The Clinton Impeachment | Secret Tracks

Summary

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Slow Burn: The Clinton Impeachment | Secret Tracks

Podcast: Slow Burn
Host: Leon Neyfakh (Slate Podcasts)
Date: October 3, 2018

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Episode Overview

Theme:
This special episode, "Secret Tracks," offers listeners a curated selection of revealing interview excerpts that could not fit into previous episodes of Slow Burn Season Two, focused on the Clinton impeachment. Host Leon Neyfakh guides listeners through bonus behind-the-scenes moments and stories from key figures caught up in the impeachment saga, examining how the event shaped public perception, legal precedent, and personal lives. The episode also makes connections to the present era, notably the #MeToo movement and Kavanaugh hearings, and reflects on how the cultural and political response to the Clinton affair still reverberates.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The "Prom Night" Operation and Ken Starr's Perspective

• Background:
  The independent counsel office’s January 16, 1998, confrontation with Monica Lewinsky was internally called "Prom Night."
• Ken Starr Interview:
  Starr describes the name as a product of "bantering and reflecting," not his personal creation. He casts the event as an invitation to Lewinsky to join their "truth seeking party," downplaying the operation's darker undertones.
  • Quote:

    "It has become, to my colleagues and comrades forever, known as by that name. But it could have been a very happy event. And it didn't turn out to be so happy, given the fact that she just said, no, I'm not going to make the deal, and the rest of the story had to unfold."
    — Ken Starr [00:31]

• Cultural Parallels:
  Neyfakh draws a line to the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, noting Kavanaugh's past work for Starr and the adolescent but sinister undertones of language like "Prom Night."
  • Quote:

    "A truth seeking party. That's what prom night meant. Seems like it probably meant something else."
    — Leon Neyfakh [01:20]

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2. Clinton v. Jones and Walter Dellinger’s Unfiltered Reflections

• Legal Position:
  Dellinger, who argued the government's case before the Supreme Court, recalls the night before the argument, when President Clinton personally called with amateur legal advice, underscoring both Clinton’s legal curiosity and the distractions Presidents face from personal litigation.
  • Quote:

    "My client is the United States of America... The President said, I found a case... it was something like a case from Oklahoma in 1912... But I did not think the Supreme Court was going to think it ought to be having to decide this case based on what some state court had decided..."
    — Walter Dellinger [05:44]

• Revealing Story:
  Dellinger wishes he could have told the Supreme Court how presidential attention is devoured by these distractions, humorously referencing his late-night call with Clinton as the kind of thing that proves the point.
  • Quote:

    "Do you know what the President, United States was doing at 1am this morning? I think it would have proven the case that for any President... it can be all consuming and distracting when you're sued personally."
    — Walter Dellinger [08:10]

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3. Dick Morris: Clinton’s Strategist on Power, Promiscuity, and Risk

• Political Strategy:
  Morris, a key Clinton advisor, recounts how Clinton ignored advice to focus on minor but believable achievements, instead stubbornly touting major successes that voters found unconvincing.
  • Quote:

    "Nobody will believe you when you say it. It'll be like ducks quacking. They won't hear it."
    — Dick Morris [09:01]

• Clinton’s Personality:
  Explains Clinton as a "classical narcissist" needing external validation, which Morris believes drove both his politics and personal behavior.
  • Quote:

    "He's like a headlight reflector on the highway. You shine your views, your emotions, he picks them up and reflects them back to you. But when the car passes, you look back and it's just a cold lump of metal... And so you look for it in a girl's eyes."
    — Dick Morris [13:00]

• Risk and Repetition:
  Morris asserts Clinton was able to take enormous risks (such as the Lewinsky affair during the Paula Jones lawsuit) because enablers—led by Hillary—ensured he never faced real consequences.
  • Quote:

    "Why did he risk Monica Lewinsky? Because he got away with Jennifer Flowers."
    — Dick Morris [14:13]

• Aftermath:
  Morris says the revelations were not personally shocking, attributing public support for Clinton to economic performance rather than morality.
  • Quote:

