IN 1992 an Arkansas agency, World Wide Travel, billed reporters for campaign trips with the president. After one three day trip I received my bill and paid it. Then another arrived, for airport transport, then another for press telephone installation, then another for snacks, then another for something else.
They only stopped after an acrimonious exchange of letters. Other correspondents had similar exasperating experiences.
This was the firm that was poised to move into the White House after the long serving travel staff was fired by the Clintons on a charge of financial mismanagement in 1993. They didn't get the job because of a furore in the media over cronyism.
That firing is now coming back to haunt the first lady, who everyone believes pressurised aides to have it done. The seven officials whose careers were destroyed are now due to appear in Congress "travelgate" hearings and they will make sympathetic witnesses.
Travel office director Billy Dale, who served in the White House under John F. Kennedy and was immensely popular with the press, suffered the most. He was accused of embezzling $68,000, but was acquitted.
The office did not handle government funds they collected money from the press and paid it out on their behalf. His colleagues, against whom no charge were made, believe he was victimised to justify the firings.
The seven appeared publicly for the first time on Larry King Live this week, and described the nightmare they suffered. They were summoned to the office of administration director David Watkins one morning and told to be out by noon. They left in a cargo van which deposited them in the rain outside.
Since then the troubled travel office has had half a dozen directors. Billy Dale said press people told him: "Boy, if that office was mismanaged when you were there we sure wish you would come back and mismanage it some more."
Mr Watkins testified in Congress on Wednesday that the real reason for their firing was to get positive news coverage by rooting out corruption.
"Wonderful," another official remarked. "We said let's croak the only White House employee the press really likes. That's certain to generate positive play!"
The seven have no love for the first lady, who said this week there had been concerns about financial mismanagement but acknowledged that the issue was mishandled.
"It's nice to know that it's just a mishandling. I kind of think of it as being fired," said Mr Gary Wright, a 32 year veteran.
His colleague, Mr Moe Maugham, recalling Mrs Clinton was upset over the columnist, William Safire, calling her a congenital liar as it upset her mother, remarked avidly: "I just wonder how she felt [our firing] affected our mothers and fathers."
Mr Maugham recalled how Vince Foster confessed in his suicide note how troubled he was by the travel office firings.
Foster haunts all the issues which collectively are known as Whitewater. His red ink notes appeared on the billing records from Mrs Clinton's law firm which were sought two years ago and mysteriously turned up recently.
Republicans, who are trying to establish that the White House impeded the Whitewater investigation, claim the records were improperly removed from Foster's office after he committed suicide on July 20th, 1993. Mrs Clinton has said nothing was improperly removed.
The documents appeared mysteriously last August on the left hand corner of a table in the "book room" in the residence used only by the Clintons and private guests, according to Clinton aide Carolyn Huber whose job was occasionally to file documents left there.
She testified that she filed them away and only on January 4th realised their significance and handed them over. They show Mrs Clinton did 60 hours of work for a failed Arkansas savings and loan firm, which Republicans say contradicts her earlier account.
The president protested yesterday that the room was not private and many outsiders passed through it and that "all kinds of stuff" was crammed in there.
None of this amounts to an impeachable offence, but the Republicans scent blood. Worse, they are laughing at the Clintons.
"Well, maybe the butler did it!" scoffed Republican Senator Lauch Faircloth at the hearing at the idea that the accounts appeared out of nowhere.
Echoing Lloyd George's comment that negotiating with de Valera was like trying to pick up mercury with a fork, he said getting information from the White House was like "eating ice cream with a knitting needle".
Mrs Clinton has gone into free fall in the polls. Her approval rating dropped from 57 to 42 per cent since last month - still higher than Nancy Reagan when she was consulting astrologers.
The president's ratings are also falling, but the public is giving low marks to Speaker Newt Gingrich who, the Washington Post revealed, broke down and sobbed uncontrollably a few weeks ago when a special counsel was ordered to investigate his own financial dealings.
With both sides blamed for the budget stalemate, the polls in fact indicate a growing disillusion with politicians, which could translate into mass apathy in the 1996 elections.
The next act in the Whitewater saga could be a summons to the first lady to testify before Congress, though some Republicans fear this could backfire. The firsts lady would make a formidable witness.
"She might clean their clocks," political scientist Erwin Hargrove said. "Don't forget the old defence lawyer's rule don't ever call a witness unless you know what they have to say."