White House

The White House is the residence and office of the President of the United States at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., and the seat of the Executive Office of the President, including the National Security Council staff. The vault's pages reach it from several directions: as the recipient of intelligence, as the giver of covert orders, as an office whose staff ran operations of their own, and as a social venue.

Covert Orders

At a White House meeting on March 17, 1960, J.C. King, Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell presented "A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime" to President Eisenhower; as Vice President that year Richard Nixon "served as the White House's liaison to the CIA's Cuban operations." On October 7, 1963, a White House tape records Kennedy asking Ambassador Lincoln Gordon about Brazil: "Do you see a situation where we might be, find it desirable to intervene militarily ourselves?"; on March 31, 1964, another tape and a memorandum of April 1 record the authorizations for Operation Brother Sam as Joao Goulart fell. On September 15, 1970, Richard Helms's handwritten notes of a White House meeting record Nixon ordering the CIA to "make the economy scream" in Chile; on October 15 Henry A. Kissinger, Alexander Haig and Thomas Karamessines met there on the plotting of General Roberto Viaux, and Karamessines described the pressure from the White House as "constant, constant, just constant." ITT Corporation, under Harold Geneen, "offered money to the CIA and the White House to keep Salvador Allende from taking office" and submitted "an eighteen-point plan" to the White House. On June 23, 1972, Helms and Vernon Walters were called to a meeting with H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman and told to "stay the hell out of" the Watergate investigation, the "smoking gun" tape; Howard Hunt had told his cover employer in July 1971 "that he had been assigned to the White House."¹

Intelligence Received

Arthur C. Lundahl "rushed early raw photographs of the Dimona construction to the White House" in late 1958 or early 1959, and John Foster Dulles "was regularly present at White House briefings where intelligence from U-2 flights, including early information on Dimona, was presented"; Dino A. Brugioni "never understood whether the White House wanted Israel to have the bomb or not," and Floyd L. Culler, Jr. reported that the reactor he inspected "was nothing more than a 'standard reactor.'" In the Kennedy years Myer Feldman "was authorized to monitor all State Department and White House cable traffic on the Middle East," while McGeorge Bundy "sought to cut Myer Feldman out"; Jerome B. Wiesner "was totally cut out of the intelligence about Dimona." After the Vela satellite recorded two flashes over the South Indian Ocean on September 22, 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Gerald G. Oplinger sat in "an urgent meeting in the White House situation room where the CIA and DIA stated that the odds were at least ninety percent that it had been a nuclear explosion," and members of the Nuclear Intelligence Panel "were dismayed by the extent of White House interference in the investigation." John Gittinger of the CIA "was summoned to the White House to advise on how Khrushchev would react" during the Cuban Missile Crisis; the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research episode "was the only time in a quarter-century of behavioral control activities when documents show CIA officials went to the White House for approval." Richard Ober of Operation CHAOS "maintained a covert office inside the White House" known to Nixon and Haldeman, and six of his reports were "compiled directly for the White House." William Sullivan disseminated derogatory information on Martin Luther King Jr. "to news organizations and government officials including the White House."²

Operations from the Building

"Under the Reagan administration, the NSC became an operational intelligence agency based inside the White House"; Oliver North "ran the Central Intelligence Agency's illegal Contra resupply operation from the White House," Robert Owen "carrying messages and funds between the White House and the Contra commanders," and when the DEA's Nicaragua sting was refused, "the story was leaked by the White House to the right-wing Washington Times." Eugene Hasenfus's capture in October 1986 was "living proof that the CIA and the White House had been lying about U.S. involvement with the Contras." In the Bush years Henry B. Gonzalez found that "the White House and NSC, armed with National Security Directive 26, sprang into action in order to save the CCC Program for Iraq," and the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro affair records that "less than ten days after one such request the White House telephoned the prosecutor in Atlanta"; Brent Scowcroft's cabinet meeting did not discuss Matrix Churchill "even though the CIA had reported its activities to both the White House and the State Department in November 1989." In 1990 "over the department's objection, the White House of George H.W. Bush" freed Orlando Bosch. Barbara Honegger "worked in the White House Office of Policy Development during the early Reagan years" and "began investigating the October Surprise allegations while still at the White House"; Michael A. McManus, Assistant to the President, wrote to FIDCO "on White House letterhead" on the rebuilding of Lebanon.³

Suppression and Editing

The Ford White House "suppressed" the Rockefeller Commission's assassination material: Deputy Chief of Staff Richard Cheney "made handwritten edits throughout the draft on or around June 1, 1975, altering language describing CIA activities from 'unlawful' to merely 'improper,'" with Counsel Philip Buchen coordinating, and recommendations were "added to the report without a Commission vote, under White House direction." President Ford "acknowledged the episode and the Frank Olson family was invited to the White House." Arnold Burns and William Weld resigned in March 1988 "after separately meeting with White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker to raise concerns about Edwin Meese's conduct."⁴

Access and Favor

Craig Spence, the Washington lobbyist, "arranged late-night White House tours for associates," one on July 3, 1988, "at which two male prostitutes were present," according to the Washington Times reporting of 1989 that Paul Bonacci's and Lawrence King Jr.'s cases later cited. Donald Regan wrote that "virtually every major move and decision the Reagans made during my time as White House chief of staff was cleared by" the astrologer Joan Quigley, which Marlin Fitzwater confirmed. President Reagan wrote to Roger Pearson of the Pioneer Fund "on White House stationery" on April 14, 1982. H.L. Hunt's man in Washington carried "a snowstorm of memoranda to the Johnson White House at a rate of four or five a week"; Ray Hunt was appointed to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board by the White House in 2001 and 2005. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell "were recorded as visitors during Clinton's presidency and were photographed at White House events," and a "former senior White House official" told Vicky Ward that Alexander Acosta had said Epstein "belonged to intelligence." Mack McLarty, Bill Clinton's first chief of staff, "telephoned Hubbell about once a week, telling him he still had friends in the White House." Schmidt Futures "had quietly paid the salaries of staff working inside the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy"; Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel dined with Trump "in the Blue Room of the White House on October 22, 2019"; Steve Bannon served as White House Chief Strategist from January 20 to August 18, 2017, and David Sacks as "the White House AI and cryptocurrency czar" in the second Trump administration. The Oslo Accords were signed on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993.⁵