LITTLE ROCK, ARK. – President Clinton’s new presidential library, which is being dedicated at a gala ceremony today, has already triggered a politically charged battle over whether the museum’s exhibits present a skewed view of history.

The $165 million facility opened yesterday for brief tours by members of the press. Reporters quickly noted that the exhibits present Mr. Clinton in a uniformly flattering light, while omitting or downplaying facts that the former president and his allies might view as inconvenient. At several points, the museum’s displays also disparage Mr. Clinton’s political adversaries.

An alcove entitled “The Fight for Power” depicts Mr. Clinton’s impeachment as the culmination of a decade-long, no holds-barred Republican crusade to take control of the federal government.

The museum identifies “character assassination” as one of the key tactics that the GOP adopted. “The Congressional Republicans took the politics of personal destruction to a new level,” one display declares.

The exhibits also dismiss as a failure the investigation by an independent counsel into the Whitewater real-estate deal. “Like every other politically-motivated investigation of the president during the 1990s, it led nowhere,” one display reads.

The White House intern with whom Mr. Clinton had an affair, Monica Lewinsky, is mentioned only in passing. It is described as “a serious mistake in his personal life.” Mr. Clinton’s false statements to a federal judge about that relationship appear not to be discussed directly.

Mr. Clinton’s impeachment by the House and his acquittal by the Senate are mentioned in timelines that run through the museum, but his acquittal receives greater prominence. “Hundreds of historians and legal scholars publicly stated there was no constitutional or legal basis for impeachment,” one panel says.

The exhibits feature two unflattering quotes from the speaker of the House during the middle four years of the Clinton presidency, Newt Gingrich, that paint the Georgia Republican as a power-hungry political opportunist.

A conservative Pennsylvania philanthropist, Richard Mellon Scaife, is also singled out, for his role in funding a research project aimed at uncovering evidence of misdeeds Mr. Clinton may have committed in Arkansas.

A spokesman for Mr. Gingrich yesterday denounced the museum for conveying an inaccurate view of what occurred during the 1990s.

“It shouldn’t be surprising that a dishonest administration would produce a dishonest account of history,” the spokesman, Rick Tyler, said. He described the Clinton museum as “the first pity-me presidential library.” Mr. Tyler also faulted the displays for railing against Mr. Gingrich’s Contract With America without describing it in detail.

In an interview aired yesterday on ABC, Mr. Clinton made clear that he still seethes over his treatment by the best-known of the independent counsels, Kenneth Starr.

“No other president ever had to endure someone like Ken Starr indicting innocent people, because they wouldn’t lie, in a systematic way, and having respectable news outlets treat them like they were serious, and parroting everything they leaked,” Mr. Clinton said. “No one ever had to try to save people from ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and people in Haiti from a military dictator that was murdering them, and all the other problems I dealt with, while every day an entire apparatus was devoted to destroying him.”

The former president also said he never disgraced America. “I made a terrible public – personal mistake, but I paid for it, many times over,” he said. “And in spite of it all, you don’t have any example where I ever lied to the American people about my job, where I ever let the American people down, and I had more support from the world, and world leaders, and people around the world, when I quit than when I started.”

Senator Clinton told CNN last night that the impeachment part of the museum is fair.

“I told everyone that the history was going to be full and accurate,” the former first lady said. “Nothing’s left out. Obviously, not everything can be shown, but there’s going to be access to all of the documents.”

Aides to Mr. Clinton defended the museum’s portrayal of impeachment as part of a broader Republican power grab.

“That’s the way history will record it … that impeachment wasn’t an isolated event, that it was part of an eight-year fight for power,” said a longtime adviser to Mr. Clinton, Bruce Lindsey. “We tried to do it in a way that was true to history.”

Mr. Clinton’s critics have not yet had an opportunity to visit the new library, which opens to the public tomorrow. Some prominent Republicans, including President Bush, are expected to attend the dedication ceremony today.