    "Nobody voted for Bill Clinton because he was moral. They voted for him to fix the economy, and he did."
    — Dick Morris [15:32]

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4. Dylan Teachout: Young Staffer’s Conflicted Pride and Shame

• Mixed Reactions:
  Teachout describes feeling pride for her work in the Office of Independent Counsel, but also shame and conflict after reading scathing critiques (e.g., Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker).
  • Quote:

    "Just a strong memory I have... the liberal public response, in a nutshell, was kind of embodied in that piece... it was, like, deeply problematic to publish for a lot of reasons."
    — Dylan Teachout [17:03]

• Impact of #MeToo:
  The movement led Teachout to reconsider her views, recognizing that detailed documentation—however uncomfortable—is sometimes necessary for women to be believed.
  • Quote:

    "When you don't back up some claims by women with a lot of details, then people really want to give the benefit of the doubt to the person who's being accused, who denies doing the thing. And so I think that's played out with Bill Cosby and others. It's like you have to just bury people in the details, in these really uncomfortable details..."
    — Dylan Teachout [18:45]

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5. Linda Tripp: The Price of Going Public

• Post-Scandal Fallout:
  Tripp describes the personal cost to her and her family after her role in the scandal became public, including intense public shaming and media vilification.
  • Quote:

    "Watching my family have to endure all of the hate and the venom and the constant scrutiny by the media. Just private life ceased to exist. That was very difficult."
    — Linda Tripp [20:57]

• Portrayal in the Media:
  Tripp discusses feeling villainized and her inability to fight the collective narrative established by the White House, media, and entertainment industry.
  • Quote:

    "Bear in mind that during that time, there was not a single entity that didn't support him... the entertainment industry, the media complex and the White House all said this was between a man and his wife. It's none of her business. She's the evil one. He's the victim of this evil one. And that was the end of it."
    — Linda Tripp [22:00]

• Motivation Clarified:
  Tripp insists her actions weren’t political or self-serving but driven by duty and concern for the broader implications of Clinton's behavior.
  • Quote:

    "What I did do was make a conscious choice to say, this is unacceptable... for anyone, let alone the leader of the free world in the Oval Office with what amounted to someone a little less than a full, fully capable of consent adult."
    — Linda Tripp [25:10]

• Reflections on #MeToo:
  Citing her granddaughters, Tripp connects her role to current cultural reckonings, wishing for greater accountability in the past.
  • Quote:

    "Had there been real accountability and censure for what he did... I think we'd be in a different place today. I think MeToo would have been history, and we would have been so much further along..."
    — Linda Tripp [27:19]

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Memorable Quotes & Notable Moments

• Ken Starr on "Prom Night":

  "Welcome to the truth seeking party. So we're trying to get to the bottom of this." [01:08]

• Walter Dellinger’s late-night advice from Clinton:

  "I'm talking to the President. He's been researching state court cases." [07:10]

• Dick Morris on Clinton’s risky behavior:

  "Why did he risk Monica Lewinsky? Because he got away with Jennifer Flowers." [14:13]

• Dylan Teachout on learning from #MeToo:

  "You have to just bury people in the details, in these really uncomfortable details that they don't want to know in order to have the women be believed." [18:45]

• Linda Tripp on public perception:

  "I tried to make people understand that I was just a civil servant doing my job in a set of circumstances that compelled me to come forward." [23:57]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:00] – Ken Starr contextualizes "Prom Night."
• [05:12] – Walter Dellinger recounts Clinton’s midnight phone call.
• [09:01] – Dick Morris discusses Clinton ignoring political advice.
• [13:00] – Morris details the psychology behind Clinton’s behavior.
• [16:28] – Dylan Teachout reflects on reactions to the Starr report.
• [18:45] – Teachout analyzes her experience through the lens of #MeToo.
• [20:57] – Linda Tripp discusses personal aftermath and media vilification.
• [25:10] – Tripp clarifies motivations and hopes for cultural change.

