WHITE HOUSE ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS AND PUBLIC ACCESS EMAIL FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Updated September 7, 1995 Version 3.3 WHAT'S NEW: - First Lady's email address, Section II ********************************************************************* ********************************************************************* Table Of Contents I. "Welcome to the White House" Web Site II. Sending Email to the White House. - Internet Direct - World Wide Web (WWW) - Addresses available - Mail FROM: whitehouse.gov III. Sending Email to Congress; ftp and gopher - Internet Direct - Other Government Sources IV. Searching and Retrieving White House documents. - WWW - Publications@WhiteHouse.GOV - 1995 State of the Union and List of Accomplishments - Copyright information on White House documents - WAIS - GOPHER - FedWorld BBS V. Signing up for Daily Electronic Publications. A. Widely Available Sources. B. Notes on Widely Available Sources. C. Direct Email Distribution. D. Email Summary Service. VI. President's Saturday Morning Radio Address - Local Broadcast VII. Submitting Updates to the FAQ VIII. Receiving Updates to the FAQ ******************************************************************** I. DOES THE WHITE HOUSE HAVE A WORLD WIDE WEB (WWW) HOME PAGE? On October 20, 1994, President Clinton and Vice President Gore acted to improve the accessibility of government information by opening a service called "Welcome to the White House: An Interactive Citizens' Handbook" on the World Wide Web. This service offers the public unprecedented interactive access to the Federal government, from the resources of Cabinet and Independent Agencies to a behind-the-scenes look at life for the First Family. In addition, the service provides a new way to electronically communicate with the President and Vice President, and provides improved access to more than 3000 White House press releases, speeches and public documents. This multimedia interface includes photographs, audio, and "hotlinks" to other government Web sites and services. To access the home page, you must have software that allows you to "browse" the World Wide Web and receive graphical information, such as NCSA Mosaic. To find out about NCSA Mosaic, call 217-244-4130, or email orders@ncsa.uiuc.edu. For those who cannot display graphics at your computer, the White House home page does support the text-only browser, LYNX. For information on LYNX, call Michael Grobe at 913-864-0452, or email at grobe@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu. To reach the White House "home page": URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/ You do not have to have a computer to access the information provided by the White House Web service. You may telephone the Federal Information Center (FIC), 1-800-347-1997, and receive answers to any questions regarding the content of the service. II. HOW DO I SEND EMAIL TO THE WHITE HOUSE? We are pleased to introduce this new form of communication with the White House for the first time in history. As we work to reinvent government and streamline our processes, this electronic mail project will help put us on the leading edge of progress. Please remember, though, this project is still very much under construction. The Office of Correspondence is currently working on defining what this system will do, as well as addressing equipment and staffing needs. When you send a message to the White House you will receive an immediate acknowledgment that your message has been received. THIS IS THE ONLY ELECTRONIC RESPONSE YOU WILL RECEIVE FROM WHITEHOUSE.GOV. If you include your street address in your message, you may receive a response by U.S. Mail. Please be assured that every electronic mail message received is read and analyzed by staff. Your concerns and your ideas are carefully recorded and reported to the President and Vice President weekly. You can send email to the following addresses: Internet Direct: president@whitehouse.gov vice.president@whitehouse.gov first.lady@whitehouse.gov WWW: President URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/white_house/mail/html/pres_1.html Vice-President URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/white_house/mail/html/vp_1.html First Lady URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/white_house/mail/html/fl_1.html There are no other personal addresses at whitehouse.gov. You may send correspondence to other White House Staff at the following mail address: The White House Washington, DC 20500 The only email generated from whitehouse.gov is the autoresponse to incoming email. If you have received a piece of email purporting to be from anyone other than "autoresponder", you have been spoofed. No other email from whitehouse.gov is authentic. But don't worry - the White House plans to begin responding to the President's email with email, but that hasn't happened yet. III. HOW DO I SEND EMAIL