Goldberg, Lucianne

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/interview/goldberg/

The Clinton production teaminterviewed over 60 politicians, journalists, and influential playersof the Clinton years. In a Facebook poll asking whose interview they wanted to see on the website, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE fans voted for literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, who helped Linda Tripp bring the Monica Lewinsky scandal to the attention of the media.

Lucianne Goldberg

In the 1980s and 90s, Goldberg promoted several conservative party tell-all books such as "Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Cover-up" by Leo Damore. After advising Tripp to secretly record Lewinsky talking about her intimate relationship with Bill Clinton, Goldberg brought the tapes to the attention of both Newsweek journalist Michael Isikoff and the lawyers investigating the Paula Jones case.

In the interview below, Goldberg discusses her role in the scandal.

Producer: Let's start with a little bit of your background and particularly, you have an interesting story of your first encounter with presidential politics. Can you tell us more?

Goldberg: Depends how far back you want to go.

Producer: Let's go back to Nixon.

Goldberg: Oh, Mr. Nixon. Well, I had been involved in politics through high school and college and so forth, but at one point during the '72 campaign I was asked if I would like to fly around on Mr. McGovern's plane -- not Mr. Nixon's plane -- and send back reports at night, which I did. And they went directly -- there was a car waiting and they went, somebody typed it up and took it directly to Mr. Nixon, and I just kept doing that for eight weeks. And then a year went by and a fellow from the Washington Star at the time put two and two together and went, wait a minute, I think that was Luci on that plane so that got a lot of publicity at the time. I don't think I was very helpful.

Producer: So on and off you've been involved in politics, publishing and so on. We come to 1993 and Bill Clinton has won the election, is moving into Washington. I wonder if you'd tell us -- you're from the conservative, republican point of view -- how Clinton was seen in Washington as he's entering in '93?

Goldberg: Well, I was in New York at the time, and I was a literary agent and because I was a conservative and married to a conservative newspaperman, we were terribly concerned about -- we were just shell shocked from Watergate and from, you know, the end of Nixon and so forth. So there were a lot of writers around who couldn't find work. I mean, they were White House staffers, they were former Cabinet officers and so forth, and no agent would represent them cause most of the agents in New York are liberals. No publisher would publish them except for a little one in Washington called Regnery. So if you wanted to sell a conservative book, you pretty much were limited to going to Regnery.

Then, it started to open up over the years, but that's how I got a lot of conservative-minded writers to represent. So that just went on until somebody came to me who had worked in the Clinton White House and said, "I want to write about what a travesty the behavior is in the Clinton White House." And that's how it all started. And that was a lady named Linda Tripp.

Producer: I'm going to get to that in a minute, but I just sort of want to kind of get a sense of how Clinton was seen by -- I mean I know that you weren't in Washington or part of the kind of punditry in Washington, but from your point of view as someone who had been a conservative and was well known to other conservatives and had your feelers out and was talking to people, was there a sense of this guy as being sort of-- well tell me, what was the sense?

Goldberg: The sense was him being a used car salesman. There's a sense of a guy being a charming hick. He was loathed because, first place, I think we've all known somebody like Bill Clinton and we don't want them to be President of our country. I think it took us a long time to get to know him, and it didn't mean we liked him any better once we got to know him. And the wife was terrifying as well. So it was a double header.

Producer: In what sense was she terrifying?

Goldberg: Well because she wasn't the traditional First Lady. She did kind of wing it on changing her name, you know; for a long time she wouldn't use her married name, which was still a no-no in politics then... I think it would be now too -- we wouldn't accept a First Lady who didn't take her husband's name. But she was pushy, she was humorless, she was-- she couldn't get her hair figured out. There were just so many things about Hillary that we didn't like. All of it superficial of course, but, you know, that's life.

Producer: Republicans had been in the White House for decades. Was there a sense of almost illegitimacy about Clinton's presidency from the beginning, in the early part?

Goldberg: Well, there may have been, but I don't think it was any question that he won, I mean you had the Ross Perot factor, but even so. No, I don't think we thought of him as illegitimate. We just wanted him to go away, and we knew he wouldn't.

Producer: My sense of it is -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- that the dislike that many Republicans and conservatives had for Bill Clinton went beyond what a normal partisan feeling would be. In other words, there was something personal about this guy.

Goldberg: Oh, yeah.

Producer: Someone expressed it to me as being... he defeated a man who was a better person than he was in George Bush. What was your sense of it?

Goldberg: Well, then you get into the whole snob thing of, you know, who's a better person? Who comes from a better family? There's always going to be that around, but Clinton was seen as a hick -- which is probably not fair. I mean there's certainly, I'm sure, some Nobel Laureate material in Little Rock, but they didn't send us somebody like that. Yeah, there was a class thing I think, I don't think it amounted to a great deal, but they didn't like him. They just did not like the man.

Producer: Let's flash forward to when you entered the story. As I understand it, it was your friend Tony Snow that actually made the connection. Tell me what you remember from your first meeting with Linda Tripp.

Goldberg: I found her very intense. See a lot of people don't know this -- I only saw her twice in my life, you know. I never, never-- was not her friend, and suddenly I'm thrown out there as her very best friend forever.

But she was very serious about her job. She was very serious about working at the White House. It was an enormous honor to her. She had worked there for Bush 41, and she had been Tony's secretary when he was there. She was more than a secretary. She was like office manager, and the speechwriters thing, and then she stayed on when Clinton came in, and she was absolutely-- she was an army brat, she was dedicated, she was serious about her job, and she was horrified about the Clintons. She was just appalled, and she wanted to write about it.

So Tony said, "Why don't you call my friend Lucianne who's an agent, and she handles, you know, people on the right side of politics?" And that's how it started.

Producer: What was her gripe? How did she express that to you? What was she upset about in the White House?

Goldberg: She was upset about his behavior with women, cause Monica was not the only one.

Producer: At first, what does she say to you?

Goldberg: She had a great pile of paper that described all of the chumminess, the political back scratching, the cronyism, the lack of protocol, the coffee stains on the rug. I mean it was everything. Everything you can imagine, and she didn't like the way-- she kept herself busy, and as many of the women who worked there did, watching what Clinton did all day long. And he was very active, shall we put it that way.

Producer:And that offended them?

Goldberg: Yeah, sure that offends women all together.

Producer: Did she compare him to Bush? Because she was very admiring of Bush.

Goldberg:Yeah no, there was no real, no real comparison.

She didn't like what she called the brats, you know, the George Stephanopoulos types, the young turks that came in and left pizza boxes all around. She had a very deeply ingrained sense of protocol, and that was being abused and she didn't like it.

Producer: That's an important point. The sense of the White House that she portrayed to you was what? And putting Clinton's behavior towards women aside, the general sense of the way things were managed and handled in the White House?

Goldberg:Well, there was a saying at the time that when it came out, what had been going on in the Oval Office -- and I don't know who to quote, I would like to, who said that Ronald Reagan put on his jacket to walk into the Oval Office and look what Bill Clinton's been doing on the rug. So it was that sense of-- that this is the best that this country has and it requires -- it demands -- the best behavior, and Clinton was walking in there in this running shorts with a girl he'd been running with and then disappearing behind a door, that kind of thing. And that is deeply, deeply offensive to people who work where a butler brings you tea, and she was just fed up. She was deeply angry about it.

Producer: So she was proposing what?

Goldberg: Well she was proposing that she write a book and tell the story of the comparison between the Bush 41 White House that she had known and the Clinton White House.

Producer: And what happened to this project, I mean did you encourage her or...?

Goldberg: Well sure, I said, "What you have to have is a proposal and three sample chapters," which is the basic package for selling a book. She got a ghostwriter to help her with that cause she was not a writer -- I mean everybody has a ghostwriter. And it just didn't pan out, it didn't come in well, and we had words. And I think in the Starr report there was something that she had-- she was getting very demanding and I said, "Oh for God's sake who do you think you are, the Queen of England?" And I hung up and I didn't talk to her again for a year. And I mean I say that to everybody all day long as an agent, you know the King of England, the Queen of England... it was just a project that wasn't getting off the ground.