In a scene uncannily reminiscent of the Clinton years, a briefing yesterday for reporters about the design and architecture of the library was upended by a flurry of questions about the content of the exhibits. Some journalists observed that the museum made no mention of the controversy over pardons that Mr. Clinton issued as he left office. Another said the exhibits downplayed some acts of terrorism that took place on the former president’s watch. The bombing of the USS Cole was reportedly described as a simple explosion, rather than a deliberate terrorist act.

Since most reporters were allowed to explore the museum for only a half-hour and were moved through the building, it is difficult to say flatly what was and was not included.

In many respects, the museum’s narrative parallels that of Mr. Clinton’s recently published memoir, “My Life.”

While the library was designed and built with private donations, Mr. Clinton is scheduled, at today’s dedication, to turn the keys to the facility over to the National Archives, which will operate both the museum and the attached collection of White House documents.

Some with experience in the field say that, as a government agency, the National Archives has a greater obligation to ensure that the museum’s exhibits present a balanced view of history.

“As of tomorrow, it becomes an institution that belongs to the people of the United States,” a founding director of the Kennedy library, Dan Fenn Jr., said in an interview. He said the National Archives staff in charge of the facility will have to examine the impeachment exhibit and decide whether it reflects that “different people have different views on that.”

An acting head of the archives in the 1980s, Frank Burke, said he was not surprised that Mr. Clinton and his aides tried to put a gloss on history.

“It affects almost all the libraries,” Mr. Burke said. “I suppose it’s a kind of a shady delusionism rather than blatant.”

Aides to Mr. Clinton said the library was not attempting to hide criticism of the former president. The president of the Clinton foundation, James “Skip” Rutherford, said the archive will include approximately 1,000 books about the Clinton presidency, some of which were written by the former president’s adversaries.

Mr. Rutherford also noted that 100,000 pages of documents from the administration should become available to researchers early next year, with millions more pages to follow thereafter. “The full record of the National Archives is there,” he said.

Mr. Clinton’s advisers said the federal agency took part in the exhibit-design process. It was unclear, however, just how involved archives staff members were in the exhibits that are in dispute. The government official who will take over the library, David Alsobrook, failed to appear at two scheduled news briefings for reporters. Efforts to reach a spokeswoman for the agency yesterday were unsuccessful.

It is clear Mr. Clinton was involved in the most minute details of the library’s design. Just this week, the former president spotted an error regarding the results of the 1992 election, in which he first won the presidency. A map showed President George H.W. Bush winning the state of Montana, when Mr. Clinton was the victor there.

“We’re going to switch out the map and put the right map in. It should be there by tomorrow,” Mr. Lindsey said.

According to Mr. Rutherford, a computer display in the new museum lists 112,000 people and entities that made donations toward construction of the facility. He said the foundation would allow some donors to remain anonymous.

Earlier reports said the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments were among the early donors to Mr. Clinton’s library. Asked if the Saudis and Kuwaitis had backed the museum financially, Mr. Rutherford urged a reporter to ask those governments or consult the display, which will not be accessible to the public until tomorrow.

Protesters who traveled to Little Rock to demonstrate against Mr. Clinton complained yesterday that their First Amendment rights were being violated by police.

“It’s just routine free-speech suppression,” said one of the demonstrators, Bob Enyart of Denver. Mr. Enyart said members of his group, who were carrying signs accusing Mr. Clinton of committing a rape in the 1970s, were repeatedly forced to move from public areas around a downtown convention center that is the site of various activities related to the dedication.

“They arrest us, take us four blocks, keep us in a car until Clinton passed by, and let us go,” Mr. Enyart said.

A spokesman for the Little Rock police, Sergeant Terry Hastings, said the protesters’ behavior could not be tolerated.

“What they’re doing is interfering with people coming and going down there,” he said. “They were screaming obscenities. They were being disruptive and abusive.”