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3. Wiring the White House[8]

3.1 Nerve Center of the Free World?

February 15, 1993 was pretty much a typical winter's day in Washington: dark, stormy, wet, and generally miserable.[9] But something unusual was about to happen. Our office was called to an "all hands on deck" meeting at lunch time. Our office director, Stephen Squires, had received a phone call from Dr. Michael Nelson [10] at the White House that morning. Would anyone volunteer for the newly forming White House Technology Task Force? It probably would involve working through the long President's Day weekend. Needless to say, it did not take me very long to volunteer!

The task force consisted of technical experts detailed from ARPA, NSF, the General Services Administration, and the Central Intelligence Agency. The team was led by an information technology consultant who had worked on the campaign. Our mission was to assess the information and communications systems within the Executive Office of the President (EOP), and to make recommendations on how to spend a supplemental budget to upgrade the existing systems. [11] From my perspective, the most important aspect of the task force was the opportunity it provided to observe the potential for the use of advanced information technology in government.

The initial condition of information technology "at the center of the Free World" could only be described as disappointing [12] [National Journal 93]. While surveying the situation by walking around the OEOB and the West Wing of the White House, we noticed a lot of typewriters and very few printers. The EOP used a centralized e-mail system running on a VAX minicomputer, known as "All-In-One" (when this was told to knowledgeable engineers at DEC, their response was "All-In-One? That system is only used by marketing!"). To give you a sense of the system's simplicity of operation, consider that the EOP offered training courses in Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced All-in-One! Most members of the incoming administration had used standard PC-based mail packages during the campaign and transition, and were demanding the same level of ease-of-use. Three weeks into the Administration, and many of the newly arrived senior staff had yet to send their first mail message. Who had time for training courses?

One senior administration official told me a story that may or may not be true. Immediately following the Inaugural, as the new staff streamed into the West Wing of the White House and the Old Executive Office Building (immediately next door) to stake out their new offices, they looked everywhere, but couldn't find any computers. Thinking that perhaps the outgoing Republicans had played a trick on them, they thought that the computers were hidden in a closet somewhere. They claim to have never found them! [13]

Most of desktop machines were underconfigured 386 PCs, used mostly as glass terminals to the VAX mainframe running the All-in-One e-mail system. These may have been state-of-the-art machines in 1989, installed early in the Bush administration, but given the doubling of computer power every eighteen months, they were at least two generations old by the start of 1993. They had such limited memory capabilities that at least one senior analyst, working on alternatives for the President's 1993 budget supplement, was forced to use her better home PC in order to manipulate reasonably sized spreadsheets. This is a national scandal.

A small number of agencies within the EOP, primarily those that had opted out of the centralized e-mail scheme, had much better computer and communications configurations. They also had their own staff system administrators who could kept their systems up-to-date.

See Figure 1 for an organizational chart of the EOP.

These included the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), the two with perhaps the highest density of university academics in the whole EOP. Unfortunately, the EOP lacked an internal internetworking strategy to tie these network islands together. While OSTP could use a PC-based mail package to communicate among themselves, they still needed an All-in-One account (and a twisted pair connection to the VAX) to communicate with anyone outside their own office. The ability to send mail outside of the White House complex was very limited. X.400-style mail was available to other Federal departments, mostly put in place to make it easier to exchange budget information between the EOP's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the departments of the executive branch. Needless to say, this was not heavily used by most of the rest of the Federal government. There certainly was no Internet access.

