To enter history, it seems, one must first get thoroughly tangled up in it. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton discovered the truth of that observation firsthand when he became entangled in a story journalists dubbed “Monicagate,” in the tradition of presidential scandals ending in “-gate.” The entire world watched the drama unfold with bated breath. Not merely because whoever occupies the White House can influence exchange rates and the price of gasoline at the nearest filling station. People were already used to worrying about that. No: it was the plot itself, with its distinctly risqué romantic undertones, that held everyone spellbound.
Love Knows No Official Rank
The White House intern who would become famous around the world was born in San Francisco on July 23, 1973, into a Jewish family. Her family history reflected the experiences of European Jewish immigrants: her paternal grandfather had fled Nazi Germany, and her maternal grandparents had roots in Eastern Europe. Her father was a physician and her mother a writer. The family was financially comfortable, and Monica grew up in the Los Angeles area, including Beverly Hills.
With help from a family connection, Lewinsky obtained an unpaid summer internship at the White House in July 1995, after graduating from Lewis & Clark College. Cheerful and sociable, she found her place among the staff, moved into a paid position, and attracted the attention of the president himself. And not merely his attention. In November 1995, an intimate relationship began between them. The president, apparently abandoning caution, engaged in intimate encounters in areas near the Oval Office. Remarkable recklessness for a man in his position! Or perhaps the risk of discovery made the attraction harder to resist?
But secrets are rarely kept forever in a workplace as closely watched as the White House. Senior staff noticed Lewinsky's frequent visits to the president's vicinity. In April 1996, she was transferred to a job at the Pentagon. Leon Panetta had been White House chief of staff during her internship, but the transfer was handled by other senior officials. The move reduced her opportunities to see Clinton privately, although records show that the two continued their encounters intermittently into March 1997.
The Friend
Like any woman in love who has been separated from her beloved, Monica suffered. And like so many people in such circumstances, she looked for consolation on the shoulder of a close friend. Unfortunately, that friend—and one is tempted to add “like every best friend,” though we should resist such a generalization for the sake of preserving the institution of friendship itself—did not justify her trust. Linda Tripp, Lewinsky's colleague at the Pentagon, secretly recorded their telephone conversations. The recordings ultimately reached the investigators examining Clinton's conduct.
Who was the devil whispering in Tripp's ear, urging her to press the record button and transform Monica's private confidences into public property? This particular devil appeared in female form, under the name Lucianne Goldberg. A literary agent with extensive press connections, Goldberg encouraged Tripp to record the conversations. Goldberg was also a committed political opponent of the Clintons. The suggestion that a lucrative publishing opportunity may have played a role was widely discussed, though there is no reliable basis for treating the promised payment described in some retellings as a proven transaction.
As for Goldberg herself, her motives seem to have involved far more than money. Political hostility and a taste for exposing and punishing public figures were part of her own public persona.
The Friend of the President
And yet, when the scandal surfaced in January 1998, few could have imagined that it would grow to such proportions. On January 17, the Drudge Report revealed that Newsweek was holding a story about the president and a former White House intern. The story rapidly escaped the confines of Washington gossip and became an international spectacle.
Then another character entered the drama: Rick Kaplan, a longtime friend of Clinton who was president of CNN. American television networks faced a practical difficulty. They possessed more than enough footage of Clinton, but relatively little video of Lewinsky. A memorable sequence soon became a fixture on television: Lewinsky greeting and embracing Clinton in a crowd at a political event in 1996. The image, taken by photographer Dirck Halstead, became one of the defining visual records of the scandal. It was not, however, evidence that a public embrace was itself a romantic encounter. Photographs have a way of acquiring meanings of their own when a scandal needs a visual symbol.
It is tempting to imagine Kaplan triumphantly finding the missing footage in a network archive and congratulating himself on beating the competition. But the familiar story that he personally discovered it and earned a substantial bonus for broadcasting it is not established by the sources reviewed. What is clear is that the embrace was replayed, published, and endlessly scrutinized while Lewinsky herself was subjected to intense public attention.
Another participant in the scandal, independent counsel Kenneth Starr, became famous for the extraordinary detail with which he investigated the private lives of the president and Lewinsky. His inquiry was not formally an investigation into romance itself: it concerned possible perjury, obstruction of justice, and related allegations arising from the Paula Jones lawsuit. Yet the published Starr Report gave the public a minute account of the couple's sexual encounters, turning legal investigation into a spectacle with its own unmistakable erotic dimension.
Before and After
Under tremendous pressure from investigators, Lewinsky eventually cooperated under an immunity agreement. Among the evidence she provided was the famous blue dress bearing biological evidence connected to Clinton—an item she had kept from the period of their relationship. By August 1998 the president acknowledged that he had engaged in an inappropriate intimate relationship with her. The House of Representatives impeached Clinton in December 1998 on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice; the Senate acquitted him in February 1999.
For years, journalists continued to pursue Monica. As a worldwide celebrity, she had opportunities to earn money from her name, and she tried a range of ventures, from television appearances and interviews to designing handbags. But being famous is not the same as being free. The scandal had given her a public identity she had never sought, and escaping it proved far more difficult than acquiring it.
Eventually Lewinsky withdrew from public attention and moved to London, where she earned a master's degree in social psychology at the London School of Economics. She returned to public life in 2014 with an essay in Vanity Fair and a speech about the experience of public humiliation. Her widely watched TED talk, “The Price of Shame,” followed in March 2015. Its appeal was direct: stop turning the humiliation of other human beings into a spectator sport.
Watch Monica Lewinsky's TED talk, “The Price of Shame.”
So Who Laughs Last?
It is not clear whether Tripp ever received the financial reward that critics alleged she expected. Like her biblical counterpart in this columnist's deliberately provocative comparison, she found herself caught in the consequences of betrayal. Tripp's own conduct became the subject of investigation and intense public attack. She lost her Pentagon position in 2001 and subsequently pursued a life outside the political spotlight. Her role remains disputed: supporters described her as a whistleblower who exposed presidential misconduct, while critics condemned the secret recording of a friend's most vulnerable confessions. Tripp died on April 8, 2020, at the age of seventy.
Lucianne Goldberg continued to be associated with the publishing world and conservative political circles. She had predicted that the scandal would produce a small library of books, but did not write the definitive personal memoir she might have produced. One can imagine a very revealing title. Her own version of events, however, would surely have made interesting reading. Goldberg died on October 26, 2022, at eighty-seven.
Rick Kaplan continued his career in television news, including later leadership roles at major networks. The old tale of an immediate retirement followed by a dramatic public apology to Clinton is not substantiated sufficiently to repeat as fact.
Kenneth Starr did not remain independent counsel until retirement: he concluded that role in 1999. He subsequently worked as a lawyer and academic administrator, including as president of Baylor University, and returned to national politics as a member of Donald Trump's defense team during the 2020 Senate impeachment trial. He died on September 13, 2022. His report remains a striking historical document: a legal text that devoted an extraordinary amount of attention to intimate sexual detail.
A Different Ending
And what became of the woman whose life had been reduced, in the public imagination, to a scandal? As of 2026, Monica Lewinsky is an activist, writer, producer, and public speaker. Her screen-producing projects include Impeachment: American Crime Story, 15 Minutes of Shame, and The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. Since 2025 she has hosted Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky, a podcast about recovering identity and dignity after experiences that threaten to define a life.
Perhaps this is the ultimate reversal of the old story. The politicians, prosecutors, friends, and television executives competed to control the narrative. The person at its center had to live with the consequences. Nearly three decades later, Lewinsky has found a way to tell her own story—and to ask what price the rest of us are willing to pay for our appetite for somebody else's shame.