Tony Andragna says, among other things:

And, what happened to Linda Tripp? NOTHING! She was already at the Pentagon when Lewinsky confided in her. She kept her job at the Pentagon, recieved promotions and salary increases (started at 47K and ended at 100K), wasn’t sacked after she “blew the whistle” in “filegate”, even refusing at the transition to ritually tender her resignation just like the rest of the political appointees were supposed to do, and just like the others who refused, she got fired.

Do I have any sympathy for the likes of Linda Tripp? Nope, only contempt…

Please, spare me the comparison between self-serving Linda Tripp and the truly courageous Sherron Watkins…

My post title indicates how reluctant I am to resurrect the battles of the last Administration, but at some point, history is going to be written by historians who didn’t vote for Bill Clinton, and were never mesmerized by him. And perhaps, now that his tenure is fading in memory and emotion, and the documentation of the facts remains, there will start to be developed a more objective view of the events of those eight years. So without addressing, for now, the other whistles that were blown (and Tony, one of the reasons that she had that Pentagon job, that she never asked for, was to get her out of the White House, where she was becoming most inconvenient), I’ll simply answer the silly question, “what happened to Linda Tripp?”

She lost her coveted job in the White House. She was threatened with prosecution for perjury. When, in self defense, she gathered evidence to fight such a prosecution, she was made out to be a villain, and threatened with prosecution for that. She was lambasted in the editorial pages, and in the then-equivalent of weblogs, just as you have. Her appearance (not just her behavior, but her appearance) was openly and cruelly mocked on Saturday Night Live and other venues of supposed comedy. She was lied about (and continues to be lied about). Her personnel records were released by the Pentagon to a White-House-friendly reporter, illegally (an act for which Ken Bacon was never punished in any way, and it was perfectly clear that it was done at White House behest). She ultimately lost her job at the Pentagon, and I believe that she has lost her house.

Other than that, no, nothing happened to Linda Tripp. Now maybe you think that she deserved all of that (I don’t), but that’s an entirely different thing than to make the ridiculous claim that nothing happened to her.

Oh, and “the self-serving” Linda Tripp? I must have missed that one. In what way did she serve herself? By wanting to both maintain her integrity and stay out of jail? She was potentially going to be called to testify in the Paula Jones case, whether Tony likes it or not. I happen to think that it was perfectly appropriate to include Monica in it–that was the intent of the sexual harassment law signed by the Big He himself–it helped demonstrate a pattern of using underlings for sexual favors. Of course, Bill Clinton never thought that the law or the Constitution applied to him. (And please spare us the standard lie about the judge ruling the Monica case not material–the fact is that she didn’t. She simply ruled that Ken Starr’s prosecution took precedence.)

If she had been called to testify, she had the choice of either lying along with Bill and Monica, or telling the truth and being prosecuted for perjury, as Monica threatened (“I’m going to lie. He’s going to lie”). Other than coming out of it with integrity intact, and in light of my above description of all of the negative things that did in fact happen to her, I utterly fail to see how she served herself.

Oh, you mean the “book deal”?

There never was a book deal–it is a figment of the imagination (to be generous) of the Clinton defenders (and hit squads on inconvenient women). There was never anything except a single conversation with Lucianne Goldberg, that never amounted to anything. If there was a book deal, where is the deal? Where is the book?

As I said, history will ultimately record the reality, even if we are still swimming in the incessant lies of the Clinton years today.