TRIPP HEADING FOR A FALL? RECORDS COULD TRAP CONFIDANTE.

Byline: Nancy Benac Associated Press 

She filled pages in a steno notebook with Monica Lewinsky's shared confidences. She piled up a bowlful of tapes of their private conversations. She urged Lewinsky not to clean the dress.

The latest batch of documents from Kenneth Starr's investigation offers a fuller picture of Linda Tripp, the woman who Bill Clinton says stabbed Lewinsky in the back, the woman who has offered herself to Americans as someone ``just like you.''

``Ugh!'' Lewinsky said when a grand juror asked about her confidante-turned-informer. ``I hate Linda Tripp.''

From prosecutors themselves come questions about whether Tripp might have lied about her taped conversations with Lewinsky. The Independent Counsel's Office said it ``continues to investigate'' whether Tripp lied in denying she duplicated the tapes.

Sources close to Tripp denied Tuesday that she altered or duplicated any of the tapes she provided Starr's office.

The portrait of Tripp remains largely one-sided, the newest details coming chiefly from those who say she betrayed them. Her grand jury testimony has not been made public.

Still, the latest documents offer glimpses of Tripp in her own words and tell more about her role in the unraveling of the Lewinsky affair.

Tripp's handwritten notes, scribbled page after page in a Skilcraft stenographer's notebook, laid out in stream-of-consciousness fashion the story entrusted to her by Lewinsky, a Pentagon co-worker half her age.

Among the more innocuous notations: ``heavy session,'' ``fooled around,'' ``no kissing,'' ``romantic,'' ``incredible,'' ``wore her tie,'' ``hugged.''

E-mail chitchat reveals a friendship in which Lewinsky and Tripp seemed drawn to one another. Tripp is the older, wiser woman, always happy to dispense advice; Lewinsky is the vibrant, energetic one with the irresistible story.

When Lewinsky's relationship with Clinton hits a bump, she unburdens to Tripp: ``Thank God for you! Oh, Linda, I don't know what I am going to do.''

When Lewinsky tries to entice her friend out for lunch, Monica writes: ``PLEASE ESCAPE WITH ME HOW CAN YOU RESIST ME??''

Indeed, it's as if Tripp can't resist her secret role in an unfolding romance novel.

She fawns over a Valentine message to Clinton that Lewinsky runs in the newspaper. ``CALL ME WHEN YOU GET IN. It read beautifully, placement was great, typeface totally effective, and text superlative . . . good job.''

She praises Lewinsky's choice of a tie for Clinton: ``I am knot (ha!) particularly into ties, but from my exposure to you, I am developing an interest. Yours was stupendous . . . a total hit.''

To hear Lewinsky tell the story, she is almost under Tripp's spell. Tripp presses the young woman for more details about her relationship with the president, and Lewinsky draws up a computer ``spreadsheet'' to chart each time they met or talked.

She adopts Tripp's belief that presidential friend Vernon Jordan knows about her relationship with Clinton: ``I also was sort of under this influence of Linda saying to me, `Of course he knows. Of course he knows. Of course he knows.' ''

When Lewinsky shows Tripp the infamous blue dress that may have been stained from a sexual encounter with the president, Tripp tells her to preserve it as evidence, and discourages her from having it cleaned to wear again, saying it makes her look fat.

As the friendship unfolds, Tripp starts taking notes, then making dozens of tapes she piled ``in a bowl on a piece of furniture,'' according to prosecutors. (Tripp claims Lewinsky knew about at least some of the notes; Lewinsky denies that.)

Lewinsky, for her part, begins to worry that Tripp will ``rat'' about her relationship with Clinton. She starts telling lies to Tripp, hoping to keep her quiet.

``I was so desperate . . . for her to not reveal anything about this relationship that I used anything and anybody that I could think of as leverage with her,'' Lewinsky acknowledged in her grand jury testimony.

Lucianne Goldberg, a New York literary agent who said she advised Tripp to make the tapes as legal protection, said it's not surprising that Lewinsky painted an unflattering picture in her grand jury testimony of her former confidante.

Tripp's version is yet to come, Goldberg said in an interview.

``Linda put her country above her friendship with Monica Lewinsky,'' she said. ``Linda is such a private person, she won't step forward. I have a feeling . . . she's waiting for her own testimony to come out and let people judge it from there.''

Tripp's spokesman, Philip Coughter, declined comment except: ``Linda Tripp from the outset has testified truthfully and completely without exception. Any allegations to the contrary from whatever quarter are entirely false.''

Ultimately, Tripp turned her tapes over to prosecutors and arranged for them to confront Lewinsky when the two met at a hotel.

When the FBI agents closed in, Lewinsky recalled, Tripp ``tried to hug me, and she told me this was the best thing for me to do.''

In the words of President Clinton to the grand jury, Tripp ``betrayed her friend Monica Lewinsky, stabbed her in the back.''

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PHOTO (color) Linda Tripp's tapes helped spur Kenneth Starr's Lewinsky-Clinton probe.

Dennis Cook/Associated Press