TRIPP, FIGURE IN CLINTON IMPEACHMENT, DIES AT 70
Linda Tripp, a key figure in the presidential sex scandal that nearly brought down the administration of Bill Clinton over his affair with onetime White House intern Monica Lewinsky, leading to the president’s impeachment in 1998, died Wednesday. She was 70.
The death was confirmed by her son, Ryan Tripp. Other details were not immediately available. She had been treated for breast cancer in the past.
Tripp was praised as a whistleblower by some for calling out presidential misbehavior with an intern in the Oval Office, and was vilified by others as a snitch who betrayed her friendship with Lewinsky in an effort to bring down a president.
Tripp had worked as a White House secretary during the administration of President George H.W. Bush and stayed on for the first two years of the Clinton presidency, in 1993 and 1994. She later told a grand jury that she was troubled by the president’s behavior toward women.
After she was transferred to the Pentagon, Tripp befriended Lewinsky, a former White House intern who confided that she had a sexual relationship with Clinton while he was president.
The two women had frequent conversations, in person and over the phone. Tripp secretly began to record their telephone conversations, resulting in hours of intimate and sometimes graphic descriptions of Lewinsky’s relationship with Clinton.
Tripp later turned over her taped recordings to independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who was investigating possible financial wrongdoing in the Clinton administration. Starr then focused his investigation toward Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky.
Clinton was later charged with obstruction of justice and lying under oath and was impeached by the House in 1998. He was acquitted by the Senate in February 1999.
When Lewinsky was called to testify before the grand jury, she was asked if she had anything to add.
“I’m really sorry for everything that’s happened,” she said. “And I hate Linda Tripp.”