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Tone and Language

The episode is conversational, intimate, and occasionally confessional. Speakers frequently reflect on hindsight, emotions, and the pressures—personal, professional, and societal—surrounding them during the impeachment. Neyfakh maintains a journalist’s curiosity and empathy, guiding the narrative with insightful prompts.

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Summary

This bonus “Secret Tracks” episode intricately peels back the layers of the Clinton impeachment, exposing human vulnerabilities, unresolved tensions, and the enduring complexity of public scandal. Through interviews with Ken Starr, Walter Dellinger, Dick Morris, Dylan Teachout, and Linda Tripp, listeners receive nuanced insight into not only the historical event but its lingering relevance—particularly in conversations about power, justice, gender, and political media.

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Transcript

[Leon Neyfakh]

The prosecutors in Ken Starr's office had a code name for their planned confrontation with Monica Lewinsky at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. They called it Prom Night. As you may remember from episode one, this was the secret operation scheduled for January 16, 1998. The plan was to convince Lewinsky to wear wire in order to catch the President committing a crime. The prosecutors referred to it internally as Prom Night in the days leading up to it. I recently had the opportunity to ask Ken Starr in an interview what prom night meant. Here's what he said.

[Ken Starr]

I didn't fashion that. It just kind of emerged out of our process of bantering and reflecting on it. But it has become, to my colleagues and comrades forever, known as by that name. But it could have been a very happy event. And it didn't turn out to be so happy, given the fact that she just said, no, I'm not going to make the deal, and the rest of the story had to unfold.

[Leon Neyfakh]

I guess my curiosity was, who was the one who was going to prom? In the analogy or in the metaphor?

[Ken Starr]

Well, she was being invited to be a part of our community. So welcome to the truth seeking party. So we're trying to get to the bottom of this. These are very serious allegations that the President had lied under oath.

[Leon Neyfakh]

I was reminded of this explanation last week when Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was answering questions in a congressional hearing about the meaning of phrases like Renata alumni and devil's triangle. Devil's triangle? Drinking game.

[Walter Dellinger]

How's it played?

[Leon Neyfakh]

Three glasses in a triangle and. You ever played quarters?

[Walter Dellinger]

No.

[Leon Neyfakh]

Okay. It's a quarters game. As many listeners probably know, Kavanaugh worked for Starr in the independent counsel's office as a prosecutor. In fact, Kavanaugh himself alluded to this when he said in his opening statement last Thursday that Democrats were opposing his nomination as revenge for the Clintons. I'm pretty certain Prom night was not Kavanaugh's coinage. He actually wasn't working in the independent counsel's office during the lead up to the January 16th confrontation. But there is something very Brett Kavanaugh about prom night, as well as Starr's flat rejection of its adolescent but sinister connotations. A truth seeking party. That's what prom night meant. Seems like it probably meant something else. As you may have noticed, I'm breaking the first rule of Slow Burn here by talking about the present. The reason I'm allowing myself this indulgence is that this is not a regular episode of Slow Burn. It's an episode meant to entice you into joining me in the expanded Slow Burn universe where there are no rules and which you can access by joining Slate's membership program, Slate Plus. The clip you heard from Kent Starr a moment ago is from an interview I did with him in September. He came to the Slate studios to promote his new memoir, Contempt. We talked for a full hour and we covered a lot of ground. And then I proceeded to use less than one minute of the interview on Slow Burn. The whole rest of the Buffalo was just left totally untouched. What if there was a way for the Slow Burn team to share stuff that, for one reason or another, we couldn't fit into any of the regular episodes? How much deeper could we go into the story of the Clinton impeachment if we had the ability to put up bonus material that only Slate plus members could hear? And what if we could make some money on it? This is Slow Burn. I'm your host Leon Naifak, and this is Secret Tracks, a special episode in which you'll hear a series of brief excerpts from interviews that we've released exclusively through Slate Plus. One thing we've learned from making Slow Burn Season two is that the Clinton saga is very rich. It's a story that rewards sustained attention and a willingness to duck into side streets. And that's what we do on Slate Plus. When I say we, I'm talking about myself and Mary Wilson, a Hall of Fame Slate producer who co hosts Slow Burn with me every week. We start out by Talking for about 10 minutes about behind the scenes stuff, how we worked around the fact that we didn't get to interview Monica Lewinsky, for example, what it was like to meet Linda Tripp. Mary and I also talk about details that were left out of the show, like the subplot of the Travelgate scandal involving Linda Bloodworth Thomason, the creator of Designing Women and the author of a recent viral column about Les Moonves. The main event on every episode of Slow Burn is the interview. If you do the Math, we've released seven episodes of Slow Burn Season 2 so far. We've got one more next week, and for every one of those episodes, we have also given Slate plus members a standalone interview with someone relevant to that specific part of the story. So, for instance, our long Ken Starr interview that appeared as a supplement to episode six. After episode three, we released an interview with Walter Dellinger, the lawyer who argued on the Clinton administration's behalf in front of the Supreme Court in Clinton v. Jones. We didn't get to spend much time on Clinton v. Jones in episode three, but you may remember that the administration's position was that if a president gets sued in civil court, he should be allowed to put a hold on it until after he's out of office. In our interview, Walter Dellinger explained how he felt about this argument and what happened the night before he made it.

