LINDA'S LONG, STRANGE TRIP
NORDLINGER, JAY
LINDA’S LONG, STRANGE TRIP by Jay Nordlinger ON JULY 7, AS LINDA TRIPP was testifying for a third day before Kenneth Starr’s grand jury, Stephen Montanarelli, a Democratic prosecutor in Maryland,...
...The two women have the same “favorable” rating: an abysmal 12 percent...
...Montanarelli is the head of an office—rare in states—designed to probe government corruption...
...Tripp is one of the 1,000 or so former Bush and Reagan administration employees whose FBI files were kept in the Clinton White House...
...It includes a highly stylized photo of Tripp, as though to answer every cruel jibe...
...Rep...
...Jay Nordlinger is associate editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Her strategists believe that, if people are allowed to know her, they will warm to her, and revolt against the widespread denigration of her...
...He further described the treatment of Tripp as the “intimidation of a Federal witness,” an example of “the damage the President’s political team is capable of, and apparently intent upon, inflicting...
...But at least Tripp has joined, however modestly, the public-relations battle...
...Furthermore, it is widely assumed that Tripp, back in January, received from Starr the type of immunity that would shield her from legal repercussions at the state level...
...Obviously, Montanarelli changed his mind...
...The person usually has to admit it, and Tripp is under no legal obligation to cooperate with the prosecutor...
...Quipped Jay Leno on the Tonight Show, “There’s one site you pray doesn’t have nude pictures...
...Her legal bills, Tripp says, have mounted to $100,000 (which, cracked Conan O’Brien of Late Night, is bad news, “because now she might have to pose nude for Playboy...
...They objected to his remarkable timing and noted (correctly) that he had in the past refused to prosecute persons who were not state officials...
...As Joseph diGenova, a former U.S...
...After weeks of pounding by Democrats, McLendon passed the matter to Montanarelli, explaining that she wanted to “take the politics out of the case...
...reply the pro-Tripps (decidedly fewer in number...
...Tripp’s small circle claims that she is the one person in the whole, fetid affair who is committed to telling the truth...
...Tripp believes unshakably in what she is doing—but the price, undeniably, is great...
...He told the press at the time, “This should defer to the federal investigation...
...Gerald Solomon, Republican of New York, is keenly interested in that attempt to harm Tripp...
...DiGenova says that “once you immunize an act, you create problems for other prosecutors,” meaning that Tripp is in all likelihood “protected from heat-seeking missiles in Maryland...
...He recalled that one of those documents was a memorandum dealing with her employment...
...Tripp further states that she has been wrongfully demoted from her job at the Pentagon, assigned instead to a “menial task” that “foretells” her “eventual termination for cooperating with the Independent Counsel’s investigation...
...Why should a Maryland prosecutor intervene...
...Her day finally arrived on June 30, when she began her testimony...
...I gave enough to that ‘Save the Whales’ thing...
...To this end, they have installed their Web site...
...He is chairman of the House Rules Committee, and he has grown impatient for a long-promised Defense Department report on a gross violation of Tripp’s privacy...
...The prosecutor has to have that evidence going in, or [the case] will be dismissed...
...Good testified that the White House counsel’s office had requested “anything and everything that we might have in our files relating to Linda Tripp...
...They take heart in a Time/CNN poll showing that Lewinsky’s “unfavorable” rating is even higher than Tripp’s—69 percent to 52 percent...
...He also complained of the “political dossiers” compiled by James Carville, once Bill Clinton’s chief campaign strategist and now his most outlandish flack...
...That is a very heavy burden for a prosecutor to prove...
...The Tripp side seeks to emphasize a contrast: “Monica of Beverly Hills 90210 versus Linda of Columbia, Maryland...
...But only the jurors could hear her...
...I don’t see how Montanarelli meets the burden...
...He has until now been known as relatively free of political bias...
...Tripp’s advisers, according to a source familiar with their thinking, trust that there is a “moral undercurrent” in the public, as yet untapped...
...A member of the Maryland House Judiciary Committee griped, “[This is] a very clever Machiavellian political move to send the issue to a legal dungeon...
...Republicans had no trouble answering: Montanarelli, they said, had bowed to political pressure, as evidenced by a letter signed by 49 state Democrats howling for Tripp’s head...
...Friends don’t ask friends to commit crimes...
...Neither letter received a response...
...LINDA’S LONG, STRANGE TRIP by Jay Nordlinger ON JULY 7, AS LINDA TRIPP was testifying for a third day before Kenneth Starr’s grand jury, Stephen Montanarelli, a Democratic prosecutor in Maryland, had a surprise announcement: He was going to launch a grand-jury investigation of his own, into Tripp’s taping of phone calls with Monica Lewinsky...
...Three and a half months later, Judicial Watch, the public-interest group that is vexing the Clinton administration with almost 20 lawsuits, deposed Terry Good, chief recordkeeper in the White House...
...In late January, Montanarelli himself advised McLendon to take no action on Tripp’s taping until Starr completed his work...