One might ask, why was the White House in such a sorry state in terms of information technology? Four theories are possible: Perhaps there are a few, less sinister reasons as well: the difficulty of procuring new technology when it changes so rapidly, security issues and the fear of intrusion, staff too busy fighting fires to put in place long term plans for things as mundane as computers and networks, and the usual problem of high staff turnover. [15]

A commonly asked question is just how "computer literate" is the President and the other senior administration officials. Based on my observations, the President still uses legal pads and pens. When he replaced the phones in the Oval Office with modern models [16], he did not choose to install a computer. The First Lady, who as a practicing attorney, has used her share of word processors, is probably more computer-knowledgeable than the President. Many senior staff, like Bob Rubin (former chief of the National Economic Council and now Secretary of Treasury), don't use computers and don't want to (though he seems to understand their importance and value). However, Lloyd Bentsen, the former Secretary of the Treasury, had a computer on his desk in the Treasury Department, as well as his own Compuserve e-mail account! Technology phobia and age are not necessarily correlated!

The Vice President lives up to his reputation as being the most computer-savvy senior member of the Administration. [17] He has a reasonable personal computer in his office, in the early days a 386 Windows-based PC [18], and he uses Macs at home. The Vice President extensively uses electronic mail to communicate with his staff. [19] In what has to be the greatest nerd speech ever given by a senior government official, the Vice President described the distinction between today's centralized government bureaucracy and his vision for a more decentralized and responsive government in terms of bottlenecked mainframe computers and massively parallel multiprocessors!

But perhaps more importantly, the President's staff represents a younger generation. In the early days of the Administration, the newspapers and magazines were filled with stories with titles like "The White House: The Kids Down the Hall" [Time 93], "White House: A Computer Nerdsville" [NY Times 93b] and "Under Clinton, The PC is PC" [Washington Post 93]. Having graduated from college fairly recently, they were familiar with computers from their educational and job experiences, and they expect access to the best technology available. After all, it would be no other situation in any major corporation!

There are at least some bright spots in this dismal story of computer use at the White House. From its earliest days, the Clinton Administration was forced to face the problems of information technology in government-arcane procurement laws, ambiguous and confused Federal/Presidential records laws, and the inherent weakness of centralized "glass tower" computer centers. This motivated much of the subsequent efforts of the National Performance Review. In addition, many decision makers understood the inherent advantages of distributed systems based on local area networks and client/server computing, the need to be on Internet to communicate electronically with the American public, and the desire to experiment with new technologies within the operational context of the EOP. This led to many of the new services I will describe below.

But of course, commitment from the top is valuable, but it does not guarantee that the career bureaucrats will help in the enterprise. The computer center staff, well versed in VAX and IBM mainframe operation, but largely clueless about enterprise networking and the Internet, were resistant to any experimentation (and at least some were committed to active sabotage!). They, as well as the Secret Service, were paranoid about being connected to Internet (and as we all know, they were rightful to be so). There was a real fear that users would transfer computer viruses into the White House over the Internet. Of course, they had no special provision for dealing with viruses brought in on floppy disks, which was a real problem since many people were forced to use computers they had at home.We spent a lot of time explaining to them the theory of operation of Internet firewalls.

The OEOB is an historic building and an architectural landmark, with all that that implies for installing modern office equipment and networks: poorly regulated power, full cable trays complete with 20 layers of paint and no cabling maps, and a policy of "no new holes." I recall surveying one site for a new desktop computer that was to share the same wall plug with a copying machine and numerous other devices including a desk lamp. When the copier was on, the desk lamp flickered-not a good sign for computer equipment! Why anyone would put up with working at desk with a flickering light is beyond me, but there are many people who will do anything to work in the Administration.

Implementing a reasonable network topology within the White House turned out to be a nightmare. The Secret Service controls the phone closets, making it a logistical headache to do any serious wiring work on-site. The West Wing of the White House had recently been refurbished, and so had a state-of-the-art fiber network plant. But the bulk of the Executive Office staffs are located the near-by OEOB

(see Figure 2).

The best place to locate machine rooms is in the New Executive Office Building (NEOB), where there is clean power and cooling. But this building is located diagonally across Pennsylvania Avenue, and none of the key staffers are located in this building (though OMB is located here).

