Washington

Linda Tripp, 70, passed away after suffering from pancreatic cancer, the BBC quoted her family as saying to the US media on Wednesday.

Recordings Tripp made of her conversations with Lewinsky became central to the 1998 impeachment trial of Clinton.

The former civil servant, who worked at the Pentagon and had a friendship with Lewinsky despite their 24-year age difference, learnt that the younger woman had had a sexual relationship with the President and began secretly recording their conversations in 1997, said the BBC report.

Tripp turned the tapes over to Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor leading a broad investigation into the Clinton administration.

The sex scandal precipitated Clinton's impeachment by the Republican-led House of Representatives in 1998, when he was found to have committed perjury for lying about the relationship.

Tripp was fired from her job at the Pentagon on the last day of the Clinton administration in 2001.

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