TO CONGRESS? The House and the Senate are establishing electronic public access links. You can access Congressional information via the protocols listed below. For additional information, please contact the offices of your Representative or Senators. Site Protocol Host/connection House Email congress@hr.house.gov Gopher gopher.house.gov [URL: gopher://gopher.house.gov:70/1] WWW http://www.house.gov WAIS Server: diamond Port: 210 Name: USHOUSE_house_bill_text_103rd [URL: wais://quake.think.com/INFO?USHOUSE] Senate Gopher gopher.senate.gov [URL: gopher://gopher.senate.gov:70/1] FTP ftp.senate.gov Library of Congress Gopher marvel.loc.gov [URL: gopher://marvel.loc.gov:70/1] FTP seq1.loc.gov Telnet locis.loc.gov OTHER GOVERNMENT SOURCES Government documents: gopher: esusda.gov Government documents: gopher: sunsite.unc.edu Americans Communicating Electronically (ACE): gopher: ace.esusda.gov Bureau of the Census: gopher: gopher.census.gov ftp: ftp.census.gov/pub Federal Publications BBS: (202) 512-1387 National Archives: gopher: gopher.nara.gov WWW: http://www.nara.gov (202) 501-5525 National Institutes of Health (NIH) BBS: (301) 480-5144 National Institutes of Health (NIH): gopher: gopher.nih.gov National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS): WWW: http:\\www.niehs.nih.gov gopher: gopher.niehs.nih.gov National Institute for Science and Technology: gopher: gopher.nist.gov (login: gopher) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adm. (NOAA): gopher: gopher.noaa.gov National Science Foundation (NSF): gopher: gopher.nsf.gov Federal Information Exchange (FEDIX): gopher: fedix.fie.com FEDIX Dial-in (modem): 1-800-783-3349 Smithsonian Institution Natural History: gopher: gopher.smithson.si.edu Brookhaven National Laboratory -- Protein Data Bank (PDB): gopher: gopher.bnl.gov United States Code: gopher://hamilton1.house.gov:70/1 U.S. Geological Survey: gopher: gopher.usgs.gov **** Please note that the government information sources listed in Section III are not connected in any way to any White House online projects, so if you have any problems with Congressional or other systems, you will need to contact their system administrators for assistance. IV. HOW DO I SEARCH AND RETRIEVE WHITE HOUSE ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS? WWW: http://www.whitehouse.gov/white_house/publications/html/publications.html Email: We have established an Internet address for retrieving White House publications by email. We have set up an Almanac server to process your requests. To receive instructions on using this server, send a message to: publications@whitehouse.gov In the body of the message, type: send info FTP: All of the White House documents available through email retrieval are also available by anonymous ftp at ftp.whitehouse.gov. STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS 1995 and LIST OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Use the following references for downloading the State of the Union and the List of Accomplishments (37 page document). State of the Union Address: Title: Remarks by The President in State of The Union Address a. WWW: http://docs.whitehouse.gov/white-house-publications/1995/01/1995-01-24-final-co py-state-of-union-address-as-delivered.text b. Email: To: publications@whitehouse.gov Message body: send file 317535 -or- To: publications@research.ai.mit.edu Subject: Retrieve pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1995/1/25/2.text ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Title: President Clinton's Record of Accomplishment on The Two Year Anniversary of His Inauguration a. WWW (three documents compose the whole): pt1: http://docs.whitehouse.gov/white-house-publications/1995/01/1995-01-19-clinton- record-on-2-year-anniversary-of-inauguration.text pt2: http://docs.whitehouse.gov/white-house-publications/1995/01/1995-01-19-record-o n-2-year-anniversary-of-inauguration-pt.text pt3: http://docs.whitehouse.gov/white-house-publications/1995/01/1995-01-19-record-o n-2-year-anniversary-of-inauguration-part.text b. Email (three documents compose complete text): pt1: To: publications@research.ai.mit.edu Subject: Retrieve pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1995/1/22/2.text pt2: To: publications@research.ai.mit.edu Subject: Retrieve pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1995/1/22/3.text pt3: To: publications@research.ai.mit.edu Subject: Retrieve pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1995/1/22/4.text COPYRIGHT INFO on White House documents: Federal government information (including White house press releases, speeches, etc) is not copyrightable. Even when they are incorporated into a copyrighted article, the government's words themselves are not copyrighted, only the editorial content of the article is copyrighted. Anyone is free to post WH press releases, etc. anywhere. If however, you were posting a newspaper's reportage of the WH press release without the newspaper's permission, you could be infringing copyright. Additional Sites: Various additional sites are archiving the press releases as 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. SITE DIRECTORY 1. SUNSITE.UNC.EDU pub/academic/political-science/whitehouse-papers 2. FTP.CCO.CALTECH.EDU /PUB/BJMCCALL 3. FTP MARISTB.MARIST.EDU 4. CPSR.ORG /CPSR/CLINTON 5. FedWorld Online System 703-321-8020 8-N-1 or: Telnet fedworld.doc.gov Telnet fedworld.gov or: FTP ftp.fedworld.gov /w-house 6. GOPHER.TAMU.EDU 11/.dir/president.dir Notes: The following are notes on how to log in and get information from the above sites. 