Unfortunately, my access to the White House compound lapsed before an EOP-wide network plan could be formulated. Based on my contacts still in the EOP, progress continues to be made in upgrading equipment and interconnecting computers. The visibility of the White House World Wide Web page (see below) has helped raise the issue of technology support throughout the EOP. While I was working in the EOP, I never felt that the technical problems were insurmountable. But there just didn't seem to be enough resources to do the job right.

3.2. White House Publications and Electronic Mail

With the arrival of Clinton and Gore in January 1993 came a new commitment at the highest levels of the government to experiment with and make use of modern communications networks and information technology. Their goal was to explore new ways to communicate more directly with the citizens, using the capabilities of electronic publications distribution and citizen electronic mail. [20]

Under my sponsorship at ARPA, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Trusted Information Systems (TIS), with support from the EOP, provided the White House with an electronic publication capability and electronic mailboxes on the Internet. With the establishment of Whitehouse.gov, we provided the White House with a way to receive electronic mail from any citizens with access to a computer network (including such commercial services as CompuServe, America On-line, the Well, MCI Mail, GEnie, and Compuserve). These services, and the experiences of their usage, are described in the following subsections.

During the Presidential campaign of 1992, a research team led by Professor Randy Davis at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory made available to each of the six national campaigns a capability for disseminating political literature on the Internet. This Campaign'92 information server managed a database of policy papers, speeches, and press releases organized by subject for each candidate. Interested subscribers could join the subscription lists simply by sending an electronic mail message to the server. A form would then be returned via electronic mail, which when filled out, would allow the subscriber to identify the topics in which he or she was interested, such as domestic policy, foreign policy, economic policy, health policy, speeches, and news conferences and releases. Individuals as well as news services subscribed to the campaign server. Much of the information was placed on bulletin boards or otherwise redistributed on commercial networks. The Clinton-Gore team enthusiastically embraced the technology.

The administration continues to use the services of the MIT Campaign Server-a production version was recently moved to the White House computer center-to distribute documents over the Internet. In mid-1994, Hurwitz and Mallery, the designers of the system, estimated that more than 120,000 people received White House documents on a daily basis (more recent estimates set the number at 250,000), either directly through subscriptions or through various redistributors such as the U. S. Department of Agriculture's "Americans Communicating Electronically" (ACE) servers. In addition, various documents can be obtained via electronic mail from publications@whitehouse.gov.
Hurwitz and Mallery performed an extensive survey of the users of the White House electronic publishing system [Hurwitz 94]. It provides interesting insights into the demographics of the Internet. 90% of the subscribers are located in the United States, although some can be found in more than 25 countries. They are young (85% under 50), highly educated (75% completed college and 50% have advanced degrees), and male (80%). Approximately one third occasionally or regularly organize support for issues or candidates. 50% are located in universities, 11% in government, 10% in companies, and 8% in issue advocacy or economic-interest groups.

It should be noted that computer networks are not the only form of electronic publication used by the Clinton-Gore administration. The details of the President's Health care plan was distributed to the Press on diskette. The 1995 President's budget, a document as thick as the Manhattan phone book, was also distributed on a CD ROM.

Sunsite.unc.edu maintains an archive of White House electronic documents, organized in chronological sequence of publication. It is accessible over the Internet via the World Wide Web, and many of the government documents referenced in the bibliography below are available as hypermedia documents on-line. Other archives can be found at ftp.cco.caltech.edu, ftp.maristb.marist.edu, cpsr.org, the FedWorld Online System, and gopher.tamu.edu.
In September 1994, the EOP rolled out the "Welcome to the White House" Web Page (http://www.whitehouse.gov), marking the anniversary of the National Performance Review. [21] More than 2,000,000 people have visited this web site, with over 13,000 visits per day! This server provides the largest archive of White House and administration documents. Over 30 million files have been downloaded from this site. By providing leadership from the front, the White House's enthusiasm for electronic publishing has led numerous Federal agencies to go "on-line," making World Wide Web servers available on the Internet. The White House Web page links to over 600 other web sites in the Federal government. Virtually all agencies now have a network presence, including the Thomas service of the Library of Congress, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. More than 100 representatives are reachable by electronic mail. [22]

