Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Aired April 5, 1998 - 10:00 p.m. ET
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Now on IMPACT, an exclusive interview
with
the book agent at the heart of allegations about a
White House sex
scandal.
LUCIANNE GOLDBERG, LITERARY AGENT: She said, well,
a friend of mine, a woman I work with at the
Pentagon, is Clinton's
girlfriend.
ANNOUNCER: The agent who told Linda Tripp to make
the
tapes, the tapes that launched a scandal.
ART HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What could you tell
us that you did hear?
GOLDBERG: It referred to evidence of sex with the
president.
ANNOUNCER: Also on IMPACT, a man returns to Selma
to
confront the ghosts of his past.
CLARK OLSEN: Ghosts in the sense of my experience
of utter
terror.
ANNOUNCER: Ghosts from when the nation was at war
with
itself.
(SINGING): All the way from Selma town.
ANNOUNCER: Ghosts of a murder long forgotten, a
murder that
changed history, a murder still unsolved today.
C. OLSEN: He was found not guilty. I believe he is
guilty.
ANNOUNCER: Finally, on IMPACT, the cruise industry
on a
course for fun and profits.
UNIDENTIFIED TRAVEL AGENT: This year is going to be
an
absolute record year for the cruise industry.
ANNOUNCER: Today's cruise companies pump up the
profits by
updating their image.
LIZ SUTTON, TRAVEL AGENT: When I get a person that
says
to me, "Oh, Liz, I don't want to do a cruise. I've
done a cruise
before." I'll often say, "How long ago?"
ANNOUNCER: IMPACT, CNN and "Time" on special
assignment, with Bernard Shaw in Washington, D.C.
and Stephen
Frazier in Atlanta. IMPACT, a collaboration of two
of the world's
leading news organizations -- CNN and "Time."
From Washington, D.C., here is Bernard Shaw.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERNARD SHAW, CO-HOST: Welcome to IMPACT. Tonight,
a first-hand account from the heart of the
investigation of President
Clinton. Paula Jones' suit against Mr. Clinton was
dismissed, but
the president's legal problems are far from over.
Independent
counsel Ken Starr says he'll press on.
His latest investigation started with Linda Tripp's
tapes of former
White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Tripp won't
talk, but we
talked tonight to the woman who told Tripp to tape.
IMPACT's Art Harris now with Lucianne Goldberg's
exclusive
tale of why and how those recordings were made.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GOLDBERG: She said, a friend of mine, a woman I
work with at
the Pentagon, is Clinton's girlfriend. And she
started to explain this,
what I found, hair-raising tale about this kid.
HARRIS (voice-over): Lucianne Goldberg describing
last
summer's phone call from Linda Tripp, the former
White House
secretary. They had become good friends while
working on a
book idea, Tripp had once proposed, disparaging the
Clinton
White House.
GOLDBERG: I said, had you, do you have any proof?
Do you
have letters? Do you have pictures? Do you have
like a second
source that has, you know, seen anything? And she
said, no. And I
said, well, how often do you talk to this woman?
And she said,
every day, non- stop, at home, before dinner, after
dinner, early in
the morning. She said, I talk to her all the time.
And I said, well, I
can't see any other thing for you to do to prove
that you're telling
the truth, is to tape these phone calls.
HARRIS (on camera): Get Monica Lewinsky on tape?
GOLDBERG: Just buy a cheap tape recorder and put it
on your
phone, and when she calls you at home, get a tape
of it so you can
prove that you talked to this girl and that this is
the truth.
HARRIS (voice-over): Goldberg says Tripp was scared
and
angry. Just weeks before, Clinton lawyer Bob
Bennett said Linda
Tripp was not to be believed. "Newsweek" had quoted
Tripp
describing Kathleen Willey as "happy and joyful"
after telling Tripp
Clinton had kissed and fondled her in the White
House.
GOLDBERG: Having been called a liar publicly would
mean
anything she might say in the future, they would
point to the
president's lawyer and say, well, she can't be
believed.
HARRIS: Tripp was also worried "Newsweek" reporter
Michael
Isikoff, who talked to her for the Willey story,
might be on to
Monica Lewinsky.
GOLDBERG: She said, I need a friend I can talk to
somebody.
Michael Isikoff is after me and he may know more
than I think he
knows.
HARRIS: Tripp was also afraid because she knew too
much. She
knew Willey. She was friends with Lewinsky. And if
she got
subpoenaed in the Paula Jones case, she would have
to tell what
she knew about two women and the president.
