“We have been informed that it is being shipped back, and the National Park Service is ready to receive it, take possession of it and take custody of it,” Jim McDaniel, the National Park Service’s liaison to the White House, said Wednesday.
“The property is being returned to government custody until such time that the issues can be resolved. It may well turn out that that property is rightly the personal property of the Clintons.”
After they were criticized for taking $190,000 worth of china, flatware, rugs, televisions, sofas and other gifts with them when they left, the Clintons announced last week that they would pay for $86,000 worth of gifts, or nearly half the amount.
Their latest decision to send back $28,000 in gifts brings to $114,000 the value of items the Clintons have either decided to pay for or return.
McDaniel discussed the matter Wednesday with Betty Monkman, the White House curator, and Gary Walters, the chief usher, or executive manager of the White House.
They were reviewing the gifts the Clintons chose to keep after $28,000 worth of items were found on a list of donations the Park Service received for the 1993 White House redecoration project. The Washington Post this week quoted three people who said that they assumed the furnishings they donated for the project would stay in the White House.
“As a result of questions about the status of certain property donated to the White House during the Clinton administration, the National Park Service will accept the return of the property in question and act as a custodian of such property,” according to a statement released by the Park Service, which administers the White House as a unit of the national park system.
A person familiar with the Clintons’ move out of the White House, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would say only: “They’ve been returned.”
While the Clintons’ decision to return these gifts was a way to get out from under this and other criticism surrounding their departure from the White House, the couple provided scant details about the shipment.
In a statement released Monday, Clinton’s transition office said every item they accepted was identified by the White House gift office as a present to them. They said none of the gifts taken was on a curator’s list of official White House property…..
The gifts in question were: A kitchen table and four chairs valued at $3,650 from Lee Ficks of Cincinnati, Ohio; a $1,000 needlepoint rug from David Martinous of Little Rock, Ark.; two sofas, an easy chair and an ottoman worth $19,900 from Steve Mittman of New York; lamps valued at $1,170 from Stuart Shiller of Hialeah, Fla.; and a $2,843 sofa from Brad Noe, a businessman from California.
LA Times, 2001 - President Clinton and his wife started shipping White House furniture to the Clintons' newly purchased home in New York more than a year ago, despite questions at the time by the White House chief usher about whether they were entitled to remove the items.
The day before the items were shipped out, chief usher Gary Walters said he questioned whether the Clintons should be taking the furnishings because he believed they were government property donated as part of a White House redecoration project in 1993, during Clinton's first year in office.
But Walters was told by the White House counsel's office that the items he asked about--which included an iron-and-glass coffee table, a painted TV armoire, a custom wood gaming table and a wicker table with wood top--were "personal gifts received by the Clintons prior to President Clinton assuming office."…
However, government records show that the gifts that concerned Walters did not arrive at the White House until after the Clintons moved in. At least one of these items, a Ficks-Reed wicker table, was logged in at the White House on Feb. 8, 1993. The widow of the manufacturer, Joy Ficks, said last week that it was meant for the White House, not the Clintons.
Walters said he accepted the determination of the counsel's office that the gifts were personal Clinton property without a fuss. "I'm not a lawyer. I didn't feel I was in a position to argue with the counsel's office." He said he'd been troubled all along by the lack of donor letters.
Walters blamed himself for not raising questions when the rest of the furnishings were taken from the White House last month. He said an aide to Sen. Clinton had told him these too were "the Clintons' personal property."
"I should have asked for more specifics on these items," he said. "I shoulder the blame for not saying, 'Hey, wait a minute.' "
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