Then a year passes and Tony Snow called me again and said, "Remember the girl that I sent you that wants to do the book about the Clinton White House? Well she's really got a story now." So, I mean, I'm human. I wanted to hear that story, and I was interested. I sell books. That's my job. That's how I earn a living. So we got back together again.

Producer: What happens then?

Goldberg: Well, she called me and she said, "He's having an affair with a girl who's 23 years old." And I said, "Yeah, yeah," you know the kind of agenting that I did, I heard a lot of wild stuff, and people have to prove things. So she said, "No I'm not kidding you. He's having an affair with a-- and I know the girl, and I talk to her every day."

And I said, "Well can you prove this? Do you have pictures? Is she willing to step forward? Is she willing to go on the Today Show and say...?" And she said, "Well no, I'm sure she wouldn't. This is a big secret. And, some secret." And I said, "Well you got to do something to prove to me so I can prove to a publisher that this wild story was true." And I said, "You say you talk to her every day, how about taping your phone conversations?"

And she agreed that that would be a cool idea, and she went to Radio Shack and bought a tape recorder and plugged it into her phone.

Producer: Now, Linda Tripp had already been in the middle of a few important events. I'm talking about the travel office incident. She may have been the last person to see Vince Foster alive.

Goldberg: I think she was.

Producer: Probably was. Is that just coincidence or has Linda Tripp got a sort of proclivity for getting herself in the middle of these kinds of things?

Goldberg: Well I don't want to speak for her, as I said, I only met her twice, I'm not her best friend. But I don't think that's unusual that you see things going on. She was very fond of Vince Foster. Loved him dearly, and it just broke her heart when that happened. I don't know. Yeah, she was involved with Willey, Kathleen Willey. As I say, I can't speak for her, but she certainly was making life interesting for me and for her.

Producer: You mutually decided that a tape recorder would be a good way of documenting this. How would you characterize, having learned of this relationship, what was the relationship like between the two women?

Goldberg: Between Monica and Clinton well it's-

Producer: No, between Monica and Linda.

Goldberg: Oh, and Linda. It was a very close relationship. Mind you, by now they both worked over at the Pentagon, and it was very much a big sister-little sister, mother-daughter relationship. And she would tell her everything. But you have to understand, women in love are a little wacky. And they will, particularly if it's somebody who's incredibly important or a celebrity or -- and every detail is important to them. Every detail has to be mulled over and discussed, and so a lot of the tapes are pretty tedious. But it leaves no doubt about what was going on.

Producer: But Linda was, for whatever reason, was encouraging that kind of an exchange. She would play that role.

Goldberg: Well sure, she was taping it, but I mean she would have been asking those questions whether she was taping it or not. She genuinely cared about Monica, but there was one-- if I may speak for her, again, there was one overriding emotion, and that was what Bill Clinton was doing and, I'm telling you, this was an angry woman.

Producer: What do you mean what Bill Clinton was doing?

Goldberg: With Monica.

Producer: She was outraged?

Goldberg: Oh yeah, she was beyond, I mean beyond outraged. This was something just visceral with her, and of course the more I listened to the tapes, the angrier I got. You know, this was a nasty bit of business.

Producer: Why?

Goldberg: Because this girl was clearly being destroyed. He was running such a number on her. And I don't think there's a woman alive -- and I'm an old lady, and I can tell you that it never changes -- there is always, in every woman's life there is one four-flushing guy who runs a number on her and who breaks her heart. And who tells her things are going to be different than he knows they're going to be. So when other women hear that they go, "I've been there. I know how that feels."

And this is the President of the United States and this is a 23-year-old kid. But I've been there. I've had a boss that did that to me. I had a girlfriend's boyfriend that did that to me. It's just one of humanity's, you know, nasty little cesspools, and we were in the middle of one, but it happened to be with the President of the United States and a 23-year-old kid, who was a very sweet girl. I never met her, but a very sweet girl from what I could-- I mean I listened to hours of her conversations, so I feel I know her.

Producer: You said a little while ago Monica Lewinsky was in love.

Goldberg: Monica Lewinsky was desperately in love. I mean she was-- and I mean again, he may have, I'm sure he was very fond of her. This thing went on for what, a couple of years? And she at one point saw herself pushing his -- she even said it -- pushing his wheelchair. Because as life would go along Hillary would leave him, and she would be with him off into fantasy land. So, that was the situation we were in.

Producer: You say that he was running a number on her. I mean the subtext is, I just want to clarify, he was using her.

Goldberg: Oh, absolutely.

Producer: Tell me in your own words, these fantasies of hers -- he was doing nothing to disabuse her of them, I guess?

Goldberg: No, nothing and even building on them and giving her little gifts, and they would have phone calls and he would call her at 3:00 in the morning, there was phone sex involved. This girl was interminably available. I mean, she would have pitched a tent under his desk if she could have. And he wanted to keep that around, I mean who-- what guy wouldn't? What dishonest guy wouldn't? But he knew he could summon her at any time and she would be there.

Producer: What was your sense of Linda's motivation? You mentioned she was outraged. Was there a financial component? Was it protection, was that offered at one point?

Goldberg: No, protection against what?

Producer: I'm talking about the reasons for the taping. At one point she was worried about a physical threat to her. In your memory what--

Goldberg: Linda wanted the world to know about this. And I think the motivation was no deeper, no more shallow than that. That was it. She wanted the world to know about this relationship. And I know at one point it was reported that she was trying to protect Monica, and that somebody had put the death list on her -- the chair of her office. I mean those stories just go around and the media. I know because I spent a year of my life feeding the media, they were desperate for any kind of, you know.

This was a great national soap opera. They wanted any little tidbit, any little nugget, and yet when I went on television and told them a nugget about how Monica was signaling Clinton -- that she was on message by wearing a hat that he had given her, and he would signal her back by holding a press conference and wearing a tie that she had given him. So they were talking to each other through the media, and I knew that and during an interview I said it on TV, and they were so busy thinking -- well, Chris Matthews was so busy thinking about his next question he never heard me.

And after the show was over, my phone was going crazy and people were outside the studio saying, "That's a great story." And I said, "Well, tell them." I just gave it to them and he didn't even notice.

Producer: Once this began and you started listening to the tapes, did you have an immediate sense of how explosive this was?

Goldberg: Yes.

Producer: You knew?

Goldberg: Absolutely. I mean to the point where I just went, I gasped when I heard the first tape I just-- I played it for a couple of colleagues and they went, "Holy cow, if this gets out..." But you know looking back -- and what has it been 10 years now, 12 years, it seems like such innocent times. It really does.

Producer: Why was this such explosive material beyond the relationship?

Goldberg: Well, I think -- if I may be simplistic about it -- that a lot of Bill Clinton's charm was sex appeal, and men kind of resented that and women liked it. And they thought, "Wow, here's someone you can really see what's going on," you know, virtually. And I mean that was intriguing. There's a reason people watch, you know, reality TV now or read juicy novels.

Producer: Did you have a sense though that this could be ruinous to his presidency?

Goldberg: Oh sure -- I knew it very likely would impeach him, and I was glad about that. That didn't bother me at all.

Producer: So this was in the service of a book project, but it also then became -- before it even became public, it became part of a set of legal machinations. How did this go from you to the Paula Jones lawyers who needed to know about this before a deposition they were going to give?

Goldberg: Because somebody was informing the Paula Jones lawyers.

Producer: Give me the whole set up.

Goldberg: The way it went from my telephone and her tape recorder to the public in general or into the legal stuff it got into was that Paula Jones' lawyers were being informed as we went along with it. Not by me, but they knew every move that was being made. And there was a real time thing here that he was about to testify, and they knew he was going to lie about Monica and that was, if you want to call it, the trap. And they were calling it that -- they were saying it's an impeachment trap.

