What the White House Tapes Really Show
Cottle, Michelle
What the White House Tapes Really Show The Keystone Kops behind the cameras BY MICHELLE COTTLE ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A tiny organization within the United States War Department known as...
...The various abuses of this fund-including JFK’s upgrading family properties, President Johnson’s spending millions to improve the wiring and plumbing at his Texas ranch, Nixon’s using half a million for a swimming pool at Camp David-are outlined in the 1980 book B~enkingC over, by former WHMO Director Bill Gulley...
...In Sullivan’s stead went WHCA Commander Col...
...By contrast, in more recent years, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush were all famously incurious about what was transpiring in the world outside...
...Life Inside The Bubble The lack of interest and knowledge displayed within the president’s inner circle about such an omnipresent entity as WHCA may sound a bit odd...
...The change had been made upon recommendation from someone who had reviewed the document, Simmons told the subconimittee, although he could not say precisely whom...
...After five years in the Oval Office, Clinton’s judgment may have been so eroded by all of the bowing and scraping that accompany the job, that he came to assume any move he made merited video documentation...
...The April 1996 phase-two report concluded that WHCA was receiving “little or no oversight of budgeting, acquisition planning, and organizational effectiveness,” and recommended that the DoD’s oversight role be strengthened...
...Alternatively, with the end of the Cold War, perhaps the DoD is so desperate for something to do that it concocted a variety of make-work tasks for military personnel-a land of workfare for the enlisted set-and asked President Clinton to go along...
...He is also, by the,nature of the job today, one of the nation’s biggest celebrities-a role that only isolates him further...
...providing stenographic services for the White House press secretary...
...In March of 1994, Congress asked the General Accounting Office to look into the agency’s management and finances...
...My understanding [is] that they were a unit of the United States military and that their function is to record . . . certain events and certain statements by the president...
...Granted, fund-raising is fast becoming the primary activity-and defining skill-of America’s elected officials...
...Democrats chalked the incident up to a simple editing decision...
...Not to mention that WHCA provides the Executive Office of the President 850 additional staffers, while allowing the White House to keep its own budget and personnel numbers respectably low...
...Today, the administration remains very protective where WHCA and WHMO are concerned...
...All I know is they were there, and they were there quite frequently, but not all the time.’’ Ickes’ offered similar insight into the workings of WHCAls operational overseer, the White House Military Office: “There is a military unit in the EOP [Executive Office of the President...
...He then submitted a second statement from which this reference to the White House’s oversight role had been deleted...
...I don’t know who it reports to...
...In February 1995, an agreement was finally reached whereby the Defense Department’s Inspector General would conduct an audit of WHCA...
...It would almost be less disheartening to think that the White House was up to a few dirty tricks, but that at least it knew what was going on inside its own government...
...Downsizing notwithstanding, WHCA remains the single largest agency overseen by the Executive Office of the President...
...Can I get the pages faxed to me...
...From the Eisenhower administration up through Reagan, WHCA’s overseer, the White House Military Office, is known to have controlled a multimillion-dollar secret fund (maintained ostensibly for the construction of presidential bomb shelters) into which the president could dip any time and for any purpose he so desired...
...If anything, the agency’s low profile was once a sign of the exact opposite...
...Mark Souder says such hearings would have begun yesterday if he had his druthers...
...But even then, the White House kept an eye on the proceedings...
...Wrote Gulley, “It’s no exaggeration to say [the Military Office is] the President’s Aladdin’s lamp: there’s nothing that can’t be done, and there’s a bottomless pit of money, ingenuity, and resources to do it with.’’ When Breaking Cover was released in 1980, the Reagan White House admitted to the existence of the secret fund-which had survived undetected throughout the uproar and paranoid aftermath of Watergate-but vowed that the Gipper would never dream of misusing it...
...As Congressman Souder admits, right around the time last year that House members were hearing testimony on the appropriateness of WHCAls oversight and operations, WHCA video crews were-unbeknownst to the subcommittee-busy working the coffeehnd-raiser circuit...
...One might get the impression from Ickes’ statement that, despite its size-and considering the sad lack of attention it has received over the years-WHCA has never been very important to anyone in the White House...
