Word: tripp
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Until the past few months, after she plunged into her role as a White House whistle blower, life wasn't at the right tempo for Tripp. In the '90s, she had mostly worked as a secretary and logistics aide, a planner and coordinator for the powerful men in the White House and the Pentagon. She belonged to a class not peculiar to Washington but well represented there--those proximate enough to power to see its realities but not vested with sufficient authority to effect change. It was frustrating. "She wanted to do things her own way," says a Pentagon official...
...Tripp's coming of middle age has not been particularly happy, though. "Her life was a struggle," says the Bush official. "She complained of a long commute, a nomadic existence as an Army wife, an ex-husband who was not a true love. She had a chip on her shoulder...
Though the day-to-day rhythms of her life were hard and dull, Tripp has discovered in the past few years that in Washington, excitement and fame are traded in a currency more basic than power: knowledge. And Tripp has had a good taste of that, having held secretarial jobs all over the White House, including a stint in one of the most sensitive, secret-rich corners of the West Wing, the counsel's office. It is Scandal Central, the final stop for all legal matters. A busy place in the Clinton years...
Most career civil servants like Tripp, especially those trusted enough to work in the White House, are ferociously competent and unrelentingly discreet. They often stay for decades, and they keep their mouth shut. Tripp was different. She was seen as a schoolmarm, a bit obsessed with improprieties she saw around her. She once turned in an Army reservist for "petty wrongdoing," according to the Washington Post, and consequently got the man fired...
...wonder she stayed in the White House so long. Though some Clintonites last week painted her as a Republican eavesdropper, Tripp was in fact nonpartisan, a registered independent. And criticism of her comes from both sides. A former associate White House counsel for Clinton says one of the office's biggest mistakes was not getting rid of Tripp sooner. "She's a complete wacko. She was imperial. You couldn't get any work out of her. She wasn't collegial," he says. Many remember her frequent gab-session cigarette breaks. Says a Bush White House official: "[Tripp] always wanted...