by: Jenni Vinson
July 13, 2001
Those among us who believed that last weeks’ inuguration of George W. Bush as the 43rd President of these United States marked the END of the Clinton Administartion must surely be disappointed at seeing how much the Clinton’s still monopolize the news.
Early on in the Clinton Adminstration, Gary Aldrich, a former FBI Security agent wrote a book entitled Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside The Clinton White House.
In the book, Aldrich details as a major concern, this administartion’s lack of respect for the White House. He writes that under the Reagan Administartion, neither President Reagan, nor any of his staff, would remove their suit jackets in the Administrative Wing of the White House out of respect for the decorum and the weight of the job that was set before them.
Aldrich states that the Bush Adminstration held to the same manner.
Too many of the Clinton staff came to work at the White House wearing jeans and sandals. Aldrich also catalogues having witnessed behavior that would be unseemly even in a rowdy bar. He lists many events that went on in plain view, without discretion.
Gary Aldrich was responsible for interviewing the staff members and qualifying them for permanent security passes. He wrote that many of the Clinton staffers remained on temporary passes, those issued before an FBI clearance check was conducted.
These passes were meant to be VERY temporary, but a memo was issued from President Clinton mandating that the temporary passes be allowed to stay in place. Aldrich alleges that this was the beginning of what would be the dismantling of much of the security that the White House had set in place and utilized for decades. The White House is a monument that represents this country- all of us who have lived here since the beginning of this nation, our stregnths and achievements, our wars and our dead. And it embodies the hope we hold for our future.
Our nation’s White House should be counted as a treasure that should be protected and all who dwell within it should be protecetd to the utmost of our nation’s ability as well.
Aldrich’s book came out early in 1998 while I was in the middle of researching and collecting data for my book. This was one of a long list of books on the Clinton Administration that I read.
I picked it up that Satuday morning, when it first came out, and I read, non-stop until I finished it. The stories Aldrich told seemed too incredible to be true.
I did not believe that it was possible for any one man and/or any one Administration to have the power to so alter the institution of the White House. I thought surely there were stingent safety measures in place that could not be altered by any single Administartion.
The very next day, during the Sunday political talkshows, Gary Aldrich was attacked by the Clinton Adminsitration for being disloyal to his oath of office as an FBI agent. His credibility was called into question and it was bad enough to bury his book. It certainly did not make the “best seller” list. The fact of the matter was that he wrote the book after he had left his position.
Time has a way of proving or disproving things that are alleged and in Mr. Aldrich’s case, time has proven him to have been right, sadly enough. It is now obvious that he wrote it as a service and a wake up call to the nation.
On their way out, staff members from the Clinton Administration vandalized the White House causing more than $200,000 worth of damage. Some of the vandalism is petty. They removed the “W” keys from all of the keyboards in honor of the new President, I suppose.
Phone lines were cut, disabling their usage. Some voice mail message boxes were re-recorded with obscenities. If a citizen should happen to call a specific person, they would be greeted with a foul message.
Furniture was turned over and trash was scattered all over the place. It is being described to look like a site where a riot took place.
Pornography was found mixed in with the blank pages in the copy machines so they would come up sporatically. The Vice President’s Office area was vandalized as well. In that office area, obscenities were scrawled on the walls with permanent markers.
Aside from all that, the airplane assigned to all our Presidents, Air Force One, is said to have been stripped. The china, the silverware, salt and pepper shakers, blankets and linens or anything that bore the emblem of the office of the presidency was stolen. These items are not meant to be souveniers. They are historically placed there for the use of each president.
The Clintons and their staffer never did seem to grasp the honor and the responisbility that was bestowed upon them by the American people in allowing them to walk in the White House, on the same floors that Lincoln paced as he listened to reports of the dead and dying in the Civil War as the country was divided and at war against each other; where FDR listened to the news of the Stock Market crash and of the many Americans who were left destitute; where news of the end of the Vietnam War reached Nixon; where great men and women from Across this counbtry have served nobly for over a century.
In vandalizing the White House, they have defaced a national monument and should be held lawfully accountable.
Once again, President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton owe this country an apology for what they have allowed those whom they are responsible for to have done to “The People’s House”, to our house.