A budding reporter

ARI FLEISCHER: Go ahead, Jim. There’s also a reporter here from the Middlebury College campus. Where is this reporter? A budding reporter. Welcome to the White House press room. This is your future. (Laughter.)

Q. Leave while you can.

Full Transcript

The White House laughter

Q. London’s Daily Telegraph reported that Prime Minister Tony Blair is considering recommending to the Queen an honorary knighthood for Mr. Clinton. And Reuter’s News Agency reports that Mr. Blair, when asked about this, laughed. And since honorary knighthoods were conferred upon Presidents Reagan and GHW Bush when they left office, can you deny that anyone in the White House laughed, too, or did anyone think that Mr. Blair was wrong to laugh?

ARI FLEISCHER: Try hard as I may, I’ve not kept up with all the White House laughter. I don’t know what all my coworkers laugh at.

Full Transcript

Testing, Testing

ARI FLEISCHER: As part of the policy of working at the White House, all employees must be drug-tested, if you’re going to work in the Executive Office of the President. And that means some 650 people were drug-tested upon a condition of employment. Since then, 127 White House employees have been randomly drug-tested. And its an ongoing random drug-testing program that this White House will continue to operate.

And I’m not going to get into anybody did or did not pass. That’s going to be treated as a private personnel matter. I would suggest to you that in its entirety, this White House is a very professional operation, and there are no problems that have been brought to anybody’s attention. Let me say that.

In the event that something — somebody were to be tested positive, the White House policy is to treat this on an individual, case-by-case matter, to sit down and talk with the person whose test may have come back positive, to work with them to determine whether it was some type of casual usage or if there is a more serious problem, to determine what drugs were involved, and to work with that person and to help that person seek treatment and counseling. And if the situation is not resolved, the consequences could be anywhere from a letter of reprimand to firing.

Q. Were there 650 drug tests to begin with and now you’re doing random follow-ups –

MR. FLEISCHER: That’s correct.

Q. — of another 127?

MR. FLEISCHER: No, that would include people who had previously been tested.

Q. Yes, okay.

MR. FLEISCHER: Correct. It’s an ongoing random drug-testing program at the White House.

Q. Everybody was tested to begin with?

MR. FLEISCHER: That’s correct.

Q. And then random tests continue?

MR. FLEISCHER: That’s exactly correct.

Q. And that includes senior staff, that 650?

MR. FLEISCHER: That’s correct.

Q. And just to follow up, again, when you said there have been no –

MR. FLEISCHER: It also includes the President and the Vice President.

Q. They were tested?

MR. FLEISCHER: They were tested as a condition of employment here. They were the first two to take the drug test.

Q. Who imposed the condition of employment, if it wasn’t the President?

MR. FLEISCHER: The people.

Q. Oh, come on.

MR. FLEISCHER: No, it’s true. The policy of the White House is all employees have to be drug-tested. And that policy extends to the President and the Vice President.

Q. Some people might not have voted for him if they had known that. (Laughter.)

Q. When did they take the test?

Q. Is that the first time –

MR. FLEISCHER: The first week in the White House.

Q. Ari, do you know, to your knowledge, have other Presidents been drug-tested?

MR. FLEISCHER: I don’t know.

Q. What if he would have failed, what would have happened, do you know? (Laughter.)

Q. Ari, when you said that no problem has been brought to anybody’s attention, are you suggesting that nobody failed the test?

MR. FLEISCHER: I’m suggesting from this podium — I’m not going to get into counts and numbers on something that may involve counseling of employees. But the fact of the matter is that there are no problems.

Full Transcript

Options

Q. Do you want to confirm or deny the report? Or dodge it? (Laughter.)

ARI FLEISCHER: As you know, I don’t confirm, deny or speculate on personnel announcements.

Full Transcript

The Sports Section

Q. On a much lighter note, you can put your Yankees hat back on if you’d like. We see the President at these sporting events. He clearly has a good time. He’s bringing the T-ball field to the White House, and they’ll have the game over the weekend. What about behind the scenes? Is he a sports-page-first guy in the morning, and when he says he’s in bed reading the briefing books, is he really watching Sportscenter? (Laughter.)

ARI FLEISCHER: The President is a sports fan. He enjoys sports. He’s a good athlete, himself. And I think in that he finds a camaraderie with hundreds of millions of Americans. He does enjoy watching Baseball Tonight. He’s been known to go back to the Residence and turn that on and get the latest scores, especially for the Rangers. He reads the sports pages. I would never, in a roomful of journalists, indicate to you the order in which he reads the paper. Of course, he reads the news section first, unless the sports scores are really good and newsworthy. (Laughter.)

Full Transcript