‘Monica Lied'
Tripp Blasts Former White House Intern
ABCNEWS.com
W A S H I N G T O N, March 7 — Linda Tripp today
painted a picture of Monica Lewinsky as a liar
who tried to cover up her relationship with the
president in order to protect him.
Tripp, appearing in an exclusive Sunday morning
interview on This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie
Roberts, said “the world according to Monica” was
“fiction, fable, farce and fairy tale.”
Tripp repeated assertions that she only recorded her
conversations with the former White House intern to
protect herself after she, Tripp, was being threatened and
asked to lie to cover up Lewinsky's relationship with
President Clinton.
Asked about Lewinsky's allegations in a just-published
book that Tripp withheld much of their conversations that
could have shed a more favorable light on Lewinsky,
Tripp said that “easily 98 percent” of their conversations
had not been documented.
If they had, she said, presidential confidant “Vernon
Jordan would be facing legal consequences.”
Tripp on Monica's Story
Tripp said that Lewinsky's version of the events was
“180-degrees” from what the president had alleged under
oath. She said that she has read most of Monica's Story,
Lewinsky's account of events written with Andrew
Morton, and she called it a “romanticizing of a tawdry,
abusive relationship.”
“I believe that Monica in her heart of hearts knows
better, but I believe that she believes that this form of
recollection of her relationship serves her best.”
Tripp said that assertions of a right-wing conspiracy
were “completely, perfectly wrong,” and she disagreed
with Lewinsky's allegations that lawyers from the
Independent Counsel office had mistreated and
intimidated Lewinsky on the day they questioned her at
the Ritz Carlton hotel.
And regarding the now infamous blue dress, stained
with the president's semen, Tripp again claimed she was
trying to help Lewinsky by urging her to keep the dress.
“I feel that this blue dress served as Monica's
insurance policy, much as my documentation (of
convesations with Lewinsky) served as my insurance
policy.
Tripp also was asked about the specifics of the stain
and Lewinsky saving the dress.
“It was a splatter effect,” Tripp said. “And not to be
too tawdry or to drown in the weeds, but this was a
badge of honor for Monica. It validated the relationship.”
Another ‘Juanita'
Donaldson and Roberts then played a portion of the
recorded telephone conversations between Tripp and
Lewinsky in which the two women discuss a woman
named “Juanita” whom they say could cause trouble for
the president if revealed.
But Tripp said that the woman they were discussing
was not Juanita Broaddrick, who has recently alleged that
Bill Clinton, then Arkansas attorney general, raped her 21
years ago.
“It was a woman who has not surfaced in this case,
and by this case I mean the Paula Jones case,” she said,
obviously uncomfortable at the line of questioning.
Tripp also said that if she were to write a book, the
Lewinsky affair would only be one, final chapter, because
it was only one small part in what she called the
inappropriate operations of the Clinton White House. She
included first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in her
accusation.
Mrs. Clinton, Tripp said, had “absolutely hands-on
involvement” in the controversial dismissal of staff from the
White House travel office, an allegation Mrs. Clinton has
denied.
“Mrs. Clinton,” Tripp says, “not only in terms of her
seeing her role as co-president, and I don't say that in a
way to fault her, was complicit in the time that I was there
in virtually every scandal.”
Tripp's Back to Work
In her interview Sunday, Linda Tripp said she had started
back at work in a job with the Department of Defense —
but not at the Pentagon.
DONALDSON: You had gone back to the Pentagon
now. You'd been working at home. How are you being
treated.
TRIPP: You know, I'm not back at the Pentagon. I wish
I were. I wish I had been sent back to my position as
director of an extremely visible program under the
Secretary of Defense.
I've been assigned to an agency who's name escapes
me at the moment. I've only been there one day. I can tell
you that my series public affairs, isn't one that they
accommodate there.
DONALDSON: So this is not the Pentagon building
itself? But it's not home.
TRIPP: No it's not. It's not home and I'm happy to be
back at work. I just sincerely hope that there is a mission
for me that's commensurate with me experience and my
paygrade.
DONALDSON: Jim Moran, the congressman from our
local area in Virginia, a Democrat, had some very bitter
words about you in the House of Representatives in a
committee the other day, questioning the fact that you had
this big paying job and really, suggesting to Secretary
Cohen, I suppose, that you be removed.
TRIPP: I didn't see his remarks, I read them. I can tell
you this. If Mr. Moran feels that he's qualified to speak
about my 19 year career, then — I'm frankly surprised that
he hasn't reviewed my personnel record.
I have a 19-year distinguished career. I have awards and
the most outstanding performance appraisals consistently
during that 19 year.
And frankly, the Pentagon has shown no qualms about
releasing that very information. I'm surprised they haven't to
him.
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