1. Office for Information Technology at the University of North Carolina maintains the full collection of White House electronic releases available for search with WAIS and also accessible via Gopher and FTP. 1.a WAIS (:source :version 3 :database-name "/home3/wais/White-House-Papers" :ip- address "152.2.22.81" :ip-name "sunsite.unc.edu" :tcp-port 210 :cost 0.00 :cost-unit :free :maintainer "pjones@sunsite.unc.edu" :description "Server created with WAIS release 8 b5 on Feb 27 15:16:16 1993 by pjones@sunsite.unc.edu These are the White House Press Briefings and other postings dealing with William Jefferson Clinton and Albert Gore as well as members of the President's Cabinet and the first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chelsea, Socks and others in Washington DC. Dee Dee Meyers and George Stephanopoulos. Other good words: United States of America, Bill Al Tipper Democrats USA US These files are also available via anonymous ftp from sunsite.unc.edu The files of type filename used in the index were: /home3/ftp/pub/academic/political-science/whitehouse- papers/1993 ") 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. 1.b GOPHER is a distributed menu system for information access on the Internet developed at the University of Minnesota. gophers are client-server implementations and various gopher clients are available for nearly any computing platform. You may now use gopher clients to access the White House Papers and other political information on SunSITE.unc.edu's new gopher server. You may also add links from your local gopher server to SunSITE for access to the White House Papers. For gopher server keepers and adventurous clients to access SunSITE you need only know that we use the standard gopher port 70 and that our internet address is SunSITE.unc.edu (152.2.22.81). Point there and you'll see the references to the Politics areas. For folks without gopher clients can telnet to sunsite.unc.edu to try out gopher access. You need to have access to internet telnet and: telnet sunsite.unc.edu login: gopher The rest is very straight forward. Browsing options end with a directory mark (/), searching options end with an question mark (?). There's plenty of on-line help available. 2. No special instructions. 3. The CLINTON@MARIST log files which contain all the official administration releases distributed through the MIT servers are available via anonymous FTP. These logs contain in addition to the official releases, the posts that comprise the ongoing discussion conducted by the list subscribers. To obtain the logs: FTP MARISTB.MARIST.EDU - the logs are in the CLINTON directory and are named CLINTON LOG9208 thru CLINTON LOGyymm where yymm stands for the current year and month. Problems should be directed to my attention: URLS@MARISTC.BITNET or URLS@VM.MARIST.EDU. Posted by Lee Sakkas - owner, CLINTON@MARIST 4. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility is providing all Clinton documents on technology and privacy at the CPSR Internet Library, available via FTP/WAIS/Gopher at cpsr.org /cpsr/clinton (and in other folders as relevant). For email access, send a message with the word "help" at the 1st line of text to listserv@cpsr.org. 5. 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. It is also possible to Telnet to FedWorld at FedWorld.doc.gov or fedworld.gov (no caps). FTP to FedWorld at ftp.fedworld.gov. 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: rem - Remarks by the President pc - Press Conference transcript pr - Press Release AM - AM Press Briefing PM - PM Press Briefing sch - The President's public schedule spch- Text of major speeches. 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. 6. Texas A&M University GOPHER Server makes available White House press releases and other documents. This archive includes information from 1992 until the present time and is updated as new documents are released. Gopher users can reach the Texas A&M server by choosing it from their local server's list of other gophers, or by pointing their gopher clients to GOPHER.TAMU.EDU. After connecting to the A&M server, take the following path to reach the White House menus: "Browse Information by Subject" --> "Political Science" --> "Information from the White House" Gopher maintainers and other intrepid souls are welcome to point directly to the A&M White House archive. The server is GOPHER.TAMU.EDU and the path is 11/.dir/president.dir. V. 