"No stealing the "W" keys on the typewriters .... "

I hate to tell people, but that shit just plain never happened.

Yet we hear it.

Like Al Gore's earth tones and serial exaggeration.

How about we hear what a war criminal George Bush is? What a sick old man Reagan was in his final years? What a deceitful fuckwad Poppy was? What a blockhead Ford was?

Jezus Fucking Kerist ..... why does this shit persist???

I'd love to do this...just don't know how (not very techie).

No photographs.

No questions.

media was their play thing all the way through it

from low-level staffers, left behind for their "replacements", but even ONE teensy little prank was magnified and hyped by Rove.. This is the juvenile stuff people like him really love..and of course the press wanted "teh funny", aftre more than a month of really serious stuff going on..and they needed a way to take the focus off of the story they REFUSED to cover..like a stolen election:grr:

I could be wrong, but I never saw any pics of even harmless practical jokes- and certainly not vandalism...

LOL! It's interesting that we are talking about this again after all these years...

the "vandalism" that was advertised - which the press accepted WITHOUT PHOTOGRAPHS - and NOTHING compared to the stunt between other administrations.

Reagan's folks stacked the desks up to the ceiling so GHWB's people needed a forklift to get them down.

And, by the way, it's NO PROBLEM, to replace a missing key on a keyboard.

The FBI and GAO said there was no vandalism, but Bob Herbert, Barbara Walters and GWB say so. Fuck 'em!

Not only did he perpetrate this lie, he went further in his news cast to call Clinton "Trailer trash". I remember it vividly ,listening to this in the car and knowing that it was just the beginning.

who should know better.

He's one greedy bastard. Obama's team should find out how many computers are in the White House and go ahead and order some new 4 keys before moving in. Bush has stolen every other dollar from this country he can get his greedy hands on. I wouldn't put it past the fucker to steal the dollar signs off the keyboards.

Yet the Bullshit flies.

but saying the word typewriter, which WAS in the original story back in 2001.

just the other day. I started a thread on it and a bunch of DU'ers emailed ABC. I got a canned response from ABC thanking me for my email, but I've yet to hear Walters correct or apologize for her "mistake." It's a lie that will become truth in the history books unless these people start getting slapped around every time they repeat it.

What was not true then may very well become so this time 'round. Document! Document! Document!

Not one single, solitary photo.

Wouldnt taking photos be the first thing you would do?

Interesting that in the infacny of the blogosphere, no one on TV ever raised this- the media just accepted the story as fact...

and folks like Bob Herbert are STILL telling that lie.

I think the report came out in June of 2002.

Basically few low level pranks. Though the L.A. times titled it "15,000 in vandalism according to GSA"/

May 23, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- The "scandal" broke benignly enough, with an item in Lloyd Grove's dishy Reliable Source column in the Jan. 23 Washington Post, three days after the inauguration of George W. Bush.

"Incoming staffers of the Bush White House," Grove wrote, were "apparently victims of a practical joke." Bush aides in the Old Executive Office Building (EOB), adjacent to the White House, discovered that "many computer keyboards in their work spaces are missing the W key -- as in President Bush's middle initial."

Some W keys were discovered "taped on top of the doorways," while others were broken.

The report was more cute than cutting, with Grove quoting former Al Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, who quipped: "I think the missing W's can be explained by the vast left-wing conspiracy now at work."

But within two days, Grove's playful item had morphed into one more full-blown Clinton scandal. Suddenly newspapers and TV news shows were featuring extensive reports of Clinton administration "vandalism," stretching from the EOB offices of former Vice President Gore to the West Wing. Reports alleged expletive-ridden graffiti, sliced computer and telephone wires, file cabinets glued shut, presidential seals steamed off doors, stolen pictures and so-called porn bombs, which were never exactly described.

The technological problems the vandals wrought were so severe that, according to a report in the New York Daily News, "a telecommunications staffer with more than a quarter-century of service was seen sobbing."

"Phone lines cut, drawers filled with glue, door locks jimmied so that arriving Bush staff got locked inside their new offices," a disapproving Andrea Mitchell reported on NBC News. The message seemed clear: The trailer-trash Clintons and their staff had enjoyed one last bacchanal at taxpayer expense.

Now it seems those closely detailed stories were largely bunk. Last week it was revealed that a formal review by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative agency, "had found no damage to the offices of the White House's East or West Wings or EOB" and that Bush's own representatives had reported "there is no record of damage that may have been deliberately caused by the employees of the Clinton administration."

