What Was Linda Tripp's Job At The White House?
As "Impeachment: American Crime Story" continues to air, the stories of the women at the center of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair are much different than the media portrayed to the public. Though it could be assumed that Monica Lewinsky, one of the show's current producers — and yes, the same former White House intern who made headlines after it was discovered she had been involved in a consensual sexual relationship with then-President Bill Clinton — could have easily vilified the key figures central to her story, the anti-bullying activist has gone on the record about how doing so would be a disservice to all involved. Instead, with Lewinsky's counsel, the show does its best to humanize most of the Clinton scandal's main players, with Linda Tripp (played by actor Sarah Paulson) as the most vivid example of that empathetic take.
As outlets like The AV Club have thoroughly chronicled, "Impeachment" is hardly meant to retroactively spin Tripp as a folk hero, making sure to include the biased inaccuracies of her illogical outsize grievances against the Clinton administration. At the same time, however, the show has, up until the time of this writing, also lent a sympathetic lens to how patriarchal structures worked against her long before 1998, the year Clinton's affair led to his impeachment hearings. So, what did Linda Tripp do as a civil servant, a job which directly affected her access to it all?
Linda Tripp spent years working for the government, only to be bitterly disappointed
As the first episode of "Impeachment" covered in its September premiere, Linda Tripp's career as a bureaucrat was already substantial by the time President Bill Clinton was sworn into office in 1993. Tripp, a staunch Republican, was open about her antipathy towards both Clinton and future secretary of state (then first lady) Hillary Clinton over qualities in the former she saw as "crass and immoral," per The Washington Post.
As "Impeachment" displayed in its rendering of Tripp, this was exacerbated by Tripp's anxieties over her job security. In 1990, Tripp, who came into her career nearly two decades earlier as a secretary in the military — a post which matched well with her husband, a career officer — found herself working as a secretary in the White House under the George H.W. Bush administration, which the Post stated was a career highlight. A year after Clinton was appointed, Tripp was transferred to an office at the Pentagon, which Tripp saw as an affront, despite the sizable raise and higher rank the position entailed. The promotion came after the suicide of Vincent Foster, a deputy White House counsel, who Tripp directly reported to.
Linda Tripp's later years took her on a different path, but she was haunted by the past
Decades before conservative conspiracy theories reached their apotheosis under the presidency of Donald Trump, Linda Tripp was a conservative who saw the Pentagon promotion as akin to a one-way shuttle to "Siberia" and as a way to keep her out of the loop of the innerworkings of the Clinton administration. The move, by all appearances, spurred her belief that President Bill Clinton had something to hide. It was also after her Pentagon transfer that she met Lewinsky. And from there, the rest is history.
Following the conclusion of Clinton's impeachment trial, Tripp left the civil service in 2001 for other ventures after she was fired from her role at the Pentagon in 2001 during the inauguration of former President George W. Bush, per CNN. (As the news network noted, it is not unusual for certain federal employees of a former administration to resign following an administrative change; those who do not resign are usually fired, as Tripp was.) After her tenure as a government employee folded, Tripp then established herself as an entrepreneur. Following her 2004 marriage to her second husband, the pair opened up a store called The Christmas Sleigh, which sold winter holiday decorations and other related merchandise year-round. Tripp died in 2020.