The Welcome to the White House archives represent a most unusual resource: for the first time, anyone with Internet access can examine all of the public documents of a Presidential administration, from press conference transcripts to the budget of the United States. In preparing this paper, I sought information from these sources about one of the minor scandals of the early days of the Clinton presidency. On May 19, 1993, the seven staff members working in the White House Travel Office were "terminated" for alleged irregularities in financial dealings (this happened during the same week as the famous haircut on Air Force One at LAX that closed down the airport for two hours). The travel office is responsible for arranging charter flights for the Press Corps and government staff that accompanies the President. The employees involved were not political appointees, but career employees among those serving "at the pleasure of the President."

The situation was complex, as a close review of the archived press releases and press conferences reveal (e.g., see George Stephanopoulos' Statement of May 21, 1993). The facts of the case are more or less the following. First, an audit by the accounting firm of Peat Marwick did uncover financial irregularities in the travel office (this was confirmed by a General Accounting Office Review that became public on May 2, 1994). The audit was supposed to have been performed in response to the Vice President's National Performance Review, but the NPR later disavowed any involvement in the audit. The FBI was brought in to determine whether there had been any criminal irregularities, without notifying Attorney General Janet Reno (later the White House promised never again to call on the FBI for internal investigations without first consulting with the Attorney General). Some alleged that the whole flap was driven by a desire to find more patronage jobs for Clinton supporters. There had been some (unsubstantiated) claims that the staff had been friendly with pro-Bush journalists. It was further alleged that Harry Thomason, Bill Clinton's TV Producer friend, had instigated the investigation because one of his many companies wanted to bid on White House travel contracts, but had been denied the opportunity (this led to another mini-scandal, since Mr. Thomason had a White House Residence pass and the White House switchboard would take messages for him, a private citizen!). Further, one of Bill Clinton's distant cousins, Cathy Cornelius, had worked in the office, and had written a memo revealing irregularities, allegedly to pave the way for her take over of the office (she had arranged travel during the campaign). Also, the travel agency that had handled the Clinton campaign, Worldwide Travel in Little Rock, was made the interim travel agent for the White House Travel Office. [23]Whatever the truth of the matter, I was able to download from the Whitehouse web page the press conference transcripts from May 20, 1993 through May 26, 1993. In it I was able to find quotes like the following:

(May 20, 1993)
Question: George, in light of the flap over the firing of the Travel Office, has the White House considered any further action, perhaps reinstatement on leave or anything for these employees?
Stephanopoulos: No, not at this time, no.
Question: The language you've used, in the judgement of many in this room, and myself, may have destroyed these people and made it impossible for them to get jobs like this in the future.

(May 21, 1993)
Stephanopoulos: It is never easy to terminate people who serve at the pleasure of the President. We could not, however, fail to act in the face of these findings. We gave these people two weeks notice. We also gave them an extra month to devote towards retirement.

(May 25, 1995)
Stephanopoulos: The administrative leave for the five employees who did not have financial authority in the Travel Office and the ones affected by this decision will be extended, pending the completion of the review.
Question: They were never told they were on administrative leave. They were fired. You said--
Stephanopoulos: That's not true. They were given two weeks and then -- the two weeks is administrative leave. But we're extending the administrative leave pending the review.

Perhaps this is only a minor attempt by an Administration official to rewrite history. Nevertheless, it is to the credit of the Administration to keep these transcripts available for any concerned citizen to do their own investigative reporting.

