Up to 900 Donors Stayed Overnight at White House

In the two years before the November election, the president and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton arranged for at least 577 friends and supporters to stay overnight at the White House, including many major party contributors referred by the Democratic National Committee, according to records obtained by The Times.

A steady procession of generous donors was invited to stay in the historic Lincoln Bedroom and other quarters in the residence, the records and interviews show. During the campaign, they donated and raised millions of dollars for the Democratic Party and Clinton’s reelection effort.

Although many of the guests were longtime acquaintances of the first family, others were selected from donor lists submitted periodically by the DNC to the White House political affairs unit.

Administration officials said the Clintons’ use of the White House to host overnight guests is entirely appropriate.

“There’s no question that it is [an ego] stroke for political contributors and people involved in fund-raising,” said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry. But, he added, “the president considered these folks personal guests, and he appreciated their interest and support. He was gracious enough to say thanks in a special way.”

However, the large number of guests--far more than previously known--and the role of Democratic campaign officials in choosing some could heighten concerns that the White House was being systematically used in a Democratic fund-raising program to raise $160 million for the party’s national campaign.

The Times obtained a White House document that shows 577 “overnight” stays in 1995 and 1996. Administration officials have declined comment on the number or names of the guests, citing privacy concerns. But they indicated that there may have been as many as 900 overnight guests during the entire first term.

“Those numbers are staggering,” said Charles Lewis, executive director of Citizens for Public Integrity, an independent watchdog group with expertise in campaign finance. “It should be alarming to the American people that the president of the United States was using the national symbol of our democracy as a way station for fat-cat donors like a Holiday Inn or Motel 6.”

Already, Clinton and the Democrats have been criticized for a series of 103 coffee klatches in the White House Map Room for business executives, community leaders and supporters. Federal election records show that donors who attended the coffee receptions gave $27 million to the DNC in 1995 and 1996.

Other perquisites extended to donors and prospects included trips aboard Air Force One, a round of golf with the president and invitations to state dinners and the White House movie theater, according to Democratic sources.

Of the overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom, said one former White House official familiar with the invitations: “It was just part of the social package.”

The Democratic Party’s fund-raising methods are under scrutiny in both Congress and the Justice Department. Criminal investigators are examining a number of illegal or questionable contributions from foreign sources. Senate and House committees are exploring the alleged misuse of government property and personnel for fund-raising purposes.

The total amount of money contributed by those invited to overnight stays is not known. But partial guest lists obtained by The Times show they include numerous generous donors, including Hollywood moguls Steven Spielberg and Lew Wasserman, who gave $300,000 and $335,000 to the DNC, respectively, and Santa Monica-based computer software magnate Peter Norton, who gave $350,000.

Interviews with guests who slept in the White House leave little doubt that the “second-floor experience,” as administration officials refer to it, had a powerful effect.

“For a kid from Cleveland, it was pretty heady stuff,” said William Rollnick, a retired Florida executive who spent the night in April 1994, and has donated $456,300 to the DNC. “It was major-league excitement.”

Although he said the invitation was not the reason he contributed, Rollnick said he “could see a causal relationship [between] being invited to stay there and then giving.” He added, “I guess I never did anything right; I was already giving.”

The parade of overnight guests far exceeded the number during the Bush and Reagan administrations, according to former White House officials. They said the Lincoln Bedroom was only used sporadically for family members and close friends of the Republican presidents.

“It was something special . . . and it was very infrequent,” said C. Boyden Gray, Bush’s former legal counsel.

Clinton White House officials stressed that many of the first family’s guests were relatives and friends.

“For the Clintons, inviting people in to stay overnight was not some special perk that went only to fund-raisers,” McCurry said.

Although the names of those who stayed overnight during the recent campaign were not available, a partial list of 73 couples who stayed at the White House during the first two years of the administration was obtained by The Times. At least 27 of the 73 donated a total of more than $3 million to the Democratic Party in the 1992 and 1996 campaigns, records show.

The use of the White House residence for overnight stays for donors was reported in August by the Center for Public Integrity and in December by the Washington Post. The full extent of the practice, and the DNC’s involvement, is only now coming to light.

Most of the people who slept at the White House in 1993 and 1994 “were old friends and early supporters, not the biggest contributors,” said a former White House official.

