Tripp Counseled Intern on Clinton Affair, Tapes Show

The secret tape-recordings that triggered the sex scandal investigation of President Clinton show that Linda Tripp actively counseled Monica S. Lewinsky on her illicit relationship with the president and coached her on saving evidence and making job demands on Clinton.

Transcripts of the tape-recordings that Tripp, a Pentagon employee, made of her telephone calls with Lewinsky were released Friday by the House Judiciary Committee from the voluminous files of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s nine-month investigation of the president.

The 4,610 pages of investigative documents were the third and final group to be made public before the House committee begins considering whether to initiate an impeachment inquiry against Clinton.

The new papers, covering the testimony of more than a score of secondary witnesses in the investigation, do not appear to alter seriously the essence of Clinton’s legal and political predicament: that he engaged in an “inappropriate relationship” with Lewinsky but denied it under oath.

But the long-awaited release of the tapes does appear to boost Clinton’s defense that his enemies--in this case, Tripp--looked for opportunities to harm him and damage his presidency. After learning about the relationship from Lewinsky, Tripp, whose unhappy tenure at the Clinton White House ended in 1994, secretly taped the young woman’s confidences and turned them over to Starr in January.

At the White House, Special Counsel Gregory Craig accused Starr of using information from people like Tripp to mount “a pattern of evidentiary manipulation and misdirection” to drive Clinton from office.

But the tapes also damage the credibility of many White House aides and Clinton confidants, even as Tripp lays out numerous allegations that apparently remain unsubstantiated by other testimony and evidence gathered by Starr.

On Monday, the Judiciary Committee will begin debating whether to open a formal inquiry into Clinton’s possible impeachment on charges that he committed perjury or obstructed justice in attempting to cover up his affair with Lewinsky. The full House takes up that proposal at week’s end.

Rep. John T. Doolittle of Rocklin, Calif., said he and other Republican House members will push on toward impeachment, unconcerned about any public backlash over the release of yet more salacious documents.

“It’s a volatile situation,” he said. “You’ve got people who voted for Clinton in denial. . . . This is something they don’t want to think about.”

The Tripp material raises questions about the grounds of Starr’s investigation because Tripp’s intent in secretly recording Lewinsky is suspect and because Lewinsky has testified that much of what she told Tripp was untrue.

Tripp’s Version Is Detailed

According to Tripp:

* Kathleen E. Willey, a former White House volunteer who has said publicly that Clinton fondled her in his study outside the Oval Office, wore provocative clothing in an attempt to lure the president into a sexual relationship.

“I am not a big advocate of Kathleen because . . . she was claiming sexual harassment when it clearly wasn’t,” Tripp says in a recorded phone conversation. “She should have kept her mouth shut because she was as guilty as he was.”

* Clinton seemed “paranoid” in his efforts to either get Lewinsky rehired at the White House or help her find a new job through his friends and contacts in the private sector.

* Clinton told Lewinsky and Willey that they should always “deny, deny, deny” if asked about having a sexual relationship with the president, and his confidant, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., advised Lewinsky that “you will not go to jail for perjury in a civil suit,” such as the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against the president.

“What if someone else knows?” Tripp said Jordan told Lewinsky. “It’s that person’s word against yours.”

In other revelations, presidential secretary Betty Currie testified that she knew that her boss and Lewinsky were carrying on a special relationship, but she did not know whether it was sexual.

“I didn’t want to know anything or be able to say I know anything,” she told the grand jury.

And some Secret Service agents said Lewinsky, known around the White House as a “clutch” or “stalker” of the president, was often pouty, snooty and arrogant.

“She was a bit of a pest,” said Agent Brian Henderson. “No disrespect intended to her, but that’s my opinion.”

In her grand jury testimony and 23 debriefings with FBI agents and prosecutors, Tripp depicted herself as amazed that two of her friends, Willey and Lewinsky, would tell her such similar stories about the president.

“It was a sense of ‘why me,’ what are the odds, that two of them will tell me the same thing?” she said.

In both cases, Tripp contended, the women talked of going to great lengths to appear at presidential events wearing eye-catching clothing, of passing notes to Clinton and, eventually, of having a forceful, sometimes “violent” sexual encounter with him.

Tripp Was Angry With Administration

Tripp said she initially believed that Clinton cared for Lewinsky, if less intensely than the young woman felt for him. “There was a connection there,” Tripp testified.

But Tripp resented Clinton and Currie for leading Lewinsky on and not following through on their promises--from breaking dates to failing to get Lewinsky a job.

A holdover from the Bush administration, Tripp also was angry that the Clinton administration pruned the White House staff after taking office.

“They took a lot of the older women and a lot of the older guys who had worked, some for almost 30 years, and said, ‘Leave by 5, don’t come back,’ ” she told grand jurors.

She felt terrible, she said, about the forced departure of an usher and members of the White House travel office--an episode that later became known as Travelgate. “They were the salt of the earth. These were good people. They were honest, loyal,” she said.

Tripp was further incensed by the events leading to her own departure in 1994 from the White House, saying she was told: “There’s just no role for you here.”

