THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
WHITE HOUSE ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS AND PUBLIC ACCESS EMAIL
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Updated February 6, 1995
Version 3.1
WHAT'S NEW:
Table Of Contents
I. "Welcome to the White House" Web Site
II. Sending Email to the White House.
III. Sending Email to Congress; ftp and gopher
IV. Searching and Retrieving White House documents.
VI. President's Saturday Morning Radio Address
VII. Submitting Updates to the FAQ
VIII. Receiving Updates to the FAQ
I. DOES THE WHITE HOUSE HAVE A WORLD WIDE WEB (WWW) HOME PAGE?
On October 20, 1994, President Clinton and Vice President Gore acted to improve the accessibility of government information by opening a service called "Welcome to the White House: An Interactive Citizens' Handbook" on the World Wide Web. This service offers the public unprecedented interactive access to the Federal government, from the resources of Cabinet and Independent Agencies to a behind-the-scenes look at life for the First Family. In addition, the service provides a new way to electronically communicate with the President and Vice President, and provides improved access to more than 3000 White House press releases, speeches and public documents. This multimedia interface includes photographs, audio, and "hotlinks" to other government Web sites and services.
To access the home page, you must have software that allows you to "browse" the World Wide Web and receive graphical information, such as NCSA Mosaic. To find out about NCSA Mosaic, call 217-244-4130, or email orders@ncsa.uiuc.edu.
For those who cannot display graphics at your computer, the White House home page does support the text-only browser, LYNX. For information on LYNX, call Michael Grobe at 913-864-0452, or email at grobe@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu.
To reach the White House "home page":
URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/
You do not have to have a computer to access the information provided by the White House Web service. You may telephone the Federal Information Center (FIC), 1-800-347-1997, and receive answers to any questions regarding the content of the service.
II. HOW DO I SEND EMAIL TO THE WHITE HOUSE?
We are pleased to introduce this new form of communication with the White House for the first time in history. As we work to reinvent government and streamline our processes, this electronic mail project will help put us on the leading edge of progress. Please remember, though, this project is still very much under construction. The Office of Correspondence is currently working on defining what this system will do, as well as addressing equipment and staffing needs.
When you send a message to the White House you will receive an immediate acknowledgment that your message has been received. THIS IS THE ONLY ELECTRONIC RESPONSE YOU WILL RECEIVE FROM WHITEHOUSE.GOV. If you include your street address in your message, you may receive a response by U.S. Mail. Please be assured that every electronic mail message received is read and analyzed by staff. Your concerns and your ideas are carefully recorded and reported to the President and Vice President weekly.
You can send email to the following addresses:
Internet Direct: President@WhiteHouse.GOV
Vice.President@WhiteHouse.GOV or
Vice-President@WhiteHouse.GOV
WWW:
President
URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/White_House/Mail/html/Pres_1.html
Vice-President
URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/White_House/Mail/html/VP_1.html
There are no other personal addresses at whitehouse.gov. You may send correspondence to the First Lady at the following mail address:
Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
III. HOW DO I SEND EMAIL TO CONGRESS?
The House and the Senate are establishing electronic public access links. You can access Congressional information via the protocols listed below. For additional information, please contact the offices of your Representative or Senators.
Site Protocol Host/connection
House Email Congress@hr.House.GOV
Gopher Gopher.House.GOV
[URL: gopher://gopher.house.gov:70/1]
WWW http://www.house.gov
WAIS Server: diamond
Port: 210
Name: USHOUSE_house_bill_text_103rd
[URL: wais://quake.think.com/INFO?USHOUSE]
Senate
Gopher Gopher.Senate.GOV
[URL: "Gopher://Gopher.Senate.GOV:70/1"]
FTP FTP.Senate.GOV
Library of Congress
Gopher Marvel.LOC.GOV
[URL: "Gopher://Marvel.LOC.GOV:70/1"]
FTP seq1.LOC.GOV
Telnet LOCIS.LOC.GOV
OTHER GOVERNMENT SOURCES
Government documents: gopher esusda.gov
Government documents: gopher sunsite.unc.edu
Americans Communicating
Electronically (ACE): gopher ace.esusda.gov
Federal Publications BBS: (202) 512-1387
National Archives: gopher.nara.gov
WWW: http://www.nara.gov
(202) 501-5525
National Institutes
of Health (NIH) BBS: (301) 480-5144
National Institutes of
Health (NIH) : gopher gopher.nih.gov
National Institute for
Science and Technology : gopher gopher.nist.gov (login: gopher)
National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Adm. (NOAA): gopher gopher.noaa.gov
National Science
Foundation (NSF) : gopher gopher.nsf.gov U.S. Geological Survey : gopher gopher.usgs.gov Department of Education : gopher gopher.inet.ed.gov Federal Information
Exchange (FEDIX) : gopher fedix.fie.com FEDIX Dial-in (modem) : 1-800-783-3349 Smithsonian Institution
Natural History : gopher gopher.smithson.si.edu
Brookhaven National
Laboratory -- Protein
Data Bank (PDB) : gopher gopher.bnl.gov
Bureau of the Census: gopher gopher.census.gov
" " " " : ftp ftp.census.gov/pub
*****Please note that the government information sources listed in
Section III are not connected in any way to any White House
online projects, so if you have any problems with Congressional
or other systems, you will need to contact their system administrators
for assistance.
