Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal Is Trail of Beltway Desires, Fulfilled and Denied

Linda Tripp wanted a book deal. Kathleen Willey wanted a job. Bruce R. Lindsey hoped to protect his boss. And Monica S. Lewinsky was after romance.

None of them got what they wanted.

Tripp’s book proposal exposing alleged shenanigans inside the Clinton White House fell through. Willey worked for a while for the administration but eventually left embittered over an encounter outside the Oval Office.

Lindsey, the president’s close advisor, could not in the end save Clinton from his detractors--or himself. And Lewinsky ultimately became the star witness against the man she said she had loved.

From start to finish, this seemingly unconnected chain of events is what cornered Clinton into telling independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s grand jury and the nation that he had lied in the past and that he had indeed carried on an “inappropriate relationship” with Lewinsky.

And by Saturday, almost nine months after Starr began investigating the trail that led from Tripp to Lewinsky to Clinton and others, the House Judiciary Committee was completing its preparations for hearings on what is likely to be a broad and lengthy impeachment inquiry of the president.

Spokesman Again Denounces Release

At the White House, meanwhile, a spokesman again denounced Friday’s release of Starr’s documents and the president and his lawyers continued to jockey for an eleventh-hour financial settlement in the civil lawsuit that still undergirds the whole Clinton-Lewinsky sex-and-perjury scandal: the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit.

Jones has dropped her demand for an apology from Clinton. The president has raised his settlement offer from half a million dollars to $700,000, still less than her $1-million request. The lawsuit was dismissed by an Arkansas federal judge earlier this year, but Jones’ lawyers are attempting to get it reinstated.

After the release of six volumes of Starr material containing about 8,000 pages of testimony and other evidence, however, it is the story of the Tripp book proposal and how it ultimately crossed paths with Lewinsky’s love interest in Clinton that provides a fresh look into how a fateful set of coincidences has jeopardized this presidency.

In her lawsuit, filed in 1994, Jones alleges that Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, had sexually confronted her in a Little Rock, Ark., hotel room in March 1991. But his real troubles began in the summer of 1996, when Tripp, a former Bush White House employee then working at the Pentagon, met New York literary agent and former Nixon campaign aide Lucianne Goldberg.

The two women visited for a couple of hours in the Washington home of Goldberg’s son, Jonah, and Tripp brought some assorted “documents and notes” to help fill in her plan for a tell-all book about irregularities inside the Clinton White House.

No ‘Warm and Fuzzy’ Portrait

Goldberg later told Starr’s office that Tripp preferred the “style” of the Bush White House over that of his successor. The agent added: “Tripp did not provide a warm and fuzzy portrait of the Clinton administration.”

A ghost writer was brought in to work up Tripp’s book proposal. Buried in the proposal was a passage about two women that the author would claim “were involved sexually” with Clinton. One was a White House intern who was not Lewinsky. The other was Willey.

But before Goldberg could sell the book proposal, Tripp called and said that she had decided to abandon the project. “Tripp advised that she thought publishing such a book was too big a risk and Tripp was afraid she would lose her job,” Goldberg told Starr’s investigators.

Fourteen months passed. Tripp and Goldberg talked again. It was the fall of 1997 and they had three phone conversations. According to Goldberg, Tripp told her that a Newsweek magazine reporter was asking her what she knew about the incident between Willey and Clinton.

Tripp told Goldberg that there was another woman now--Lewinsky, who was no longer in the White House but was working with Tripp at the Pentagon--who had been involved with Clinton.

According to a Starr office summary: “Goldberg told Tripp to tape the telephone conversations with the young woman [Lewinsky] from the Pentagon.”

“Tripp did not want to tape the calls as she thought it was ‘sleazy,’ ” Goldberg said.

But Tripp, because of the unflattering testimony about White House officials that she gave to a congressional committee investigating the mysterious death of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, was worried that she was “being betrayed” by the Clinton administration. She wanted protection for herself, she said.

So she agreed to begin taping Lewinsky when Goldberg, according to the summary, warned her about one other thing: that the Clinton “machine would destroy Tripp unless Tripp had irrevocable proof.”

Tripp believed that she already had plenty of evidence about Willey.

Willey and her husband, Edward, of Richmond, Va., had been Clinton supporters during the 1992 presidential campaign. A year later, with Clinton in the White House, Willey’s husband was under investigation for embezzlement.

According to another Starr summary, Willey, then working as a White House volunteer, was desperate for a job and she “was vocal about needing a paying position.”

Willey testified before the grand jury earlier this year. But her testimony, unlike that of almost every other Starr witness, remains sealed. Sources have said that Starr is continuing to investigate others for possible obstruction of justice charges and believes that Willey may have been pressured to change her story about a November 1993 encounter with Clinton outside the Oval Office.

Two months after the Lewinsky story broke, Willey appeared on the CBS television program “60 Minutes” and described the alleged incident. It was just before she learned that her husband had committed suicide and she had gone to the White House to ask the president to give her a salaried position, she told CBS.

