that and I hope he will accept.” Aiken’s rep didn’t return The Scoop’s calls for comment.

Paulus also claims that in a “very callow and selfish moment” he passed along the story to the National Enquirer, then changed his mind and tried to get the tab to kill it, and even took legal measures to stop it, sending a cease-and-desist letter to the Enquirer. That’s not quite the way the editors at the tab remember it.

“Our reporter couldn’t get him off the phone,” National Enquirer editor David Perel told The Scoop. Perel says he doesn’t remember Paulus having a legal letter sent, but says even if there was one, Paulus is “completely distorting” the story. “It’s not a situation where he told the story one time,” Perel said. “He engaged in multiple conversations with our reporter. He couldn’t stop talking, and then he talked to reporters after it was out.”

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