[Walter Dellinger]

There's one thing that I would like to have been able to tell the court, and that's what happened the night before the argument. So I was driving home from the Justice Department after my last night of preparation. It must have been near midnight. I guess that would have been Sunday night, January 12, 1997. And my beeper goes off and it says, urgent, urgent, urgent. Quadruple exclamation points.

[Leon Neyfakh]

This is the night before you were supposed to.

[Walter Dellinger]

The night before the argument. And so I pulled the car over, I called in, they said, the President has to speak to you immediately. I said, I'm 100 yards from my house. Let me make this call back on a landline. So I went into the house, I called back, they put me through to the President, and he said, and that memorable twine, Walter, how you feeling about the argument? I said, I said, Mr. I said, Mr. President, first of all, you need to understand I am not your lawyer and you're not my client. Bob Bennett is your lawyer. My client is the United States of America. So. So you and I do not have a lawyer client privilege. And my arguments have to be arguments in the interest of the United States. If there's any divergence. I got that. I got that. The President said, I found a case, the President tells me, and it was something like a case from Oklahoma in 1912 or a case from Missouri in 1920. I don't.

[Leon Neyfakh]

Meaning he found a case.

[Walter Dellinger]

I remember that he found a case.

[Leon Neyfakh]

That he thought would help you, that.

[Walter Dellinger]

He thought would help the argument. Right. And he said it was a lawsuit against the governor, and the court had held that the lawsuit should be postponed until the governor was no longer in office. So he gave me the site, and I said, well, I'm writing it down, I'm writing it down. But. But I did not think the Supreme Court was going to think it ought to be having to decide this case based on what some state court had decided at the turn of the century about a governor.

[Leon Neyfakh]

Right. You weren't impressed. You thought, you thought.

[Walter Dellinger]

I didn't think that was. I mean, and the President was actually, as a. President Clinton had a great legal mind, but this, this was as a matter of Supreme Court practice was not going to be impressive on the Court?

[Leon Neyfakh]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly Leon Neyfakh or another Slate interviewer)]

Did you tell him that you didn't think this was going to help that much?

[Walter Dellinger]

No, no, no. I didn't want to get into an argument. It was after midnight. In fact, my wife Ann called down from upstairs and she says, walter, what are you doing? You've got to come to bed. You've got an argument in the morning. And I cupped my hand over the phone. I said, I'm talking to the President. He's. He's been researching state court cases. At any event, the next morning, I'm in the argument and. And Justice Stevens is pressing me on whether this would really require much of a President's time and attention to have litigation. Justice Stevens says, isn't it the case that his lawyers will handle anything and it's unlikely that this would occupy any of the President's time.