Instead, she alleged in detail on national television that Clinton had groped her.

After that incident near the Oval Office, she was given White House jobs but they did not last. She also later wrote warm and affectionate letters to the president, letters that were released by the White House after Willey appeared on television.

But Tripp, in her discussions with Starr’s office, gave an entirely different account of Willey’s time at the White House.

The women had become friends, and “by early spring 1993, Willey told Tripp that she was flirting with the president and that the president appeared interested in Willey,” a Starr summary says.

“Willey described several ways that she would pursue the president. Willey would arrange to cover evening social functions where the president would be present. Willey would wear a particular black dress which accentuated [her] cleavage. Willey would wear high heels to enhance her legs.”

The summary described Tripp’s recollections of spotting Willey moments after the scene with Clinton near the Oval Office. Willey looked disheveled, her hair and makeup askew and red marks on her neck.

According to the summary:

Tripp: “It happened, didn’t it?”

Willey: “I need your lipstick, and I need to speak to you in West Exec right away.”

They met in the West Executive Driveway for half an hour.

Willey: “Oh my God, it happened. I’ll tell you everything.”

According to Tripp, Willey recounted how the president swept his hands over her breasts and put her hand on his penis. “His tongue was literally down my throat,” Tripp recalled Willey saying, adding that he was a “great kisser.”

In the summer of 1997, as Newsweek was preparing to report Willey’s story, Tripp learned that she would be named in the magazine account as someone who supported Willey’s version of events. Afraid that she could lose her job, Tripp contacted Lindsey and told him that, at the time of the incident, Willey had not said anything about Clinton sexually harassing her.

Tripp and Lindsey discussed how to handle the ensuing controversy, with Lindsey telling Tripp that Clinton “emphatically denies” Willey’s story. He asked Tripp “if she would agree that Willey was an unstable person,” Tripp told investigators.

But Lindsey’s damage-control efforts came too late, and Willey was later subpoenaed by Jones’ attorneys.

Eventually Jones’ attorneys did ask her, although what she told them is not known.

Four years later, Tripp, while busy recording many hours of conversations with Lewinsky, picked up her telephone at home to find David M. Pyke, a Dallas lawyer, on the other end.

The Jones lawyers were searching for other women who could be connected sexually to Clinton. So Pyke was calling not just to learn what Tripp knew about Willey but also about another woman, an unnamed younger woman, possibly once an intern in the White House.

Tripp taped this phone call too.

Tripp: “I feel strongly that the behavior has to stop, um, or should at least be exposed.”

She told Pyke that the Lewinsky-Clinton relationship was actually just about ending.

Tripp: “ . . . she is very, very angry with him because of the way he’s handling this but would rather martyr herself in a way rather than--than expose him.”

Tripp told Pyke how Lewinsky was “a young girl, just out of college,” who interned at the White House when the affair began. She said that the White House transferred her to the Pentagon and then, to end the relationship, began to characterize her as a lovesick “stalker” of the president.

She further told Pyke that Betty Currie, Clinton’s secretary, was one of many Clinton aides who “covered” for the president to help facilitate his liaisons with Lewinsky.

Tripp: “Oh, absolutely, absolutely. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe there’s a person in the White House who would--who would not lie.”

Willing to Divulge Information

Tripp also made it clear that she was prepared to give a legal deposition in the Jones case to divulge information about Willey and Lewinsky. But she was worried about keeping her own job and stressed to Pyke that it must look as though she was being compelled to cooperate.

Tripp: “I need to look hostile.”

Pyke had called Tripp after getting her name from Goldberg. The chain of events was coming full circle.

On Jan. 16, Tripp wore an FBI-provided body wire to record another conversation with Lewinsky, and then FBI agents and Starr prosecutors swooped in.

Tripp next briefed the Jones lawyers about Lewinsky’s relationship with Clinton.

The next day, Clinton was deposed in the Jones case and was asked detailed questions about his relationship with Lewinsky.

A few days later, the allegations became public knowledge and Clinton immediately drew in his closest advisors, denying the affair and seeking political cover.

His closest confidant was Lindsey. Lindsey was so close to Clinton, Tripp said, that Lewinsky had told her he “always had the hotel room next to the president’s so that the president could not sneak women in his hotel room.”

Desperately trying to help his boss, Lindsey met over lunch with presidential friend Vernon E. Jordan Jr. They quickly agreed that there was one thing above all that Clinton should do to keep the scandal from wrecking his presidency: He should settle the Jones lawsuit.

Jordan volunteered that he might be able to raise the necessary funds for the president to pay off Jones.

“I suggested to him,” Lindsey told the grand jury, “that he ought to have a conversation with the president expressing what his thoughts were.”

The next morning, Lindsey testified, Jordan did indeed visit Clinton at the White House. He gave the president his best “pitch.”

On his way out, Jordan stopped by Lindsey’s office. In a bit of frustration, Jordan said: “I gave it my best shot.”

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