IV. HOW DO I SEARCH AND RETRIEVE WHITE HOUSE ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS?
WWW: http://www.whitehouse.gov/White_House/Publications/html/Publications.html
Email: We have established an Internet address for retrieving White House
publications by email. We have set up an Almanac server to process
your requests. To receive instructions on using this server, send a
message to:
Publications@WhiteHouse.GOV
In the body of the message, type:
send info
FTP: All of the White House documents available through email retrieval are
also available by anonymous ftp at ftp.whitehouse.gov.
STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS 1995 and LIST OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
Use the following references for downloading the State of the Union and the List of Accomplishments (37 page document).
State of the Union Address:
title: Remarks by The President in State of The Union Address
To: Publications@whitehouse.gov
Message body: send file 317535
-or-
To: Publications@Research.ai.mit.edu
Subject: Retrieve pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1995/1/25/2.text
ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
Title: President Clinton's Record of Accomplishment on The Two Year Anniversary of His Inauguration
pt1:
http://docs.whitehouse.gov/white-house-publications/1995/01/1995-01-19-clintonrecord -on-2-year-anniversary-of-inauguration.text
pt2:
http://docs.whitehouse.gov/white-house-publications/1995/01/1995-01-19-record-o n-2-year-anniversary-of-inauguration-pt.text
pt3:
http://docs.whitehouse.gov/white-house-publications/1995/01/1995-01-19-record-o n-2-year-anniversary-of-inauguration-part.text
b. email (three documents compose complete text):
pt1: To: Publications@Research.ai.mit.edu
Subject: Retrieve pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1995/1/22/2.text
pt2: To: Publications@Research.ai.mit.edu
Subject: Retrieve pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1995/1/22/3.text
pt3: To: Publications@Research.ai.mit.edu
Subject: Retrieve pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1995/1/22/4.text
COPYRIGHT INFO on White House documents:
Federal government information (including White house press releases, speeches, etc) is not copyrightable. Even when they are incorporated into a copyrighted article, the government's words themselves are not copyrighted, only the editorial content of the article is copyrighted.
Anyone is free to post WH press releases, etc. anywhere. If however, you were posting a newspaper's reportage of the WH press release without the newspaper's permission, you could be infringing copyright.
Additional Sites:
Various additional sites are archiving the press releases as distributed. What follows is an incomplete list of some of the sites containing the documents that have been released to date. This FAQ will be updated to reflect new sites as they become known.
SITE DIRECTORY
Telnet fedworld.doc.gov Telnet fedworld.gov or: FTP ftp.fedworld.gov /w-house
Notes: The following are notes on how to log in and get information from the
above sites.
1.a WAIS
(:source
:version 3
:database-name "/home3/wais/White-House-Papers" :ip-
address "152.2.22.81"
:ip-name "sunsite.unc.edu"
:tcp-port 210
:cost 0.00
:cost-unit :free
:maintainer "pjones@sunsite.unc.edu"
:description "Server created with WAIS release 8 b5 on
Feb 27 15:16:16 1993 by pjones@sunsite.unc.edu These are the
White House Press Briefings and other postings dealing with
William Jefferson Clinton and Albert Gore as well as members
of the President's Cabinet and the first lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton, Chelsea, Socks and others in Washington DC. Dee Dee
Meyers and George Stephanopoulos. Other good words:
United States of America, Bill Al Tipper Democrats USA
US These files are also available via anonymous ftp
from sunsite.unc.edu The files of type filename used in
the index were:
/home3/ftp/pub/academic/political-science/whitehouse-
papers/1993 ")
Folks without WAIS clients or gophers that act as WAIS
clients may telnet to sunsite.unc.edu and login as swais
to access this information via WAIS.
1.b GOPHER is a distributed menu system for information access on the
Internet developed at the University of Minnesota. gophers are
client-server implementations and various gopher clients are
available for nearly any computing platform. You may now use
gopher clients to access the White House Papers and other
political information on SunSITE.unc.edu's new gopher server.
You may also add links from your local gopher server to
SunSITE for access to the White House Papers.
For gopher server keepers and adventurous clients to access
SunSITE you need only know that we use the standard gopher
port 70 and that our internet address is SunSITE.unc.edu
(152.2.22.81). Point there and you'll see the references to
the Politics areas.
