Word: tripp
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...quirk of history vaulted Tripp into the spotlight nonetheless. She was working in the counsel's office one hot summer day in 1993 when deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster asked her to get lunch. She fetched a burger and some M&M's from the cafeteria and became the last known person to see him alive. Later that day, he committed suicide...
...told to begin looking for another job. She had little to do but polish her resume and send E-mail to the other secretaries. In one embarrassing message that became public, she called the White House lawyers who took days to find Foster's suicide note "the three stooges." Tripp got her picture in the New York Times but won the enmity of the Clintonites...
About a year later, former FBI man Gary Aldrich published his incendiary tale of shenanigans inside Clinton's White House. It was delicious reading for Tripp, who became angry when the White House tried to discredit Aldrich, whom she knew from the Bush years. It gave Tripp the idea for her own kiss-and-tell. Behind Closed Doors, it was to be called, and it was to cause an earthquake. She chose as her literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, known in the '90s for controversial clients like Mark Fuhrman (of O.J. Simpson fame) and in the '70s for being a G.O.P...
Already a gossip, Tripp was now doubtless more attuned than ever to tattles she could tell. And she had a juicy one. In 1993 she had bumped into Kathleen Willey just as the Virginia socialite was emerging, rather bedraggled, from the alleged Oval Office grope session. Tripp told that tale to Newsweek last summer (see related story). And of course Tripp made another friend--Monica Lewinsky, who worked in the same Pentagon office. The more Tripp heard during their chats, the more it sounded to her that America had no idea how far Clinton could go, even after the Willey...
...Tripp consulted her friend Goldberg. Her advice was blunt: you've got to tape your talks with Lewinsky. "I couldn't do that," Tripp replied, according to Goldberg. If you don't, Goldberg said, "the White House will eat you alive." Tripp began the taping...