NYDailyNews

Clintons Can Get 3 Of Their Gifts Back

By KENNETH R. BAZINET Daily News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - The Clintons can have back at least three of the furnishings they returned to the White House when those gifts were believed to be government property, the Daily News has learned.

"They have not picked them up yet, but the Clintons have been notified that we have some of their personal property," Jim McDaniel, the National Park Service's director of White House liaison, said yesterday.

The three gifts are an easy chair and an ottoman from New York furniture maker Steve Mittman, and a painting by Thomas McKnight.

McDaniel said it had been determined that the three items were the personal property of former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), and not the White House.

"We went through all the available documentation, including letters from the donors and acknowledgment letters from the National Park Service and determined that those were personal gifts to the Clintons," he said.

Clinton spokeswoman Julia Payne told The News: "As has been said before, nothing was removed without the Usher's Office's approval, and it's encouraging that the bookkeeping process is being cleared up."

The ottoman and easy chair were among four pieces of furniture from Mittman, including a pair of sofas that remain White House property. The four pieces had a total value of $19,900, records showed.

The Clintons also will get back a painting by McKnight — an artist who has drawn several of the official White House Christmas cards in recent years. Called "Constitution," the painting had hung in the living room in the First Family's private residence at the White House. "We asked the donor, and he said his intent was for it to be a gift to the Clintons," McDaniel said.

Another gift, a print called "Summer" by New York artist Will Barnet, also might be returned soon.

In February, the Clintons returned some 19 sets of furnishings, valued at more than $28,000, that they took with them when they left the White House on Jan. 20. They had started shipping the gifts to Chappaqua about a year before they left Washington.

The Clintons paid out of their pockets to ship the items from their home in Chappaqua back to the White House.

All the gifts remain in a supersecret National Park Service museum warehouse in Maryland that houses presidential artifacts dating to George Washington.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001