I did not take the ‘W’ key off those keyboards!
Decades later, former president Bill Clinton has spoken out about allegations that his staff damaged the West Wing ahead of his administration’s 2001 exit from the White House.
As a spurn to the incoming George W. Bush — to make it harder for staffers to type his name — ‘W’ keys on keyboards went missing at an exponential rate, according to reports from the time.
Some were found glued to doorways, while others were swapped with other keys, Bush staffers moaned to the General Accounting Office, who conducted a year-long investigation into the matter.
Clinton, 78, fumed in his new memoir “Citizen: My Life After The White House” that he “didn’t know” about the “mischief.”
“The whole thing bothered me because I had made it clear that I wanted a smooth, cooperative transition and we had done exactly that,” he wrote.
“Within a few days some people finally went on the record to say that either no damage had occurred or that the allegations of ‘W’ mischief were greatly exaggerated.”
But the orgy of pilfering didn’t stop there.
The presidential plane was reported to have also been “stripped bare” during Clinton’s last flight by souvenir-hunting members of the outgoing administration’s staff .
China, silverware, and salt and pepper shakers, were among the items that allegedly went missing.
Graffiti on the walls, obscene phone messages, filing cabinets glued shut and pornographic pictures left among blank paper loads in printers, were also among the damage allegations given to the GAO.
Meanwhile, the contents of desk drawers were “dumped on the floor” while glass desk tops were “smashed” and rotting food was left in unplugged refrigerators, according to the allegations.
And “six to eight 14-foot trucks were needed to recover usable supplies that had been thrown away,” the GAO said in its 2002 report.
Clinton’s staff caused about $15,000 worth of “damage, theft, vandalism and pranks” and some incidents such as removing keyboard keys, placing glue on desk drawers and leaving obscene voicemail messages “clearly were intentional,” the GAO found.
Intentional damage would constitute a criminal act under federal law, but no one was prosecuted for the incidents.
Clinton who was impeached by the House of Representatives in 1998 when it emerged he’d lied about a relationship with then-22-year-old intern Monica Lewinsky, also opened up about the affair in the book.