Trouble in the White House

by Charlie Zee

Tuesday, January 26, the White House phone number 456-1414 is busy.  In fact, all the White House numbers seem to be busy.  And so it's been for the past few days at the White House.  There's no way to get through.  Is there something wrong with the White House phones?  No, said Robert Calhoun, assistant to Delano Lewis, president of C&P Telephone.  "We checked on it yesterday.  The actual equipment is working fine.  There is just a tremendous amount of calls coming into the White House switchboard as well as the Capitol.  It appears to me personally that this is something new.  That people want to take an interest in their government.  They want to speak to the president directly."

Perhaps.  But this has been going on for days.  Old-timers have never seen anything like it.  There were some times during the Watergate stories that the lines would get busy, and the day after Reagan was shot.  But hour after hour?  Day after day?  The White House phone system is designed to handle demands comparable to those of, say, Desert Storm.  It has its own dedicated central office-size switching center, said Michael Daley, a spokesman for C&P.  The telephone company's normal central offices in Washington, D.C. usually route traffic for dozens of blocks of office buildings.

As far as who's answering those many lines, the White House won't say.  Alex Nagy, director of telephone services (called at the same number he had during the Bush administration), would not even come to the phone.  His assistant said: "We do not give out any details."

However, one former White House staffer said there are perhaps a half dozen operators usually working at any one time.  He said they "are the top of their profession and career civil servants."

It's definitely not business as usual at the White House according to Joel Garreau of The Washington Post.  High and low officials throughout town, supplicants and power brokers, can't get through.  At a key moment in the recent confirmation hearings for Attorney General-designate Zoë Baird, Senator Joseph Biden got so frustrated trying to get through to the president that he told aides if he didn't hear from Bill Clinton in five minutes, he was going out to the floor to flatly announce his opposition.  That broke through the clutter.  Somehow Clinton got back to him instantly.

Is it easier for the Russians?  With the hot line and all?  No, said embassy press counselor Vladimir Derbenev at 347-1347.  The White House's direct connection is only to Moscow, not the embassy.

What about the Iraqis?  How would they get through to the president?  Fire a few rounds at the Kittyhawk?  A hurried call to their embassy at 483-7500...  No, we have not been having any particular problem with the White House phones, came the answer.  That's because we can't call the White House much.  Our problem is with the United Nations.

And bypassing the White House switchboard and trying to reach somebody's direct line is no snap.  Call the old number for the press office listed in the National Journal's The Capitol Source directory, and the call is answered by the office of the chief of staff.  Ask them if anybody is keeping track of how many incoming calls there have been, and you are directed to the staff secretariat.  Ask who is the head of that, and the person at the office of the chief of staff does not know.  There's no new White House phone directory out yet even for people inside the building.  Track is being kept on the backs of envelopes; some numbers have changed.  "We're working on hit-or-miss temporary listings.  They're not complete," said one White House source.

On January 26, the telephonic gridlock had sloshed over into the Capitol Hill lines.  The office of Senator Dan Coats (R-Ind.), a vocal opponent of Clinton's proposal to rescind the ban on homosexuals serving in the armed forces, numbers about 1,000 by Tuesday night - about 16 to 1 in favor of the ban, the Associated Press reported.  The office of one prominent liberal senator said it received 500 to 700 calls, with a majority in favor of allowing homosexuals in the military, said an aide.

And the main Capitol Hill number, 224-3121, has remained busy.  Could this all be people wound up in the gay issue?  In fact, no, said one White House official when finally reached.  "The switchboard is totally swamped, but the calls are running about 50-50," said the source.  "Half concern the issue of gays in the military.  But the other half is people who are perceiving waffles on campaign pledges.  Clinton promised many things.  And now people are worried that things are not going to turn out that way.  People are more involved with this administration than in the past.  Even the [mechanized] comment line has never been like this.  Everybody and their brother feels like they can call in, and right now, they are."

Then again, some of those calls are like the ones made to David Watkins.  If anybody should know what's going on with the phones, he ought to be the one, seeing as how he's assistant to the president for the office of administration and management.  And somebody had him listed at 456-6797.

That, in fact, turns out to be the office of the chief of staff, which could still make sense since that's who he works for, according to the table of organization handed out back in Little Rock.  But no.  The person who answered the phone at the office of the chief of staff said she did not have him on any of her lists.  Nor did she know where he sat or what his phone number might be.  In fact, she had never heard of him.