''It was completely unplanned. I was just on there monitoring the chat just like everyone else. ... It asked me for a nickname,'' said Christopher Petro, a computer security consultant and chief technology officer for Internet communications company Lorcom Technologies, of New York.

The incident took place on Monday during an interview of Mr Clinton by CNN, which the network billed as the first live online news interview with a sitting president.

Users who had logged into CNN's chat room carrying the event saw what appeared to be the president declaring, ''Personally, I would like to see more porn on the Internet.''

Mr Petro told Reuters in a telephone interview that the remark was ''the first thing that popped into my head.'' He posted an account and computer log of the incident, under the nickname Wankel, on his personal Internet site (www.boredom.org/cnn/).

He stressed that he had not ''hacked'' the system, or broken into it from the outside, a point also made by CNN.

''I hope that this harmless prank has served to let CNN know that this system is insecure and needs to be overhauled before someone does actual harm to them or one of their guests,'' the account said.

Mr Petro said he was able to assign himself Mr Clinton's nickname after the chat room system apparently became overloaded and crashed, disconnecting the users.

He logged in and switched his nickname to Mr Clinton's before the typist entering the president's responses was able to log in. There were less than 400 users logged in at the time.

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said the prank would ''absolutely not'' deter the president from giving more online interviews. ''This is an exciting new medium, and any time you try something new there's always unexpected developments. But the president loved the interview, loved the questions, and I expect he'll be doing a lot of these,'' he said.

A CNN spokeswoman said there were no plans to overhaul the conference system. She dismissed the incident as minor compared with the significance of making the president available to answer questions from a worldwide audience.

''I would liken this to a live television broadcast,'' said spokeswoman Edna Johnson of CNN Interactive. ''I think it's unfortunate that someone wanted to pull such a prank. If we look back in the history of live television, there have been countless pranks.''

Mr Petro was able to post a total of three comments under Mr Clinton's name, including an apologetic final shot: ''Okay, that was just too much. My apologies.''

He told Reuters he had offered to write a statement for CNN giving his account of what happened, but was rebuffed.

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