[Leon Neyfakh]

Right.

[Walter Dellinger]

And of course, I was so tempted to say if I could step out a role. Justice Stevens, I need to tell you that we believe that East Timor. I have to use hypotheticals here, not the real cases. But, you know, Justice, East Timor is developing nuclear weapons and we're trying to decide whether, you know, to launch a military attack to take out their weapons system. And do you know what the President, United States was doing at 1am this morning? I think it would have proven the case that for any President, not just Bill Clinton, for any president, it can be all consuming and distracting when you're sued personally.

[Leon Neyfakh]

That was Walter Dellinger. The next clip I want to play for you is from my interview with cutthroat Clinton adviser Dick Morris. Morris appeared in episode four. Clinton brought him in as a shadow guru after the Democrats got clobbered in.

[Dick Morris]

The 94 midterms in October of 94, right before the disaster in November when they lost both houses of Congress. I did a very extensive survey for him. I found that when you cited the major achievements of his administration, lowering the unemployment rate, cutting the deficit, repaying a portion of the national debt, lowering interest rates, nobody believed that he was responsible for that and it wouldn't help him. But when you looked at his more minor achievements, appointing pro choice judges to the court, getting family leave passed, people loved that. So in a phone conversation in the middle of October with Bill and Hillary, I told them that. And Bill ranted and raved, but I did cut the deficit. I did cut the unemployment rate. I did create 4,000 jobs. I'm not going to hide that. And I said, nobody will believe you when you say it. It'll be like ducks quacking. They won't hear it talk about instead the accomplishments, the smaller accomplishments that you've had that people will believe. And then Hillary said to him, bill, don't try to get elected for the right reasons, just try to get elected. And he wouldn't do it. He insisted on that stuff, and it had no effect. Nobody would listen to him. And then two days before the election, he called and said, what do you think? I said, you lose the Senate and the House. And he said, the Senate, maybe, but definitely not the House. And then the day after he lost the House, he brought me in.

[Interviewer (possibly Leon Neyfakh or another Slate interviewer)]

What do you think he needed you for? That you couldn't get from the people who were working for him already at.

[Dick Morris]

The time Congress shifted to the Republicans, and he had no idea how to govern with the Republican Congress. Establishing his relevancy was terribly important, obviously.

[Interviewer (possibly Leon Neyfakh or another Slate interviewer)]

But how can the President be irrelevant? What would that mean?

[Dick Morris]

Well, because he couldn't get anything passed. He couldn't get anything done, much as Obama had no idea how to govern with the Republican Congress.

[Interviewer (possibly Leon Neyfakh or another Slate interviewer)]

Did you consider him a close friend?

[Dick Morris]

No. He kept a rather clear line between personal friends and the hired help.

[Interviewer (possibly Leon Neyfakh or another Slate interviewer)]

Did you like him?

[Dick Morris]

Well, I certainly admired him, and I sometimes liked him. I sometimes didn't. Bill Clinton is a very, very complex person, and it's very hard to have a unitary opinion of liking or not liking him. Yeah, it's easy to admire him, which I do.

[Interviewer (possibly Leon Neyfakh or another Slate interviewer)]

There's a scene in Peter Baker's book where Clinton is addressing his Cabinet after his grand jury testimony and after his speech. And basically he's apologizing for misleading them, for asking them to lie on his behalf without knowing it. And he makes a comment there. He says, I've been waking up angry for the last four and a half years because of this Whitewater thing. And the implication was that he did this, that this happened because of the stress of having to fight off all these outside forces.

[Dick Morris]

No, I don't think that. First of all, when people asked me, how do I feel after I left him, how do I feel about his misleading the entire administration? I said, if they were dumb enough to believe him, they're entitled to what they got. But I do not believe without evidence to support it, without evidence to support my view. My view is that he did not increase his sexual activity during his time with Monica. He got discovered. The others never did.