Producer: Do you know who was informing them?

Goldberg: Yes I do.

Producer: Who was informing them?

Goldberg: Well, when they die I'll tell you. I don't rat people out. I can't. It wasn't me, no.

Producer: You didn't talk to the elves, as they're called. Mike Isikoff-

Goldberg: Well, you know who started that was, it wasn't Mike Isikoff -- it was Anne Coulter called them the elves. And she was an elf, and George Conway was an elf, and I was an elf, and then Drudge became an elf, and it was a gag more than anything, but no it wasn't, that's where they -- Blumenthal and Hillary -- made this into a conspiracy, cause these elves were getting together and conspiring, and it wasn't like that at all.

Producer: But were you in contact with George Conway or --

Goldberg: As a friend yeah, sure. He's the one that told me to call up Drudge when Isikoff's editors -- I never felt more sorry for a journalist in my life than I did for Mike Isikoff. He had worked his fingers to the bone on this story and they just deep-sixed it.

And I was mad. You know I got the call from George. George told me and Michael told me. He said, "They aren't gonna run with it. They're afraid of it. They don't like it, nasty stuff. They don't want to do it." And I said, "Well what am I gonna do?" I'm sitting on this thing, and a couple of people said, "Call that Drudge." I said, "Well tell him to call me." So at 11:00 that night he called me and that was it. It went kaboom.

Producer: Why were you interested in either Isikoff or Drudge having the story?

Goldberg: Well, in the first place I wanted Newsweek to have it. Because it was mainstream media and I wanted it. You know, I wanted the story to get out because I'm selling a book. You have to understand that. It was that as much as it was a political thing. It was nice that it was a political thing, because I didn't happen to agree with the Clinton administration. But I wasn't doing it for that reason. I was doing it because I was selling a book. I was representing a client.

So I knew if the story broke huge in Newsweek -- I mean, this would be a cover story on Newsweek -- that people would start calling Linda, and Linda would say, "Call my agent." And they would call her agent, and her agent would make a book deal, and then would make some money, and she would get a little money, and I would get 10 percent of it, and that's the way the world works.

The irony here is that Linda Tripp never made a dime and I never made 10 percent of her dime. Nobody made any money on this. Nobody.

Producer: But the hope was that by leaking a little of it or some of it to an Isikoff or a Drudge, it would generate interest for the buyer.

Goldberg: That was the whole idea. To get the story out, use that as a hook to get publishers interested, and sell a book. It was that simple.

Producer: Again for Linda, it was both things. It wasn't just selling the book, nor was it just outrage. It was a kind of combination -- is that a fair thing to say?

Goldberg: Yeah, it was her whole life.

Producer: It was her whole life?

Goldberg: At that point it was. She was totally absorbed, and I was too, pretty much because the world wouldn't let me not be.

Producer: But before this breaks, let's say, does Linda become preoccupied with the Monica relationship and what she's hearing? I can't imagine she wouldn't be. But, I mean, characterize how big a part of her life this became.

Goldberg: An enormous part of her life. But by the time Drudge broke the story, that was it. The taping stopped. I mean, the cat was out of the bag, Monica knew what Linda had been up to.

Producer: That part stops a lot of people cold. They're willing to understand why Linda might want to publicize this out of outrage, out of political motivation, whatever it is, but what it was going to do to Monica is where people begin to wonder. Did you think about that, did you talk about that with her?

Goldberg: Yeah, I don't think we thought it was going to be harmful, that harmful to Monica, really didn't. It made Monica a star, and if she had wanted to handle it differently if she had -- had she been a different kind of person -- I mean look at the girls that were being paid to sleep with Tiger Woods, they're going to have their own TV shows, and Monica could have been, you know, could have been just about anything she chose to be.

Producer: But it was at a minimum a betrayal of her confidence.

Goldberg: Yeah, sure.

Producer: Of her friendship. Did Linda not pause on that front?

Goldberg: She may have, but she didn't pause in front of me. She wanted me to sell a book. That was what she was looking for from me.

Producer: Do you know the route by which this went from the Paula Jones lawyers to Ken Starr?

Goldberg: I don't think I know how it went -- but Ken Starr had already been, I mean I haven't refreshed this stuff in 10 years -- he had already been appointed Special Counsel, right so--

Producer: It's okay if you don't--

Goldberg: Yeah, well, it was after the publicity, after the Drudge that Starr found out about it. Because that was right before the testimony. Right before Clinton had to go and testify.

Producer: So Linda begins to tape record these conversations. What happens, you're listening to them with her and what is the --

Goldberg: No, she taped for several weeks, I believe. And then she said, "You really should hear the tapes." So I went to Washington and I stayed at my son Jonah's apartment, and she brought the tapes over and she asked Isikoff to come and listen to the tapes. Isikoff did not want to listen to those tapes. He really didn't. I mean, I think he saw some ethical problems, too, if he listened to them ahead of time.

But he believed her. He saw the tapes and so at the time we really didn't know what we would do with them. But she threw them in a tote bag that I had. And we went on about our business, and the next day I went home and it wasn't until some time later I realized, ah, I have two of those tapes and that's when I listened to them. And then I thought, "Oh boy, here we go."

Producer: What was the sort of idea of what would happen at that point?

Goldberg: Well, it was complicated by the fact that when Drudge broke the story, Kenneth Starr and his guys in the black hats moved in on Linda Tripp, and I mean they arrived at her home, her suburban home, and said -- and I had called her just at that moment, and the caller ID came up and he looked down at the phone and said, "There'll be no more talking to Lucianne Goldberg." And I never spoke to her again. Never. I have never spoken to her since. That was the end of it.

So, there I was out on the end of this pier, and I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know who was doing what to whom. They took Linda, they frog-marched her off to some hideout someplace, some safe house, and I just had to wing it. I mean I had -- my door was being -- FBI was at my door, they wanted those two tapes. They couldn't have been sweeter. I mean they were nice as they could be. And then suddenly I had Hillary's lawyer calling me, and all I could do was just tell them over and over again what I knew up to that point and that was it. But it was a year of doing that.

Producer: Before it is broken by Drudge and goes viral, to put it mildly, what was your time table? What was your plan? You had her, the two of you, she was taping these conversations, what was the notion of what was going to take place?

Goldberg: The notion was to get it out as soon as possible through the mainstream media. She had already established a friendship with Mike Isikoff at Newsweek because he had run a little blindish item about Kathleen Willey, so they knew each other, and she was working with him. She was talking to him a lot more than she was talking to me. And when he and I started speaking, he was not too happy about my trying to sell a book because I would glom all this information that he wanted to use. Which is fine with me, I didn't care how it got out. So what we did was that we just narrowed our view to Mike Isikoff, and what he was gonna write, and then at the 11th hour when he said, "I can't, my editors won't let me run the story," that's when we went viral.

Producer: Were you prepared at all for how quickly and how explosively this blew up?

Goldberg: I knew it would be huge. I mean I had been around long enough to know that this stuff -- and this was as big as you can get, I guess. I didn't think -- I mean my picture was on the front page of the Washington Post the next morning. Mind you Drudge called me at 11:00 at night, and my picture -- fortunately it was one from a book I had written that was-- the picture was taken about 20 years ago and it was a great picture. So at least I had that advantage.

They didn't-- they weren't that pleasant afterward. But no, I had no-- I was stalked, I was-- one of the major money tabloids had a van full of reporters down in front of my house for two weeks, and they kept calling and saying, "We have a check for $50,000 here, come and get it, come and get it." And then people hiding in my washroom, and it got scary after a while.

Producer: Did Linda ever express to you a desire to be subpoenaed by the Paula Jones--

Goldberg: Yes, yeah.

