Linda Tripp

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Linda Tripp at the time of the Lewinsky scandal.

Linda Tripp (born Linda Rose Carotenuto on November 24, 1949 in Jersey City, New Jersey) was a central figure in the Lewinsky scandal of 1998 and 1999 that led to the impeachment and subsequent acquittal of U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Tripp graduated in 1968 from Hanover Park High School in East Hanover, New Jersey.^[1]

1 Government employment history
2 Tripp's involvement in the Lewinsky scandal
- 2.1 Indictment by the State of Maryland
3 Arrest record controversy
4 Lawsuit and settlement
5 George H. W. Bush affair controversy
6 Life since the Lewinsky scandal
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Government employment history

Linda Tripp was a White House employee in the George H. W. Bush administration, and kept her job when Bill Clinton took over in 1993. During the summer of 1994, senior White House aides wanted Tripp out, so they arranged a job for her in the public affairs office in the Pentagon which gave her a raise of $20,000 per year.^[2]

On January 19, 2001, the last full day of the Clinton Administration, Linda Tripp was fired from her job in the Pentagon.^[3] Tripp claimed that the firing was vindictive, but the Clinton administration countered that all political appointees like Tripp are normally asked to submit their resignation upon a new administration taking over, and those who refuse are fired. Tripp's attorneys Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, one of the top law firms in Washington, D.C. defending government whistle blowers, issued the following response: "The termination of Linda Tripp is vindictive, mean-spirited and wrong. President Clinton should not have ended his presidency on such a vengeful note." Tripp had retained the firm to sue the government for violating her rights under the Privacy Act of 1974 when the Clinton Administration leaked confidential details of her employment record to the press.

[edit] Tripp's involvement in the Lewinsky scandal

Despite an age difference of 24 years, Tripp became a close confidante of another former White House employee, Monica Lewinsky, when they both worked in the Pentagon's public affairs office. According to Tripp, they knew each other for a year and a-half before the incipient scandal began to reach its critical stage. After Lewinsky revealed to Tripp that she had had a physical relationship with President Clinton, Tripp, acting on the advice of Lucianne Goldberg, began to secretly record her phone conversations with Lewinsky while encouraging Lewinsky to document details of the relationship. Although the Clinton Administration and its allies have portrayed Tripp, for the most part successfully, as a sort of agent provocateur who waylaid an unsuspecting Lewinsky for the benefit of the Republican Party, Tripp says that her motives were mischaracterized. She claims that she was trying to protect herself from retaliation from the Clinton Administration as she was not going to lie under oath about what she knew of the affair, despite the pleas of her friend, Lewinsky, to do so.

In August 1997, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reported that Tripp said she had encountered Kathleen Willey coming out of the Oval Office "disheveled. Her face red and her lipstick was off." Willey alleged that Clinton groped her. Clinton's lawyer, Robert S. Bennett said in the Newsweek article that "Linda Tripp is not to be believed."^[4]

In January 1998, Tripp gave the surreptitiously recorded tapes to then-Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Tripp disclosed to Starr that she was aware of the relationship between Lewinsky and President Clinton, that Lewinsky had executed a false affidavit denying the relationship that was submitted to the federal court in Arkansas in the Jones v. Clinton lawsuit, and that Lewinsky had attempted to suborn Tripp's perjury in the Jones v. Clinton suit to conceal the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship as well as Tripp's knowledge of the Kathleen Willey incident from the federal court. As Tripp explained, she was being solicited to commit a crime to conceal evidence in the Jones civil rights case.^[5] Tripp also informed Starr of the existence of a navy blue dress that Lewinsky owned that was soiled with Clinton's semen. During their friendship, Lewinsky had shown the dress to Tripp and said she intended to have it dry-cleaned; Tripp convinced her not to.

Based on Tripp's tapes, Starr obtained approval from Attorney General Janet Reno and the special court overseeing the Independent Counsel to expand Starr's investigation into the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship, looking for potential incidents of perjury, to investigate Lewinsky for perjury and suborning perjury as a witness in the lawsuit Paula Jones had brought against Clinton.^[6]

While Tripp maintains she acted out of "patriotic duty," some Americans believe that she betrayed Lewinsky in the hopes of using her knowledge of the relationship to obtain a possible book or movie deal, neither of which has occurred to date. Tripp has also claimed that she taped Lewinsky out of self-defense, as she feared retaliation from the Clinton Administration. Lewinsky had assured President Clinton that she had only told Tripp about their affair (which was untrue), thus making her a target as she refused to go along with perjuring herself to protect Lewinsky and the President.