[Interviewer (possibly Leon Neyfakh or another Slate interviewer)]

I see. You're saying there were others before that didn't get discovered.

[Dick Morris]

I can name about five, but won't.

[Interviewer (possibly Leon Neyfakh or another Slate interviewer)]

Can you tell me what. What you felt after.

[Dick Morris]

Let me explain the reason for Bill's promiscuity. I concluded that he is a classical narcissist. And a narcissist is somebody without an internal sense of self worth. Their sense of who they are comes from the reflection. Not in a lake like Narcissus, but in other people's eyes. So he chose politics as an occupation where that feedback is constantly available, and the feedback was essential to his being. People always say that Bill Clinton is empathetic. He's not. He's like a headlight reflector on the highway. You shine your views, your emotions, he picks them up and reflects them back to you. But when the car passes, you look back and it's just a cold lump of metal. And I believe that at some point, even as president, the crowds go home and the press goes away and the cleat lights are turned off, and you're still left with that insatiable need for a reflection of yourself. So you look for it in a girl's eyes. And that. That essentially was why he was promiscuous. I don't think it was fundamentally sexual. I think it was psychological at a very core level.

[Interviewer (possibly Leon Neyfakh or another Slate interviewer)]

That explains, like, maybe why he wanted it. But what do you think explains his willingness to take the incredible risks that he must have realized?

[Dick Morris]

He's surrounded by enablers, led by Hillary, who have made it possible for him to do that. Every time he's done it, he's gotten away with it. Why did he risk Monica Lewinsky? Because he got away with Jennifer Flowers.

[Interviewer (possibly Leon Neyfakh or another Slate interviewer)]

But just, I mean, to be under. To be beating away a lawsuit that is about sexual harassment involving a subordinate. And then, you know, in the exact same part of this timeline.

[Dick Morris]

Yep.

[Interviewer (possibly Leon Neyfakh or another Slate interviewer)]

He's starting a relationship with a new person.

[Dick Morris]

What you need, you need.

[Interviewer (possibly Leon Neyfakh or another Slate interviewer)]

Psychologically, it's very hard to understand. I think it's just because you have to assume that he cared what happened to his presidency.

[Dick Morris]

Once on President's Day in 95, he came into the meeting with me and he said, I just met with the reporters, and they asked me on President's Day, what would you like to ask your idol, John Kennedy, if you could ask him one question? And then he told me we were alone. I wanted to ask, how did you do it? Was there like a closet or a staircase I don't know about? How did you get away with it? And he said, but I couldn't say that. So I said, what's it like to be president at a time when people are not alienated from their government?

[Interviewer (possibly Leon Neyfakh or another Slate interviewer)]

Can you tell me how you felt once everything came out and you found out, for example, that you were on the phone with him during one of these assignations.

[Dick Morris]

I wasn't judgmental on him. Nothing that I didn't know. I didn't know about Monica. But, you know, I never felt he was a beacon of personal morality. Nobody voted for Bill Clinton because he was moral. They voted for him to fix the economy, and he did. My actual reaction, my major reaction at the time was, oh, shit, there are a lot of great things we were planning to do in a second term we won't be able to do now.

[Leon Neyfakh]

That, again, was Dick Morris. Next up, we have an interview with Dylan Teachout, who served as an intern in the Office of the Independent Counsel during the summer of 1998. The interview was conducted by slow burn researcher Madeline Kaplan. Here she is talking to Teachout about what it was like to come home after the publication of the Star Report, which she helped copy edit. Did you get any responses, like, directed.

[Dylan Teachout]

At you personally from people you knew or people who knew you that you'd.

[Leon Neyfakh]

Worked on the report?

[Dylan Teachout]

I remember I had a friend in college who was from a Christian family in the south, and I remember he said to me that his mom was just really grateful for the work of Ken Starr and just really appreciative of any support I had given that effort. And that was kind of funny to me because they were just such a Christian family. Yeah, yeah.

[Leon Neyfakh]

Did you get any responses from more liberal people that you recall?

