Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [222]
Yet Tripp never wavered from her belief that the Talking Points did not originate with the twenty-three-year-old former intern. “I’ve spent a great deal of time with Monica,” Tripp explained. “Monica’s résumés, Monica’s letters to prospective employers, Monica’s work product in the Office of Public Affairs. I edited it on a daily basis. I was aware of her writing. I was aware of her capability. And I took one look at this and knew she hadn’t written them.”
Monica defended herself by pointing out that she had received a plaque from her boss, Ken Bacon, for her diligent efforts at the Pentagon, and that she consistently received solid work performance reviews. She admitted that she allowed Linda Tripp to review some of her personal letters to Bill Clinton as a sort of “talisman,” yet she countered that Tripp knew nothing about her work product.
Seated on a folding chair in a stark storage facility in Greenwich Village and digging through documents that she had forced out of her mind since the trauma of 1998, Monica Lewinsky insisted that this was another example of Linda Tripp’s sick, conspiratorial thinking. Throwing into a box a lengthy scholarly article that questioned her authorship of the Talking Points, Monica blurted out, “Can you believe some Ph.D. wrote a whole paper about this?… Didn’t he ever stop to think the versions were different because someone (Tripp) was talking to me over the telephone and I was typing some of these things as we talked?” For Lewinsky, the notion that she was incapable of writing the Talking Points was “insulting.”
Yet the point made by this professor with a Ph.D., suggesting that as many as “three separate authors” wrote the three-page Talking Points, could not be dismissed as implausible. Even to the naked eye, the document seemed to shift radically in style and clarity, as if some third person (perhaps a family member or a friend) had reviewed a draft or made suggestions to Monica as she typed the words on the computer keyboard.
Whatever the actual process by which Monica finalized the Talking Points on her home computer, neither her own nor Tripp’s explanation seemed fully satisfactory. Yet this much could not be disputed: Linda Tripp promptly handed over the three-page document to OIC that same night.
How the purported friendship between Tripp and Lewinsky had devolved into a relationship of such mutual dishonesty is a question that would stump even Monica Lewinsky. Years later, the former intern would say that she could never figure out what caused Linda Tripp to betray her so thoroughly. “I’m probably not a good person to answer that,” Monica said, her voice turning humorless. “Because I clearly did not have a good sense of this woman.” One theory, of course, was that Tripp simply wished to advance the conservative Republican agenda. There was no doubt that Tripp “was very happy when she worked for the Bush administration” and that she longed for the halcyon days of the Bush White House. Yet Lewinsky didn’t subscribe to the theory that Tripp was simply a “political kook,” pointing out, “I never really heard her [Tripp] say disparaging things about [Clinton] per se, except when it came to when he was being a jerk to me.”
Consequently, Monica could only offer her own alternative theory: Linda Tripp was a false friend and a devious manipulator who had decided it was acceptable to hurt her, as part of the loftier mission of trying to bring down a morally corrupt president.
Tripp, for her part, expressed no regrets about her actions. The president, she concluded, was not in love with Monica Lewinsky. “Absolutely was not,” she said. “He would give her ten minutes after their little sessions, and I think—against his own will, I think he found her somewhat endearing.” Over time, Tripp came to believe that Monica had become like an addictive drug for the president. Tripp leaned forward in her antique chair, a faint smile