While cautious GSA staffers won't issue a blanket exoneration of the Clinton team, Bernard Ungar, the agency's director of physical infrastructure, told Salon the media clearly exaggerated the extent of the damage. According to the terse GSA statement that formed the basis of Ungar's conclusion, "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy."

Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., the ardent Clinton foe who requested the GAO review, has tried to interpret the agency's findings to mean no "record of damage" had been compiled, not that no damage had occurred. But the lack of records "cataloging" any damages -- which Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer promised in January the White House would compile -- would seem to suggest one thing: Widespread acts of vandalism never occurred.

So how did the vandal scandal that wasn't get blown into a media firestorm?

"Certainly people inside the administration fed this story," says an angry John Podesta, Clinton's former chief of staff. "At least they got what they wanted out of it."

A close look at the way the scandal mushroomed bolsters Podesta's view: The Bush administration helped the vandal scandal along, publicly appearing to try to douse the flames, while privately fanning them with detailed, off-the-record allegations of damage. On Tuesday, after the GAO's review was made public, Fleischer was left trying to spin himself out of a very deep hole, insisting he had tried to "knock down" the vandal story when it first emerged.

But a transcript of Fleischer's Jan. 25 briefing on the issue contradicts him. It shows the Bush spokesman coyly encouraging reporters' suspicions about the vandal scandal, while refusing to confirm or deny the reports of damage. According to one leading White House reporter, the story was also nudged along by two unnamed Bush aides.

Fleischer and the off-the-record Bush staffers, meanwhile, got a lot of help from a press corps eager for early scoops from a new administration. For some reporters and pundits, the White House vandalism story was just too good to pass up.


Seems like it's in all my papers today. Here we go again with the insanely silly portrayal of the Bush administration as the "responsible adults". HAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!

http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/05/23/va ...


The White House vandal scandal that wasn't
How the incoming Bush team nudge-nudged a credulous press corps into swallowing a trashy Clinton story.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Kerry Lauerman and Alicia Montgomery

May 23, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- The "scandal" broke benignly enough, with an item in Lloyd Grove's dishy Reliable Source column in the Jan. 23 Washington Post, three days after the inauguration of George W. Bush.

"Incoming staffers of the Bush White House," Grove wrote, were "apparently victims of a practical joke." Bush aides in the Old Executive Office Building (EOB), adjacent to the White House, discovered that "many computer keyboards in their work spaces are missing the W key -- as in President Bush's middle initial."

Some W keys were discovered "taped on top of the doorways," while others were broken.

The report was more cute than cutting, with Grove quoting former Al Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, who quipped: "I think the missing W's can be explained by the vast left-wing conspiracy now at work."

But within two days, Grove's playful item had morphed into one more full-blown Clinton scandal. Suddenly newspapers and TV news shows were featuring extensive reports of Clinton administration "vandalism," stretching from the EOB offices of former Vice President Gore to the West Wing. Reports alleged expletive-ridden graffiti, sliced computer and telephone wires, file cabinets glued shut, presidential seals steamed off doors, stolen pictures and so-called porn bombs, which were never exactly described.

The technological problems the vandals wrought were so severe that, according to a report in the New York Daily News, "a telecommunications staffer with more than a quarter-century of service was seen sobbing."

"Phone lines cut, drawers filled with glue, door locks jimmied so that arriving Bush staff got locked inside their new offices," a disapproving Andrea Mitchell reported on NBC News. The message seemed clear: The trailer-trash Clintons and their staff had enjoyed one last bacchanal at taxpayer expense.

Now it seems those closely detailed stories were largely bunk. Last week it was revealed that a formal review by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative agency, "had found no damage to the offices of the White House's East or West Wings or EOB" and that Bush's own representatives had reported "there is no record of damage that may have been deliberately caused by the employees of the Clinton administration."

While cautious GSA staffers won't issue a blanket exoneration of the Clinton team, Bernard Ungar, the agency's director of physical infrastructure, told Salon the media clearly exaggerated the extent of the damage. According to the terse GSA statement that formed the basis of Ungar's conclusion, "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy."

Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., the ardent Clinton foe who requested the GAO review, has tried to interpret the agency's findings to mean no "record of damage" had been compiled, not that no damage had occurred. But the lack of records "cataloging" any damages -- which Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer promised in January the White House would compile -- would seem to suggest one thing: Widespread acts of vandalism never occurred.

more...

Yeah, that's right...I have them all.


Place 35 lbs. of chocolate covered jumbo cashew nuts in an unmarked bag on my front porch by Jan 20th or you'll never see them again...


~signed,
The Real Keynapper