She moved to the Pentagon, where she later met Lewinsky, who also had been transferred there from the White House.

But Tripp strongly denied that she was out to get Clinton. And, unlike Lewinsky’s assertion to the grand jury that “I hate Linda Tripp,” Tripp told the same grand jurors: “I felt very sorry for Monica Lewinsky. And I was very fond of Monica Lewinsky.”

Still, Tripp contradicted Lewinsky’s account of her own manipulation, saying that it was Lewinsky’s idea to document her relationship with Clinton in Tripp’s notes and her own computer matrix.

“My idea was never to manufacture evidence,” Tripp said. “In fact, I had never even thought about the independent counsel in my wildest dreams.”

But the tapes show Tripp and Lewinsky discussing a dress of Lewinsky’s that is stained with Clinton’s semen and Tripp encouraging the young woman to save the dress as it was.

When Lewinsky tells Tripp that she plans to wear the dress on Thanksgiving after having it cleaned, Tripp responds, “That’s too bad” and suggests that she wear something else.

“This navy blue dress,” Tripp says to Lewinsky. “Now all I would say to you is: I know how you feel today and I know why you feel the way you do today, but you have a very long life ahead of you. . . . I would rather you had that in your possession if you need it years from now. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

And Tripp did tape her phone conversations with Lewinsky, turn her tapes over to Starr’s office and provide key information to attorneys for Jones--information that they then used to surprise Clinton in his Jan. 17 deposition in their lawsuit against him.

It was in that deposition that Clinton allegedly lied about his affair with Lewinsky.

Lewinsky also was asked to give an affidavit in the Jones case and she swore that she had never had sexual relations with Clinton.

It was then, Tripp said, that her friendship with Lewinsky began to come apart.

“At that time I stopped being told the truth,” Tripp told the grand jury.

Asked what kind of misinformation she had been given, Tripp replied: “Not having seen the president when she had. Not having signed an affidavit when she had.

“There were just countless ways that it was clear to me that this was no longer Monica feeling that she could change my mind.”

Never Doubted Lewinsky’s Story

Tripp portrayed Lewinsky as volatile, attracted to older men already married or involved in serious relationships, and at times suicidal.

But Tripp never doubted Lewinsky’s story that she was intimate with the president.

“I promise to you on my mother’s soul and on the lives of my children, this is not a fantasy,” Tripp said.

Tripp said that she grew extremely frightened when the Clinton presidency was thrown into crisis as she started playing a larger role in Starr’s investigation.

“I figured I’d be fired or killed,” she testified.

Currie, the president’s secretary, was equally nervous--but for other reasons.

She described her elaborate efforts in arranging meetings, telephone calls and gift exchanges between Clinton and Lewinsky and she said that she suspected for a long time that they had a special relationship.

Asked whether she sensed any impropriety, Currie said, “I had a feeling, but I had nothing to base it on other than a gut.”

A summary of this account, based on Tripp’s recollections of what Lewinsky told her and written by Starr’s office, said:

“At first Currie would provide access, but later, Currie would run interference for the president. . . .

“When Lewinsky would meet with the president, Currie would escort Lewinsky in and then return at the right time. Sometimes, Currie would stay before the encounter to chat for a while. If Currie could get out of the Oval Office without causing suspicion, Currie would leave.

“Sometimes Currie would use the back door and go around to her desk to avoid suspicion.

“Once, Currie had to stay in the Oval Office, while the president and Lewinsky were having a sexual encounter in the [nearby] study.

“Lewinsky said that there was no way Currie could not hear the noise. On this occasion, Currie hid in the bathroom in the Oval Office.”

The summary added that “Currie always seeemd to know when to come back in and bring things up as they finished.”

It said: “The president, Currie and Lewinsky would then sit together in the dining room while Lewinsky would get herself together. During this time, Currie, the president and Lewinsky would talk and pass the time as if nothing had happened.

“Once Lewinsky had her clothes and her appearance in order, the three would walk out, often with the president having an arm around each simultaneously.

“The president would also often kiss Lewinsky on the cheek or forehead as Lewinsky left the office to create the impression that the president had a perfectly innocent fatherly or avuncular relationship with Lewinsky.”

In her grand jury testimony, Currie also said that she was acting alone in helping Lewinsky find a job and not as part of any Clinton directive to help conceal his affair. For instance, she disagreed with Lewinsky’s testimony that Clinton had suggested she retrieve his gifts to Lewinsky.

In separate appearances before the grand jury, neither Currie nor Jordan supported prosecutors’ theory that the job search for the ex-White House intern was part of a conspiracy to obstruct justice--an effort to keep Lewinsky from testifying about her sexual relationship with Clinton.

The Washington lawyer and Clinton friend insisted in his grand jury testimony that he had tried to find a job for Lewinsky because she “bordered on being a nuisance,” not because he was trying to placate a potential witness who could damage the president.

Jordan said that Currie had asked him to help the young woman and he testified that he originally did not even know of Lewinsky’s connection to Clinton.

