Linda Tripp - Arrest Record Controversy

Arrest Record Controversy

On March 14, 1998, it was revealed that Linda Tripp was arrested when she was 19 years old in Greenwood Lake, New York, in 1969 on charges of stealing $263 in cash as well as a wristwatch worth about $600. The charges were eventually dismissed before coming to trial. Although never convicted in 1969, years later Tripp answered “no” to the question “Have you ever been either charged or arrested for a crime?” on the Department of Defense security clearance form.

Shortly before Tripp was scheduled to appear before the grand jury in the Lewinsky investigation, in March 1998, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Kenneth Bacon, and his deputy, Clifford Bernath, leaked to reporter Jane Mayer of The New Yorker magazine, Tripp’s answer to the arrest question on her security clearance form. Following the Bacon–Bernath leak to Mayer, the Department of Defense leaked to the news media other confidential information from Tripp’s personnel and security files. The Department of Defense Inspector General investigated the leak of Tripp’s security clearance form information and found that Bacon and Bernath violated the Privacy Act, and the DoD IG concluded that Bacon and Bernath should have known that the release of information from Tripp’s security file was improper.