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 Vc 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. Va. WIDELY AVAILABLE SOURCES 1. On USENET/NETNEWS, electronic publications are found on a variety of groups: Direct Distribution alt.politics.clinton alt.politics.org.misc alt.politics.reform alt.politics.usa.misc alt.news-media alt.activism talk.politics.misc Indirect Distribution misc.activism.progressive cmu.soc.politics assocs.clinton-gore-92 2. On CompuServe: GO WHITEHOUSE. Also, see the Democratic Forum: Go Democrats 3. On America Online: keyword WHITEHOUSE or THE WHITEHOUSE or CLINTON 4. On Prodigy, jump WHITE HOUSE MEMO. 5. On The WELL: type whitehouse 6. On MCI: type VIEW WHITE HOUSE 7. On Fidonet: See Echomail WHITEHOUSE 8. On Peacenet or Econet: See pol.govinfo.usa. 9. On The Meta Network: Go Whitehouse 10. On GEnie: Type WHITEHOUSE or WHRT, or MOVE 1600 Vb. 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. CompuServe's Democratic Forum (GO DEMOCRATS) is the Democratic Party's online information service covering the activities of the Clinton administration. The sysops of the Democratic Forum work for the Democratic National Committee, and are directly involved in managing the forum and responding to online questions. The Democratic Forum provides access to documents from the White House Office of Media Affairs, with vigorous discussion and debate in the message sections about the impact of the Clinton Administration's policies and proposals. The Democratic Forum also holds a regular weekly online conference with special guests on current topics. 3. On America Online, the posts are sent to the White House Forum, located in the News & Finance Department of the service or accessible via keywords: "white house" or "clinton". The White House Forum on America Online contains the press releases from the White House, divided into the categories "Appointments", "Budget", "Congress", "Education", "Economy", "Foreign Policy", "Health Care", "Housing", "Labor", "Law and Order", "Meetings & Speeches", "Proclamations", "Technology", and "Vice President". The area features a message board so you can discuss the releases with other AOL members, a searchable database for easy retrieval of releases that interest you, a Library for longer releases from the White House, and a library that members can upload files of interest for other members. America OnLine now offers full access to the Usenet Newsgroups, Gopher, and WAIS servers mentioned throughout this document. 4. On Prodigy, WHITE HOUSE MEMO contains all the public documents released by the White House. This service is offered as a PLUS feature. 6. MCI Mail users 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. 9. On The Meta Network, material is posted in the White house conference and is accessible via keywords (matching on document titles and subject categories) as well as full text search. Discussions on specific initiatives take place in special interest forums, e.g. health, technology, and reinventing government. 10. GEnie's White House RoundTable has been established to distribute and discuss the official press releases and files relating to the White House and the Clinton Administration. The files library holds all of the press releases on the official mailing list, and the Bulletin Board has Categories set up with topics relating to all aspects of the Administration and Executive Branch of government. Letters to the White House can be entered easily online with a menu option on the WHITEHOUSE page. Vc. DIRECT EMAIL DISTRIBUTION You can subscribe to Electronic Publications by the White House via electronic mail. This publications system allows you to fine-tune your subscription, using keys based on over 160 different categories, to include only specific kinds of documents and in specific subject areas. You can also control whether you receive the documents selected as they are released or altogether once a day. Finally you can choose to receive entire documents, you may choose to get only summaries of the documents, which are written by the extension service of United States Department of Agriculture. INFORMATION: To find out more about this service 1. By World Wide Web - http://www1.ai.mit.edu/publications.html 2. By email - send a message to: publications@research.ai.mit.edu with the subject "Help", like this: To: publications@research.ai.mit.edu Subject: Help [This system replaces an older one that was reached through Clinton-Info@Campaign92.org, which will soon be decommissioned.] STANDARD SUBSCRIPTIONS: A set of standard subscriptions for popular topics are available and easy to use. For the given topic, just include the corresponding command in the subject line: COMMAND TOPIC Receive All Everything Receive Economy Economy Receive Education Education Receive Environment Environment