Law Requires Empty White House
W A S H I N G T O N, Dec. 27 -- The White House is the hub of government, yetthe new staff that walks into the West Wing on Inauguration Daywill be lucky to find a scrap of paper to jot down a phone number.
When a president leaves office, the White House is swept clean.File drawers are emptied. Hard drives are yanked from computers.Office furniture is piled in the hallways. Institutional memorydisappears.
“The White House they enter is whistle clean. It contains emptydesks, no files from their predecessors,” says Martha Kumar, oneof several presidential scholars working to smooth the 10-weekpresidential transition, which is even shorter this year because ofthe postelection ballot drama.
But Is This the Best Way to Start?
This clean sweep is mandated by federal law, but presidentialexperts say starting from scratch might not be the best way tobegin a new presidency.
“When I walked in, there was not a piece of paper in thedrawers. I think the only thing I found was a paper clip in onedrawer,” said Edwin Meese, counselor to President Reagan in theearly 1980s and later attorney general.
“There’s some stuff at the National Security Council. And inthe White House counsel’s office there are some records, but not anawful lot. You kind of expect that the old administration is goingto have cleared out, but you’re a little bit surprised that theplace is as bare as it is.”
Law Requires Paper Purge
The Presidential Records Act, passed in 1978, requires the paperpurge.
It says the official records of the president and his staff arethe property of the United States, not the chief executive. TheNational Archives takes custody of them and preserves them foreventual public release.
In President Clinton’s case, boxes of papers already are beingshipped to a warehouse in Little Rock, Ark., site of hispresidential library, which will be administered by the archivist’sstaff.
“The most surprising thing to many people is that the computersare not functioning,” said Alvin Felzenberg, executive director ofthe President’s Commission on the Federal Appointments Process inthe Bush administration.
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