...So why the pursuit of Tripp...
...Outside, her name was still mud, as she was depicted in the media as a snitch, a hustler—someone who would wreck a friendship and roil a country for the sake of a book deal...
...The Web site, most notably, is home to the “Linda Tripp Legal Defense Fund” (Leno: “Do you believe the nerve of these people...
...All the while, say some who know her, she nursed the hope that she would be vindicated once she could explain...
...He also mentioned Cohen’s own role as a young House member during the Watergate hearings, saying, “You have a unique appreciation of my position and understand the importance of timeliness in matters relative to an Impeachment Inquiry involving the President of the United States...
...Indeed, James Moody, an early Tripp lawyer, told the New York Times, “I asked for immunity and she got it...
...Initially, the case had fallen to a county prosecutor, Marna McLendon, a Republican, who protested, “Whatever we do, or don’t do, will be subject to charges of political partisanship and political motivation...
...Thus, the intrigue and, to a degree, mystery surrounding Tripp continue...
...When that day passed without any report, he sent a letter to defense secretary William Cohen, an old Capitol Hill colleague, calling the Pentagon’s “continued delay and vagueness” “unacceptable...
...Says the source, “The other side is doing a good job of selling Linda as self-righteous, vindictive, disgruntled, and out to write a book and make a buck, when there is a huge segment of the population that, while not agreeing with her methods, may stand with her and understand the pressurecooker she found herself in...
...An administration-provided list of those files indicates three items under Tripp’s name, including a memorandum of an unspecified nature...
...attorney and independent counsel, puts it, Montanarelli is “a sort of statutory special prosecutor, a local Ken Starr...
...He called on Starr to take “appropriate action...
...For almost half a year, Linda Tripp lay low, not uttering a peep, waiting for her chance to appear before the grand jury in Washington...
...Solomon, on hearing of Good’s testimony, was incensed anew, and he asked the Pentagon to give him a date certain for its report on the Tripp disclosure...
...Montanarelli went on to say, “I don’t think there’s any knowledge that [Tripp] knew the Maryland law [which requires ‘two-party consent’ to the taping of phone calls...
...The former White House secretary—more talked about than talking—is entering a new phase in the sex-and-obstruction saga: spending dozens of hours with the grand jury, fending off Montanarelli, dispatching her surrogates to the TV studios, introducing an Internet Web site (on which she solicits funds), and anticipating a resolution of the Pentagon affair that she construes as an attempt by her many enemies to bring her low...
...The Tripp camp, though, is beginning to respond...
...It also offers light biographical information— Tripp “is an avid collector of 18th century antiques, porcelain, and books”—along with a pledge from Tripp that she will divulge everything to the public as soon as she has finished her grand-jury testimony...
...July 9,” came the reply...
...In mid-March, the Pentagon’s public-affairs office released information from Tripp’s confidential security file to the media, apparently in order to incriminate her...
...Yet Anthony Zaccagnini, Tripp’s current lead counsel, says that Montanarelli’s action prevents Tripp, and her lawyers as well, from speaking publicly about the tapes until even the barest threat of state jeopardy has passed...
...When Montanarelli made his announcement, Republicans, along with Tripp and her lawyers, cried foul...
...Says Joe diGenova, “The question is, Did [Tripp] know it was illegal to tape” (without Lewinsky’s permission...
...This isn’t just any federal investigation...
...Friends don’t tape friends...
...Maybe so, maybe not...
...His decision to prosecute is a flat contradiction of his repeated statements over five months—besides which, virtually everyone familiar with Maryland law considers the case a certain loser...
...Yet Democrats were not appeased...
...In addition, Tripp is hawking “I Believe Linda Tripp” bumper stickers (derived from the Anita Hill original...
...Said Solomon, “I fear that there is an unholy nexus between the inappropriately obtained personnel information [meaning the 1,000 FBI files] and the political agenda of Carville...
...The Tonight show has an actress play Tripp in a “Cross- Your-Friends Bra...
...cry the anti-Tripps...
...Thus did Tripp’s life, already messy, become suddenly messier...
...It’s one of the biggest in the nation, and it involves the president of the United States...
...I knew it was routine for whistle-blowers to be in fear of retaliation, and so I made the request...
...Then, on July 16, Solomon took the aggressive step of writing to Starr, noting the Good deposition and citing the “potential obstruction of a Congressional Investigation...
...The comedians, of course, had a field day with her looks...
...People disagree, but [McLendon] doesn’t have a case...
...The nation’s judgment of Tripp is probably tied to its ultimate judgment of the president...
...A day after receiving the case, Montanarelli, from the dungeon, told the Washington Post that he would not initiate any prosecution while the Starr probe continued: “We’d be wanting the same witnesses and the same documents at the same time...
...When Solomon learned of this breach, he fired off letters to the attorney general and the president, asking whether anyone at the White House had requested documents dealing with Tripp, particularly in light of the FBI-files controversy...
Vol. 3 • July 1998 • No. 44