Yet he appeared to step up efforts on Lewinsky’s behalf after learning on Dec. 19 that she received a subpoena from Jones’ lawyers because they suspected she had had an affair with Clinton.

Tripp Statements on Jordan Rebutted

Jordan’s testimony also rebutted Tripp’s statements to investigators that Lewinsky had told her privately the lawyer was aware of her affair with Clinton and had advised her to lie about it.

Lewinsky made no such charge against Jordan in her own appearance before the grand jury, according to the transcript of her testimony released last month.

Friday afternoon, while much of official Washington was still poring over the thousands of pages of new documents, Craig, the president’s special counsel, read a statement of rebuttal to reporters gathered outside the White House.

“In its zeal to prop up its allegations against the president,” he said, Starr’s report to the House had purposely left out key evidence that would exonerate Clinton.

Craig added that Starr’s office “intentionally omitted direct exculpatory testimony, paraphrased unambiguous statements to obscure their plain meaning and systematically resolved conflicting testimony in its favor.”

He specifically denied that anyone in the White House tried to get Lewinsky a new job in return for her silence. The Starr evidence, he said, “eviscerates the independent counsel’s job-for-silence theory.”

Craig similarly criticized Tripp for playing a “troubling role” in turning over her tapes and other material to Starr and the Jones’ lawyers.

Particularly suspicious, Craig said, were Tripp’s cooperation with the Jones lawyers as early as the autumn of 1997 and her suggestion that Lewinsky demanded a job in return for lying in her affidavit in the Jones case.

Other White House officials said the material released Friday would only boost the president’s case.

“The general feeling is that there is quite a lot in this material that will suggest to a lot of people that the orginal report was pretty biased,” said a senior White House aide.

The Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, proceeded with plans for next week’s votes on whether to open a formal impeachment inquiry.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), said Friday that he expects the full House to approve articles of impeachment against Clinton, leading to a possible trial in the Senate next year. But Hatch said that the Senate probably would divide along partisan lines and fall short of the two-thirds vote that would be required to remove Clinton from office.

Asked if the charges against Clinton amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors,” he said: “If you take the totality of the evidence, they do.”

But Clinton’s legal team disputed that notion in a 30-page letter to the Judiciary Committee that accused the Republican-led panel of rushing toward a “dangerous, standardless inquiry” on impeachment before defining what constitutes an impeachable offense.

White House Letter Assails Republicans

Republicans want to “damage the president, distract government from its proper business and waste enormous time and resources with absolutely no offsetting benefit to the people,” said the memo by David E. Kendall, Clinton’s private lawyer, and White House Counsel Charles F.C. Ruff.

“Nothing in the Starr referral is remotely sufficient to warrant an impeachment inquiry,” they argued. . . .

“Even assuming that every allegation in the one-sided referral were true, there is simply nothing there that approaches any great offense against the Constitution,” they added.

The lawyers also said that the committee’s process was “politically irresponsible” and could become a “Starr-like, open-ended, expensive, intrusive and wasteful inquiry for no stated reason at all.”

The Kendall-Ruff letter also said that if the committee fails to establish guidelines, “a vote to proceed with a full-scale impeachment inquiry will have all the intelligibility of a Roman emperor’s thumb in the gladiatorial arena.”

Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), who chairs the committee, did not immediately respond to the letter. But he did deny allegations earlier in the day from House Democrats that the process was moving too fast and was unfair to the president.

Said Hyde:

“The Democrats’ alternative resolution is certainly made-to-order for the White House, but not for the American people. . . . The Democrats are proposing an alternative resolution which is more concerned with coming to a hasty conclusion, rather than the right conclusion.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Edwin Chen, Faye Fiore, James Gerstenzang, Janet Hook, Norman Kempster, Ann L. Kim, Judy Pasternak, David G. Savage and Elizabeth Shogren.

Times on the Web

* The complete text of the Starr documents released by the House Judiciary Committee is available on The Times’ Web site at: https://www.latimes.com/scandal

* WEATHERING A STORM: Clinton hits the road, as controversy swirls around him. A12

* SECURITY OF IGNORANCE: Betty Currie says she had no inkling of an affair. A21

* TRANSCRIPTS: A17-19

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Linda Tripp

July 7 testimony: “My idea was never to manufacture evidence. In fact, I had never even thought about the independent counsel in my wildest dreams.”

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Vernan E. Jordan Jr.

May 7 28 testimony: “I confronted both Monica Lewinsky and the president about sexual relationships, and both told me that there was no sexual relationship.”

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Betty Currie

Jan. 27 testimony: “I didn’t want to know anything or be able to say I knew anything.”

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Tripp Job Review

Included in the 4,600 pages of evidence released Friday were scathing job performance evaluations for Linda Tripp at the Department of Defense.

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What’s Ahead

MONDAY: The House Judiciary Committee begins meeting to consider a resolution formally opening an impeachment inquiry into President Clinton’s suitability to continue in office.

FRIDAY: The full House votes on the committee’s recommendation, then adjourns for the year.

LATER: If an inquiry is launched, the committee staff will begin investigating the case, with open hearings to follow.