Citizen Electronic Mail

The presence of the President and Vice President on the Internet sparked considerable interest in the press, with headlines like "'Hey Prez!': Computers Offer New Line to Clinton" [NY Times 93a] and "Writing the Clinton's? Send by E-mail and Save a Stamp" [Government Computer News 93]. The result was quite a bit of interest by the American public as well. More than 500,000 electronic messages have been received as of Summer 1995. Unfortunately, they continue to be handled like paper mail. They are printed out, and if a postal address is included in the message, an appropriate response is generated and returned to the sender via conventional post. This low-tech approach is used because most of the White House mail is handled by volunteers, usually very dedicated retirees who are relatively unfamiliar with computers (this was also true in the Bush administration). A small number of electronic mail messages are culled and included among the correspondence actually seen by the President and Vice President.

A significantly more sophisticated system is under development that would allow the electronic mail to be sorted by its contents for a more immediate semi-automated and targeted response by electronic mail. While the general problem of text understanding is very difficult, the complexity can be reduced if e-mail electronic forms, filled in by the respondents, are used. Forms need not be static; by a series of email exchanges the issues of interest captured by the form can be made more focused. The MIT researchers are pursuing this approach, and plan on experimenting with it within the context of Presidential electronic mail.

President Clinton became the first head of any government to exchange an e-mail message with one of his constituents. This happened in the Spring of 1993, when the President sent a message to an elementary school class that had held a bake sale to help reduce the National debt. The message was delivered via KidNet, a dial-up communications networks that links numerous schools together.
On February 4, 1994, in another historic event, President Clinton exchanged Internet mail with the Prime Minister of Sweden Carl Bildt. The is the first time in history that two heads-of-government have communicated in this medium. Prime Minister Bildt [24] wrote: "Sweden is, as you know, one of the leading countries in the world in the field of telecommunications, and it is only appropriate that we should be among the first to use the Internet for political contacts and communications around the globe." President Clinton responded with: "I share your enthusiasm for the potential of emerging communications technologies. This demonstration of electronic communications is an important step toward building a global information superhighway."

While electronic mail is an effective tool for breaking down traditional hierarchies and for enabling teams across hierarchical boundaries, there are some problems with its use within government. In the United States, Federal records can be examined by a private citizen if a request is made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The "Armstrong" case, named for the citizen that instigated the legal proceedings, was brought by a public interest group to determine whether the electronic mail of the Reagan and Bush White Houses were Federal records or the more restricted Presidential records. If they are Federal records, the e-mail is subject to search under the Freedom of Information Act. On the first day of the Clinton administration, more than $300,000 in hard disks attached to personal computers in the EOP were impounded as evidence in this case.

Recently the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has set forth a proposed specification for how electronic mail is to be treated as Federal records (see [NY Time 93b]. This has considerable implications for all e-mail users within government. They will now need to tag whether their messages are records. This is how paper-based Federal records are identified today: at the discretion of their creator. In addition, e-mail systems must preserve and maintain transmission information associated with the mail message, such as the sender, recipient, time of day, and date. For messages identified as Federal records, an archival system must be established that will enable timely search and retrieval of such records. Of course, none of the commercial electronic mail systems currently in use provide these capabilities. Whole new systems will need to be deployed rapidly to bring agency systems in line with the new specifications. In fact, the EOP has been forced to construct a new electronic mail system that includes an optical disk archive to satisfy the judge that electronic mail is being properly archived. Of course this system was implemented as an extension of All-in-One, insuring that the VAX mainframe will never go away. More seriously, the scramble to implement an archival strategy led to the further deflection of needed resources, further slowing the hoped for update of the EOP's computing and communications infrastructure.

Clearly, to be a better medium for communication, it is important to improve the elements of trust in our computer networks. It should be possible to authenticate that mail has actually come from who it says it did, either for the purpose of providing transmission data related to archiving or to make it easier to trace the originator of a threatening message to the President. The technology of Privacy Enhanced Mail will make this possible, and a concerted effort is being made to deploy it more widely in the Internet.

