January 21–28, 1999

pretzel logic

Letter From Linda

by Howard Altman

Last week, I received a blue envelope in the mail. MInitially, I thought it was a joke, because the sender was one Linda R. Tripp, the Mrs. Doubtfire of the body politic.

Perhaps it's from Comedy Central, I thought, hyping the retooled Daily Show.

It wasn't.

The envelope's contents were actually funny.

Well, at least laughable.

The 12-page form letter really was from Linda R. Tripp. More specifically, the Linda R. Tripp Legal Defense Fund. Tripp is requesting money. To continue her "fight to tell the truth about what I saw and heard since I've worked in Bill Clinton's administration."

"Dear Friend," she writes. "I'm told you are a fair person. And since you are fair and understanding I'd like to ask you to listen to my story about my role in what's become known as the Monica Lewinsky affair."

Tripp's tome reads like it was cribbed from the pages of the Sally Struthers Guide to Effective Whining.

"Right now I stand to lose everything… my job, my reputation and even my freedom," writes Tripp, who gained her entrée to infamy when she secretly recorded her former friend Monica's babblings.

Tripp says, "Bill Clinton's disciples have never been satisfied with just winning elections or political arguments. Their approach has always been to attack, discredit and destroy their opponents. Now they have me in their crosshairs and I feel like David up against Goliath."

Tripp goes on to complain about the media.

"And there are television entertainers and political commentators who cruelly choose to ridicule both my actions and my appearance. But, in fact, I'm just a single mother of two college-aged children (Allison, 19 and Ryan, 22) who is risking losing everything I have to tell the truth about what I've seen and heard while working in the Clinton Administration."

Tripp says that her troubles really began on November 29, 1993. "That's the day that Kathleen Willey came to see me directly from the Oval Office with her lipstick smeared and her blouse untucked. Ms. Willey then volunteered to me that President Clinton had just sexually assaulted her while they were alone in his office."

Tripp says that, after testifying about the Willey matter in a deposition for Paula Jones' sexual harassment case against Clinton, she was transferred out of the White House.

"I was now at the mercy of the Clinton Administration—the very administration I had observed with horror during the questionable handling of the Vince Foster case, the firing of the Travel Office on phony grounds and all the other scandals."

Ironically, it was this transfer that helped undo Bill Clinton. For it was at the Pentagon that Tripp met Lewinsky.

"Monica worked for my boss. She and I became acquainted and we'd sometimes have lunch together. Then she began calling me at home on a regular basis. It was through these conversations that I learned that she was having an affair with the President of the United States."

Tripp, who says she was "shocked and embarrassed" when Lewinsky "told me all the sordid aspects of her Oval Office visits," says that Lewinsky burbled at her own volition.

"Monica Lewinsky chose to make those disclosures," writes Tripp. "I never sought that information."

Without specifically mentioning that she taped those conversations, Tripp says she "took the steps necessary to prove that I was telling the truth."

Lewinsky, says Tripp, was the one with the interest in falsehoods.

"Monica urged me to lie for her and the President if I was ever asked about their relationship. Monica also asked me to lie… and say I believed Kathleen Willey could have smeared her own lipstick and untucked her own blouse."

Things became so bad that Tripp says "for my own safety, I was moved out of my house and into a FBI safe house and separated from my children. I'm living in fear for my job and for the safety of my family and myself."

Ten pages into her letter, Tripp delivers her punchline. "If you choose to believe me, then please make a contribution to the Linda R. Tripp Legal Defense Fund… Presently, my legal bills are more than $325,000 and growing every day. My children and I have our backs to the wall and we need your help immediately. After I pay my mortgage, school expenses for my children, my car payment and personal living expenses, there's just not enough… to begin to make a dent in these legal bills" which are being spent to fight a charge of illegal wiretapping filed by the state of Maryland.

"If you can spare $20, $25, $35, $50 or $100, please send it right away," Tripp asks. "If you are so fortunate that you could send $250, $500, or even $1000, those contributions are urgently needed as well."

Of course they are.

It'll be months before book and movie money—society's ultimate reward for 15 minutes of infamy—starts rolling in.