No sooner had Linda Tripp finished her final day of testimony before the grand jury last week than word leaked out that her old pal Monica Lewinsky was crediting Tripp herself, of all people, with authoring the now-famous "talking points." Lewinsky gave Tripp the talking points, interestingly enough, two days after Tripp (unbeknownst to Lewinsky) had begun cooperating with Kenneth Starr -- an odd time, surely, for a witness to compose a memo to herself about how to commit perjury. In any case, Tripp sticks with the story she gave the grand jury: She had nothing to do with authoring the talking points, and further, Lewinsky herself, upon giving Tripp the papers, told her friend that "this is what the president wants you to say."
Meanwhile, Tripp is off on a brief vacation to an understandably undisclosed location, after which she will return to an unsettled professional future. A Pentagon public affairs officer, she's been working from her house since the Lewinsky scandal broke, and it looks like that's where she'll stay. Her requests to return to work at her old office have so far been denied.
This spring, she was removed from her job as director of the Pentagon's Joint Civilian Orientation Conference and was reassigned to write an administrative manual. She subsequently made one trip back to her old office to retrieve personal materials. There she was met by three members of the Pentagon's office of general counsel, who asked her to leave and escorted her from the building. Tripp, incidentally, is a political appointee, who serves, in the delicious lingo of the government, "at the pleasure of the president."
Tripp's luck with friends -- with one in particular, anyway -- is famously bad, but it may have just gotten worse. Last week, she shared a five-hour dinner with CBS's Mike Wallace, who, Tripp sources say, is "putting on the full-court press" to get her to sit for an interview. To increase the pressure, Wallace has leaked word that he's reserving a choice chunk of time on 60 Minutes' season debut this fall, just for Tripp. So far Tripp isn't biting. She'll be busy this fall, anyway. She'll have testimony to give at congressional hearings and -- who knows? -- maybe at a trial as well.