Clinton Inauguration Invitations Found Among Misplaced Mail

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A misplaced container of mail cost some Friends of Bill one of the premier perks of knowing a President: the chance to attend his inauguration.

Workers preparing a warehouse for the annual flood of Christmas mail found a large air cargo container this week with about 40,000 pieces of wet, moldy mail.

The mail was at a postal contractor’s warehouse near Blytheville, about 155 miles northeast of Little Rock. Most of the letters were postmarked about Dec. 23, 1992, and destined for Tennessee and Arkansas.

Included in the container were numerous invitations to Arkansas residents to attend President Clinton’s Jan. 20 inauguration, according to Sen. David Pryor (D-Ark.).

In a letter to Postmaster General Marvin Runyon, Pryor demanded an apology for the people whose mail has been languishing for nearly a year.

“My constituents experienced tremendous disappointment and frustration as a result of this serious error,” Pryor said in the letter, which was released Thursday.

A private contractor handling holiday mail for the U.S. Postal Service apparently forgot that the mail was in the warehouse, postal spokesman Sam Bolen said.