Linda Tripp's Vindication
NORDLINGER, JAY
Linda Tripp's Vindication A Clinton scandal reaches its end. BY JAY NORDLINGER LINDA TRIPP—remember her?— is back in the news, with a bit of vindication. The Defense Department will pay her...
...Tripp had not indicated an arrest, Jay Nordlinger is managing editor of National Review...
...Tripp was ridiculed, even vilified, for her looks, which were sub-Hollywood...
...First, Charles Colson reminded me that it was exactly this type of offense to which he had pleaded guilty back in 1974...
...Tripp sued, and has won this settlement...
...How did Tripp answer Question 21, Parts A and B, on Form 398 (a highly confidential security questionnaire...
...Got a question for you, she said...
...The Defense Department will pay her $595,000...
...In the Lewinsky era, liberals forgot a number of things...
...Years ago, one of her lawyers said, poignantly, "Despite Linda Tripp's unpopularity, the law should protect her...
...Because the Clinton Pentagon played a nasty trick on her, and violated the Privacy Act in so doing...
...Others said, essentially, "Oh, come on...
...She said Linda Tripp's ex-stepmother...
...Bacon, in a comically flagrant violation of the Privacy Act, moved heaven and earth to make sure that the reporter got her answer—on deadline...
...I believe that Tripp was a patriot who, when she got a job in the White House in 1990, was thrilled to death...
...Not Tripp...
...Throughout those Monica days, she was basically the only one who told the sorry truth, who never spun, and who never, ever, changed her story...
...For the moment, however, she can enjoy her measure of vindication...
...It will also give her a retroactive promotion and retroactive pay...
...And when the Clintons and their people came in, she was sickened...
...it is a tale with many twists and turns, but I'll provide the briefest of summaries...
...Interestingly, part of her deal with the Pentagon is that she be permitted to apply once more for federal jobs...
...Oh, well...
...In a deposition, the chief recordkeeper in the White House testified that the White House counsel's office had requested "anything and everything that we might have in our files relating to Linda Tripp...
...But all such lessons went out the window when the first rock 'n' roll president had to be defended...
...A lot of us were suspicious, casting our thoughts toward the White House: Sid Blumenthal, Harold Ickes, Bruce Lindsey, and the rest of that merry band...
...The other side cried back, "Friends don't pressure friends to lie, and to break the law...
...So Tripp had to lodge suit herself...
...The special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, rejoiced that Colson's plea had set a precedent: No more smearing, of this kind, in this way...
...The other question is: Did Ken Bacon act on his own (that is, release the information all by his lonesome, on his own initiative...
...So Mayer called up her old friend Kenneth Bacon, who was Pentagon spokesman...
...You won't have to have an inquiry or rigmarole or anything else...
...and it looked like she was in big trouble...
...You know...
...In March of 1998—two months after the Lewinsky affair exploded— Jane Mayer, a reporter for the New Yorker, acquired a valuable piece of information: Linda Tripp, Monica's onetime confidante, had been arrested for larceny as a teenager...
...They forgot their feminist lessons, and they forgot their Watergate lessons...
...The Pentagon's inspector general, Eleanor Hill, launched an investigation, and in about two seconds determined that, of course, Bacon and his deputy Clifford Bernath had violated the Privacy Act...
...She hated adultery, she hated lies, and she did what she thought necessary to protect herself...
...She referred the matter to Janet Reno's Justice Department, which sat on it for two years, then refused to prosecute...
...Ah, yes, there was a stepmother— an ex-stepmother!—in this case, and, in my opinion, a wicked one...
...In his first press conference as president-elect, Clinton declared, "If I catch anybody doing it, I will fire them the next day...
...This was the incident in the 1992 presidential campaign in which officials in the Bush State Department rooted through Governor Clinton's passport files— and those of his mother...
...She later had dramatic cosmetic surgery, paid for by sympathizers...
...Sure...
...Betty Currie, Vernon Jordan, Blumenthal, and the rest of the crew— including the president himself— "adjusted" with the daily circumstances...
...Second, I and others made reference to Passportgate (talk about ancient history...
...Colson, as you know, went to jail...
...She is now reported to be battling cancer, and her prospects for future employment are uncertain...
...Linda Tripp, the taper of Monica, was always an ambiguous figure, but the Clin-tonites and their supporters wouldn't let her be: She was pure villainess...
...Colson had leaked Daniel Ellsberg's FBI file to the Copley Press, when Ellsberg was a witness in the Pentagon Papers case and a thorn in the Nixon administration's side—just as Tripp was a thorn in Bill Clinton's side...
...Yes...
...He said yes...
...But the "arrest" turned out to be a mix-up having to do with a juvenile prank (perpetrated against her), and it was Ken Bacon who was in big trouble...
...As for the Watergate lessons, you're not supposed to, like, play dirty tricks, with confidential files, etc...
...Even today, these comments make for painful reading...
...Tripp herself said that she had been ridiculed "in a manner so mean and so cruel that I pray none of you is ever subjected to it...
...A couple of great questions have always hung over this little case...
...They cried, "Friends don't tape friends...
...This was the question dealing with prior arrests...
...What happened, back then...
...First, who tipped off Jane Mayer...
...While covering this story, I made a couple of points, repeatedly...
Vol. 9 • November 2003 • No. 10
