Tripp's Turn to Talk

The message was couched in the cold, metallic language of the law: "You are commanded to appear and testify" before Kenneth Starr's grand jury on Tuesday, June 30, at 9:15 a.m. Not exactly a Hallmark hug, but to its recipient, Linda Tripp, the subpoena was a welcome invitation--one she in effect had been preparing for since August 1997, when she began secretly tape-recording her long, strange telephone conversations with Monica Lewinsky.

Through five grueling months of scandal, Tripp has been cast in at least three unflattering, even cartoonish roles. First, she was the Betrayer, who secretly taped the phone conversations of a love-struck friend. Next, according to a New Yorker reporter who dug into her background, she was the Vengeful Woman, an insecure gossip who had become embittered about the opposite sex because of a philandering father and her own failed marriage. Then, according to an account by media watchdog Steven Brill, she was the Set-Up Artist, a conniver who teamed up with literary agent Lucianne Goldberg to expose Clinton's alleged misdeeds primarily because she wanted a book deal. In a report last week on previously undisclosed Tripp tapes in U.S. News & World Report, she appeared to be egging on Lewinsky's confessions (or fantasies) for the benefit of her tape recorder.

After the beating Tripp has taken in the press, Starr's grand-jury chamber must seem downright inviting. There, at least, she will be in control of her story, telling it for the first time in a friendly forum--a room free of opposition lawyers, pesky reporters or late-night comedians. To prepare for the moment, people close to the case tell TIME, Tripp has spent more than 100 hours going over her tapes and other evidence with Starr's deputies, lending context and details to what Lewinsky said.

Calling Tripp to testify now is an indication of where Starr's probe stands. Earlier this month, when Lewinsky dumped the loquacious California medical-malpractice lawyer William Ginsburg and hired a pair of Washington sharpies, Plato Cacheris and Jake Stein, many observers assumed it meant she was getting ready to cooperate. If Lewinsky were to testify, Tripp would then be relegated to a mere corroborating witness, appearing only after Monica had spilled to the grand jury. But Starr's decision to bring Tripp to the stand before Lewinsky signals a standoff, at least for now, in the negotiations between the Starr and Lewinsky camps. The talks have snagged, sources tell TIME, over the prosecutors' well-known demand to interview Lewinsky before any immunity deal is struck. Starr's team has spent months attempting to corroborate the stories she told Tripp; now they want to walk her through it all, judging her credibility. They may even want to hook her up to a polygraph machine--particularly if she asserts that Clinton and his friend Vernon Jordan never obstructed justice by asking her to lie about the relationship. Lewinsky's lawyers don't want to subject her to questioning unless she is first given immunity; Starr doesn't want to grant immunity unless she talks first.