Magazine: Tripp Tried To Write A Clinton
'Tell-All' Book
NEW YORK (AllPolitics, Jan. 25) -- Former White House
staffer Linda Tripp, whose taped conversations with
Monica Lewinsky set off allegations of a White House sex
scandal, attempted to write a tell-all White House memoir
two years ago, the New Yorker magazine reports.
Tripp, according to the magazine, planned to title the
book, "Behind Closed Doors: What I Saw Inside the
Clinton White House." Proposed chapter headings
included, "Shock Therapy: My Introduction To the Mores
and Manner of the Clinton White House," "Mrs.
President" and "The President's Women," the article says.
A treatment for the book is in the possession of Tripp's lawyer, James Moody, the magazine
reports. The project was being developed in 1995, the same year Lewinsky joined the White
House.
The planned book was the second on which Tripp and New York literary agent Lucianne
Goldberg collaborated. The first Tripp-Goldberg project was to be a book on the death of
Vincent Foster, the Clintons' lawyer who committed suicide in 1993.
Goldberg had been referred to Tripp as someone "who might make an excellent source" by
conservative columnist Tony Snow, who, like Tripp, worked in the Bush White House. Tripp, a
holdover working in Clinton's White House counsel office in 1993, was one of the last people to
have seen Foster alive.
The Foster book project fizzled, but Tripp and Goldberg became friends and eventually initiated
the plan for Tripp's own memoir, according to the New Yorker. But Tripp's tales were "too
poorly written to shop around to prospective publishers," the magazine says.
On CNN's "Larry King Live" on Saturday, the article's
author, Jane Mayer, explained the relationship: "Lucianne
Goldberg is not just a neutral bystander in this. She is a
literary agent, but she is quite a bit more also. She is a
political enemy of Clinton's, a conservative woman who had
done dirty tricks for the Nixon White House."
"In this particular case, what's fascinating is two years ago,
before Monica Lewinsky appeared on the scene, she and Linda
Tripp talked about doing a book," Mayer said. "And it was
also going to be a sexual expose of Bill Clinton. It didn't come
off. They didn't put it together."
On Saturday, Goldberg publicly confirmed that it was her idea
for Tripp to secretly tape telephone conversations with
Lewinsky, who reportedly talked about a relationship with the president.
"We had no choice but to do this. I'm very very proud of Linda Tripp," Goldberg said Saturday.
Goldberg told CNN on Sunday that she was initially offered $750,000 by the National Enquirer
for copies of the tapes. That offer rose to $2 million before Goldberg insisted she didn't have
copies to give. Goldberg says she's heard only two of the 17 reported tapes.
"I wouldn't accept a billion dollars," Goldberg told CNN.
Goldberg also claims the tabloid offered $500,000 to arrange an exclusive interview with Tripp,
but Goldberg refused.
Tripp, besides being a witness in the Foster and Lewinsky investigations, was a quoted source in
a 1997 Newsweek article suggesting that Clinton had fondled a campaign volunteer named
Kathleen Willey in the Oval Office.
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