[Dylan Teachout]

One thing that happened to me is that I remember the report came out. I went back to college and a couple weeks later, and I had a sense of, I guess, pride about it or a sense of, like, I did really respect the people I was working with in that office for the most part, and understood to some extent the logic of what they were trying to do and kind of sympathy. And so a loyalty to it. Just a loyalty related to the amount of time or whatever effort in. And I just remember reading this piece by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker a couple weeks after it came out that was just such a takedown of it and feeling like his points were all valid and just feeling like really almost like ashamed or taken down or kind of pleasantly confused or something. Just like that. Those two things kind of seemed like they could both exist. Like that the people in the office had been doing what they thought was important in good work, or many of them were, and then also that it was, like, deeply problematic to publish for a lot of reasons. So that was like, just a strong memory I have of just that Particular piece was like this. The liberal public response, in a nutshell was kind of embodied in that piece. And so I just. That was a moment that stuck with me around, like, kind of a deepening sense of shame about being involved in it.

[Leon Neyfakh]

Do you think about it differently now, do you think, than you did then?

[Dylan Teachout]

Yeah. So the MeToo movement and the kind of exposure over the last couple years of men in powerful positions who have taken advantage of women had me revisit my involvement and that kind of embarrassment about it. And it's complicated. Like, to me, part of the critique of the Starr report somehow included a minimizing of Bill Clinton's kind of sexual predation or sexually predatory behavior. And so thinking about the Starr report in the context of the MeToo movement made me feel like Bill Clinton's kind of predatory behavior is really important. And that shouldn't necessarily be minimized. And this, and especially the stories of the women who talked about it shouldn't be minimized. By saying that, I don't mean that I think the Star Report was justified. It just makes my personal role in it more complicated. I shared with you the other day that reading about Eric Schneiderman. I had that what felt like such a parallel experience where I shouldn't be reading these really intimate details of someone's relationship. Like, this feels really uncomfortable and awkward and yet also important if people are going to be believed. I think that's a little bit about what the Office of the Independent Counsel is trying to say is when you don't back up some claims by women with a lot of details, then people really want to give the benefit of the doubt to the person who's being accused, who denies doing the thing. And so I think that's played out with Bill Cosby and others. It's like you have to just bury people in the details, in these really uncomfortable details that they don't want to know in order to have the women be believed.

[Leon Neyfakh]

All right, that was Madelyn Kaplan with Dylan Teachout. Last but not least, we have a clip from my interview with Linda Tripp, whom I spoke to for about three and a half hours on her horse farm a few months back. Here is Tripp talking about her portrayal in the media and after the Clinton Lewinsky scandal broke. I want to make sure I ask you about what it was like after the story broke for you.

[Linda Tripp]

Ugh. Do we have to go there so bad? It's just so bad watching my family have to endure all of the hate and the venom and the constant scrutiny by the media. Just private Life ceased to exist. That was very difficult. And they were sort of tarred with the same brush. They were my children, so they were the spawn of Satan. I pride myself on being pretty strong. Where I'm weakest is where my kids are vulnerable. And the notion that they were seeing their mother on Saturday Night Live being portrayed that way was not the greatest feeling.

[Leon Neyfakh]

Do you remember ever feeling like self doubt to the point where you watch these depictions of yourself and listen to people call you a villain and all this kind of thing? And actually, did any part of you ever come to believe it and see yourself that way?

[Linda Tripp]

Well, I was so consumed with guilt for those three months of whatever you want to call it, the three months, October, November, December, that it resonated with me because I felt pretty much villainous. Ish. I certainly looked the part. And let's just say that I understood why. It was very easy for the Clintons and those in the media who chose to portray me as a villain to do so. Bear in mind that during that time, there was not a single entity that didn't support him. The feminists, the entertainment industry, the media complex and the White House all said this was between a man and his wife. It's none of her business. She's the evil one. He's the victim of this evil one. And that was the end of it. When it became an affair, when it became a consenting affair between two adults, then I became a prude, a prig, a betrayer.

