If you’re hoping that President George W. Bush will hire Linda Tripp and bring her back to the White House, don’t hold your breath.

You do not understand the fundamental nature of the Bushes.

Nor do you – or Matt Drudge, Tripp’s biggest booster in the media – want to recall the first time Tripp, the now-infamous whistle-blower, burst on the national scene.

Back in the first Bush presidency Linda Tripp was stationed down the hall from the Oval Office. She somehow caught wind on a long known but well-kept Washington secret: President George Bush had a "special" relationship with a staffer named Jennifer Fitzgerald.

In fact, Bush had been "very close" to this Jennifer beginning in Peking back in the days when Bush was our delegate to Red China. So close, in fact, that Barbara Bush had come home to D.C. in a state of "depression."

Years later, during Bush's vice presidency, Jennifer Fitzgerald held a key staff post – and this caused a virtual revolt among his other loyal staffers. They hated the haughty, pushy and arrogant woman who clearly had more "access" to Bush than they did.

Vice President Bush went to Geneva in 1984 during the arms talks and arranged through our negotiators to stay in a government guest house – with Jennifer Fitzgerald. Our ambassador was aghast!

When Bush became president, Jennifer Fitzgerald was moved over to the protocol office inside the State Department. But she was still visible at public functions and occasionally traveled with the presidential party.

Those "in the know" inside Washington knew about this relationship. A Washington Post story at the time had carefully danced around the topic, even speculating about the "positions" Fitzgerald had taken with Bush.

Linda Tripp learned of it and saw it from her desk down the hall from the Oval Office. She thought it inappropriate. And she told people about it.

This was no different from what she would later do in the Clinton White House when she again saw examples of presidential philandering – remember Kathleen Willey emerging disheveled with smeared lipstick from the Oval Office?

Things came to a head one summer up in Kennebunkport when CNN’s Mary Tillotson asked President Bush if he was having an ‘adulterous’ affair?

Bush went ballistic and decried the question even being asked. He attacked the reporter for "what you are doing."

But he never answered the question.

Instead he later sent out a spokesman to say, "The answer to the ‘A’ question is a big NO."

The spokesman?

His oldest son, George W. Bush.

The Bushes have long memories. They know full well it was Linda Tripp who, among others, ratted out the Bush-Jennifer Fitzgerald relationship during the first Bush administration.

And there is no way that they are going to ‘reward’ her by giving her a new White House job.

To many of us Linda Tripp is a true American hero for taking on Bill Clinton. And she suffered for her courage.

But to the Bushes she is the one who exposed their own scandalous behavior and subsequent cover-up.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/2/12/55616.shtml

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), February 26, 2001

Answers

Is that why Clinton kept her?

Silly boy, considering.

Rather maybe Bush would like to see Clinton's name fade from the headlines and rehiring Trip wouldn't help. There is, afterall, a country to run.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), February 26, 2001.

Cherri, you call this journalism because it alleges Bush wrongdoing. This is nothing compared to your lover boy Clinton. What garbage bin did you go through to drag this one up? Shaking in head in disbelief. Doomer mentality.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), February 27, 2001.

The media today not only make up things and/or exaggerate the truth, they print out-right lies without any possibility of being held responsible for their actions.

The claims that Hillary had registered at that high priced store was an out and out lie, written by one person in the press which was picked up and built up even more by other members of the press. Not one of them printed a retraction or wrote the truth after it was told to them by the representatives of the store. "The News" is no longer the news as it once was. They are nothing more than scandal rags.

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), February 23, 2001.

-- We know (exactly@what.you.think), February 27, 2001.

Cherri, you call this journalism because it alleges Bush wrongdoing.

Translation: It's only journalism when it alleges Clinton "wrongdoing".

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), February 27, 2001.

Why can't we just forget about Clinton, and for that matter filegate, watergate, iran-contra, whitewater, vince foster, etc. etc. Dan Burton should just give it up, and Cherri should just go back to doing what she would prefer to do - espousing redistributionist governmental policies.

-- who cares....????? (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), February 27, 2001.