But as the 1996 race got closer, the official said, the president increasingly turned to the White House Office of Political Affairs for recommendations of guests who could be counted on to help in the campaign. The DNC began supplying lists of names.

DNC Finance Director Richard Sullivan recalled contacting the White House “about seven or eight times” last year to refer names of fund-raisers, said DNC Communications Director Amy Weiss Tobe.

“Sullivan would call and say, ‘So and so was in town. He’s a big contributor. How about putting him up at the White House?’ ” said one administration official.

Marvin Rosen, the DNC finance chairman from October 1995 until last month, also submitted names for the White House and Air Force One. So did Rosen’s predecessor, Truman Arnold.

Tobe said the decision of who was invited was always made by the Clintons.

However, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee said in an interview Friday that he would “never” allow staffers to furnish the White House a list of top donors to consider for the Lincoln Bedroom.

“I don’t think it is proper for us as a matter of routine to line up the top heaviest hitters and send them over and say, ‘You’ve got to have these people in the Lincoln Bedroom,’ ” said Roy Romer, the Colorado governor who was named head of the DNC by Clinton last month.

Rep. David M. McIntosh (R-Ind.), chairman of a House subcommittee investigating alleged White House political misdeeds, said he is frustrated by the administration’s refusal to turn over information detailing the use of the residence quarters.

“It looks to me like they set up the Lincoln Bedroom as the ultimate bed and breakfast for donors,” he said.

An invitation to sleep at the White House is considered one of the highest honors for presidential friends and supporters. Guests usually slept in one of two rooms down the hall from the president’s second-floor residence--the Lincoln Bedroom, the only room in the White House named after a president, and the Queen’s Bedroom, a bright room with a four-poster bed.

The Lincoln Bedroom holds a special place in White House lore. Used by Lincoln as his office, it was there, among a pile of maps, that the 16th president convened Cabinet meetings and charted the course of the Civil War.

Jacqueline Kennedy attended to its detailed restoration. A holograph copy of the Gettysburg Address rests on a desk. Portraits of Andrew Jackson and a young Mary Todd Lincoln gaze out over a collection of Victorian rococco-revival furniture, its dark wood laced with carvings of grapevines, birds and flowers. By a window sits a rocking chair similar to the one in which Lincoln sat at Ford’s Theater.

The most striking feature however, is the 8-by-6-foot bed, crowned with an ornate headboard. Lincoln never slept in it, but Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt did when it was in a different room.

The aura of history is so strong that some guests say they stay awake all night in a state of nervousness. And Clinton has added his own flourish for his guests. After taking them on a personal tour of the residential suites in the East Wing, the president leads them into the room for a theatrical finish.

“He’ll guide people over to a spot, point to the picture of Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation and say, ‘He signed it right here and you are standing on the spot where he signed it,’ ” said one guest.

Times staff writer Alan C. Miller and researchers Robin Cochran and D’Jamilia Salem-Fitzgerald contributed to this story.

* DINNER QUESTIONED: Tax-exempt group official says nominee helped plan event. A19

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White House Bedrooms for Rent?

During the president’s first term, the Clintons arranged for up to 900 guests to stay overnight at the White House, many of whom contributed large sums to the Democratic National Committee. Many slept in the Lincoln Bedroom.

About the Lincoln Bedroom

* Original usage: Used as an office or Cabinet room by Lincoln. It is also the room where he signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

* Furniture: American Victorian furnishing from 1850 to 1870. The rosewood bed is over 8 feet long and almost 6 feet wide and was originally purchased by Mrs. Lincoln in 1861.

* Previous Guests: Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson are the only presidents known to have slept in the room. Former first daughter Maureen Reagan and her husband, Dennis stayed there and both claimed to have seen a transparent figure in a red coat. The Reagans’ dog, Rex, barked and wouldn’t go in that room. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill refused to sleep in bedroom while visiting Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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Big Spenders

On April 11, 1994, Hugh Westbrook, Bernard Rapoport and William Rollnick spent the night in the White House. All three contributed larges sums of soft money to the Democratic National Committee. Rapoport gave $215,000; Rollnick gave $456,300 and Westbrook gave $162,852 for a combined total of $824,152.

Source: The White House: An Historic Guide, Times staff.