Receive Executive-Acts Executive Acts Receive Foreign Foreign Affairs Receive Government Government Activities Receive Healthcare Healthcare Receive International-Security International Security and Defense Receive Domestic-Security Justice and Crime Receive Legislation Legislation Receive Party Party Politics Receive Personnel Personnel Announcements Receive Technology Science and Technology Receive Social Social Issues Receive Press-Briefings Daily Press Briefings Receive Instructions Instructions (FAQs) Receive Policy-Briefings Policy Briefings Receive Remarks Remarks by President, Vice President, First Lady Receive Speeches Speeches on Major Topics CUSTOM SUBSCRIPTIONS: Advanced facilities allow you to create customized subscriptions based on your combinations of the available categories. CANCEL SUBSCRIPTIONS: You can stop receiving email releases by sending a CANCEL message to the Publications server. The word CANCEL 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: publications@research.ai.mit.edu Subject: CANCEL ECONOMY To be dropped from a specific distribution group, you could substitute for ECONOMY in the above message any of a variety of options described below, including SOCIAL, FOREIGN, HEALTH, SPEECHES, NEWS or ALL. If you send the subject line CANCEL ALL, then you will be taken off the email distribution system all together and will not receive further releases of any kind. REDISTRIBUTION: Special facilities are now available for redistributors of these documents that allow you to create feeds to mailing lists and associated maintainers with those feeds. If any trouble arises, the publications system operators can contact the maintainers. If you use these tools, we can provide more reliable service. USER SURVEY: A electronic survey of the readers of White House publications is accessible from the server. The survey is designed to determine people's satisfaction with the Electronic Publications Service, how they receive the documents, and how the documents are used. Results of the current survey will be compared with those of an earlier one to see how the composition of users has changed. The results of the earlier survey are available over WWW at http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/iiip/doc/surveys/report.html Vd. EMAIL SUMMARY SERVICE The Extension Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture provides a daily summary of White House electronic publications. 1. Subscriptions To subscribe to the USDA Extension Service White House Summary service, send a message to: almanac@esusda.gov In the body of the message, type: subscribe wh-summary To Unsubscribe from the USDA Extension Service White House Summary service, send a message to: almanac@esusda.gov In the body of the message, type: unsubscribe wh-summary 2. Document Retrieval To request a specific document from the daily summaries, send a message to: almanac@esusda.gov In the body of the message, type: send white-house ##### (where ##### is the request number for the document) 3. Document Search A user-friendly search facility is also available to search the white-house documents archived at esusda.gov. To search, send a message to: almanac@esusda.gov In the body of the message, type: search white-house keyword1 keyword2 4. Catalogue of Summaries and Documents Back issues and the catalog of the summaries or the documents contained at esusda.gov can also be retrieved through our almanac server. To get the summary catalog, send a message To: almanac@esusda.gov In the body of the message, type: send wh-summary catalog 5. Further Information If you have any questions about Almanac, please contact: wh-admin@esusda.gov VI. WHERE CAN I HEAR THE PRESIDENT'S SATURDAY MORNING RADIO ADDRESS? What is the POTUS Saturday Address to the Nation (PSAN)? The President of the United States (POTUS) makes an Address to the Nation every Saturday at 10 AM. This is in continuation of the tradition started by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (with the famous Fireside Chats), and revived by President Ronald Reagan. The POTUS Saturday Address to the Nation is referred to by the acronym "PSAN". President Clinton's Saturday morning Radio Address to the nation can be heard on many local stations throughout the country. The address is carried live by some stations and broadcast on tape-delay by others. Please check with your local stations to determine if and when you can hear the address in your area. You can also write to the: White House Office of Media Affairs Attn: Saturday Radio Address The White House Washington, DC 20500 snail mail only for a listing of local area broadcasters. VII. HOW DO I SUBMIT UPDATES FOR THIS FAQ? Please send corrections, deletion and additions to this FAQ to: faq-update@whitehouse.gov VIII. HOW DO I GET THE MOST UP-TO-DATE COPY OF THIS FAQ Send an electronic mail message to faq@whitehouse.gov and the most up-to-date copy of this file will be returned to you.