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that wasnt because Obama won
that slide was due to word getting out that George W and Cheney were taking everything but the kitchen sink and gutting America before they left
dumb ass
Vandalism
Back to the Clinton Criminal Page
List Is Response to Credibility Questions
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 3, 2001; Page A01
White House officials yesterday released a list of damage they say was done by outgoing staffers of President Bill Clinton, including obscene graffiti in six offices, a 20-inch-wide presidential seal ripped off a wall, 10 sliced telephone lines and 100 inoperable computer keyboards.
For months, Democrats had questioned the administration's credibility because officials refused to document allegations of vandalism they made in the week after President Bush's inauguration. In April, the General Accounting Office said it was unable to confirm damage, in part because of what it called a "lack of records" from the White House.
Most of the incidents described yesterday by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer were said to have occurred in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House. Pornographic or obscene greetings were left on 15 telephone lines in the offices of the vice president and White House counsel and in the scheduling and advance offices, Fleischer said. As a precaution, all phones were disabled and reprogrammed, he said.
The details were provided to The Washington Post after several days of inquiries about the degree of White House cooperation with the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress. The GAO said in April that it "found no damage" to White House real estate. The GAO did not prepare a report but said in a three-paragraph letter that it could reach no further conclusions because the White House said it had no written record of damage. The letter did not mention the Eisenhower building, where most of the damage had been reported.
White House officials had said they did not release the information sooner because of Bush's desire to "move forward and not live in the past."
The vandalism brouhaha started the day after Bush was inaugurated with boasts by Clinton staffers that they had removed the "W" key caps from their computers, and it escalated with televised allegations by Fleischer on Jan. 25 that departing aides had "cut wires" and performed other acts that the administration was "cataloguing."
The episode seemed to deflate on Jan. 26, when Bush said the only damage was that there "might have been a prank or two" and Fleischer said the catalogue consisted of mental notes, kept by one aide.
Fleischer said yesterday the written list was prepared Friday, based on the recollections of officials and career government employees, in response to Democrats' "suggestion that the Bush White House made things up."
"The White House will defend itself and the career employees," Fleischer said. "We tried to be gracious, but the last administration would not take graciousness. By getting the information out, we hope to put an end to this, so everyone can go on with the policy and business of the government."
Clinton administration officials said the size of the list did not measure up to the luridness of the allegations. Former presidential press secretary Joe Lockhart said the vandalism allegations were part of a failed Bush strategy to "make the new administration look good by comparison to the last one."
"If anyone did anything that harmed government property, that's wrong," Lockhart said yesterday. "But to have suggested there was an organized effort that ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage is grossly wrong and misleading."
The only incident Fleischer described in the White House itself was a photocopier in the West Wing that had pictures of naked people interspersed with blank photocopy paper so deep in the tray that they were still popping out weeks after the inauguration.
Fleischer said that workers were able to affix new "W" caps to many computers but that 100 keyboards had to be replaced. Fleischer also said five brass nameplates bearing the presidential seal were missing in the Eisenhower building.
Fleischer said 75 phones had been "tampered with," which he described as having the number plates removed and the lines plugged into the wrong wall outlet. "Nobody knew their number, and nobody could call in," he said. Six fax machines were moved around in a similar fashion, he said.
Fleischer said that two historic doorknobs were missing and that desks and furniture were overturned in many of the Eisenhower offices. He said six to eight 14-foot loads of usable office supplies, including 6,000 binders, were recovered from the trash and are being used. He said no estimate had been made of the dollar value of the damage.
Initially, the allegations of vandalism at the White House were relished by Bush supporters as symbols of the immaturity and recklessness of the Clinton administration. Four months later, with the White House still refusing to substantiate the allegations, there had been a stark turnabout: The episode was being invoked by Democrats to question the new administration's tactics and veracity.
On Friday, Rep. Anthony D. Weiner (D-N.Y.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, stood in the rain outside the White House complex with four low-level Clinton administration workers and called for Bush to apologize. Weiner, who attracted five television cameras to his news conference, asserted in a letter to Bush that the new administration "deliberately misled the American people and smeared the names of public servants who were guilty of nothing."
Democratic sources said the Bush administration has recently threatened, through a private conversation with a Clinton official, to release photographs of damaged property. The White House released two snapshots yesterday of the White House counsel's office that showed a lot of trash but no discernible damage.
