Linda Tripp, the former US civil
servant whose secretly taped telephone conversations with a
former White House intern documented the sex scandal that led to
then-President Bill Clinton's 1998 impeachment, died on
Wednesday at age 70.
Her death was confirmed to the Washington Post by her son,
Ryan Tripp, and to the New York Post by her son-in-law, Thomas
Foley, who said Tripp's unspecified illness was unrelated to the
coronavirus.
The Daily Mail in Britain cited a longtime close friend,
Diane Spreadbury, as saying Tripp succumbed to a brief battle
with pancreatic cancer.
Tripp became forever linked with the sex scandal that nearly
brought down Clinton's presidency by way of her whistleblower
role in exposing the extramarital affair he had with Tripp's
acquaintance, Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern.
Tripp was a secretary in the White House counsel’s office in
the early years of Clinton's presidency before she was
transferred to the Pentagon's public affairs office and
befriended Lewinsky, 24 years her junior.
As the two became close and Lewinsky revealed her past
sexual relationship with Clinton, Tripp began clandestinely
recording their private telephone conversations in which
Lewinsky documented her affair with the president in graphic
detail.
Tripp ultimately turned over hours of those tapes to
Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who was investigating
potential wrongdoing by Clinton, the former Arkansas governor,
stemming from the failed Whitewater real estate venture in the
Ozarks. Tripp was granted immunity from illegal wiretapping
charges in exchange for the recordings.
On the basis of the tapes, Starr obtained permission to
expand his probe into the Clinton-Lewinsky affair.
Tripp also brought to light one of the most notorious pieces
of evidence in the scandal, the semen-stained blue dress that
Lewinsky had told Tripp she had worn during a sexual encounter
in the White House with Clinton. Tripp recounted that Lewinsky
had once shown her the dress, and that Tripp persuaded the
former intern to keep the garment without having it dry-cleaned.
Starr's office seized the dress, and DNA analysis of it
forced Clinton to recant his infamous, finger-wagging public
denial of his affair with Lewinsky - "I did not have sexual
relations with that woman."
The revelations also led the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives to impeach Clinton for perjury and
obstruction of justice over statements he made denying the
affair under oath as part of a sexual harassment lawsuit brought
against him by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones.
Clinton was acquitted in the Senate.
In the end, Tripp was vilified by Clinton's supporters as
having betrayed a friend for partisan political motives. But she
insisted she had done the right thing in exposing the
president's misconduct.
Tripp was fired from her Pentagon job on Clinton's final day
in office in January 2001, and later settled with her husband in
Middleburg, Virginia, outside Washington.