For folks without gopher clients can telnet to sunsite.unc.edu
to try out gopher access. You need to have access to internet
telnet and:
telnet sunsite.unc.edu
login: gopher
The rest is very straight forward. Browsing options end with a
directory mark (/), searching options end with an question mark (?).
There's plenty of on-line help available.
2. No special instructions.
3. The CLINTON@MARIST log files which contain all the official
administration releases distributed through the MIT servers
are available via anonymous FTP. These logs contain in
addition to the official releases, the posts that comprise the
ongoing discussion conducted by the list subscribers. To obtain
the logs:
FTP MARISTB.MARIST.EDU - the logs are in the CLINTON directory and
are named CLINTON LOG9208 thru CLINTON LOGyymm where yymm stands
for the current year and month. Problems should be directed to my
attention: URLS@MARISTC.BITNET or URLS@VM.MARIST.EDU.
Posted by Lee Sakkas - owner, CLINTON@MARIST
4. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility is providing
all Clinton documents on technology and privacy at the CPSR
Internet Library, available via FTP/WAIS/Gopher at cpsr.org
/cpsr/clinton (and in other folders as relevant). For email
access, send a message with the word "help" at the 1st line of
text to listserv@cpsr.org.
5. The FedWorld Computer System, operated by the National Technical
Information Service, archives White House papers in a traditional
BBS type file library. Connect to FedWorld by calling (703) 321-8020.
No parity, eight data bits and one stop bit (N-8-1). FedWorld
accommodates baud speeds of up to 9,600.
It is also possible to Telnet to FedWorld at FedWorld.doc.gov or
fedworld.gov (no caps). FTP to FedWorld at ftp.fedworld.gov.
White House papers are located in the W-House library of files.
To access this library from the main FedWorld menu,
enter <f s w-house>. Files are named with the first four digits
being the release month and day (e.g. 0323XXX.txt). Some
standard abbreviations after the date include:
rem - Remarks by the President
pc - Press Conference transcript
pr - Press Release
AM - AM Press Briefing
PM - PM Press Briefing
sch - The President's public schedule
spch- Text of major speeches.
These files are saved in ASCII format. Files can be viewed
online by requesting to download a file and then selecting
(L)ist as the download protocol. This will display the file a
screen at a time. White House papers are kept in the above
format for up to two months. Papers more than two months old
are compressed using Pkzip into a single file that contains all
of the files for that month (e.g. 0193.zip contains all papers
released during January 1993). In addition to White Documents,
FedWorld also provides a gateway to more than 100 government
funded BBSs and computer systems.
6. Texas A&M University GOPHER Server makes available White House
press releases and other documents. This archive includes
information from 1992 until the present time and is updated
as new documents are released. Gopher users can reach the
Texas A&M server by choosing it from their local server's list
of other gophers, or by pointing their gopher clients to
GOPHER.TAMU.EDU.
After connecting to the A&M server, take the following path to
reach the White House menus:
"Browse Information by Subject" -->
"Political Science" -->
"Information from the White House"
Gopher maintainers and other intrepid souls are welcome to point
directly to the A&M White House archive. The server is
GOPHER.TAMU.EDU and the path is 11/.dir/president.dir.
V. HOW DO I SIGN UP FOR ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS BY THE WHITE HOUSE?
The White House Communications office is distributing press releases over an experimental system developed during the campaign at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
You can obtain copies of all the press releases from a wide variety of on-line services or discussion groups devoted to either national politics in general or President Clinton in particular. These are listed in sections I and II.
Section Vc explains how you can sign up to receive press releases directly from the experimental MIT system by using an automated email server. The present system was not designed to handle high levels of message traffic. A more powerful system will become available in due course, and in the meantime, it would be appreciated if you used this service sparingly. One appropriate current use is secondary redistribution and archiving. If you use it, you will be carried forward when the more powerful system that replaces it.
Va. WIDELY AVAILABLE SOURCES
Direct Distribution
alt.politics.clinton
alt.politics.org.misc
alt.politics.reform
alt.politics.usa.misc
alt.news-media
alt.activism
talk.politics.misc
Indirect Distribution
misc.activism.progressive
cmu.soc.politics
assocs.clinton-gore-92
2. On CompuServe: GO WHITEHOUSE.
Also, see the Democratic Forum: Go Democrats
3. On America Online: keyword WHITEHOUSE or THE WHITEHOUSE or CLINTON
4. On Prodigy, jump WHITE HOUSE MEMO.
5. On The WELL: type whitehouse
6. On MCI: type VIEW WHITE HOUSE
7. On Fidonet: See Echomail WHITEHOUSE
8. On Peacenet or Econet: See pol.govinfo.usa.
***TECHNICAL NOTES***