...Oh, they have some vague sense of what the agency does...
...Or perhaps WHCA itself, in a classic bureaucratic attempt to protect its share of the defense-funding pie, kept offering to take on additional duties, and the White House obligingly piled them on...
...The book also includes memos documenting WHCA’s setting up of LBJ...
...Why hadn’t the agency responded to previous committee inquiries regarding taped events...
...As president of the United States, he is arguably the most powerful inan in the world...
...and, of course, ensuring that, wherever he goes and whenever he gets there, the leader of the United States of America has “dependable means by which to communicate instantly with individuals anywhere in the world at any moment...
...WHCA has made a career of operating under the radar, and Congress will be hard-pressed to breach the walls of “presidential security” surrounding the agency...
...President Clinton said he was even more furious...
...Congressional Republicans certainly suspect as much, and the recent videotape fiasco has spurred a movement to launch hearings by early spring into the perceived abuses of WHCA...
...Why had WHCA ignored a memo from the White House requesting all videos of coffees and political events...
...Didn't the president or someone on his staff ever question the wisdom of having Bill Clinton's years in office memorialized as a never-ending kissup to checkbook-swinging fat cats...
...What is the name of it...
...The White House Military Office simply hid any‘expenditure the president did not want examined by “classifying” it as a matter of “presidential security,” said Gulley, who noted that WHCA personnel were frequently employed for these “classified” projects...
...Having requested all pertinent information on the events months earlier, GOP lawmakers charged that this delay in producing the tapes was another example of the administration’s obstructionist "foot-dragging...
...Expect conspiracy don Christopher Ruddy to come out with the FBI-files/Rose-billingrecords/ WHCA-videos conspiracy thrillogy next spring...
...The agency’s basic tasks have been reviewed only three times since its inception, and it escaped formal audit until a defense department review two years ago...
...Sounds relatively straightforward...
...But that’s about as far as it goes...
...As the news media detailed the furious finger-pointing, what emerged read more like a comedy of errors than a grand conspiracy: The White House had sent a memo to WHCA in April, but part of the memo hadn’t gotten distributed by the White House Military Office, so WHCA officials didn’t know the White House wanted the database searched specifically for coffee footage, and certainly nobody at WHCA had thought to query the database using the keyword “coffee...
...If this is the case, however, it simply points up a sad truth about the lack of interest-intentional or not-that most presidents have in the way the bureaucracy around thein is functioning...
...Republicans saw it as the White House’s attempts to distance itself from the agency...
...The agency is, after all, under operational control of the White House, and senior White House aides are, in fact, the folks who arrange for WHCA coverage of an event...
...manning the switchboards at the White House...
...Remember Reagan’s professed ignorance regarding the Iran-Contra affair...
...And although on one level, it seems unavoidable that The President be insulated froin the rest of the country...
...An equally plausible scenario is that Clinton never thought twice about the cameras being there-that he is so accustomed to being shadowed by the video crews that he no longer notices when they’re around...
...Since 1991, this number has gradually declined, and today WHCA employs a mere 854 personnel...
...Over the years, various leaders have responded differently to such isolation...
...on another, such isolation seems untenable...
...This, at least, was the impression given by former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes in his October testimony before Congress concerning the WHCA incident...
...When asked about the agency’s function, Ickes’ responded: “I’m fortunate, I think, that I know little about it...
...As a part of the even lower-profile White House Military Office, WHCA has long been among the most bizarre and the least understood government agencies...
...What the White House Tapes Really Show The Keystone Kops behind the cameras BY MICHELLE COTTLE ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A tiny organization within the United States War Department known as the White House Signal Detachment...
...I don’t know when they are called...
...He first submitted a prepared statement indicating that “WHMO provides operational direction and control to the WHCA...
...Today, this mandate entails, among other things: toting the presidential seal, American flags, and bulletproof podium around the country for the president’s public appearances...
...I don’t know what the criteria is for what they film and what they take on audio...
...During the Bush years, the agency hit a personnel peak of 1,017...
...One would be wrong...
...secret taping system...
