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Profile: Lucianne Goldberg Lucianne Goldberg Lucianne Goldberg is a New York agent with a history of political espionage against Democrats. It was Goldberg's idea for one-time White House employee Linda Tripp to secretly record the claims of Lewinsky that she was sexually involved with the president. It was Goldberg who advised Tripp to take the tape recordings to independent counsel Kenneth Starr. THE PLAYERS Betty Currie Lucianne Goldberg Paula Jones Vernon Jordan Monica Lewinsky Kenneth Starr Linda Tripp As long as four years ago, Goldberg has acknowledged, Tripp and she began exploring ways to produce an insider's tell-all book about the Clinton White House. But Goldberg told The New Yorker that Tripp's writing was not good enough to shop the prospective book to publishers. Goldberg insists that money isn't her motive. Rather, she says, she was trying to protect Tripp and was personally disgusted by the reports of Clinton's behavior. But when she advised Tripp last October to begin secretly taping Lewinsky, she didn't realize that recording phone conversations is illegal in Maryland, where Tripp lives, without the consent of both parties. Lewinsky was unaware of the taping, which made Tripp vulnerable to prosecution. So when Goldberg learned of the Maryland law, she advised her friend to get the tapes quickly to the special prosecutor as a way of avoiding punishment. Goldberg has had a long career of flourishing at the edge of scandals. She was the agent for the best-selling "Murder in Brentwood," a book by Mark Fuhrman, the controversial detective in the O.J. Simpson murder investigation, as well as for an expose book about the Chappaquiddick incident and for a book by a Texas woman who claimed to have had an affair with Lyndon Johnson. Goldberg admits that in 1972 she was a spy for the Nixon White House. She posed as a reporter and rode on candidate George McGovern's press plane. By Scripps Howard News Service