Producer: Tell me about that.

Goldberg: She wanted to be right up until-- that was at the very end of all of this when everything was happening at once. She wanted to be subpoenaed so she could tell the truth. Because she was convinced that Clinton was not going to admit to the Lewinsky thing and would thereby have perjured himself. So she and Monica wanted to be subpoenaed too. And I can't remember now -- the subpoenas did go out. You're much more in touch with this story, but they did go out, and I don't -- Linda did not testify, did she? To the Grand Jury, but not to the, that Saturday thing that Clinton-

Producer: No, she didn't, no. I think she gave a deposition to the Paula Jones lawyers before.

Goldberg: That's right. Yeah yeah.

Producer: Before the Saturday thing. Were you aware of the dress at all? Did she tell you that she had--

Goldberg: She had told me about the dress long beforehand on the phone.

Producer: What had she told you?

Goldberg: Linda said she had been to the apartment and Monica had shown her a dress that had been stained, and she said she was gonna give it to her mother and have it dry cleaned. And Linda said, "Don't do that. Keep that dress." And she said, "Why?" And she said, "Because that's proof that the two of you had a relat- and if you ever, you know, if you're gonna get in trouble and you're gonna have to testify and you're gonna get charged with perjury and you're gonna this and you're gonna- you've got that dress."

Producer: Fantastic advice.

Goldberg: Yeah.

Producer: This woman was no dummy.

Goldberg: Oh no no, never. I mean not her worst detractor ever said she was dumb but -- and you know where that dress -- I was curious. I asked someone -- one of the Starr lawyers once what had ever happened to that, and it's cut up in little pieces in a baggy at the FBI on a shelf.

Producer: Bill Clinton after the Saturday deposition had some interviews, famously, with [Jim] Lehrer on PBS he essentially, not essentially -- he denies everything. What did you think watching that?

Goldberg: Well I don't know as I had any particular reaction to it. I knew he would deny it. That's his personality, was to deny something even when they catch you doing it. If I can jump ahead a little bit, my first real reaction was when he stood up and said, "I did not," and I was watching with a friend in my office and I said, "That is it, this man is dead meat. That is it, because I know that he's lying and if I know that he's lying then the rest of the world is gonna know he's lying."

And that -- I can't think of anything in public life that shocked me -- that he would go that far with the wife standing there and it, you know, with the world watching and say, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." And I thought, "How can he?" You know, I, figuring out Linda's motivations in my mindset is nothing compared to figuring out how a man could do that. I don't get it. To this day I don't get it. I guess it's the thinking of, "If I deny it I'm so popular and so well loved, if I deny something long enough it'll come true. And everybody'll believe me and I'll go about my business."

Producer: Was he, in your opinion, someone who just was a congenital liar or was someone who just couldn't admit to himself? I mean how do you answer that question, how could he?

Goldberg: I don't even try. I just keep watching other people do -- we have a president now [President Obama] who has a certain sense of denial. People are endlessly fascinating, and that, I mean, that was his personality he came up with -- no dad and a mother, absent mother that wasn't around. But there's a lot of similarities between the current president and Clinton, family-wise. But I think that was just his personality.

Producer: So, that moment where he says "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" obviously inflamed Ken Starr as much as it did you, and eventually he is confronted with irrefutable evidence and he has to admit. Do you remember watching his address to the nation after he testifies in front of Ken Starr's Grand Jury and he finally says I did it?

Goldberg: Yeah, and I thought, "He's not a broken man, he's been backed against the wall, and he has to admit it. He's admitting it, and he's just gonna wing it from there on. He'll just see what" -- and look what happened. He stayed in the job, he got impeached but not to the point where he had to pack.

Producer: Is that an injustice?

Goldberg: No I think it, I think he paid -- I think there's enough of a -- the price had been paid.

Producer: How is the American people by and large dealt stood it, people didn't share your outrage I don't think.

Goldberg: No. I don't think it did. Well, everybody I heard from did, but I was hearing from my friends. You don't hear from your enemies when something like that's going on. But no, I think he still, I mean, I think he had a deep reservoir of fondness, and I think he still does.

Producer: As you watched what happened to Linda and to Monica after the story broke, what do you feel about that?

Goldberg: Well I thought it was -- they were much more sympathetic to Monica, Monica didn't take nearly the beating. Because there was a powerful machine behind -- I don't mean to sound like Hillary, a machine of conspiracy, but there were movers and shakers behind destroying Linda Tripp; doing her as much damage as they possibly could, and me too, by association. But, you know, when you know you're telling the truth, it's one of the strongest things that you can have in life, I don't care what kind of health you've got. I don't care what kind of friends or influence or money -- knowing you're telling the truth is absolute, total protection. And you just wait, you just sit back and wait cause you know that some day they're gonna find out. And that's why I kept getting up every morning and answering all these questions and dealing with the media, and with no net under my act -- I mean I didn't have, I couldn't call up Linda and say, "Now what was that that Monica said about so and so and such and such?" I couldn't get to her. She was, it was like she was dead, gone because Ken Starr wouldn't let her talk to me.

Producer: How did you characterize what was done to Linda? How was she depicted?

Goldberg: Well, the nastiest thing was Jane Merritt. New Yorker magazine went and found some police record in a town in Maryland when she was a teenager and riding around in a car with a couple of boys and they, I don't know, vandalized a dog house or something. I mean some little kid thing like that, and made it a huge, enormous deal out of it.

Well you have to remember that Linda was the kind of person that never had her name called in public. I mean this was a very private person, a government employee, top clearance security-wise and it was, it must have been horrible for her. Not just that one little incident but there were -- I mean there were stories that were deliberately made up about her. She was deeply in need of a stylist at the time, and she should have had one and they picked on her about that. You know, if they can't find anything else for a woman they'll go after her looks and they went after that, which I thought was cruel. But look, if you can play in the big leagues, you're gonna get sacked from time to time and you just have to brace yourself.

Producer:I can hear people at home saying if she didn't want to have that happen why did she--

Goldberg: Don't get involved. That's right.

Producer: You can feel sorry for her up to a point.

Goldberg: Up to a point. I feel sorry for myself up to a point, and then I know that you know that, you know, I made some mistakes too but they're -- you know, they weren't that dangerous.

Producer: You said once, I think I'm quoting you accurately, you said we as a country needed a test, and that's what the scandal was, a little priority test for everybody. Particularly for people who've had kids in the past couple of years when all this nonsense was going on. Do you remember saying that?

Goldberg: I don't, but I'm glad I said it. I agree with it entirely.

Producer: You said this whole mindset -- screw anybody you want, don't have a husband if you have a baby, latchkey kids are okay, don't marry anybody, the whole general morality. Tell me what you meant by that.

Goldberg: I meant that it's a test to see whether these values that I personally hold, that people that I respected and admire, and these values that make society move along, that protects you. These rules aren't written by squares who want you to keep from having a good time on Saturday night. They are written so you will lead a good, kind, loving life and raise your kids in a good, kind, loving way. And this as I'm quoted, I'm glad you dug it up because I forgot that I said it -- it was a test, and if the President of the United States, 60s, whatever he was, having all sorts of extracurricular sex in the Oval Office with a young intern is not a test, I can't think up one. I don't know how to work that test out. And this was what it was.

Producer: Is there a sense in which the country didn't pass the test because they didn't react more strongly to this? I mean there were certainly sources of outrage among certain people like you and Ken Starr, but it didn't seem to really affect the American people that way, is that fair to say?

Goldberg: That's too big an elephant for me to eat, you know? I'd have to do that one bite at a time.

I think it was a wake up call to a lot of people. There will always be a lingering little sort of taint to Bill Clinton because of that. Because they lied about it. That was what, you know, that's what people forget. He wasn't being impeached for what he did to Monica Lewinsky. It was that he lied about it and repeatedly lied about it and lied about it some more, and that was the test, if anything. Do we want our public servants to lie to us? And I think we passed the test with a resounding, "No, we don't. We don't want that." That's why there's anger boiling up now.

