Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky’s colleague at the Pentagon who surreptitiously recorded their conversations about her extramarital affair with former President Bill Clinton, insisted Monday that her decision to give the tapes to then-independent counsel Kenneth Starr was never about politics.
“It was always about right and wrong, never Left or Right,” Tripp said during an address at a National Whistleblower Day event on Capitol Hill.
“This became so polarizing, globally really, with everyone having an opinion. And yet, at its core, it had nothing to do with politics,” Tripp said, adding that she instead had been motivated by the prospect of exposing perjury and obstruction of justice.
Tripp said she had no regrets over her role in the scandal and the ensuing investigation, other than wishing she had come forward earlier. But she described the personal toll taking such very public action had on her life and her family, saying whistleblowers were rarely “made whole again” once they speak out.
“It is virtually impossible to get your good name back,” she said. “The vitriol, the attacks, the slander remain in the public domain and sort of color people’s thoughts forever more.”
Since leaving the federal government, Tripp has advocated for more protections of whistleblowers.
Clinton and Lewinsky’s relationship took place between 1995 and 1997 when she was a young White House intern.
Tripp’s recordings were used in Starr’s probe before they formed the basis on which the House brought impeachment proceedings against the then-president in 1998 for misleading testimony he gave in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought against him by Paula Jones, denying his affair with Lewinsky.
Clinton was eventually acquitted of the impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice by the Senate.
Tripp’s appearance at the National Whistleblower Center-hosted event Monday was her first speaking engagement since 2000.
