The may-be press secretary

BY GLENN THRUSH | Newsday Washington Bureau

April 22, 2006

WASHINGTON - Conservative commentator Tony Snow, on the short list to replace Scott McClellan as White House press secretary, played a small but pivotal backstage role in uncovering the sex scandal that nearly sunk the Clinton administration.

Snow, who worked as a speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s, introduced White House whistle-blower Linda Tripp to literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, who later helped Tripp tease out Monica Lewinsky's detailed description of her affair with Bill Clinton.

In the summer of 1996, Snow reached out to Goldberg, a longtime friend, after Tripp called for help writing a tell-all book about Clinton.

"Tony called and said, 'Do me a favor, talk to a friend of mine who wants to write a book about the White House,'" said Goldberg, speaking Friday from her Manhattan apartment. "Nothing sinister. I get these calls all the time. I don't even think he thought Linda had a book in her."

The Fox radio host and occasional Rush Limbaugh stand-in became friends with Tripp when both worked for the elder Bush. Tripp, a clerical worker who shared Snow's conservative political view, remained at the White House after Clinton took office and Snow left.

Goldberg disputes reports that Snow, 50, later intervened to patch up a feud between Tripp and herself. "The rift between us was never that big," she said.

In 1998, after the Lewinsky scandal broke, Snow used his syndicated newspaper columns to praise Tripp's patriotism, denounce Clinton as a "cur" and "liar" and publicize Tripp's claims that Clinton spies were combing her garbage to justify a tax audit.