...One, President Clinton wanted them there...
...The White House Counsel’s office wrote a letter seelung to block Sullivan’s appearance...
...But an even more basic-if somewhat less politically gripping-question is likely to remain unexplored: What in the hell were WHCA camera crews doing at those coffees to begin with...
...On October 4 of this year, deep into the Senate hearings on campaign finance reform, the Clinton administration turned over to investigators “belatedly discovered” videotapes of the infamous White House coffees...
...But, hey, the White House is an odd place, and the people who occupy it inhabit a different kind of reality...
...The Office of Management and Budget, commonly thought to be the largest, runs a pale second with 520 employees...
...Moreover, without a strong desire to reach beyond his artificial environment, the president can lose touch with what is going on even within his own government, addressing only those issues that are allowed to enter his world by an army of aides and assistants...
...And I don’t know from whom it takes its orders, quite frankly...
...Stay with me here, these layers of command will be important later on...
...Rather, it was an unofficial collection of 32 members of the U.S...
...later told the House subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice, “[Oln three occasions in May, June, and August 1994, DoD representatives advised us that the White House had prohibited DoD contact with GAO or release of DoD datal’ The GAO pursued the matter, said Hinton, and “during a January 1995 meeting with DoD and White House staff, White House Counsel staff indicated that we would not be provided the information needed to further pursue these issues...
...Rep...
...And Senate Committee Chairman Fred Thompson and his Republican cohorts were downright apoplectic...
...President Truman reportedly sent people out to drive around the country and talk with the public...
...I don’t know how it is structured...
...But while this may be a valid explanation for WHCA crews’ tailing the president to peace conferences and fluttering around him during state dinners, it still begs the question of why they were on hand for DNC fund-raisers and White House love-ins with bigmoney donors...
...The Hunt For “Wocka” The administration’s apparent evasions on WHCA, along with the nature and history of the agency, bring up the very real possibility that the White House is not at all ignorant of the agency’s operations...
...You say you read about it in a book...
...Today, the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), as it has been known since 1962, is a “joint service agency” staffed by all branches of the armed forces, as well as a handful of civilians...
...The question of whether this apparent display of stunning incompetence was in fact intentional will likely be debated along partisan lines for years to come...
...developing and printing photos of the president and first lady...
...In the 1996 follow-up hearings, the House Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice requested testimony from the head of WHMO, presidential appointee Alan Sullivan...
...They were around a great deal of time to the extent that those of us traveling with, or with the president in meetings or otherwise, came not to even notice them, quite frankly...
...Upon closer examination, however, one learns that those “related” elements include services for “the vice president, the National Security Council, the president’s staff, the First Family, the Secret Service, and others as directed...
...Among these: WHCA was annually performing $7.8 million worth of tasks beyond the scope of its mission...
...As is the case with the entire executive branch over the past five decades, the White House Communications Agency-dubbed “Wocka” by White House aides and the press corps-has grown in both mission and size...
...But the public shouldn’t expect too much from a congressional inquiry...
...For example, from the time he left office until six months after his death, LBJ had a dozen WHCA staffers down at his ranch-compliments of the WHMO fund...
...Joseph Simmons...
...As one might expect, such an increase in responsibilities has required a comparable increase in staff...
...See page 14 for why this isn’t as absurd as it seems...
...Created in December 1941 by President Franklin Roosevelt, the White House Signal Detachment wasn’t even a real agency for the first three months of its life...
...As the GAO’s Assistant Comptroller Henry L. Hinton Jr...
...But even Simmons’ testimony proved controversial...
...The director of the WHMO prepares annual officer evaluation reports for the commander [of] WHCA, and the White House Chief of Staff is the reviewing official...
...Permanently cowed where the Pentagon is concerned by that unpleasant “draft-dodger’’ label, Clinton is unlikely to deny the military anything its little heart desires...
...If the president exists in a bubble, how can he really know what’s going on in the nation-and by extension, what needs to be done...
...I don’t know anything about that,” says Majority Staff Director Robert Charles...
