In the fall of 1997, literary agent Lucianne Goldberg advised her friend Linda Tripp to secretly record telephone conversations with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky about Lewinsky’s relationship with President Bill Clinton. Goldberg incorrectly told Tripp that Maryland law allowed recording a call without the other participant’s consent; in fact, Maryland required consent from all parties. Tripp ultimately made roughly 20 hours of recordings, creating a serious privacy and wiretap-law issue rather than merely documenting a political allegation.
Goldberg urged Tripp to provide the tapes to independent counsel Kenneth Starr and connected her with Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff. After the story became public in January 1998, the recordings became central to Starr’s investigation into whether Clinton had committed perjury in a sworn deposition. The House of Representatives impeached Clinton in December 1998, while the Senate acquitted him on February 12, 1999. Maryland prosecutors subpoenaed Goldberg before a grand jury considering charges against Tripp; prosecutors later dropped the case, but the episode remains a prominent example of covert recording technology being used in a politically consequential privacy breach.