At first, Goldberg says, Tripp balked at taping her
friend.
GOLDBERG: And she didn't want to do it.
HARRIS (on camera): Why?
GOLDBERG: She said, I feel sleazy doing it. I don't
want to do
that.
HARRIS (voice-over): Goldberg said she'd better
reconsider.
GOLDBERG: And I said, well, OK, they'll trash you.
They'll
destroy you.
HARRIS: So Tripp began taping. And to shore up
Tripp's
credibility, Goldberg also advised her to talk to
the "Newsweek"
reporter again and, this time, tell him about
Monica Lewinsky.
(on camera): October, 1997, it was about 6:00 p.m.
when Tripp,
Goldberg and Isikoff met here at Goldberg's
Washington
apartment for about an hour. Tripp brought the
tapes, but the
reporter didn't listen to them. Mike Isikoff tells
IMPACT, he didn't
want to be party to any taping. He did listen
carefully to Tripp's
story, though, because he had been hearing about a
mysterious
White House intern and the president. Now, for the
first time, he
had a name -- Monica Lewinsky.
As for Goldberg, now she had copies of two tapes.
(voice-over): Tapes she brought here, to her New
York
apartment, where Goldberg brokers book deals, a
former political
operative who once spied for Nixon.
HARRIS (on camera): Nixon, Goldberg, in a
presidential trip?
GOLDBERG: Yeah. That was from the McGovern plane.
HARRIS (voice-over): When you were a spy?
GOLDBERG: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS (on camera): What was that like?
GOLDBERG: It was fun! Food was terrible.
You call up the best file for us. We plotters and
schemers and vast
right wing conservative spies, is this one here.
HARRIS (voice-over): Goldberg is now an unabashed
Clinton
basher.
GOLDBERG: All righty.
HARRIS: She dines on political gossip from her New
York lair.
(on camera): Some critics are painting you as a
book agent
provocateur.
GOLDBERG: Oh, well. It makes a good copy, but it's
not true.
HARRIS: Listen, Goldberg, right wing operative,
former Nixon
operative...
GOLDBERG: Right.
HARRIS: ... spy on the McGovern plane.
GOLDBERG: Right, wife, mother, damn good cook, good
literary
agent, good friend, and, you know, all around
decent gal.
HARRIS (voice-over): A conservative gal who sells
fact and
fiction. The book proposal she'd once worked on
with Tripp went
nowhere, but this time when Tripp called, Goldberg
figured, book
deal or not, Tripp needed protection.
Then Goldberg listened to the tapes and heard Tripp
and
Lewinsky talking about an affair both the president
and Lewinsky
have since denied under oath.
(on camera): You've called the tapes, quote,
"shocking beyond
belief."
GOLDBERG: Yes.
HARRIS: Why?
GOLDBERG: Because they are about a young 23,
24-year-old
girl having a sexual relationship with the
president of the United
States in the Oval Office. Now, I'm sorry. I find
that shocking.
HARRIS: What could you tell us that you did hear?
Sex with the
president?
GOLDBERG: It referred to, yeah, evidence of sex
with the
president.
HARRIS: Oral sex?
GOLDBERG: Yes. The tapes will come out someday and
you can
hear all of it.
HARRIS: Believable?
GOLDBERG: Oh, of course.
HARRIS: Why? How?
GOLDBERG: I know that Monica Lewinsky was having an
affair
with Bill Clinton. I can't prove it. Linda Tripp
can prove it, she has
the tapes.
HARRIS (voice-over): Tapes that portray Lewinsky as
the other
woman, who was a little more than a heartbreak kid.
(on camera): What is the tone of Monica Lewinsky?
GOLDBERG: Sort of semi-hysterical when she's
talking about
him. You know, girl in distress.
HARRIS: Girl in love?
GOLDBERG: Yeah, I suppose. Yeah. Oh, yeah, she's in
love,
yeah.
HARRIS: Could it have been a fantasy?
GOLDBERG: No, absolutely not.
HARRIS (voice-over): Monica Lewinsky crying on the
shoulder of
Linda Tripp, who saw herself as a big sister.
GOLDBERG: The thing that Monica was going through
with the
president not seeing her and not taking her calls,
and she just said
to me, that poor girl, that poor girl, because this
kid's heart was
breaking. She was in love with a married man and
talking to her
girlfriend about how painful it was.
