"It was the modern political equivalent of Moses and the Burning Bush. On Inauguration Day 2001, Bush presidential aides entered the White House to discover the Miracle of the Warm Pizza Crust.

The famous crust was found, appropriately enough, in a pizza box that had been left on a desk when a Bush aide arrived for work on the new administration's first day. The discovery was included in a list of alleged vandalism of White House offices by departing Clinton aides, furnished by the Bush White House to the investigative arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office. But when presented with the warm-crust allegation, Clinton officials pointed out that no Clinton aides assigned to that office were even in the White House complex after Jan. 19 -- the day before inauguration.

This means that even if the Clinton aides left at midnight the night before and the Bush aides showed up at noon on Inauguration Day, the pizza crust stayed warm for 12 hours.

That the Bush administration would cooperate so freely in the GAO investigation of such matters as pizza temperature in the Clinton White House stands in stark contrast to the administration's stand against another GAO investigation, this one involving Vice President Cheney's energy task force. In protecting the identities and requests of outsiders who met with the task force, top White House officials have indicated they may challenge the constitutionality of the law empowering the GAO -- a move that, if successful, would pretty much put the 80-year-old office out of business.

In the GAO's Clinton vandalism probe, due to wrap up in April, the Bush administration has furnished the agency with a list of allegations.

'We are saddened that especially after the events of September 11, 2001, the White House continues to push this matter,' two former Clinton aides in charge of White House administration, Mark Lindsay and Mike Malone, wrote to the GAO last month.

Lindsay and Malone pointed out some apparent flaws in the catalogue of Clinton vandalism, including the Warm Pizza Crust incident. The Bush team gave the GAO a photo of a dirty room in the White House complex, but the Clinton aides wrote that 'the office featured in the photograph was vacated at least one week prior to Inauguration Day, and had been in fact completely cleaned by the morning of January 20th.'

Then there was the case of Room 145 in the building next to the White House. The Bush administration said 'historical artifacts' had been taken from the office. 'We understand that at least one of the artifacts, an historic fireplace mirror, can be found hanging over the fireplace in [Bush] Chief of Staff [Andrew H.] Card's office,' Lindsay and Malone wrote.

The GAO itself, in its suit filed last week against Cheney over the energy task force records, argues that the White House worked to 'facilitate the investigation' into alleged Clinton vandalism. The suit points out that before President Bush came to office, 'the executive branch has complied with countless GAO requests for information.' The Clinton White House gave GAO the names of outside consultants who met with its health care task force and 'thousands of documents' from a task force on trade relations with China.

Even the Nixon administration, no standard of transparency, relented during the Watergate years when the GAO wished to examine White House records. 'To litigate the GAO's authority would bring only negative publicity and defeat,' former Nixon counsel John Dean has said.

Apples and oranges, says the Bush White House. Previous GAO requests did not involve requests for information about meetings of the president or vice president, Bush aides say, while the current request is for meetings held by Cheney in his role as head of the task force. 'This would be something we've never seen before,' a senior Bush aide says.

But that principle is a bit murky. While the GAO had not previously asked the current White House for information regarding the contacts of the president or vice president, the Bush White House has been quick to relinquish to Congress such information from the Clinton White House.

Last September, Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, asked for e-mails from the Clinton White House to see whether campaign contributors had inappropriate influence over President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. The National Archives, noting that Bush 'agreed to this release,' turned over 2,000 pages of e-mails two months later, including those to Gore from his staff and between senior Gore staff.

Also last year, Bush raised no objection to handing over to Burton's committee 2,475 pages of Clinton documents related to the Marc Rich pardon -- including phone records, a list of visitors cleared to enter the White House and notes of Clinton conversations with a foreign leader.

Clinton did not object. But such flexibility was learned the hard way. Lanny Davis, who was Clinton's special counsel, says Bush is right to stiff the GAO, and Clinton was right to try to block earlier congressional 'encroachments,' too. Problem is, it never works.

'Been there, done that,' Davis said. 'We abandoned principle under the pressure of politics, and unfortunately, that's going to happen here.'" (Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, February 26, 2002).