White House Office of the Executive Clerk
Agency overview
Formed1865 (1865)
HeadquartersEisenhower Executive Office Building
Washington, D.C., U.S.
38°53′51.24″N 77°2′20.93″W / 38.8975667°N 77.0391472°W / 38.8975667; -77.0391472
Agency executive
  • David E. Kalbaugh, Executive Clerk
Parent departmentOffice of the Staff Secretary

The White House Office of the Executive Clerk is responsible for managing the original legal documents signed by the President of the United States which make up his official acts—these include public laws, vetoes, treaties, executive orders, signing statements, nominations, proclamations, commissions, pardons, and certificates of awards or medals.[1][2] The office is further responsible for delivering any reports or messages the President wishes to send to the United States Congress.[2] Formed in 1865, it is one of the oldest offices in the Executive Office of the President of the United States.

Organization

The Office of the Executive Clerk is currently housed within the larger White House Office of the Staff Secretary, which controls the general paper flow through the President's office.[1] The Office of the Executive Clerk is a small component, typically composed of just the Executive Clerk and three to five assistants working out of Room 2 in the northwest corner of the ground floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building—across from the West Wing.[3][4]

Unlike most components of the White House Office—where the staff are nearly all political appointees of the incumbent President—the Office of the Executive Clerk is staffed entirely by career civil servants.[5] Also unique within the White House, the Executive Clerk retains many of its records from one administration to the next, rather than packing up all documents and data and delivering them to the National Archives and Records Administration as other White House offices are required to do under the Presidential Records Act.[2][5] Since the founding of the office in 1865, there have been only 11 executive clerks—an average term of over 13 years per executive clerk. The current White House Executive Clerk, since 2012, is career civil servant Dave Kalbaugh.[4] Kalbaugh has served in the Office of the Executive Clerk for 29 years, serving four presidents.[6][7]

History

Before the establishment of the White House Staff Secretary in 1953, the Executive Clerk oversaw a much broader range of White House functions, including White House finances, the messenger service, the mail room, presidential correspondence, and records management.[8]

Executive clerks

Partial table of former White House executive clerks:

Image Officeholder Term start Term end
William H. Crook 1870 1910
Rudolph Forster 1910 1943
Maurice C. Latta 1943 1948
William J. Hopkins[8] 1948 1971
Noble C. Melencamp[9] 1971 1973
Robert D. Linder[10] 1973 1982
Ronald G. Geisler[11] 1982 1994
G. Timothy Saunders 1994 2012
David E. Kalbaugh 2012 present

References

  1. 1 2 Patterson, Bradley H. (2008). "25. The Executive Clerk". To Serve the President. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution. pp. 272–278. ISBN 978-0-8157-6954-5. Retrieved December 22, 2020.
  2. 1 2 3 Dunn Tenpas, Kathryn; Hult, Karen. The Office of the Staff Secretary (PDF). The White House Transition Project (Report). Retrieved December 22, 2020.
  3. ↑ "2006 White House Office Staff List - Salary". The Washington Post. July 19, 2006. Retrieved December 22, 2020.
  4. 1 2 Annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel (PDF) (Report). White House Office. June 26, 2020. p. 9. Retrieved December 22, 2020.
  5. 1 2 Executive Clerk, Office of the (Report). George W. Bush Presidential Library. Retrieved December 22, 2020.
  6. ↑ "David Kalbaugh - White House Executive Clerk". LinkedIn. Retrieved December 22, 2020.
  7. ↑ "Fall 1999: Meet Executive Clerk, Tim Saunders". whitehouse.gov. Retrieved December 22, 2020 – via National Archives.
  8. 1 2 Burg, Maclyn (April 13, 1974). Interview with William Hopkins (PDF). Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library (Report). Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  9. ↑ "From Dodge City to D.C. and the White House" (PDF). The SigEp Gamma Ramma. No. 19. Sigma Phi Epsilon. Winter 2007. p. 6. Retrieved December 22, 2020.
  10. ↑ Office of the Executive Clerk Files (PDF). Jimmy Carter Library and Museum (Report). National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  11. ↑ White House Staff, 1981-1989. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum (Report). National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved December 23, 2020.


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