WASHINGTON -- Months before she began secretly taping Monica Lewinsky, Linda R. Tripp set out to expose President Clinton's affair with the former White House intern, believing the president's actions were an "unconscionable" abuse of power, according to testimony by Tripp made public yesterday.

Tripp's justification for her betraying her former friend -- one of the enduring mysteries of the Lewinsky matter -- is one of many new details to emerge from 4,610 additional pages of documents sent to Congress by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

Tripp acknowledged to the federal grand jury that she knowingly broke Maryland's law against taping phone calls last winter. She explained that she turned her tape recorder back on, after learning that it was illegal to make surreptitious recordings, because "I needed to protect myself."

In that emotional Dec. 22 phone conversation, Tripp told her distraught young co-worker that she did not wish to lie if she was ever questioned about her knowledge of Lewinsky's affair with the president.

"I feel like I'm sticking a knife in your back, and I know that at the end of this, if I have to go forward, you will never speak to me again and I will lose a dear friend," Tripp said prophetically.

Tripp's admission cannot be used against her by Maryland prosecutors because her testimony was given under Starr's grant of immunity, said her lawyer Anthony Zaccagnini.

If Tripp is charged with breaking the wire-tapping law in Maryland, Zaccagnini said, she could argue that her action was justified because she was being solicited to commit perjury and participate in a plan to obstruct justice.

The three fat volumes put on sale by the Government Printing Office ($92 a set) include roughly 1,000 pages of tape transcripts, grand jury testimony and other information provided by Tripp. They represent the last release of material before an expected vote next week to open a formal impeachment inquiry of Clinton by the House Judiciary Committee.

Among the highlights is grand jury testimony by Clinton's secretary, Betty Currie, and his friend Vernon Jordan, which provide fresh glimpses into the anguished president's actions as news of his relationship with Lewinsky began to break in January.

Another of those who spoke with the president in those hours, political consultant Dick Morris, conducted a private poll for Clinton that compared public reaction to the president's illicit sexual activity with its view of President John F. Kennedy's adultery.

Word from the White House

Yesterday Clinton, on a campaign swing through Ohio and Pennsylvania in advance of next month's congressional elections, had no immediate comment on the latest information. But a spokesman took the occasion to resume the White House attack on Starr.

Gregory Craig, a White House special counsel, claimed that Starr's office, "in its zeal to prop up its allegations against the president," had "intentionally omitted direct exculpatory testimony, paraphrased unambiguous statements to obscure their plain meaning and systematically resolved conflicting testimony in its favor."

Starr responded with a prepared statement that called the White House statement "disingenuous" and insisted his report did not omit exculpatory information.

"Significantly, the White House today did not question Ms. Lewinsky's credibility or the factual underpinnings of nine of the 11 possible grounds for impeachment, including the president's perjury in his civil deposition and before the grand jury," Starr said.

Lawmakers play down data

The response from several House Judiciary Committee members sought to play down the importance of the latest release.

"I don't think it contributes much," said Rep. Charles T. Canady, a Florida Republican. "The fundamental facts were set forth in the independent counsel report."

Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, a committee Democrat, said: "Nothing released today has any relevance whatsoever of whether our constitutional system has been undercut" by Clinton's actions.

But Republican Rep. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas pointed to Currie's testimony about retrieving gifts that Clinton gave Lewinsky, which had been subpoenaed in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual-misconduct suit.

"Would a personal assistant to the president of the United States put gifts under subpoena under a bed on her own?" asked Hutchinson, a former prosecutor.

Still to be made public are dozens of hours of audiotapes of Tripp's phone conversations with Lewinsky, secretly recorded on device in Tripp's Howard County home. But transcripts of 29 tapes were published yesterday.

In them Tripp, described in one FBI interview as "sort of a surrogate mother to Lewinsky," emerges as a manipulator, coolly interspersing questions about Clinton with social chitchat and compliments about her young friend's appearance.

Lewinsky would often call Tripp immediately after talking to Clinton so the two could dissect what he had said. Tripp probed for details and edited Lewinsky's letters to Clinton over the phone, even as she assured Lewinsky that leaving the relationship was the best thing for her.

"It's because -- it's because I care about you, and I -- you know, in my heart of hearts, I do wish things could work out with -- between the two of you," Tripp told Lewinsky on Nov. 20.

"And in my other side of my heart, I'm thinking, 'Run as fast as you can, Monica.' "

At their "wired lunch" at a suburban Virginia hotel, recorded with the assistance of Starr's office, Tripp tries to get Lewinsky to talk about lying under oath. Tripp expresses fear for her future if she ++ lies under oath.

For her part, Lewinsky seems to anticipate Clinton's hairsplitting testimony when he denies under oath that he had a sexual relationship with her.

"I don't think the way that man thinks, I don't think he thinks of lying under oath," Lewinsky says. "In a meshuga, strange way -- OK? He's probably not even thinking in terms of lying under oath."

'It's for the country'

Lewinsky defends the president, acknowledging that it may sound a little "hokey," but: "To me, a little bit of -- it's for the country. Every president, every president we have ever had has always had lovers because the pressure of the job is too much. Too much."

In her eight days of grand jury testimony last summer, Tripp detailed her efforts, beginning in the spring of 1997, to expose Clinton's affair.

Meeting with Michael Isikoff, a Newsweek reporter, at a bar near the White House that April, Tripp "encouraged" the reporter to "do investigative reporting on an intern at the White House," she said.

