Who

Lucianne Goldberg is a right-wing muckraker, former spy for Richard Nixon, occasional literary agent, author, talk radio personality, and the woman who convinced Linda Tripp to record her conversations with Monica Lewinsky.

Backstory

Lucianne Steinberger grew up near Washington—her dad worked as a government physicist—before landing a job at the Washington Post and later joining the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In the early '70s, though, she switched sides and became a "reporter" for the 1972 Nixon re-election campaign, spying on the McGovern campaign and reporting back to the Nixon camp. Since then, she's worked as an occasional literary agent to assorted right-wingers (like racist cop Mark Fuhrman), as well as a celebrity ghostwriter and webmistress (Lucianne.com). She's also an author in her own right: In 1992, she published her debut novel, Madame Cleo's Girls, about three jet-setting hookers.

Of note

The avowedly right-leaning Goldberg has always proven useful to the Republican party. A "friend" and advisor to Linda Tripp, it was Goldberg who urged Tripp to (illegally) tape her phone calls with Monica Lewinsky and it was those tapes, of course, that set Bill Clinton's impeachment in motion.

Drama

Author Kitty Kelley sued Goldberg, her literary agent, for fraud in the early '80s over a biography of Elizabeth Taylor that Kelley had written. Kelley claimed that Goldberg had mishandled royalties; a judge eventually awarded Kelley $41,000.

Personal

Goldberg, whose personal habits read like a recipe for heart disease (she's smoked for more than four decades and is partial to martinis and red meat) wed her high school sweetheart William Cummings in 1957. The marriage ended in divorce in 1960. Husband number two was media executive Sidney Goldberg; after their 1966 wedding, they remained together until his death in 2005. Goldberg has two sons, Jonah—the editor of the National Review—and Joshua. She lives in a nine-room apartment on the Upper West Side.