Linda Tripp

Linda Rose Tripp (née Carotenuto; November 24, 1949 – April 8, 2020) was an American civil servant who played a prominent role in the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal of 1998. Tripp's action in illegally and secretly recording Monica Lewinsky's confidential phone calls about her relationship with President Bill Clinton caused a sensation with their links to the earlier Clinton v. Jones lawsuit and with the disclosing of intimate details. Tripp claimed that her motives were purely patriotic, and she avoided a wiretap charge by agreeing to hand over the tapes. She later claimed that her firing from the Pentagon at the end of the Clinton administration was vindictive, but the administration called it standard procedure for a political appointee. From 2002, Tripp and her husband, Dieter Rausch, owned and ran a year-round holiday store, The Christmas Sleigh, in Middleburg, Virginia. Early life and career Tripp was born Linda Rose Carotenuto in Jersey City, New Jersey. She was the daughter of Albert Carotenuto, an Italian-American high school math and science teacher, and his wife, Inge, a German woman whom he had met while he was an American soldier stationed in Germany. They divorced in 1968, after he had an affair with a fellow teacher and Linda severed all ties to him afterwards. Raised in the Whippany section of Hanover Township, she graduated from Hanover Park High School in East Hanover, New Jersey in 1968. She later worked as a secretary in Army Intelligence at Fort Meade, Maryland. In 1971, she married Bruce Tripp, a military officer with whom she had a son and a daughter. They divorced amicably in 1990.