Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [200]
Goldberg would not dispute that Tripp was a complex, mixed-up woman by that summer; there was no way to sort out the bundle of motives that had prompted this call. “Oh, I think at this point she was so emotionally conflicted and terrified,” said Goldberg, “and that’s when it really started, I think, to dawn on her how big this thing was going to be.”
Tripp sensed, by this time, that Bruce Lindsey and President Clinton had likely figured out that she knew about Lewinsky. Michael Isikoff had quoted her in his story about Kathleen Willey that had appeared in Newsweek. She was beginning to feel like a marked woman. So Tripp asked the literary agent for “advice and protection.” Unbeknownst to Tripp, Goldberg had decided to tape their juicy conversations so that she could stash them away for future reference (she was later offered $750,000 for the tapes, but instead accepted a subpoena to turn them over to OIC). The tape of the September 18 telephone chat, which took place at 10:23 P.M., reveals Tripp’s plan to go public with her story. Tripp told the glitzy gossip agent, “This is so explosive. It makes [the previous book proposal], which was nothing, you know, pale.”
Goldberg warned Tripp of the potential consequences this action would have for the young intern. “You realize the press will destroy her,” Goldberg declared. Clinton’s people would chew up both Tripp and the intern and spit them out without blinking an eye. “I mean, I love the idea; I would run with it in a second,” Goldberg fessed up. But did Tripp really want to be the “instrument” of this kid’s demise?
Tripp dismissed this worry—the intern (she still had not revealed Monica’s name) came from a “privileged” background in Southern California and didn’t deserve much sympathy. “She was not a victim,” said Tripp. This was a young, sexually active woman who was “every bit a player.” Tripp also revealed to Goldberg that the intern had saved incriminating phone messages from the president on her answering machine. Tripp could chart out the dates and times of these conversations and had started doing so in a notebook.
Goldberg next asked Tripp a question that nearly knocked her out of her chair: Had she considered arranging for the young intern to be “reached by the Paula Jones people?” Tripp paused, taking a long drag on a cigarette: That might be too dangerous. It would essentially pour gasoline on that case and might result in a wild conflagration, she thought aloud. So Goldberg offered a revised plan: Why not take the story to Michael Isikoff at Newsweek? After all, she had a track record with him on the Kathleen Willey piece.
Tripp replied, “Oh, I could do that in a minute, but then he’d write the book. Or he’d write the whole thing.”
Goldberg tossed out a compromise—why didn’t Tripp cut a deal with Isikoff? He would get the exclusive scoop to write the initial story exposing the relationship. “But the rest of it belongs to Linda because she’s doing a book. He would have to honor that if he wanted the story.” This proposal “protects you totally, that gets the surface of this out, and then you stand back to fill in the pieces and I get you a publisher.” Tripp chewed at a finger. Finally, she conceded that she liked the idea. Goldberg proclaimed in a throaty voice, “My tabloid heart beats loud!”
Linda Tripp would later adamantly dispute the notion that she was a Judas Iscariot bent on betraying her friend Monica to earn cash for herself. Having found peace and quietude in a rehabilitated farm house outside of Middleburg, Virginia, with rolling hills in the distance and champion horses graying in the pastures outside, Linda Tripp