House Officials

WASHINGTON - Stepping up preparations for the possible retirement of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist - perhaps as early as next week - the White House has narrowed its list of potential replacements to a handful of federal appeals court judges and has conducted interviews with leading contenders, a senior administration official said yesterday. Senior White House officials and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales have interviewed top candidates and briefed President Bush, but the president has not made a decision, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Editor: On behalf of the staff and clients at Anna's House, I want to express my gratitude for the wonderful private/public partnership and collaboration between Harford Transit, Harford County Parks and Recreation and Catholic Charities of Baltimore. So often we focus on all of the negative circumstances around us, and during this holiday season, I wanted to share some positive news.  Anna's House is a program of Catholic Charities of...

WASHINGTON -- The questions fly his way day after day, sometimes with quite a zing. Reporters have been pressing -- sometimes hammering -- White House press secretary Scott McClellan for answers to a growing list of questions surrounding the leak of a CIA officer's identity. Invariably, his response is the same: This is a serious investigation. It's continuing. No comment. But as the questions have become more pointed, McClellan has faced a buzz saw in the White House briefing room, in large part because he had assured reporters early in the inquiry that top White House officials were not involved in the leak case.

Even after Jean Thomas lost her job and her husband, Sherman, became ill, she said she never missed paying the rent on the West Baltimore house the couple shares with their daughter and four young grandchildren. Yet after seven years in the rent-subsidized, four-bedroom rowhouse on North Fremont Avenue, the family is bracing to be evicted Tuesday morning. "I won't have a choice but to leave," said Jean Thomas, adding that her family has nowhere to go. "It's hard to find a place if you don't have a job. " Thomas blames the situation on the actions of her two adult sons.

Washington -- The House Judiciary Committee sharply broadened its investigation yesterday into the firing of eight top federal prosecutors, calling on the White House to provide legal documents and make current and former senior officials available for interviews -- including former White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers. The Democratic-controlled panel is investigating whether the wave of firings in December may have been part of a political vendetta against prosecutors who did not bring criminal cases that would have hurt Democratic candidates in last year's midterm election.

WASHINGTON -- Senior White House officials were informed that China might have stolen U.S. nuclear secrets nearly a year earlier than the Clinton administration originally disclosed, according to current and former U.S. officials.White House officials were told about China's apparent theft of U.S. nuclear weapons technology in July 1995, soon after it was detected by the Energy Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, several officials said.Until now, the administration has left the impression that White House officials first learned about the matter in April 1996, when Samuel R. Berger, then President Clinton's deputy national security adviser, was briefed on the case by Energy Department officials.

WASHINGTON -- Investigators said yesterday that the autopsy of Vincent W. Foster Jr., the deputy White House counsel, appeared to confirm that his death two weeks ago was a suicide.Mr. Foster was found dead July 20 in a park in Virginia with a gunshot wound to the head. Officials said the autopsy found gunpowder burns on Mr. Foster's hand, strong evidence that he had fired the weapon that killed him. The bullet that went through Mr. Foster's head has not been recovered, officials said.They said the autopsy did not detect drugs or alcohol in his body.

WASHINGTON -- Ever since the White House cut back on John H. Sununu's use of military aircraft for leisure and political travel, the controversial chief of staff has been soliciting free trips aboard jets provided by American corporations, White House officials said yesterday.In the latest instance, Beneficial Corp., a consumer credit company headquartered in Peapack, N.J., provided a chartered jet for Mr. Sununu to return to Washington from a New York stamp auction and a New Jersey GOP fund-raiser Wednesday night.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton's choice to head the Central Intelligence Agency, retired Air Force Gen. Michael P. C. Carns, has withdrawn his nomination because of a "personal matter" reviewed during his FBI background check, White House officials said yesterday.General Carns, a 57-year-old former fighter pilot, decided to take himself out of consideration to spare the administration and his family the embarrassment of another controversial, and potentially doomed, Senate confirmation hearing, a White House aide said.

White House officials said Sunday that the presidential environmental adviser Van Jones resigned this weekend of his own accord, a move resulting from a furor over his fiery remarks about Republicans and his signature on a petition questioning whether the U.S. government had any role in planning the Sept. 11 attacks. White House officials never rose to defend the aide, a prominent San Francisco community activist, and took pains over the weekend to distance themselves from Jones' past statements and decisions about his employment status.

