| |
How Lewinsky was tricked into confessing
FROM BRONWEN MADDOX, IAN BRODIE AND
DAMIAN WHITWORTH IN WASHINGTON
sunday-times.co.uk
IN PHRASE after phrase, through hours of agonised
telephone calls, Linda Tripp manipulated and led her
young friend Monica Lewinsky into confessing intimate
details of her affair with the President of the United States,
including his admission that he had "an empty life apart
from my work".
That is the repellent portrait which leaps dramatically from
the 4,610 pages of raw evidence in the Lewinsky saga
released by Congress yesterday, a torrent which
beleaguered Democrats hope will boost public support for
Mr Clinton even further.
Transcripts of the Tripp tapes, made secretly by the
woman dubbed "the most reviled person in America" over
months of conversations with the 22-year-old White
House trainee, are the startling core of the huge mass of
the latest evidence released by the House of
Representatives Judiciary Committee as it prepares to
recommend that Congress should open formal hearings
into the President's impeachment.
In a savage sign-off in October 1997, as Ms Tripp was
threatening to give evidence about the affair, she sends Ms
Lewinsky an e-mail saying: "From now on, leave me
alone. Don't bother me with all your ranting and raving and
analysing of this situation. And don't accuse me of
somehow 'skewing' the trust - because the reality is that
what I told you is true. I really am finished, Monica. Share
this sick situation with one of your other friends because,
frankly, I'm past nauseated about the whole thing."
By then, as the hundreds of pages of transcripts show, she
had extracted damning details of the affair. Earlier that
year, Ms Lewinsky told Ms Tripp that the President had
confided: "I have an empty life except for my work, and
it's a f***ing obsession."
She continues: "And then I said, I said, 'Well, don't you
get any warmth and da da da from your wife?'" Ms Tripp:
"You didn't." Monica: "I did. He said 'Of course I do'."
In another conversation, Ms Tripp urges Monica to
remind the President that she is scarcely older than his
daughter. "In fact, that's a question you might want to ask
him," she suggests. "I mean, he would die rather than let
this happen to Chelsea, but you're supposed to be a stoic
soldier [sigh]. Some 50-year-old man decides to have an
intimate relationship with his [deleted] daughter and then
she - oh, it defies imagination."
In a dig at Chelsea's gawky adolescence, Ms Tripp adds:
"Well, who would want to with her?" The documents
include pages of handwritten jottings by Ms Tripp of her
phone chats with Ms Lewinsky with notations such as
"phone sex" and "HRC there" referring to Hillary Clinton.
The three-volume report also makes clear that the
President's secretary, Betty Currie, who clearly knew that
there were emotional links between her boss and the
trainee, even if unaware of the sexual relationship, was put
under enormous pressure before the grand jury.
After much prodding, and one exit from the room, Mrs
Currie agreed that Ms Lewinsky had suggested to her that
"as long as no one saw us - and no one did - then nothing
happened". Ms Lewinsky also offered to pay Ms Tripp to
lie about the affair. |
|
