Linda Tripp, whose tapes exposed Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, dies at 70
- Pentagon publicist made secret recordings of ex-White House intern talking about affair with president and urged her to save infamous blue dress
- Tapes were turned over to independent prosecutor Kenneth Star, leading to Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998
Linda Tripp, the Pentagon publicist whose secret recordings of Monica Lewinsky talking about sex with president Bill Clinton led to the his impeachment, died on Wednesday at 70.
Her former lawyer, Joseph Murtha, confirmed the death, and US media cited family members saying she died after a short battle with pancreatic cancer.
Tripp was a public affairs official of the US Department of Defence when her colleague Lewinsky, who had served as a White House intern in the mid-1990s, told her she had secretly had sexual encounters with Clinton in the Oval Office.
In conversations Tripp secretly recorded, Lewinsky said the two had had sex on numerous occasions and that she had saved a blue dress she wore during one that still had stains of Clinton’s semen on it.
Tripp then took the recordings to independent prosecutor Ken Starr, who used them to expand a separate investigation of Clinton.
Clinton at first denied the relationship, declaring from the White House: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”