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Wednesday, June 6, 2001

GAO officials said they planned to look at a newly disclosed list of damages and conduct interviews with aides to the former and present presidents to substantiate reports by Bush officials that Clinton staffers trashed the White House grounds as they left in January.

"It's probably going to be a laborious, time-consuming process," said Bernard Ungar, GAO's director of physical infrastructure, who pointed to a list of alleged damages the White House aired over the weekend, which the GAO has the task of proving at the request of Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga.

Ungar, whose agency acts as the investigative arm of Congress, told Barr last week that the congressman's initial request for an investigation into reports of White House vandalism was a dead letter because the White House could provide no written record of damages. Then, over the weekend, as former Clinton officials demanded an apology from the Bush administration in the absence of proof of vandalism, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer offered a list to the Washington Post.

Ungar said the White House was preparing an official list of damages for his office, which could begin looking over the claims as soon as late Tuesday.

"Now there's a list, that kind of changed our approach," Ungar said. "At least now there's a place to start."

Ungar said the first step would be to compare the list of damages with White House maintenance logs, which the GAO previously ruled out as sources of evidence because the White House said they lacked detail. Ungar said GAO investigators would use interviews to try to fill any gaps in evidence between the maintenance logs and the list of damages. He also opened the possibility of subpoenas, but said so far the White House had promised to cooperate openly.

The inquiry would be the first congressional investigation ordered during Bush's tenure as president.

Ungar also said his team would look into the previous transition in 1992, when former President George Bush lost the White House to Clinton, to provide a "balanced presentation" of any findings.

Reports of "pranks" and crimes by staffers of the outgoing White House circulated widely in the media shortly after Bush took office in January. Fleischer and other White House officials suggested that Clinton staffers were responsible for a wide array of damages they said they found upon coming into the White House. They did not offer concrete proof of vandalism, however, because they said Bush wanted to put the matter to rest.

The story fizzled when Clinton called for a list of damages and the costs, and offered to pay for any needed repairs. The Bush White House then began dampening media speculation about the report.

Meanwhile, acting on Barr's initial request, the GAO looked into the allegations, asking the White House administrative offices and the General Services Administration for any records of the alleged damages. Neither office offered any written proof, and Fleischer said the White House's efforts to catalogue the damages stopped at mental notes made by White House administrative staff.

Those mental notes, made by an individual who the White House has refused to name, became the basis for Fleischer's list, which was apparently drafted Friday for the first time. The list of vandalism, which reportedly occurred mostly in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, includes a presidential seal torn from a wall, vulgar graffiti in six offices, profane voice mail recordings on 15 phone lines, 10 phone lines cut and 100 broken computer keyboards.

Claire Buchan, a Bush administration spokeswoman, said the White House counsel's office had photographs of the vandalism, but did not explain why they were not offered to the GAO when the agency first requested proof of vandalism.

"If the GAO would like more information, we would be happy to complete a list and be helpful," Buchan said. "We stand by that list as provided to us by those involved in cleaning up and preparing the offices."

Ungar said he had seen the White House photographs, which surfaced on Internet sites Tuesday. But he said the images showed only messy conditions, not vandalism.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

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