The interest of the courts in electronic records represents only the tip of the iceberg. The next steps will be for all Federal agency e-mail messages to be archived. One might imagine that the step after that will be the archive of all electronic documents created on government owned computers. The treatment of electronic mail under the same rules as written documents has important implications for the use of e-mail in private sector as well. How long will it be before e-mail is obtained as evidence in a product liability suit or a wrongful termination suit? What other forms of electronic documents will be classified as a record? Is voice mail an electronic record? From a technical perspective, what will it mean to support the search of multimedia mail?

3.3. Other White House Pilot Projects

Figure 3 illustrates the range of projects undertaken by the White House Technology Task Force during my time in Washington. I have already described two of its major efforts, Citizen E-mail and Electronic Publishing, in the above subsections. This subsection briefly discusses some additional projects.

Executive Briefing Center

Any early project was to bring state-of-the-art multimedia and computer-based screen projection to the White House complex. In mid-1993 we established a technology-rich briefing center in a major auditorium on the fourth floor of the OEOB. This room included workstation, PC, and Macintosh computers, as well as video disk and 35mm slide projection, driving a high resolution rear-projection display system. The computers were linked to the Internet through a private leased line that predated the actual Internet connection for the complex. The room has been used for a number of critical information technology briefings, including several NII-related presentations hosted by the Vice President. This is where the White House World Wide Web page debuted to the press.

Analysts' Workgroup

I found it hard to convince the computer center staff that the future computing environment would be characterized by interoperable applications running on a wide range of hardware and software platforms. They continued to think in terms of a fixed menu of machine configurations and selected software. I hatched a project to prove the concept, using analysts in the White House Office of Media Affairs as my guinea pigs. A host of software applications were deployed to show that it is possible to share presentations and word processing documents over the network and across multiple platforms and operating systems. This particular project was not an initial success: despite the promises of the test subjects, they could not tolerate the lose of access to their systems even for short times during the test period. It was a mistake to have tried this out on an operational group of users. Unfortunately, the computer center staff inserted themselves into the testbed, creating confusion and a lot of mutual finger pointing. Nevertheless, the local area network as it was installed proved to be effective in supporting several special purpose crisis action groups within the White House. It also demonstrated that networks could be installed rapidly when and where they were needed.

Secure Internet Access

A critical aspect about interfacing the White House to the Internet was to insure that the best technology was in place to protect the internal systems from outside intrusion. We installed a state-of-the-art Internet firewall, and subjected it to more than a year of operational testing before moving it to the White House computer center. The Secret Service and system administrators at the EOP are now well trained in tracking down the sources of intrusion attempts. At least one undergraduate has been prosecuted for submitting threatening electronic mail to the President. Note that all of the White House's national defense related systems are completely airgapped from the connection used for e-mail and document distribution to the public.

Secure Mobile Offices

The final project was to demonstrate new capabilities to support secure access to White House systems from staffers on the road, especially overseas, and at home. It is well known that in certain countries, international telephone and fax traffic are scanned as a matter of course. Very sophisticated systems, managed by the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), are in place to insure secure communications for the President and senior staff when they travel on matters of state. But not even best practice commercial technology was available for the more junior members of the EOP when they dial in from the road or from home. Without revealing the technical details, the general approach is to use authentication security cards as an augmentation to passwords (this has long been in practice at the White House), encrypted communications from the mobile to modem banks inside the White House firewalls, and on-disk encryption for "sensitive" but unclassified data on mobile computers. More aggressive techniques, which I cannot elaborate on here, are used for secret and top secret information, as you might expect.

While working on this particular project, a group of us had the opportunity to survey the technology on Air Force One, the Presidential aircraft. The recent Clint Eastwood film "In the Line of Fire" gives a good feeling for the layout of this unique Boeing 747 aircraft. [25] The President's on-board office, sleeping quarters, and shower is located in the front section of the plane. Immediately aft of the Presidential Suite is seating for VIPs and Cabinet officials (complete with wooden coffee tables, large reclining seats similar to plush living room sofas, with individual entertainment stations at each seat). Further back is seating for the Presidential staff, the press corp, and Air Force ground and support staff. No seat on the plane is smaller than a conventional first class airline seat. By tradition, any passenger can move from their seating location towards the back of the plane, but you must be personally invited to be able to move forward.