Producer: Are you proud of your role in what happened?

Goldberg: I'm not ashamed of it. Proud, eh. I'm proud that I knew the truth. That once I knew the truth, I got the truth out. I'm proud that I took care of my friends in doing so. I certainly -- there's nothing that I did that I'm ashamed of for an instant. It's just that things worked out the way they worked out.

Producer: I didn't ask you about the Ritz Carlton stuff with Linda-

Goldberg:That's too rococo to get into cause that's- no I wasn't talking to her then.

Producer: So it would just be what you read anyway.

Goldberg: Well no, I was talking to her then, because it was that night that they came up to her house. But no, she was on the phone, on the escalator going to-- and I can see Monica, she's down there with the shopping bag.

Producer: Tell me, if you wouldn't mind that one story of the escalator.

Goldberg: Well that was where she was being -- she was meeting her at the Ritz Carlton, and she was gonna tape her about being subpoenaed and the Grand Jury and so forth. So she called me and she was going down on the escalator and she said -- cause she was afraid Monica had gotten hip to what was going on. And she said, "I can see her she's down," she said, there was a food court, "and she's sitting, she's sitting down at the bottom, but she's got a shopping bag with her. I bet you she's got a tape recorder in there and she's gonna tape me." And I said, "Well you know what goes around comes around. If you're telling the truth, so what?" But by that time she was hooked up with two FBI agents that were, you know that were behind her, following her, so and that was -- then I had one more phone call when they took Monica up to the room and, you know, held her hostage from Linda saying, "I can't talk, we're going down to get something to eat, and the, and the FBI is with me." And that was-- click, boom, that's it.

Producer: That was the last you ever you spoke to her?

Goldberg: That was the last I ever spoke to her.

Producer: You're talking to Linda as this is going on, did you have a sense of, "Jesus, this is history."

Goldberg: And, she had a -- I said, "Where's your tape recorder?" And she said, "It's taped into, inside my thigh."

Producer: At this point the FBI was running this?

Goldberg: Well, they taped her, they wired her, she was totally wired, yeah, yeah.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/12/11/why-matt-drudge-and-lucianne-goldberg-still-rule-the-conservative-media-roost/

A flock of (relatively) new conservative media sites have gained attention in the mainstream-ish media over the past few weeks, a function of their increased role in driving political attention and, in some cases, their savvy in redirecting Facebook's traffic hose toward themselves. Bloomberg's Dave Weigel notes a series of scoops from the Washington Free Beacon (largely focused on Hillary Clinton); at Slate, Betsy Woodruff explains Twitchy. At the Awl, John Herrman noted the rise of the Independent Journal Review, which "landed big" on Facebook.

For all of this success, for all of the novelty of new sites with sharp designs and well-considered social strategies, publishers will note that there's something to be said for another genre of political news site: the old-school, poorly designed link blog.

The obvious example here is Drudge. Matt Drudge's Drudge Report isn't the elephant in the room, it's the Sun in the old-school linkblog solar system. The Drudge Report has been a massive traffic driver for years, and continues to be.And it looks like it was written by hand in 1996, which, perhaps, it was. Let's apply a new-web technique to make the point. The Drudge Report, as seen in 2001 and 2014.

More pictures, otherwise the same.

How big is Drudge for political sites? Over the course of the year, links from Google to the Post's politics coverage have accounted for 5.5 percent of all incoming links. Drudge accounted for 4.1 percent.

But it isn't only Drudge. Lucianne Goldberg has run Lucianne.com since 1998, she told the Post in an email this week. Over the course of the year, 0.1 percent of incoming links to Post political coverage has been from Lucianne. That doesn't sound like much, until you consider that it is one out of every thousand clicks. For every 55 links from Google, Lucianne Goldberg sends the Post one. (You may be familiar with Goldberg's son Jonah, who writes for the National Review Online, or remember her role in the Lewinsky scandal.) Lucianne has sent five times as much traffic to the Post's politics coverage as the conservative Daily Caller site and more than 50 times more than the Free Beacon. Different types of sites -- Lucianne drives people to reported stories at sites like Caller and Beacon -- but still suggesting a remarkable influence.

http://www.lucianne.com/

Saturday, May 21, 2016

The Connection

Blogs Lucianne Loves

FredGrams.com

Billionaire donors who paid to stop

Trump are now backing him

Reality check.

I watched Hillary Clinton’s forces swipe Nevada:

This is what the media’s not telling you

Hillary's peeps went a bridge too far.

That's why the chairs flew.

Media in agony as Trump makes

it relive Clinton sex scandals

What in the world did they expect?

Does Obama´s Troubled Childhood

Explain His Bathroom Weirdness?

This is as good an explanation as any.

Bill Clinton: Republicans ´say

terrible things´ about Hillary

He must not have heard what the democrats are saying.

Must Read Archive [Last 60 Days]

Aide for Democrats

She worked as a general clerk in the promotion department of the Washington Post from 1957 to mid-1960, quitting to take a job as a press aide in Lyndon Johnson's unsuccessful 1960 campaign for president.^[7][8] After John F. Kennedy won the Democratic nomination, she got a position at theDemocratic National Committee followed by a spot on Kennedy's Inaugural Committee.^[7] She has said she served on Kennedy's White House staff, but according to the Washington Post, her name does not appear on any staff records.^[7] In response, she explained that she worked in the Old Executive Office Building doing opposition research, then worked out of the National Press Club building in public relations.^[7]

Public relations firm

In 1963, she opened up her own, one person public relations firm, Lucianne Cummings & Associates.^[7] She received national media attention in 1965 when she attempted to sell a handwritten note from Jackie Kennedy to Lady Bird Johnson through an auction house for $1000 ($7484 in today's dollars).^[9] She had come into possession of the note when acting as a messenger for Kennedy in 1960.^[9] Upon hearing of the auction, the First Lady became irate, and demanded that the note be returned to the White House.^[9][10] Cummings apologized and returned the note, then found out the next day that her income tax returns were going to be audited by the Internal Revenue Service.^[9]

In 1966, she married Sidney Goldberg, who was then the executive editor of the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), a subsidiary of United Features Syndicate.^[11][12] She took the name Goldberg upon her marriage and worked for the Women's News Service, also a subsidiary of United Features Syndicate.^[11][12]

Conservative activism and Watergate era

In 1970, Goldberg and her friend Jeannie Sakol founded an organization called the "Pussycat League" to oppose the women's liberation movement,^[11] and in 1971 she and Sakol published Purr Baby Purr, a critique of feminism.^[13][14]

During the 1972 presidential campaign, she joined the press corps covering Democratic candidateGeorge McGovern claiming to be a reporter for the Women's News Service, though she was on leave of absence from that position.^[12] In actuality, Goldberg was being paid $1000 a week - $5638 in today’s dollars - to spy on McGovern and those traveling with him on the campaign’s planes.^[11][12]When recruited, she was told U.S. President Nixon himself had approved the spying, which was to include traditional political intelligence and information on personal habits: "'They were looking for really dirty stuff,' [she] said. 'Who was sleeping with whom, what the secret service men were doing with the stewardesses, who was smoking pot on the plane - that sort of thing. I was told to send it all along.'"^[12] Goldberg's role as a reporter-spy came to light in the Watergate hearings that led to the resignation of Nixon.^[15]

Feminist Betty Friedan alleged in June 1973 that Goldberg, as an organizer of the Pussycat League, had been attempting to derail the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment by engaging in Watergate-style "dirty tricks" and by touring the country falsely telling women they would lose their husbands and rights to family support if the amendment was passed.^[16]

