It doesn't pay to be a snitch...serves her right for revealing intimate confidential information.......Broke and Jobless, Linda Tripp Asks for Help
Wednesday, August 22, 2001
Linda Tripp is crying poverty in a fund-raising letter sent to Republican supporters — in which she says she can no longer pay her rent, buy food or support her family.
The appeal also asks supporters to sign a form letter to President Bush, asking him to find "a meaningful position in your administration" for Tripp — who was fired from her Pentagon job a day before Bush took office.
Tripp says in the letter that she's sinking under a mountain of debt, including more than $2 million in legal bills.
"I now find myself with no money for rent, transportation, food, heat and utilities and the other basics of life," Tripp says in the letter, which arrived in mailboxes yesterday.
"In addition, my daughter is still in school and she depends on me for her support."
Eight times in the letter, Tripp asks her "allies" to send anywhere from $20 to $1,000 to a defense fund set up in her name.
"I never thought that I would have to write and ask you for money while Bill Clinton gets $100,000 to make a speech," she says.
"But now I need help, not just to pay my lawyers, but for all of the essentials of living."
Tripp repeatedly lashes out at Clinton.
"The last thing he did upon leaving office — just before handing the keys to the new president — was to fire me!" she writes.
"Just like that, a 22-year, dedicated public servant's career came to a halt. It was clearly retaliation for daring to speak the truth."
Tripp has at least two lawsuits pending against the federal government, one of which charges she was improperly fired.
Her former employer, the Defense Department, said in January that political appointees like Tripp are expected to submit their resignations when a new president takes office — and because Tripp refused, she was fired.
She said she hasn't been able to find a new job since she was canned.
In the letter, she repeats charges made in one of the lawsuits that her attempt to get a U.S. government job in Germany was intentionally sabotaged when a front-page story on her job search appeared in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes the day she flew overseas for an interview.
"My spirit was broken," she writes. "I felt there was literally no place on earth where I could go to escape the long arm of the vicious, vindictive Clinton machine."
Tripp says she never sought to cash in on the notoriety that came her way after she taped hours of chats with White House intern Monica Lewinsky gabbing about her Oval Office affair with Clinton.
"Some advised me to cash in and get rich. But I didn't," she writes. "I won't make $100,000 per speech. I didn't run for Senate. I'm not selling purses. I wanted nothing more than to resume my career as a public servant."
Tripp also admits to doubts.
"I sometimes wonder if it was all worth it," she says. "I sometimes lie awake at night wondering if I just should have become part of the Clinton cover-up."
But she concludes that, in the end, "I did the right thing."
Tripp could not be reached for comment.
"Linda Tripp has never profited from the scandal," said her lawyer, Stephen Kohn. "She was a civil servant before the scandal broke and now . . . she has no source of income."
Tripp's former friend Lucianne Goldberg, who encouraged her to tape her conversations with Lewinsky, called the letter "pathetic." |