The vandalism allegations proved to be a political tale that would not die, despite the absence of any nourishment in the form of new facts. On Jan. 29, Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr. (R-Ga.), one of the first House members to push for Clinton's impeachment, asked the GAO to look into the matter. The GAO's first stop was the General Services Administration, which manages government property. The GSA said in a letter to Barr on March 2 that "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy."
In a letter to Barr on April 27, the GAO said the White House had said there was "no record of damage that may have been deliberately caused by the Clinton administration."
Bernard L. Ungar, the agency's director of physical infrastructure issues, said in an interview that White House officials had told him some items "had to be repaired, such as telephones and computer keyboards, but that there was no record of damages."
Fleischer said the agency had only "asked us if we had anything in writing to provide."
"The answer is 'no' because we did not keep track in writing -- consciously so, because the president wanted to look forward and not look backward," Fleischer said.
After news accounts last month about the GAO's findings, Clinton administration alumni used television and newspaper commentaries to denounce the news media for having trumpeted the allegations. One of the participants in Weiner's news conference, Matthew P. Donoghue, 38, who formerly worked at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, recalled the "slight digs at parties" and accusatory questions from relatives that haunted him after the vandalism allegations.
Fleischer, whose comments about "cut wires" had stoked the reports, said Thursday, "I stand by that statement."
"Sometimes, stories just are like water running downhill and you can try to slow down the press, but you can't stop them," Fleischer said. "All the White House comments were aimed at moving forward. It was all in the context of drawing reporters back from the story, because that's what the president wanted."
? 2001 The Washington Post Company
Gore vandalism has paper trail
White House staffer: Computer damage reflected in flood of requisition orders
Wednesday, June 6, 2001
By Paul Sperry
? 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON -- A career White House employee who helped replace computer keyboards broken by departing Clinton and Gore staffers in January says President Bush could document the vandalism through requisition orders. Some 100 keyboards had to be replaced during the transition.
Democrats and former Clinton aides have challenged Bush to prove charges that spiteful former aides trashed the White House before the inauguration.
Bush's spokesman Ari Fleischer finally detailed the damage for the press this week.
He says that, among other things, 100 keyboards were broken, 10 phone lines were cut and several brass emblems with the presidential seal were removed from doors. Most of the damage was done in the Eisenhower Building, or Old Executive Office Building, where Vice President Al Gore and his staff kept offices.
Fleischer, hard-pressed to show a paper trail backing his damage assessment, says the White House did not keep detailed repair records.
But the White House employee says that at least the computer vandalism is reflected in an unusual surge in requisition orders for keyboards at the time.
"You'd see it in the requisition orders," he said in an exclusive interview with WorldNetDaily.
"It's not like we'd throw away a bunch of keyboards one day," said the employee, who requested his name be withheld. "They were damaged beyond repair and we had to replace them."
The employee, part of the White House computer staff, says that Clinton aides did not stop at removing the "W" -- Bush's famous middle initial -- from keyboards, which would otherwise be a relatively harmless and humorous prank. But he says they also gouged out the contacts beneath the plastic keys, rendering the keyboards useless.
"The membranes were jabbed out underneath," he said.
He says most of the keyboards were made by Microsoft and included ergonomic features.
A CompUSA salesman handling government accounts in the Washington area priced for WorldNetDaily a similar Microsoft ergonomic model at $33, including the government discount, or $39.99 retail.
Costs from maintenance and repair of White House offices and equipment during the transition were paid out of General Services Administration's transition fund. GSA has offices in the White House complex.
Clinton supporters pooh-poohed Fleischer's damage assessment because they said it relied on the five-month-old recollections of White House workers.
But the assessment jibes with earlier, contemporaneous accounts by White House workers tasked with assessing and repairing the damages.
Those workers -- interviewed by WorldNetDaily in January within days of the vandalism -- include the computer employee who helped replace the keyboards while setting up new Bush aides at their work stations, a phone-operations manager who helped survey phone-line damage, including in the West Wing, and a GSA building manager who was involved in supervising the custodial crews.
In terms of damage, "there was never anything like this" in previous administrations, said one career worker.
"The money will come from taxpayers," said another.
Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., has asked Congress' investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, to consider reinvestigating the vandalism charges. GAO had closed its investigation because Bush officials, wanting to "move on" from the Clinton scandals, had produced no proof of vandalism, while at the same time privately ordering career workers to clam up, WorldNetDaily has learned.
"We need to speak to some of the government employees, who were charged with repairing or cleaning up the damage, to see what they saw or witnessed," said one congressional source close to Barr.
Phone calls seeking comment from Fleischer's office were not immediately returned.