Linda Tripp

American news figure, caught up in the presidential scandal of 1998 in which Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, was quoted as saying she had an affair with President Bill Clinton. Few public figures have drawn more scabrous press coverage than the Pentagon official, but then few have so richly deserved it. She betrayed her friend in pursuit of political payback and book-deal riches and then claimed that it was really patriotism and self-preservation that led her to putting a recording device on her body.

In April 1998, she was age 48 with one son, Ryan, 22, and a daughter, Allison, 19. She had divorced husband Bruce Tripp several years before. She was world traveled with her husband, a Lt. Colonel in the military, and was fluent in German. She did clerical work, holding a classified job with the Army's elite Delta Force. She was known as a hard lady except not much of a lady, often with a chip on her shoulder.

Employed in secretarial jobs in the White House, she rubbed shoulders with the movers and shakers. Picking up a lunch order, she was the last person to see Vince Foster alive before his mysterious suicide. She liked the gossip and being "in the know." However she was indiscreet and officious, not trusted or well liked among her co-workers. In 1993, she told reporters at Newsweek about the alleged Oval Office grope session.

Tripp made friends with the younger intern, Monica Lewinsky and they became confidants. When she told attorney James Moody what she knew about Monica's alleged affair with the President, he set up Tripp's first meeting with special prosecutor Ken Starr's people on 12 January 1998. On the following day she was "wired" with a tape recorder strapped to her body in order to record what her friend said about her sex life. The story broke around 20 January. It was the girl-talk captured on those tapes that led to the impeachment ugliness that obsessed the nation during most of 1998.