White House Official

WASHINGTON -- Ignoring the advice of President Bush's counsel, White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu personally solicited the use of a corporate jet for political travel after three proposed aircraft donors were rejected because of potential conflicts of interest, a senior White House official said Friday night.Mr. Sununu's efforts to obtain use of the privately owned aircraft, coupled with his erroneous identification of the donor, prompted White House counsel C. Boyden Gray on Friday to revise the procedures used to screen the chief of staff's travel requests, the senior official said.

President Barack Obama will tour a small business Friday morning in Baltimore and outline a new job-creation proposal, according to a White House official. The stop is in addition to Obama's previously announced appearance before a group of House Republicans, who are holding a retreat at an Inner Harbor hotel. The Baltimore business was not immediately identified. Obama called jobs his "number-one focus in 2010" in his State of the Union speech on Wednesday night. He proposed taking $30 billion of TARP funds already repaid to the federal treasury by large financial institutions and giving that money to community banks for loans to small businesses.

WASHINGTON -- After more than five weeks of intense bargaining by congressional and White House negotiators, agreement is near on a $5 billion urban aid package.The emerging pact would provide $500 million a year for five years for the nation's cities, including money for new social programs, and $2.5 billion in capital gains tax waivers for businesses to spur investment in impoverished neighborhoods.A senior White House official said the administration was pleased with the arrangement, while Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo.

WASHINGTON -- Not to be "ungenerous or self-centered," said White House counselor Ed Gillespie, but he thinks some people overestimate Karl Rove's importance. After all, Gillespie pointed out, in the 2004 presidential campaign he himself headed the Republican National Committee, the heart of the party's operations. And he only talked to Rove "from time to time" Another White House official, asked what it would mean to lose the legendary strategist, whose departure was announced Monday, recalled that Rove had started the staff's "ice cream Fridays."

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton is seriously considering a new tax on hospitals to help finance medical care for people who have no health insurance, administration officials said yesterday.The officials said the proposal would be high on the agenda when Mr. Clinton meets this week with his advisers to review the design of his plan to guarantee health care for all Americans.A senior White House official supervising the work of the president's Task Force on National Health Care Reform said many hospitals would get a financial "windfall" under Mr. Clinton's plan because all Americans would have insurance.

WASHINGTON -- Nigeria acquired the status of international pariah yesterday after its military rulers hanged nine minority-rights activists in defiance of clemency appeals from the United States and many other countries.Playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight members of his Movement for the Survival of Ogoni Peoples were hanged in Port Harcourt prison in the Nigerian capital, Lagos, about noon yesterday, according the official News Agency of Nigeria.The executions came just two days after the nine activists were formally sentenced to death in procedures that allowed no appeals.

President Barack Obama will tour a small business Friday morning in Baltimore and outline a new job-creation proposal, according to a White House official. The stop is in addition to Obama's previously announced appearance before a group of House Republicans, who are holding a retreat at an Inner Harbor hotel. The Baltimore business was not immediately identified. Obama called jobs his "number-one focus in 2010" in his State of the Union speech on Wednesday night. He proposed taking $30 billion of TARP funds already repaid to the federal treasury by large financial institutions and giving that money to community banks for loans to small businesses.

WASHINGTON -- White House officials are actively floating the name of New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo as a potential nominee for the Supreme Court in an apparent attempt to get the reaction of official Washington and special-interest groups.The effort does not signal that Mr. Cuomo definitely will be the nominee, or that he is necessarily at the top of any official list, or even that the list of possible nominees is final, a White House official conceded."I don't have the sense that they are hot and heavy in the pursuit right now," one outside adviser said of the search for a new justice.

WASHINGTON -- With President-elect Bill Clinton's inauguration in sight, President Bush is preparing for the final weeks of his presidency and will deliver at least one major address presenting his view of the world as he leaves office.Using President Dwight D. Eisenhower's famous "military-industrial complex" address as a model, Mr. Bush is expected to give one such "farewell" speech -- and possibly as many as three -- in the coming weeks.The themes will draw on his three decades in national office and turn a national spotlight on "the challenges we'll be looking at" in coming years and the "post-Cold War world missions for the United States," an aide said.

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration continued its efforts this weekend to salvage the nomination of Dr. Henry Foster Jr. as surgeon general, scheduling an array of administration officials for today's television talk shows on his behalf and trying to rally support among physician and other medical groups.But the White House also found itself responding to new reports: According to the Associated Press, Dr. Foster wrote in a 1976 medical journal that he had performed hysterectomies to sterilize some severely mentally retarded women.

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband seeking damages against Vice President Dick Cheney, former Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and two others she accused of conspiring to disclose her identity. Plame and her husband, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, had alleged that Cheney, Libby, White House political adviser Karl Rove and former State Department official Richard L. Armitage had violated their constitutional rights in the events that led to Plame's being identified in news reports in the summer of 2003.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has mobilized his administration, including his top general in Iraq, in a major push to win more time and money for his war strategy. But one crucial voice has been missing from the chorus: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. In fact, Gates' recent comments seem to run counter to the message from the White House. During a recent trip to the Middle East, Gates told the Iraqi government that time was running out and praised Democratic efforts in Congress to set a timetable, saying it would help prod the Iraqis.

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 -- 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.

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.

WASHINGTON - That was some deal the 9/11 commission struck with President Bush to gain the on-the-record, public testimony of his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. If the commission had been playing poker with the president, it would have been the functional equivalent of holding a full house and folding your hand to a pair of deuces. The price the 9/11 panel paid for Ms. Rice's oath-taking appearance was ludicrous. It accepted the condition of White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales that it agree "in writing that it will not request additional public testimony from any White House official, including Dr. Rice."

WASHINGTON -- Seven weeks after the White House said he would be reassigned for his role in the misuse of a Marine Corps helicopter, the head of the White House military office has not been disciplined and remains on the job, administration officials say.They said Friday that the White House had found it difficult to find a successor to the official, retired Col. Alphonso Maldon Jr., and that some thought had been given to letting him stay in his post.Colonel...

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton cleared his schedule yesterday to go over the three finalists for the Supreme Court vacancy, amid signs he had zeroed in on one of them: Interior Secretary Bruce E. Babbitt."

Do you want to send an e-mail message to the White House? Good luck. In the past, to tell President Bush - or at least those assigned to read his mail - what was on your mind, all you had to do was sit down at a computer and dash off an e-mail note to president@whitehouse.gov. But this week, Tom Matzzie, an online organizer with the AFL-CIO discovered that communicating with the White House has become more difficult. When he sent an e-mail to protest a Bush administration policy, the message was bounced back with an automated reply, saying he had to send it again in a new way. Under a system that was deployed on the White House Web site last week, those who want to send a message to President Bush must navigate as many as nine Web pages and fill out a detailed form that starts by asking whether the message sender supports or opposes White House policy.

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle angrily attacked President Bush and his administration yesterday, accusing them of using the debates on Iraq and homeland defense to challenge Democrats' commitment to national security. Speaking on the Senate floor, Daschle demanded an apology from Bush, shouting: "You tell those [Democrats] who fought in Vietnam and in World War II they're not interested in the security of the American people. That is outrageous - outrageous! "We ought not politicize the rhetoric about war and life and death.