On-board communications support is provided by military personnel assigned to WHCA, including stenographers and typists. When we visited Air Force One in the Fall of 1993, the only computers available for use where four 286-vintage Grid laptops (bolted down-perhaps the press can't be trusted!). A modern fiber optic network was actually installed on the airplane when it was delivered at the end of the Reagan Administration. Unfortunately, the network was placed behind the beautiful wooden appointments found throughout the airplane. Nobody thought to put in the network taps! The cost of retrofitting these at this late date is too prohibitive to even be considered. So no network is likely to be available on Air Force One until the next generation aircraft, perhaps well into the next century.

Footnotes


8. I do have a Ph.D. in electrical engineering after all.
9. The summer alternative of hot, humid, and thunderstorming is not much better.
10. At this time, Dr. Nelson was on Vice President Gore's staff. He subsequently was assigned to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and is a major administration figure in formulating NII policy.
11. As an historical note, this supplemental budget was defeated by Congress, and so the grand scheme for upgrading the systems could not be fully implemented. It appears that some of the resources were diverted to a sophisticated conference center located in a brownstone on Jackson Place. Over time however, things have gotten better.
12. I have often wondered whether the Soviet Union would have broken up had they only known!
13. A possible reason that it was so hard to find a usable computer during those early days may have been because a Federal judge had impounded all of the hard disks in the EOP's computers. They were subject to a Freedom of Information Act case involving President Bush's knowledge of the Iran-Contra affair. The judge wanted to be able to scan the disks for stored electronic mail.
14. It doesn't matter which party is in the White House and which controls the Congress. These two branches of our government are in continuous conflict over resources, and the EOP budget is under a microscope.
15. The typical "lifetime" of a White House staffer is reportedly 18-20 months.
16. In the Reagan and Bush days, the President needed only to pick up the phone to get the White House operator, who would dial the number for him. President Clinton prefers to dial the phone himself.
17. In a sense, he can afford to have outstanding computer support. The Vice President is the only person in government who is simultaneously in the Executive and Legislative branches of government (he serves as President Pro Tem of the Senate). The result is a fat equipment budget because of his legislative duties!
18. Contrary to my expectations, former Vice President Dan Quayle had a pretty good set-up in the Office of the Vice President: high end 386s and a modern Novell network connecting his West Wing and OEOB staffs. Vice President Gore inherited a good infrastructure.
19. When a group of us from the National Performance Review presented him with an Internet-ready Powerbook 180 computer, and as we were explaining the operation of the mouse to him, he replied "I know how these things work." I offered to help him get on the Internet, but he never took me up on the offer! Perhaps he already knew how to do it.
20. It has been alleged that their real purpose was to keep the Press out of the communications loop.
21. The Japanese leader had beaten the President to the Internet by a few weeks, but the amount of information available through www.whitehouse.gov is much more extensive.
22. Unfortunately, my congressman, Ron Dellums, is not one of them. Originally you had to submit a postcard, postmarked from the representative's district, before the House would reveal his or her e-mail address. They were afraid of e-mail overload. Now the email addresses are freely available.
23. Because of charges of potential cronyism, they were soon replaced by American Express.
24. Carl Bildt's party lost the Swedish national elections in the middle of 1994. He is no long the Prime Minister.
25. There are actually two 747s that provide the function of Air Force One. The one designated to transport the President at any point in time is the real Air Force One. The Vice President travels in Air Force Two, which is the previous generation aircraft used as Air Force One. One of the officers on-board Air Force One told us a story about how they once needed to swap aircraft while President Bush was vacationing in Maine. He noticed that his pencils were not in the same place he had left them when he next boarded the plane. "This isn't my plane!" he is reported to have said.
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Randy H. Katz, randy@cs.Berkeley.edu, Last Updated: 21 December 95