[Leon Neyfakh]

People didn't see it as an act of abuse.

[Linda Tripp]

No. They saw it as how it was presented by the media, the entertainment industry, and by the Clintons. And so you don't fight that. How does someone remember the White House has unlimited resources when it comes to pr? I mean, at the drop of a hat, they can hold a press conference. They have folks who will go out on air 247 and now we are in a 24. 7 news cycle and speak on their behalf. I had no one. I wasn't about to go out and do it.

[Leon Neyfakh]

You did speak once, publicly at least.

[Linda Tripp]

Right on the courthouse steps.

[Walter Dellinger]

Yes.

[Leon Neyfakh]

And you, you said something quite interesting.

[Linda Tripp]

I am you. Yeah.

[Leon Neyfakh]

You said, I am you.

[Linda Tripp]

The worst statement I've ever made. I tried to make people understand that I was just a civil servant doing my job in a set of circumstances that compelled me to come forward, that I felt it was my duty to come forward, that I was no different than anyone else. I didn't have an agenda other than the exposure of this behavior. It had nothing to do with Politics. Had he been Republican, there would have been no difference here for you, at all.

[Leon Neyfakh]

For you, you mean?

[Linda Tripp]

Well, yeah, but I mean.

[Leon Neyfakh]

Meaning, your. Your antipathy towards him had nothing to do with his policies, but rather what.

[Linda Tripp]

He was doing, his behavior. Why can't people separate behavior from political leanings? When you color the lens through only a political prism, that's what you're left with. So the people who supported me hated him. And I believe that hasn't changed to this day.

[Leon Neyfakh]

You want people to believe that you didn't do this out of a desire for financial gain or notoriety, that you wanted, that you did this out of a sincere.

[Linda Tripp]

But I don't want to pose it as a negative. What I didn't do, right. I'd like them to see what I did do. And what I did do was make a conscious choice to say, this is unacceptable, completely unacceptable for anyone, let alone the leader of the free world in the Oval Office with what amounted to someone a little less than a full, fully capable of consent adult. I have always said, and the reason I keep a very low profile, is I don't want to make a career out of defending myself. If you don't understand it, there's nothing I can do about it. But you'll notice I have not written a book. I have not gone on the speaking circuit. All these things were available. I have instead retreated into private life with family, which is the only thing that counts anyway. And, my dearest friends, do you still.

[Leon Neyfakh]

Think about it every day?

[Linda Tripp]

No. Oh, God, no. It doesn't define my life. It was a negative chapter. But when you're confronted with news, that brings it back, the MeToo movement has awakened a lot of dormant feelings. And remember, I have five grandchildren, rather five granddaughters. I have seven grandchildren. And what I felt then so strongly, I didn't think I could feel more strongly about anything. Having a daughter close in age To Monica, however, 20 years later, I feel even more so as I watch these five little girls growing up. And the fact that we didn't take a stand against that behavior 20 years ago frightens me for the future. I'm heartened by the MeToo movement. I just hope it can catch up with itself. By the time my little granddaughters are in the workplace as young women, had there been real accountability and censure for what he did, and I don't mean impeachment necessarily, I think we'd be in a different place today. I think MeToo would have been history, and we would have been so much further along with ensuring that none of this happened in the workplace, making it the exception rather than the rule. As I've said before, very little has changed in that time, but I think we are finally on the right track.

[Leon Neyfakh]

All right, that is our Slow Burn plus clip show Secret Tracks. You can sign up for [e-mail]/ and hear the full version of all these interviews, plus the Ken Starr one, and a bunch more. If you like Slow Burn, you'll like Slow Burn Plus. It's $35 for the first year, and in addition to all the stuff I've just played for you, it also gives you access to ad free versions of all Slate podcasts. And on top of all that, it helps make shows like Slow Burn possible. Give it a whirl slate.com/plus in any event, see you back here next week for the finale of Slow Burn Season two.

[Dick Morris]

It.