Literary agent and author

Goldberg ultimately set up her own literary agency and became known as a promoter of "right-wing, tell-all attack books", according to The New York Times.^[8] One of her clients, celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley, sued her in 1983 over proceeds from foreign sales of Kelley's unauthorized biography onElizabeth Taylor. Kelley ultimately won a judgment of $40,000, with the judge declaring that Goldberg was only guilty of "sloppy bookkeeping".^[17] Goldberg was also the U.S. agent for the memoirs ofPrince Charles' former valet, which were blocked for publication in England by Queen Elizabeth.^[18] In the early 1990s Goldberg promoted a conspiracy theory book about the suicide death of Clinton White House aide, Vincent Foster, and several books dealing with Clinton's purported sexual infidelities including one by Arkansas State Troopers who alleged they had procured women to have sex with then-Governor Clinton.^[5][19][20] None of the Clinton-themed books were ever published.^[5][19]Goldberg was also the agent for former detective Mark Fuhrman's bestselling account of the O.J. Simpson trial, Murder in Brentwood.^[6][20]

Goldberg has written several novels. Friends in High Places co-written with Sondra Robinson, was published in 1979. Her first solo novel Madame Cleo's Girls, a story of three high-priced call girls, was published in 1992,^[5] followed by People Will Talk in 1994. She has also ghostwritten for celebrities;^[5]the romance novel Washington Wives (1987) penned under the name of Maureen Dean, wife of Watergate figure John Dean) is one of her behind-the-scenes works.^[5][8]

Clinton impeachment

The Tripp tapes

Goldberg met Linda Tripp in 1993 or 1994 while working on the proposal for the book on the death of Clinton aide Vince Foster.^[5][19] The two women became friends, and in 1997 Goldberg advised Tripp to secretly record former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, talking about her sexual relationship with Bill Clinton.^[8] Goldberg mistakenly advised Tripp that it was legal to record phone conversations in Maryland without the consent of the other party.^[21]

Goldberg urged Tripp to take the resulting 20 hours of tapes to Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starrwho had a broad mandate to investigate improprieties by Clinton.^[22][23] Goldberg also brought the tapes to the attention of lawyers working on the Paula Jones sexual harassment case against Clinton.^[22][23] The tapes became crucial to Starr's investigation on whether Clinton had lied about his affair with Lewinsky.^[24] (Ultimately, Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice because he stated in a sworn deposition in the Paula Jones case that he had never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. He was not removed from office, however.)

Soon after the secret taping began in the fall of 1997, Goldberg arranged for Tripp to speak withNewsweek reporter Michael Isikoff, who had been investigating other allegations about Clinton's sex life.^[20] After the scandal became public in January 1998, Goldberg was interviewed frequently by the media.^[7] She declared that the tapes proved that Lewinsky and Clinton had had a sexual relationship,^[19] and previewed other highlights of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair such as the existence of a semen-stained dress which later proved to have Clinton's DNA.^[7]

The Washington Post called her “the producer and publicist” who set the stage for the scandal and the investigation, she called herself the "facilitator".^[7] Of Goldberg's role in the scandal, TIME magazine said; "At a minimum, she is forever sealed in history as the New York City literary agent who uttered to her friend the most ruinous sentence of the Clinton presidency: 'Linda, buy a tape recorder.' "^[25] Author Jeffrey Toobin named her as one of the seven "Key Players" in the impeachment.^[26][27]

Goldberg said her actions in helping to disclose the Lewinsky–Clinton affair were motivated by her sense that general morality had declined, and that America needed “a wake-up call”.^[25] She also said that the disclosure of Lewinsky's affair with Clinton helped to protect Lewinsky, who suffered from an obsessive infatuation with Clinton.^[8] During this time, Goldberg made no secret of her personal animus toward Clinton, saying she was glad Clinton was getting caught "at something", and that "[i]f it took this to get him, fine."^[24] She also said she was a political independent,^[8] though she was described in the press as having long standing ties to the Republican Party.^[19]

Repercussions

In the aftermath of the disclosures about the Clinton–Lewinsky affair, Goldberg was subjected to media attacks on her personal character and past business dealings.^[8] The Democratic National Committee faxed an unflattering "information sheet" on Goldberg to reporters within days after the story broke.^[25] Goldberg admitted that slurs on her own character were to be expected, '"I have never thought of myself as a victim in all this," she [said]. '"Never. Let them take their best shot."'^[25]She later said she had been worn down by the scrutiny.^[8]

Goldberg denied allegations made in the media that she was part of a vast right wing conspiracy to bring down the presidency of Bill Clinton.^[8] When Jeffrey Toobin published his 1999 book, A Vast Conspiracy, that also alleged Goldberg had told friends that she had an affair with Lyndon Johnson,^[27] and a Washington Post writer claimed he and others had overheard Goldberg bragging about an affair with Vice President Hubert Humphrey as well, Goldberg threatened Toobin and Random House with a libel suit, denied both affairs, and denied telling any such stories.^[28]

Goldberg was subpoenaed to testify before a Maryland grand jury that was contemplating indicting Tripp for having made the recordings. Under Maryland law, knowledge that such recordings were illegal was a necessary element of the crime. Goldberg explained that she had given Tripp incorrect advice, telling her it was legal to make secret recordings.^[21] Charges against Tripp were later dropped.^[29]

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore later set up a webcam focused on the windows of Goldberg's Manhattan apartment, that he called "I See Lucy Cam".^[30][31] Moore's project did not violate New York State's laws.^[30] Claiming that Goldberg did not respect the privacy rights of other people, Moore wrote, "`[s]he believes in keeping an eye on persons who are a threat to the country. So do we.'"

Later career

Goldberg was a prominent presence on the conservative website, Free Republic in the late 1990s, posting under the name "Trixie". She and other conservatives, including Matt Drudge, left the site when the webmaster, in Goldberg's words, "let all the Y2K, gun-nut, Jew-baiting crazies take over [the forum] and flame the plain-old conservatives.^[32] She then founded her own website, Lucianne.com,^[32][33] and for a time, was a nationally syndicated talk radio host whose show featured a Washington correspondent.^[34]

Personal life

Lucianne was married to Sidney Goldberg, a wealthy newspaper executive with United Features Syndicate from 1966 until his death in 2005.^[8][25][35] The couple had two children, Joshua (1967–2011) who was the editor of her websites as well as the 2009 Republican nominee for the New York City Council seat representing district number six on Manhattan's Upper West Side, who lost the election to the current Democratic incumbent Gale Brewer; and Jonah (born in 1969), who is a best selling author and conservative political commentator. The children were raised in their father’sJewish faith,^[36] while Lucianne who was raised an Episcopalian, remained a Christian.^[37][dead ^link]

References

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tripod blog, hmmn larouch?

Lucianne Goldberg could win the Chutzpah Award for her work as a literary agent fabricating tales of murder, corruption, and sexual dalliance within the Clinton administration. By her own admission, she worked for Nixon Special Counsel Murray Chotiner, as a dirty trickster for his Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), going so far as to infiltrate the 1972 Democratic Presidential campaign of Sen. George McGovern.

Goldberg's boss Chotiner, as we shall show, was not only Nixon's campaign strategist from the beginning of his political career, but Chotiner was an attorney who was so mobbed up'' that between 1949-52, he defended 221 members of the Meyer Lansky syndicate**. He was eventually subpoenaed by Attorney General Robert Kennedy to testify before the McClellan Committee on his dealings with syndicate boss and money-launderer Meyer Lansky. Chotiner had long-standing ties with **Lansky's Murder, Inc.'' lieutenant Benjamin Bugsy'' Siegel,** with syndicate member Mickey Cohen, who took over Lansky's Hollywood and Las Vegas operations after Siegel's murder, and with Lansky lieutenant**Morris Barney Moe'' Dalitz, who founded the La Costa Country Club in California, where President Nixon, Murray Chotiner, Sam Ehrlichman, and others met in 1973 to fix their Watergate cover stories.These associations with Lansky's Murder, Inc.'' apparatus make Lucianne Goldberg the Ma Barker'' of Clintongate.

