Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [204]
So Tripp contacted the Dallas lawyers handling the Paula Jones suit. “I wanted to guarantee that I would be subpoenaed and soon,” she explained. Whether it was paranoia or justifiable fear, she wanted to get “outed” and spill her guts under oath—sooner rather than later. “I was very, very concerned for my safety and the safety of my children, and I very much wanted to make it to the subpoena table,” said Tripp.
She made her own wish come true. Tripp received a subpoena from the Jones lawyers on November 24—her birthday.
Linda Tripp also decided to follow Lucianne Goldberg’s suggestion and to contact the Office of Independent Counsel. Looking back on it, Tripp remained convinced that there were few other options. As she would later frame the question: “Tell me—you’re an intelligent human being, you’re up against the president of the United States, who owns the FBI, who owns the Department of Justice—he’s got every police auxiliary in the country on his side. Do you think I could go to the Howard County Police and say, ‘Hi, I’m after the president, I’ve got all this evidence, what are you going to do?’”
Tripp had been stuck with a lawyer, Kirby Behre, who had been steered in her direction by Clinton forces. (The White House was even paying his bill; she distrusted him thoroughly.) Goldberg had recommended a new lawyer, Jim Moody—a friend of the elves—but how could she afford to pay Moody’s legal bills? Her whole income was going toward “raising my kids and paying my mortgage and commuting.… I had refinanced my house to make improvements. I mean, I was living on my salary.” So Tripp decided that calling Ken Starr’s office was the perfect solution. “At the time, my impression of the Office of the Independent Counsel was that of a professional truth-finder,” she said. In Tripp’s mind, there were “white hats and black hats” in this production. She saw “Ken Starr and his people as the white hats and the Clinton protectors and facilitators [including the Clintons themselves] as the black hats.”
Tripp later editorialized: “I since have come to realize that there were shades of gray.”
Linda Tripp had vaguely recalled hearing the name Jackie Bennett during her brief stint as an OIC witness. She had played only a minor role in the Vince Foster and Travel Office investigations. Yet it had been a generally positive experience. When Goldberg passed along Bennett’s number, Tripp said, “Okay, he’s professional, he’s a good guy in the OIC, and yeah, okay, I’ll call him.”
At home that evening Tripp paced around, trying to get the nerve to make the call. Holding the same phone that she had used to record Monica, she felt conflicted feelings wash over her. For one, “I knew I was betraying Monica in the truest sense of the word,” she admitted. No matter how much this tough love might be good for her, she knew that Monica would never see it that way. Oddly enough, Tripp also felt a vague sense of “disloyalty to Clinton.” She had always respected the presidency; she worked for the Clinton administration. This was akin to insubordination. Of course, she told herself, if she did nothing, she might end up at the bottom of the Potomac River. Tripp almost felt paralyzed. “My heart was throbbing and I was in a cold sweat and I felt as though the world was coming to an end.… I had gotten myself into something that was so much bigger than I had anticipated.”
For three hours, Linda Tripp paced around the room, smoking cigarettes and putting off the call. Her teenage son, Ryan, sensed something was amiss—he asked his mother if she was feeling okay. At approximately nine o’clock that night, Tripp finally dialed Bennett’s number, “hoping against hope that he wouldn’t answer.”
Two hours later, Sol Wisenberg’s white minivan was pulling into her driveway, a single light blazing on her porch as a beacon to a fast-walking group of Ken Starr’s prosecutors.
ON and off since the time when she had been yanked out of the White House, Monica Lewinsky had “toyed with the idea of leaving Washington.” As her