Bill and Hill Make off With Gifts as White House Cleans Up

Bill and Hill Make off With Gifts as White House Cleans Up

MoneyNews.com Wires
January 26, 2001

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration announced Thursday that it is creating a ''catalog'' of damage done by outgoing Clinton aides to computer keyboards, telephone lines and other equipment at the White House.

But White House aides had little else to say about whether pranks perpetrated by their predecessors rose to the level of vandalism.

Spokesman Ari Fleischer said no formal investigation is being launched and no cost estimate has been placed on the damage. And he said no one was prevented from working.

''What we are doing is cataloguing what took place,'' he said.

Pressed by reporters for details of the alleged damage, Fleischer said President Bush does not want aides to focus on the matter because he ''understands that transitions can be times of difficulty and strong emotion'' and he is more interested in ''changing the tone in Washington'' than in placing blame.

Former president Bill Clinton's departure from Washington has already been mired in controversy over his settlement with the independent counsel, his last-day flurry of presidential pardons and reports that he and his wife accepted $190,000 in gifts last year.

The new dispute between the incoming and outgoing aides to Bush and Clinton has percolated for days. At issue is whether the Clinton aides perpetrated the kinds of pranks that are typical during presidential transitions or whether those aides, angry over the outcome of the disputed presidential election between Bush and former vice president Al Gore, crossed a line with acts of vandalism.

Ultimately, ''I don't think anything will ever come of it,'' Fleischer said. ''We're just taking a look at what was done, and that's that.''

Earlier this week, White House aides found that the W keys had been removed from computer keyboards in a prank aimed at the incoming president's moniker.

On Thursday, reports in The Washington Times and on the Drudge Report Internet gossip site suggested Bush aides were angered by graffiti in bathrooms and severed phone lines.

Asked how he knew whether phone lines were cut on purpose by Clinton aides or by mistake by workers during renovations on inaugural weekend, Fleischer replied: ''I don't believe that the people who are professionals, who make it their business to go in and prepare the White House for new arrivals, would cut wires.''

At least a dozen Clinton and Gore aides who were working at the White House in the final week of Clinton's presidency said they were unaware of any vandalism. The aides, who refused to be quoted by name, acknowledged plans to pop the ''W'' off keyboards but said there was never any intent to do damage.

''Most people were working so hard up to the last minute that they barely had time to do more than clean out their desks,'' said former White House press secretary Jake Siewert.

One admitted prankster on Gore's team said a few surprises remain for Bush's team. When several copiers run out of paper, ''Gore 2000'' bumper stickers will appear on the trays.

Some Clinton aides said they also were the victims of pranks when they arrived at the White House in 1993 to replace aides to Bush's father's staff. In some offices, they said, the phone cords connecting the receivers to the telephones were missing. In others, pictures of former president George Bush were stuck on the sides of file cabinets and desktops, they said.