Goldberg's son, Joshua, told this author that his mother also had a tie with Roy Cohn, who, like Chotiner became a Lansky syndicate attorney (in Cohn's case, after frying Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and then leaving his position as Sen. Joseph McCarthy's chief aide). As FBI and Army Intelligence records attest, Cohn was a homosexual who ultimately died of AIDS-related Karposi's sarcoma.

Two of Chotiner's other Nixon-era cronies in the dirty tricks department were Marvin Liebman and William F. Buckley. Liebman, recently deceased, was also a homosexual, and Buckley publicly advocates legalization of drugs and pedophilia.

Hardly a crew to be consulted on matters of Presidential morality!

As for Lucianne Goldberg herself, who walks, talks, and acts like one of Chotiner's gangster molls, she wroteMadame Cleo's Girls, a 1992 novel with lurid details about a trio of high-class prostitutes.

Still, before Goldberg became the den mother for Bush-leaguer Linda ``Bad'' Tripp, she had reportedly represented Dolly Kyle Browning for a potential book deal about an alleged, early Clinton love affair, but critics debunked Browning's story.

Next, Goldberg tried to get a book deal for the Arkansas state troopers who alleged that they had procured women for then-Gov. Bill Clinton.

Goldberg and her son, Joshua, also confirmed that she has been a frequent collaborator of the two leading British intelligence operatives assigned to trash Clinton: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Lord William Rees-Mogg.

"I live for dish!"

There is an extensive interview with Goldberg in the Feb. 2, 1998 issue of the New Yorker, which shows Goldberg shepherding former Bush-league Army Intelligence Command and Delta Force groupie Linda Tripp through the maze, toward committing what may soon be considered treason against United States. In late 1993, Goldberg states that Fox TV news Talk Show host Tony Snow introduced her to Tripp, suggesting her as an excellent author for a book on the death of Clinton White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster, since Tripp had been one of the last people to see Foster alive and had been an executive assistant to the White House counsel.Fox TV is owned by Lord Beaverbrook protégé Rupert Murdoch, who has also taken over the London Times, which has repeatedly carried assaults against President Clinton. Goldberg and Tripp quickly became cronies in their hatred of the Clinton administration.

When Goldberg decided to promote a convicted perjurer, former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman, for a book on Vince Foster instead of Tripp, Goldberg suggested that Tripp should instead write a book tentatively called, Behind Closed Doors: What I Saw Inside the Clinton White House. The proposal, which many of Tripp's friend believe was ghost-written by Goldberg, because its language was so profane, featured chapter titles like Mrs. President'' and The President's Women.'' Unfortunately, ``Bad'' Tripp could not write the kind of salacious style that Goldberg wanted.

Tripp's name surfaced last summer in Newsweek, where she was a source for the claim that President Clinton had fondled a campaign volunteer named Kathleen Willey. Clinton's attorney Robert Bennett denounced Tripp as a liar.

After this, Goldberg went to Washington in October to renew her acquaintance with Tripp, who had been transferred to the Pentagon. It was on this visit that Tripp told her about her fellow Pentagon Public Affairs worker Monica Lewinsky. Tripp said that Michael Isakoff on Newsweek's ``bimbo beat'' was pressuring her, and Tripp was fearful of Bennett calling her a liar again, if she talked about Lewinsky's alleged affair with the President. Goldberg claims that it was during this October meeting that she convinced Tripp to begin taping her conversations with Lewinsky. However, a senior editor of Newsweek, interviewed on CNN on Jan. 17, 1998, reported that she heard tapes of conversations between the two women from August 1997!

According to Goldberg's questionable account, it was only when Tripp learned that her secret taping of Lewinsky had been illegal, that she went, on Jan. 12, 1998, to Kenneth Starr. They moved with snakelike speed,'' Goldberg told the *New Yorker,* describing the zeal with which Starr's office arranged for the FBI to wire Tripp for a face-to-face session with Lewinsky the very next day. Tripp was also instantly granted complete immunity from prosecution.** At this time, Starr did not have any mandate to probe the Clinton-Lewinsky matter. Asked by the *New Yorker* why she got involved with Tripp, Goldberg sounded just like a gangster moll: I did it because it's f--king fascinating! I love dish. I live for dish.''

Behind Regnery's doors

In mid-1996, Lucianne Goldberg presented Regnery Publishers with a several-page prospectus for yet another tell all'' book against the Clinton White House, to be written by Bad'' Tripp. Regnery is another nexus of Get-Clinton operations, based in Washington, D.C. They published both Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's and Gary Aldrich's fractured fairy-tale smears on the First Family. Tripp wanted to write a book and she wanted a half-million for it,'' said Alfred Regnery, president of the right-wing publishing firm. **Regnery Vice President Richard Vigilante's** meeting with Tripp was arranged by Goldberg. Although Linda was very discreet, it was clear to me she was in the position to write a book with the potential to be a bestseller, a@ag la Aldrich's book,'' Vigilante said, referring to the fatuous compilation of lies by former FBI agent Gary Aldrich, Unlimited Access.

But, James Moody, who had been hired as Tripp's attorney at the recommendation of Goldberg, said of the prospectus: ``It looks like something a senationalist would write. Linda wanted to write a nerd policy book about changes from President Bush's White House to President Clinton's. These look way too sensational for the way Linda talks.''

When Goldberg was queried as to whether she had written the prospectus, she said: ``I know what I know, and I don't lie. I never, ever would write anything for a client.''

And, of course, everyone knows that someone who worked as a CREEP dirty tricks'' agent for a mobbed up'' attorney, would never tell a lie.

As for Tripp, the Washington Post pointed out that, heretofore, people have waited until they left $88,000-a-year jobs with the U.S. government, before asking for a $500,000 advance to write a book.

Tim Weiner and Jill Abramson reported in the New York Times on Jan. 28, that Alfred Regnery had said: ``I know Lucianne Goldberg well. I introduced Lucianne Goldberg to Mark Fuhrman.'' Goldberg had been Fuhrman's agent for the bestseller on the O.J. Simpson case (published by Regnery), entitled Murder in Brentwood.

When the New York Times questioned Alfred Regnery about Clinton Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr, he replied: ``I knew Ken Starr when I worked at the Justice Department.... I've known him since 1981, when I was a deputy assistant attorney general and he was a special assistant to the Attorney General, William French Smith.... We're friends. I see him three, four, five times a year.''

In what other age would this relationship between a CREEP dirty trickster agent, peddling fabrications about the President to a right-wing publisher, who was in close contact with the Special Prosecutor targetting the President, not be considered a potential criminal conspiracy that ought to be put under a microscope by the Attorney General?

It seems at the least an egregious violation of conflict-of-interest that Tripp, goaded by Goldberg, should seek a $500,000 advance for a tell all'' book on the Clinton White House (especially, while still part of the Executive branch) since her *curriculum vitae* states that from May 1993 until April 1994, she was Executive Assistant to then White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum. States Tripp on her job: I kept informed of the Counsel's responsibilities, views, interests and current policies governing particular matters of importance.... I provided a close working relationship with the Counsel to effectively and efficiently handle the issues and items which arose for action and decision.''

Despite these seemingly significant responsibilities, Bad'' Tripp later testified that her complaint to Nussbaum that White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster was spending too much time on the Clinton family's personal affairs, fell on deaf ears. Certainly, Lucianne Goldberg thought Tripp could present some real dish'' on the Clinton White House Counsel Office, apart from having been the last person to see Vincent Foster alive.

It is also significant that Colonel Bridges of the Pentagon's Public Affairs Office confirmed that Tripp has top secret security clearance on a need-to-know basis. She has had such security clearance for some time, since her curriculum vitae says of her 1988-89 job with Delta Force at Fort Bragg, North Carolina: The nature of this position is classified.'' Likewise, during 1987, she was an assistant to the Director of the United States Army Intelligence Command at Fort Meade, Maryland, which she states was a classified unit,'' where her responsibilities included ``tracking classified case files.''

