By Joe Conason

June 10, 2001 | 8:00 p.m

Presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer, the balding boy who

cried "vandal," is in a world of trouble. The clever ploy he executed last January to demean the White House's former occupants and thus dignify his boss-all the while feigning high-minded disinterest-looks more and more like a lowdown frame-up. His accusations about the damage done to the executive mansion by Clinton administration staffers have lost credibility, and so has he. After months of media hyperbole about felonious behavior and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, the only "evidence" put forward to substantiate Mr. Fleischer's charges is a couple of photographs. At most, they show an office littered with boxes and files. To date, there is no evidence of severed phone lines, wrecked keyboards, obscene graffiti, busted furniture, stolen plaques, pilfered doorknobs or any of the assorted awful delinquencies ascribed to the departing Clinton staff in stories attributed to anonymous Bush sources. Of course, the veteran scandalmongers of the national press corps required little or no substantiation for this thrilling story. By last January, broadcasting and exaggerating such tales about the Clintons, their staff and their associates was an eight-year media addiction, and its ill effects were exacerbated by the related habit of ignoring or burying exculpatory facts. These old journalistic patterns persisted for a while, even after the General Accounting Office's investigation of the supposed vandalism, demanded by Representative Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican, revealed no incriminating data. According to the General Services Administration, "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy." Likewise, the G.A.O. informed the kooky Congressman that the White House had provided "no record of damage that may have been deliberately caused by the Clinton administration." Despite the typical reluctance to properly correct lurid, baseless headlines, the official contradiction of Mr. Fleischer's fantasies was too sharp to be suppressed by the Washington press corps. At long last, some of these Elmer Fudds, stumbling around with their notebooks and tape recorders, started to suspect that they'd been duped. This suspicion grew when, upon being asked a few elementary questions, the press secretary responded with blusters and evasions. His answers were less plausible than a dot-com business plan. Consider Mr. Fleischer's claim that the alleged damage was "catalogued" by the White House staff. It quickly turned out that he hadn't meant that term to be taken literally, as no one had physically recorded any act of vandalism until June 1. Instead, according to him, an outraged Bush aide was maintaining full and complete "mental" notes for four months. (Mr. Fleischer insists that the Clinton gang threw away all the pencils and paper, a nefarious act that may have precluded traditional methods of compiling information. Or perhaps, as he has hinted more than once, the Bush staffers and their boss, George W., were just too noble to write down those bad things.) Fortunately, the young Republicans have prodigious brains. They remember everything perfectly! How else to account for the highly detailed set of "facts" provided to The Washington Post by Mr. Fleischer last weekend? Suddenly, he had nice round numbers for the disconnected or damaged telephones (75), pornographic phone messages (15), discarded binders (6,000), tampered keyboards (100) and booby-trapped fax machines (six). Concluding with a few tart words about the Bush administration's unappreciated "graciousness," Mr. Fleischer told the Post that he now hopes "everyone can go on with the policy and business of the government." That may not be possible just yet, however, much as he would like to get back to prevaricating about bigger issues. The unstraitjacketed Mr. Barr has demanded another vandalism probe by the G.A.O. (although one of his calmer aides apparently told United Press International that he doesn't really want "a full-blown investigation with subpoenas and hundreds of interviews." Maybe just enough to refurbish the original smear, if possible.) And Mr. Barr's request has been endorsed by many former Clinton staffers, who believe it will vindicate their innocence of anything more destructive than minor pranks. Meanwhile, the media pack might press Mr. Fleischer with a few more belated inquiries: Do any requisitions, orders or other documents exist to confirm the vandalism story? Are there any photographs of skanky graffiti? Will anyone on the White House staff speak on the record about what they found in late January? If this fiasco drags on much longer, the Oval Office masterminds who pull Mr. Fleischer's strings could decide that their flattened flack is no longer worth the embarrassment. There is a traditional solution to problems such as this. The press secretary can be "promoted" to handle "other responsibilities" that don't require any skeptical adult to believe what he says. From a White House that never apologizes, that might be apology enough.