Potential Tripp Donors Refuse to Give or Forget

When a reporter read Friday about a legal defense fund established for Linda Tripp, the Pentagon employee who secretly tape-recorded her conversations with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky, he got a coffee can and took to the streets, asking for donations.

Telling passersby that $4 was the “recommended donation,” he went from an ATM machine on 15th Street to the McPherson Square Metro station, where he was ejected by a uniformed city employee who made a face and threatened an arrest for soliciting on public property.

Some other reactions: “Are you kidding?” “Don’t make me throw up.” “Not on your life.” “Good luck!” “Please go away.” And: “I should take money out of that can!”

The bottom line, the reporter told Bronagh Mullin of the District of Columbia, is that Tripp is strapped for cash. Won’t she help?

“She screwed her friend,” said Mullin. “That’s the bottom line.”

Computer engineer Greg Day, 43, pleaded poverty. But eventually, he gave a penny.

Finally, a small, intense woman listened to the pitch, nodding silently.

She reached into her purse, extracted a $1 bill and put it in the can.

“Thank you,” the reporter said.

“Por nada,” she said.

Her name is Barbara Conch. She is 36, a nursing assistant in Alexandria, Va., who arrived here from Cuba and isn’t fluent in English.

Did she know who Tripp is?

No, not really.

The reporter mailed $1.01 to Tripp.

Tripp’s chief fund-raiser sent 20,000 letters out in the hope of raising $80,000 for her.

She earns $90,767 a year in her Pentagon job, but the letter says her legal bills are already more than $325,000 and are “growing every day.”

Tripp is on a list of witnesses who might be called to testify at Clinton’s impeachment trial in the Senate.

She is also under investigation by a Maryland grand jury for taping her conversations with Lewinsky.