Eventually both Clinton and Lewinsky had to appear before a Washington, D.C. grand jury to answer questions, although Clinton appeared via closed circuit television. After the round of interrogation, the jurors offered Lewinsky the chance to offer any last words. "I hate Linda Tripp," she said.^[7]

Tripp was portrayed by John Goodman in recurring Saturday Night Live sketches. Tripp liked most of Goodman's impersonations of her, except for one, which hurt her feelings.^[5]

[edit] Indictment by the State of Maryland

Tripp was a resident of Columbia, Maryland at the time she made her surreptitious recordings of the conversations with Lewinsky, and after 49 Democrats in the Maryland Legislature signed a letter to the state prosecutor demanding that Tripp be prosecuted, she was charged by state authorities with violating Maryland's wiretap law.^[8] Prior to trial, the state court ruled that, due to the immunity agreements which the Independent Counsel's office entered into with Tripp, Lewinsky, and others, a substantial amount of the evidence which the prosecution intended to use was inadmissible. At a pre-trial hearing the prosecution called Lewinsky as a witness to try to establish that her testimony against Tripp was untainted by the Independent Counsel investigation. However, the Maryland state court ruled that Lewinsky, who "admitted that she lied under oath in a federal proceeding and has stated that lying has been a part of her life," was not credible and Lewinsky's proposed testimony against Tripp was "bathed in impermissible taint." As a result, all charges against Tripp were dismissed on May 26, 2000 when the prosecution decided not to proceed with the trial of the case.

[edit] Arrest record controversy

On March 14, 1998, it was revealed that Linda Tripp was arrested when she was 19 years old in Greenwood Lake, New York in 1969 on charges of stealing $263 in cash as well as a wristwatch worth about $600. The charges were eventually dismissed before coming to trial.^[9] Although never convicted in 1969, years later Tripp answered "no" to the question "Have you ever been either charged or arrested for a crime?" on the Department of Defense security clearance form.

Shortly before Tripp was scheduled to appear before the grand jury in the Lewinsky investigation, in March 1998, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Kenneth Bacon, and his deputy, Clifford Bernath, leaked to reporter Jane Mayer of New Yorker magazine Tripp's answer to the arrest question on her security clearance form. Following the Bacon-Bernath leak to Mayer, the Department of Defense leaked to the news media other confidential information from Tripp's personnel and security files. The Department of Defense Inspector General investigated the leak of Tripp's security clearance form information and found that Bacon and Bernath violated the Privacy Act, and the DoD IG concluded that Bacon and Bernath should have known that the release of information from Tripp's security file was improper.^[10]

[edit] Lawsuit and settlement

Tripp sued the Department of Defense and the Justice Department for releasing information from her security file and employment file to the news media in violation of the Privacy Act of 1974. Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto handled Tripp's Privacy Act lawsuit. On November 3, 2003, Tripp reached a settlement with the federal government.^[11] The settlement included a one-time payment of more than $595,000, a retroactive promotion, and retroactive pay at the highest salary for 1998, 1999 and 2000. She also received a pension and was cleared to work for the federal government again. Her rights to remain part of a class action lawsuit against the government were also preserved.

[edit] George H. W. Bush affair controversy

It has been alleged that Linda Tripp was involved in leaking information about an affair between former President George H. W. Bush and a staffer named Jennifer Fitzgerald. It has also been speculated that this may explain why she was not rehired to her old White House position despite calls from many conservatives to Bush's son, President George W. Bush, to do so;^[12] however, Tripp has publicly denied this allegation as "ludicrous" and "a complete fabrication."^[5]

[edit] Life since the Lewinsky scandal

Since the Lewinsky scandal Tripp has moved to Northern Virginia, had extensive plastic surgery, married German architect Dieter Rausch (a longtime sweetheart) in 2004 and opened with her new husband a year-round Christmas shop, called the Christmas Sleigh, in Middleburg, Virginia.

In a December 1, 2003 appearance with Larry King on Larry King Live, Tripp told of her battle with breast cancer. On the subject of her successful invasion of privacy lawsuit against the federal government, Tripp claimed that she actually came out behind financially, due to attorneys' fees and the derailment of her government career. She also claimed that the Clinton Administration's violations of her privacy were not equivalent to her violations of Monica Lewinsky's privacy as the Clinton Administration's leaking of her employment history was illegal. Furthermore, Lewinsky had asked her to lie under oath in the Paula Jones lawsuit against Bill Clinton, something she had refused to do. She told King that she only began taping her conversations with Lewinsky, who she had known for 18 months, a mere eight weeks before she was scheduled to be deposed in the Jones lawsuit. Tripp had earlier said she taped the conversations to prevent the Clinton Administration from retaliating against her, since she had decided not to lie under oath.^[13]