...Didn’t the president or someone on his staff ever question the wisdom of having Bill Clinton’s years in office memorialized as a never-ending kiss-up to checkbook-swinging fat cats...
...Wocka” Is Watching Time magazine was credited with breaking the story...
...As for the agency’s colorful history, when approached for this article, staffers of the House subcommittee that ran last year’s WHCA hearings expressed total surprise at the agency’s past connection to WHMO’s secret fund, or indeed that the fund had ever existed...
...Although the GAO’s preliminary inquiries raised concerns about, among other issues, WHCKs budgeting policies, investigators were barred from pursuing the matter by the White House...
...Of course, the bubble can have a very real protective value, allowing the president to maintain plausible deniability regarding any “mishaps” that may occur on his watch...
...By 1978, WHCA’s stated duty had become L‘top rovide telecommunications and other related support to the president of the United States and to other elements related to the president...
...The Clinton administration may well be hoping to absolve itself of guilt regarding the WHCA videotapes by maintaining that no one really paid much attention to the agency’s activities...
...WHMO and the White House Counsel’s Office have been unavailable for comment on the current status of the fund...
...the minute-by-minute schedule, instructing him where to stand, whom to greet...
...The White House explained that its denial of the GAO’s request was because WHCA operations involved matters of “presidential protection...
...videotaping key events of the presidency for the National Archives...
...Army whose low-profile mission was to provide secure lines of communication for the president during World War 11...
...In his 1992 book, What it Takes, Richard Ben Crainer captures the artificial existence to which George Bush-at the time vice president-had grown accustomed by his second term: No one who hadn’t lived in the bubble could know what it was like...
...the men in slightly better suits, handing him typed pages, telling him where he’d be going and whom he would see, who his friends were among the crowd and what he was supposed to tell those friends, what the press would be asking and what he ought to say in response...
...But to preserve in Technicolor detail the pathetic realities of today’s political money-grub is hardly a shrewd move for a guy supposedly obsessed with his presidential “legacy...
...Which helps explain why no one really knows when the White House assigned WHCA all those “other related” duties mentioned in the agency’s 1978 mission statement...
...the simple, awesome fact that from the moment he opened his door in the morning until he retired for the night, no matter what he chose to do, or where he went, or what he wanted, he would never be alone...
...Within days, the White House Communications Agency, the unfortunate maker and keeper of the tapes, found itself under siege from all sides...
...Eleanor Roosevelt and former AP reporter Lorena Hickock were but two of the numerous sets of eyes FDR sent into the trenches to gather information on the progress of administration projects such as the WPA...
...the men in suits and earplugs, always around, talking into their wrist microphones...
...A handful of explanations for WHCA’s videotaping the coffees comes to mind...
...Officially activated in March 1942, WHSD has since undergone two name changes and a couple of shifts in oversight...
...Despite WHCA’s considerable bulk, however, this 800-pound gorilla has operated with little attention from either its Defense Department or White House masters...
...The following June, WHCA representatives testified before a congressional subcommittee that the agency was talung steps to address the audit’s criticisms...
...it was unable to account for more than half a million dollars worth of agency property...
...The November 1995 report on phase one of the audit cited “no evidence of significant theft or significant waste” in WHCA, but noted several areas in need of “management attention...
...At last count, footage of 44 coffees and more than 200 fundraisers had been turned over to congressional investigators...
...In 1996, its budget topped $120 million, all of which came out of the Defense Department’s coffers...
...and it was paying close to $800,000 to lease superfluous equipment...
...Although staffed and funded through the Pentagon’s Defense Information Systems Agency, WHCA takes its marching orders from the White House, under the auspices of the White House Military Office...
...Hardly a promising sign from the folks who promised to thoroughly evaluate and “reinvent” the federal government...
...Then came The Coffees...
...The agency’s stated reason for attending the events sounds benign enough: The duties of the White House Communications Agency include videotaping “key” moments in the presidency for posterity...
...Attorney General Janet Reno was furious...
...Bill Clinton’s existence for the past five years has been, if anything, even more unreal...
...And after only a couple of unflattering media blips, WHCA sank back into relative anonymity...
Vol. 29 • December 1997 • No. 12