Did Tripp violate her top-secret clearance with her crony and adviser, ``Ma Barker'' Goldberg? This would seem to be a top priority for U.S. counterintelligence units to investigate.

But, it gets worse.

"Consigliere" Murray Chotiner

Lucianne Goldberg told the New Yorkerthat it was her friend Victor Lasky, the author of an acerbic 1963 book attacking President John F. Kennedy, who got her to become a CREEP dirty trickster, working for White House Special Counsel Murray Chotiner, infiltrating Senator McGovern's 1972 Presidential campaign, under cover as a journalist. In August, 1972 Goldberg told the McGovern campaign that she was working for the Women's News Service of the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), where her husband, Sidney, eventually became president.

NANA was founded by a high-ranking Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officer, Ernest Cuneo. The news agency had several CIA agents in it, such as Priscilla Johnson McMillan, who had numerous CIA and State Department links, and who was working for NANA when she interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald in Moscow.

As the New Yorker points out, after Nixon self-destructed, Goldberg never lost her hatred for Kennedy Democrats, becoming the agent for Leo Damore's 1988 Chappaquiddick exposé on Ted Kennedy, Senatorial Privilege.

In the mid-1960s, Drew Pearson became a partner in NANA, and Goldberg would eventually become the literary agent for his column's successor,Jack Anderson, who was a favorite leak spot for all branches of the intelligence community.

Once she was hired by Chotiner to travel as a journalist'' with the McGovern campaign, *Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Year,* by Anthony Lukas, reports her as saying: They were looking for really dirty stuff. Who was sleeping with whom, what the Secret Service men were doing with the stewardesses, who was smoking pot on the plane--that sort of thing.''

It was just more ``dish'' to Lucianne Goldberg.

S. Weissman, author of Big Brother and the Holding Company, reports that it was also Chotiner's dirty tricks'' operation against the McGovern campaign that was responsible for learning that McGovern's running mate, **Sen. Thomas Eagleton, had had successful electroshock treatment for depression 20 years earlier. More than anything else, the Eagleton affair'' convinced voters that Nixon's opponent had poor judgment and was indecisive.

Murray Chotiner had been with Richard Nixon ``at the beginning.'' According to the 1990 book Blue Thunder, by Thomas Burdick and Charlene Mitchell: **In 1946, Nixon announced his candidacy for Congress, and Beverly Hills attorney Murray Chotiner showed up as a consultant on his campaign staff.Chotiner counted Lansky's childhood friend and Las Vegas partner `Bugsy' Siegel among his numerous mob-connected clients. During the period 1949-52, Chotiner defended clients in 221 organized crime cases.''

Chotiner would eventually be summoned by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedyto testify before the McClellan Committee about why so many of his clients were members of the Meyer Lansky syndicate.

Chotiner also appealed to the Lansky syndicate to fund Nixon's campaigns. The 1975 book Mickey Cohen: In My Own Words--The Underworld Autobiography of Michael Mickey Cohen as told to John Peer Nugent describes how Chotiner arranged a fundraising dinner for Nixon's 1950 Senate campaign, which was entirely subscribed by members of the Lansky syndicate in Hollywood and Las Vegas,through Cohen. He described the event: ``So now I put together this dinner at the Knickerbocker Hotel.... Everybody around here that was on the pad naturally had to go to the dinner.... Nixon made a speech. He made a hop, skip, and jump speech because the guy that really done all the speaking was Murray Chotiner.''

If Lucianne Goldberg's assassination conspiracy friends--e.g., Christopher Ruddy and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who claim that Vince Foster was killed by a plot implicating the President--want to do a real service, they might probe how Goldberg's former ``dirty tricks'' boss, Murray Chotiner, died. What is known is that in January 1974, at the height of Watergate, Chotiner was killed in a hit-and-run automobile crash, and no one was brought to justice.

There is one story that Chotiner's death was related to a decision by Henry Kissinger, that Kissinger implemented through his deputy, Gen. Al Haig, to force Nixon's resignation by commissioning a report, in August 1974, on the President's organized crime connections, which would have put a spotlight on Murray Chotiner. There is no question, as EIR has previously reported, that Kissinger and Haig were plotting behind President Nixon's back throughout his administration.

Another report on Chotiner's death is that the hit-and-run driver that smashed into his car in McLean, Virginia was a Naval Intelligence officer. This version says that Chotiner survived the crash with only a broken leg, but was killed in the hospital a week later. And, the story continues that Chotiner's widow wanted to sue, but incoming President Gerald Ford gave President Nixon a blanket pardon.

It is certainly strange that so many questions could surround the death of White House Special Counsel Chotiner, without anything like the spate of books, Internet gossip, and newspaper tittle tattle'' that Lucianne Goldberg's friends have dished'' out over the suicide of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster. No special prosecutor ever investigated President Nixon or such top aides as Henry Kissinger for Chotiner's death.

The British are coming

Josh Goldberg told this author that his mother has had a longstanding relationship withAmbrose Evans-Pritchard, who has been among the principal right-wing conveyors of conspiracy theories peddled by lunatic Mellon heir, Richard Mellon Scaife, into the media mainstream. Almost as soon as Evans-Pritchard became the Washington bureau chief for the London Sunday Telegraph, and focussed every ounce of energy on destroying President Bill Clinton, this author had a conversation with Evans-Pritchard, in which he admitted that he was a second generation spawn of Her Majesty's Secret Service. His father, Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard had worked first for the Colonial Office as an anthropologist to help rig what is today the British destabilization of Sudan, and then, during World War II, Sir Edward worked with British military intelligence to mobilize the Senussi Bedouin tribes to found Libya. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who once described his presence in the United States as an ``anthropological expedition,'' told this author that he had collaborated with MI6, since he covered both sides of the Central America war.

Among the many right-wing conspiracy theories that Ambrose Evans-Pritchard foisted and then conveyed into the respectable'' press, was the Paula Jones case. It is Ambrose Evans-Pritchard whom Clinton-haters credit with helping Jones to shape her legal strategy. In the *New York Times* of Jan. 28, Evans-Pritchard confirmed what Josh Goldberg told me, admitting that he knows Lucianne Goldberg well: She was very nearly my agent,'' referring to his book, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton, which accuses President Clinton or his aides of having been involved, directly or indirectly, in mysterious deaths and conspiracies.

In a sense, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's collaboration with MI6 pales before his role as a journalistic hitman for the Hollinger Corp., which owns Telegraph PLC. Hollinger was reorganized by Canadian-born Tory Conrad Black, from the Argus Corporation of E.P. Taylor, which ran British arms procurement during World War II and provided a Canadian base of operations for British Security Coordinator Sir William Stephenson and for the Special Operations Executive. Some of the board members of Hollinger include: Kenneth Starr's heroine, Lady Margaret Thatcher; Sir Henry Kissinger; and Bilderberg chairman and co-founder of the spy organization Kissinger Associates, Inc., Lord Peter Rupert Carrington.

Lucianne Goldberg admitted to this author that she knows another leading British opponent of President Clinton, Lord William Rees-Mogg, the former editor of the London Times now owned by Rupert Murdoch. Of course I know Lord William Rees-Mogg,'' she said. I think he's been doing a great job against Clinton.'' Rees-Mogg's attacks upon the Clinton administration either appear in the London Times or in the U.S.-based newsletter Strategic Investment, which Lord Rees-Mogg co-edits with James Dale Davidson, founder of the right-wing National Taxpayers Union.

No sooner did the Goldberg-Tripp-Lewinsky scandal break, than Lord William Rees-Mogg sped to the United States, apparently in search of DNA samples and other dirt dished up by his admirer, Lucianne ``Ma Barker'' Goldberg.