Lucianne Goldberg, best remembered for the role she played in uncovering President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, died Wednesday at the age of 87.
“The news is now out there. So, I should say something here. My beloved mom, Lucianne Goldberg, passed away yesterday,” Goldberg’s son, political commentator and author Jonah Goldberg, wrote on Twitter Thursday. “She died peacefully at home, surrounded by people – and pets! – who loved her.”
Goldberg did not reveal his mother’s cause of death.
A longtime conservative activist and literary agent, Lucianne Goldberg gained national prominence for advising her friend Linda Tripp to secretly tape her conversations with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, who had been involved in a sexual relationship with Clinton.
New York literary agent Lucianne Goldberg addresses a large assembly of media outside her apartment Saturday, Jan. 24, 1998, in New York.
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Tripp’s 20 hours of tapes of her conversations with Lewinsky were crucial to special prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s investigation of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives on Dec. 19, 1998 for denying under oath that he had had sex with Lewinsky, but he was acquitted by the Senate.
Goldberg set up her literary agency to promote books shunned by others. The New York Times described her as “an agent with a taste for right-wing, tell-all attack books” in an article published amid the fallout from the Lewinsky tapes.
Goldberg’s earlier career included co-founding a group in 1970 called the Pussycat League that campaigned against feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment, and an eponymous news website.
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Goldberg was born Lucianne Steinberger in Boston. Her first marriage, to William Cummings, ended in divorce. Her second husband, newspaper executive Sidney Goldberg, died in 2005. Her survivors include Jonah Goldberg. Another son, Joshua Goldberg, died in 2011.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