Tripp's ire was heightened over the summer when Robert S. Bennett, Clinton's lawyer, told Newsweek that Tripp was "not to be believed" in an article about Kathleen Willey, who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with the president.

What's more, Tripp testified that she was "scared" when Bruce Lindsey, the deputy White House counsel, repeatedly told her in a phone conversation that the president denied having sexually harassed Willey.

By late September, Tripp said, her outrage had reached the point at which she contacted Lucianne Goldberg, a New York book agent with whom she had once discussed a book proposal, to figure out a way to publicize Clinton's misdeeds.

"I told her about this young girl who had been confiding in me for going on a year at that point and that -- you know, the frightening elements of it and that I had finally had it," Tripp testified.

"That I finally wanted this to come out, that I was outraged at the president's attorney and that I felt that this sort of behavior and the way they treated truth tellers needed to be exposed."

Tripp said she "wanted it out," but "selfishly" did not want her name associated with it.

'Gleefully testify'

Tripp said she planned to "gleefully testify truthfully" in the Jones case, if she was asked whether she knew of any other women with whom the president had had affairs.

"And I say gleefully," she told the grand jury, "because it had taken me a very long time to make that decision in my mind, that I was ready to ensure that to the extent possible I would help the facts get out."

Tripp said Goldberg advised her to tape-record her conversations with Lewinsky so she would have proof she was telling the truth: "Ultimately, she convinced me that I needed this insurance policy, and I believed her and I still believe her."

Tripp testified that she began keeping a written record of Lewinsky's encounters with Clinton in May or June of 1997, at Lewinsky's insistence. Tripp said Lewinsky became exasperated that Tripp couldn't remember the dates and details of the Lewinsky/Clinton relationship and urged her to keep notes.

In handwritten, diary-type notes from Jan. 16, the Friday she called Lewinsky to Pentagon City mall where Starr's agents confronted her, Tripp wrote about the semen-stained dress.

She says she discused with Goldberg and Tripp's then-lawyer Kirby Behre "taking the dress or swabbing and preserving the sperm on dress. Kirby went ballistic and claimed I would look like a rat. Advised me not to do that. I did not, but wish I had. A nut? A vindictive nut. My integrity is on the line and I have no proof."

In addition to Tripp's grand jury appearances, yesterday's release included testimony by Secret Service agents, senior White House aides, Clinton associates, several of Lewinsky's friends and her mother, Marcia Lewis, and many others.

Currie, the president's secretary, whom Tripp described as an "enabler" in the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship, recalled Clinton's midnight phone call to her home Jan. 19.

Clinton asked whether she had read the "Drudge Report" on the Internet, which was disclosing details about Lewinsky and Tripp. "He said it wasn't good," Currie testified.

She said the president asked her to get in touch with Lewinsky. But when Currie did, Lewinsky hung up on her.

"She probably was told that by her lawyers, not to talk to you," Clinton explained, according to Currie's Jan. 27 testimony.

Call from the president

Jordan, who had helped obtain a lawyer for Lewinsky and arrange a job for her in New York, testified that he was in his $400-a-night suite at the St. Regis Hotel hotel in New York when Clinton phoned at about 6: 30 a.m.

The date was Jan. 21, and Clinton was calling to say that the Washington Post had broken the news of Starr's investigation of the Lewinsky matter.

According to Jordan's testimony, Clinton told Jordan: "It's not true."

Clinton also told him that Hillary Rodham Clinton was still asleep and was unaware of the story.

"And I said, 'Take it easy,' you know, 'We'll get through it,' " Jordan testified. He said he told Clinton not to worry. "Tell the first lady. Deal with it later in the morning."

Later that day, Mrs. Clinton would tell White House aide Sidney Blumenthal that she thought her husband's relationship with Lewinsky was merely part of "his ministry of a troubled person."

"She said that the president ministers to troubled people all the time," Blumenthal testified. "She said to me on that occasion, 'If you knew his mother, you would understand it.' "

Meanwhile, Clinton spoke with longtime political adviser Dick Morris, who told the president he would conduct a quick poll to test public opinion on the matter.

Among the questions that, Morris testified, were asked of about 500 Americans that day: "Do you think Bill Clinton is a sex addict?" "Do you think President Clinton's adultery is more extensive than President Kennedy's?"

Morris testified that he spoke with Clinton shortly before midnight on the 21st and advised the president that he could not simply tell the public what he had done and beg for forgiveness.

"You can't tell them about it. They'll kill you," Morris said he told Clinton. The president "said nothing. He didn't respond."

Former White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta testified to the discomfiture that Lewinsky caused among staff members, especially in light of Clinton's past infidelities.

"Obviously, in going into this position as chief of staff, I was aware of the -- of the rumors and the allegations that involved the president -- beginning as governor -- with Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones, and, you know, just the general rumors that surrounded the president," Panetta told the grand jury.

"As a result, we took particular precautions to ensure that there was never the appearance of the president being with somebody, so that it could be misinterpreted by the public or anybody else. So that, on trips, for example, if an acquaintance wanted to drive with the president, we would say, 'No.' If there was a female acquaintance who wanted to greet the president we would say, 'No.' "

Added Panetta, "I mean, the president was always very cooperative. If we said, 'Look, you know we don't want you You know what the problem is, it creates the wrong appearance and it shouldn't happen.' "

"And he would say, 'Fine.' "

Pub Date: 10/03/98