Baltimore housing officials are warning that the city's homeless and others in need are being misled by deceptive fliers offering Section 8 housing vouchers. The fake fliers are circulating throughout the city, according to statement from the Housing Authority of Baltimore City. The fliers tell people to bring pay stubs, Social Security information and proof of income to the housing office to apply for a program that actually ran out of money last year. "These claims are not true," the statement from the housing authority says.

The Census Bureau reported recently what many people have long suspected: Over the last decade, the growth of Maryland's population has largely been driven by Hispanics, who increasingly are settling in suburban areas of the state. The data don't say how many of them are immigrants, but it's a good bet that many are. At the same time, the report noted, the population of Baltimore City, which has been declining for decades, fell by another 30,000 residents since 2001 — more than half again as much as city officials had expected.

State and local officials joined Shaun Donovan, the nation's top housing official, on a tour Friday of construction efforts that they hope will give residents of a blighted corner of West Baltimore affordable and environmentally minded housing. The development, which aims to renovate or build 111 low-income apartments by the end of this year, is in the Poppleton neighborhood, where boarded-up buildings sit alongside tidy, well-kept homes. The Department of Housing and Urban Development provided $1.5 million of federal stimulus funding to outfit apartments in the development with features that include double-pane windows, cabinets free of formaldehyde and energy-efficient appliances.

White House officials said Sunday that the presidential environmental adviser Van Jones resigned this weekend of his own accord, a move resulting from a furor over his fiery remarks about Republicans and his signature on a petition questioning whether the U.S. government had any role in planning the Sept. 11 attacks. White House officials never rose to defend the aide, a prominent San Francisco community activist, and took pains over the weekend to distance themselves from Jones' past statements and decisions about his employment status.

Residents of Howard County's oldest public housing complex would face higher rents this fall if county housing officials can persuade skeptical Housing Commission members to go along with their proposal. A vote on the idea for Hilltop Housing in Ellicott City split the four commission members in attendance 2-2 Tuesday night, meaning the proposal failed, but Deputy Housing Director Thomas Carbo said he and Housing Director Stacy L. Spann will bring the issue back at the Aug. 18 meeting in the county's Gateway building.

A Baltimore housing department official pleaded guilty yesterday to stealing from the same batch of gift cards for needy families that Mayor Sheila Dixon is accused of pilfering and has agreed to cooperate in a prosecutor's case against the mayor. Lindbergh Carpenter Jr., 44, who appears to be included in a 31-page indictment filed against Dixon last week as "Baltimore City Housing Employee #5," pleaded guilty to a charge of theft. Carpenter promised to provide "truthful and complete testimony concerning his dealings" with city officials as prosecutors mount their case against the mayor, court documents show.

WASHINGTON -- In a surprising reversal, Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr announced yesterday that he would not investigate how the White House obtained 481 confidential FBI files, most of them on Republicans.Attorney General Janet Reno responded by ordering a "complete and thorough" investigation of her own, which would be conducted by the FBI. Republicans, noting that Reno could either have expanded Starr's mandate to include the file controversy or appointed an additional special prosecutor, questioned how independent she would be."

WASHINGTON -- A 1,000-page stack of documents surrendered to a special prosecutor yesterday showed that more White House officials than the six already subpoenaed knew of internal discussions about a federal investigation into an Arkansas savings and loan tied to the Clintons.The documents, which came from the offices of as many as 40 White House officials, were turned over by the White House in response to a sweeping subpoena by Robert B. Fiske Jr., the special prosecutor.Nothing was known about the contents of the documents -- message slips to memorandums to personal notes -- or who they were from.

Howard County housing officials had 17 subsidized houses to sell but only nine qualified buyers this week in the first attempt this year to match working families with housing they can afford. The county plans to award up to 60 new townhouses and condominium apartments to buyers this year as long-planned developments along the U.S. 1 corridor come to fruition. But despite interest from hundreds of families, there were not enough qualified purchasers.

WASHINGTON -- At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the CIA from 2003 to 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two al-Qaida operatives, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials. The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.