American Crime Story season 3: Is What I Saw in the White House a real book?

In American Crime Story season 3–titled Impeachment–Linda Tripp believes herself to be a woman in the know.

As a civil servant in the White House Counsel’s office under Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, she saw the comings and goings of high powered figures. As well as heard the whispers spread throughout the office and the West Wing about the Clintons. Linda even did some whispering of her own.

Spoilers ahead of the American Crime Story season 3 premiere

When she was pushed out of the office in “Exiles” after Vince’s suicide, she decided to give the higher ups who shunned her a piece of their own game.

Earlier in the episode, she’d been hesitant about writing a tell-all book about the Clinton administration. Linda swore she was going to be pulled in for questioning about the Whitewater scandal (though no one has done so yet).

She also hadn’t reached the point of exposing the ins and outs of West Wing drama and inappropriateness without hesitance. Her tentativeness on the subject gradually receded the angrier she got about how far she’d been pushed away from the seat of power.

When Linda met Monica Lewinsky, a young woman carrying a big politically earth-shattering secret involving the president, she immediately hopped at the chance at finally taking those in power down several pegs. As such the opportunity to publish her book, What I Saw in the White House, was revived and she set herself on a course to growing closer to Monica to get the information she needs to shake-up D.C. and the political world at large.

With the American Crime Story anthology series being based on real life events and people, the question of what actually happened and what’s been fictionalized for drama is routinely navigated. In the case of the real life Linda Tripp, she did publish a tell-all book about the Clinton administration, but it was posthumously in December 2020, nine months after her death.

The book is titled A Basket of Deplorables: What I Saw Inside the Clinton White House and it was co-authored with Dennis Carstens.

What is What I Saw in the Clinton White House about?

The official synopsis according to Goodreads:

"In this brilliantly written behind-the-scenes account, Linda Tripp along with her co-author, Dennis Carstens, shares her side of the Clinton White House sex scandals for the first time—detailing the behavior of two very flawed people who fooled a nation: Bill Clinton, a sexual predator, and his wife, Hillary, who was his primary enabler.In this exposé, Tripp outlines what the public was not allowed to see: the lengths Clintons’ protectors would go to lie, deceive, and coverup for them; some of the many women Bill Clinton used his position, privilege, and power as president to sexually abuse; how the former president got away with it thanks to his morally bankrupt, unscrupulous wife and cabal of protectors; and finally, the role party politics played when he was called to task and was almost the first president to be removed from office for perjury and corruption."

New episodes of Impeachment: American Crime Story air on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on FX. Stay tuned to Hidden Remote for more news and coverage on the series.