hide random home screenshot http://www.acns.nwu.edu/us.gov.online.html (World Wide Web Directory, 06/1995)
White House Electronic Access FAQ 
>Date:         Thu, 15 Apr 1993 22:15:15 EST
>From:         Dave Banisar 
>Subject: Obtaining Whitehouse E-Publications

WHITE HOUSE ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS AND PUBLIC ACCESS EMAIL

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Updated April 7, 1993

Table Of Contents

I. 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 Ic 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.

A. WIDELY AVAILABLE SOURCES

  1. On USENET/NETNEWS, electronic publications are found on a variety of groups:

    Direct Distribution
    Indirect Distribution
  2. On CompuServe: GO WHITEHOUSE (see notes)
  3. On America Online: keyword WHITEHOUSE or THE WHITEHOUSE or CLINTON (see notes)
  4. On The WELL: type whitehouse
  5. On MCI: type VIEW WHITE HOUSE (see notes)
  6. On Fidonet: See Echomail WHITEHOUSE
  7. On Peacenet or Econet: See pol.govinfo.usa.

B. NOTES ON WIDELY AVAILABLE SOURCES

 2. CompuServe's White House Forum (GO WHITEHOUSE) is devoted to discussion of the Clinton administration's policies and activities. The forum's library consists of news releases and twice daily media briefings from the White House Office of Media Affairs. CompuServe members can exchange information and opinions with each other in the 17 sections in the forum's message area. The message board spans a broad range of topics, including international and United Nations activities, defense, health care, the economy and the deficit, housing and urban development, the environment, and education and national service.

3. On America Online the posts are sent to the White House Forum, located in the News & Finance department of the service and accessible via keywords "white house" and "clinton." The White House Forum on America Online contains the press releases from the White House, divided into the categories "Press Briefings," "Meetings & Speeches," "Foreign Policy," "The Economy," "Technology," "Health Care," and "Appointments." The area features a message board so you can discuss the releases with other AOL members, and a searchable database for easy retrieval of releases in the topic that interests you.

5. MCI Mail users can access daily information on the administration's programs provided by the White House through MCI Mail bulletin boards. The available boards are: WHITE HOUSE ECONOMIC, WHITE HOUSE FOREIGN, WHITE HOUSE SOCIAL, WHITE HOUSE SPEECHES and WHITE HOUSE NEWS. A listing of these boards can also be obtained by simply typing VIEW WHITE HOUSE at the COMMAND prompt.

C. DIRECT EMAIL DISTRIBUTION

If you don't have access to the these accounts or if you would prefer to receive the releases via email, then the next section details how to sign up for this service. The server is not set up to answer email letters, comments or requests for specific information. To reach this MIT server, send email: 

                To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org
                Subject--Help
The server works by reading the subject line of the incoming message and taking whatever action that line calls for. If you want to sign up to automatically receive press releases, then your subject line would begin with the word RECEIVE. You can then specify what kind of information you are interested in receiving. The categories of information are:

ECONOMIC POLICY
Get releases related to the economy such as budget news, technology policy review, etc.
FOREIGN POLICY
Get releases related to foreign policy such as statements on Bosnian airdrop, Haitian refugee status, etc.
SOCIAL POLICY
Get releases related to social issues like National Service (Student Loan) program, abortion, welfare reform, etc.
SPEECHES
All speeches made by the President and important speeches made by other Administration officials.
NEWS
Transcripts of press conferences released by the White House Communications office, as well as the President's remarks in photo ops and other Q&A sessions.
ALL
All of the above
So, if you wanted to sign up to get releases related to the economy your email message would look like this: 
        To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org
        Subject--RECEIVE ECONOMY
When you send a signup message to the clinton-info server, it sends you back a status message letting you know what distribution streams you are signed up for. If you ever want to check on what groups you are signed up for send the following message: 
        To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org
        Subject--STATUS
You can stop receiving email releases by sending a REMOVE message to the clinton-info server. The word REMOVE would be followed by whatever distribution stream you wanted to drop. If you wanted to stop receiving message about the ECONOMY then your mail would look like this: 
        To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org 
        Subject--REMOVE ECONOMY
You could substitute SOCIAL, FOREIGN, SPEECHES, NEWS or ALL for ECONOMY in the above message and you would be dropped from that distribution list. If you send the subject line REMOVE ALL, then you will be taken off the email distribution system all together and will not receive further releases of any kind.

You can also ask for help from the automated server. Send an email query as follows: 

        To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org
        Subject--HELP
The server will respond by sending you a detailed form that will guide you through the process of signing up for the various distribution streams. As you will quickly discover, there is a automatic form processing interface that parallel the quick and easy subject line commands discussed here. More detailed help is available by sending an email query as follows: 
        To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org
        Subject--Please Help!
Finally, if you want to search and retrieve documents, but you do not have access to the retrieval methods discussed in section II, you can do this via email through the MIT server. You can obtain the WAIS query form by sending an email query as follows: 
        To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org
        Subject--WAIS
Once you have identified the documents that you want, be careful not to request them all at once, because you may be sent a message containing all the documents and this message may be too big for some mail delivery systems between the email server and you.

II. HOW DO I RETRIEVE WHITE HOUSE PUBLICATIONS FROM INTERNET ARCHIVES?

Various sites are archiving the press releases 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.

[hyper-editors note: assuming that web users are familiar with internet information services, I have deleted much of the explanation of these services, preferring instead to provide links to them and let them explain themselves... hope no one is too miffed)

FTP sites

WAIS sources

 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.

GOPHER

sunsite.unc.edu also provides these documents by gopher.

FedWorld BBS

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. White House papers are located in the W-House library of files. To access this library from the main FedWorld menu, enter . 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:

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.

III. HOW DO I SEND EMAIL TO THE WHITE HOUSE?

The White House email system is under construction. This is a new project and suffers from all of the problems common to a startup operation. The Communications office is currently working on defining what this system will do, as well as trying to come up with equipment and staffing to make sure that it works. Email messages are currently being printed out and responses are being sent out via US Mail.

Nobody wants this new venture to work more than the staff that has devoted so many hours to getting it up and running. But much time and effort will be required before the system is truly interactive. In the mean time, they will need a little patience from the electronic community. If you send a message to the White House, please include a US Post office address for replies.

You can send email to the following accounts:

Internet
  • president@whitehouse.gov (also vice.president@whitehouse.gov)
  • Clinton-HQ@Campaign92.Org
  • 75300.3115@CompuServe.Com
  • clintonpz@AOL.Com
CompuServe
75300,3115
America OnLine
clinton pz
MCI
TO: WHITE HOUSE
Fidonet
TO: WHITEHOUSE@1:2613/333
Please send corrections, deletion and additions to this FAQ to:
Updates@Clinton92.Org
This FAQ was HTML'ized by Joe Germuska.
j-germuska@nwu.edu