HARRIS (on camera): To be the other woman?
GOLDBERG: To be the other woman. And Linda felt
very sorry
for her.
HARRIS: The tapes portray Lewinsky as close to the
edge, telling
Tripp the president had dumped her in the spring of
'96, that he
wanted to be, quote, "just friends." Still,
Lewinsky was working
hard on a transfer back to the White House, asking
Clinton's
secretary, Betty Currie, to check on her request.
She was also
sending love letters to the president, hoping
Currie would put them
on his desk.
What did Linda say about the president's secretary
Betty Currie?
GOLDBERG: She told me that if anything ever
happened, that
they would use Betty Currie, or I should say, he
would use Betty
Currie as a cover.
HARRIS (voice-over): Those familiar with Lewinsky
tell
IMPACT, she studied Clinton's travel schedule to
plot White
House visits. Lewinsky told Tripp she was hurt
White House
staffers had branded her a stalker, clinging to a
fading affair with
the president. As for Tripp...
GOLDBERG: I think the relationship bothered her a
great deal.
HARRIS (on camera): Why?
GOLDBERG: Because it was the president of the
United States,
because -- and you know, a really weird concept
here. It was
adultery. Now, I know we're not suppose to be
shocked by that. I
happen to feel that way, but I'm just this old
square. Linda is a lot
younger than I am, I think, feels that way too.
HARRIS (voice-over): Linda Tripp, a divorced mother
of two, 48
years old, who took Lewinsky under her wing at the
Pentagon
where both had been transferred from the Clinton
White House.
Tripp had worked there under Bush, but came down
with a severe
case of culture shock under Clinton. Monica
Lewinsky made
Tripp's fever spike.
GOLDBERG: And it was also messing with this girl's
head. And
she kept saying to her, you've got to get on with
your life, get on
with your life, get on with your life. And she
couldn't.
HARRIS: While Lewinsky poured out her heart to
Tripp, Tripp
was afraid of losing her job. Then came the
breaking point:
subpoenas in December from Paula Jones' lawyers.
Now,
Lewinsky and Tripp faced telling the truth under
oath. Tripp took
her story and her tapes to the feds.
GOLDBERG: She personally was asked to obstruct
justice,
herself, and she can testify to that. She was a
good team player
until the team asked her to lie. And she was not
going to lie for
anybody's team.
HARRIS (on camera): Who did she tell you asked her
to lie?
GOLDBERG: Monica Lewinsky asked her to lie.
HARRIS: How?
GOLDBERG: By relaying the message that she should
lie.
HARRIS: Deny?
GOLDBERG: Deny, deny, deny.
HARRIS: Deny the Willey incident?
GOLDBERG: Deny whatever they were going to tell her
to deny.
HARRIS: Deny anything? Deny it happened between
Monica and
the president?
GOLDBERG: Deny. You don't know anything about it.
HARRIS: Now, Linda Tripp has tapes that Lucianne
Goldberg
says will prove your client obstructed justice.
BILL GINSBURG, LEWINSKY'S ATTORNEY: I don't believe
anything that Lucianne Goldberg says. And I believe
that what
Lucianne Goldberg says is from the perspective of
someone who
doesn't understand the law and who is trying to
build a case for her
book.
HARRIS (voice-over): January here at The
Ritz-Carlton, the big
sting. Tripp gets wired by agents for independent
counsel Ken
Starr and turns the tapes on her unwitting friend
Monica Lewinsky.
Later that day, Goldberg's last call from Tripp.
GOLDBERG: I got a frantic phone call from Linda
saying that she
had gotten the tape that she was wired for, that
Starr wired her for,
and then getting wired by the FBI. It's not fun.
It's very scary stuff.
HARRIS: Detractors call Tripp a traitor or worse.
Goldberg says
her friend just felt trapped by Lewinsky.
GOLDBERG: So who betrayed who here? If you were
counselling a friend to do something that can send
them to jail, a
friend who has two children, no husband, and a good
job she
doesn't want to quit, and your boyfriend can fire
her without cause,
and you're telling her to put her whole life at
risk, and she tape
records you telling her that, who betrayed whom?
You can't make
a book out of it, but you certainly can make a
case. And that's my
case for Linda.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SHAW: Linda Tripp gets to state her own case soon.
She may
testify before Ken Starr's grand jury as early as
this week.
--
Two rules in life:
1. Don't tell people everything you know.
2.
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