"Chefgate" is rearing its ugly head at the White House. Or should that be its stomach?
First Lady Hillary Clinton's well-meaning efforts to keep the President's waistline trim have lead to embarrassing revelations about feuding below stairs in the White House kitchen, hush money to a fired chef and even wild allegations about a plot to "poison" the First Family.
The saga only now coming to light began in April 1994 when the First Lady decided to get rid of the French-trained chef, Pierre Chambrin. His version is that he was fired because he was "fat and spoke with a French accent".
The White House version is that Pierre's "culinary concept differed from that of the Administration". But what is not in question is that Pierre was paid $37,026 (£24,684) not to speak to the press.
This revelation has led the House Majority Whip, Texas congressman Tom Delay, to say: "We simply cannot afford to pay hush money to chefs that [sic] barely speak English." Mr Delay, who has dubbed the matter "Chef gate", and other members of Congress now want to know all about a secret "personnel fund" handled by the White House Chief Usher, Gary J. Walters, out of which the hush money was paid.
All this unsavoury stuff is coming out now because an assistant chef, Sean T. Haddon, is suing the White House for unfair dismissal. He claims he was fired because he had filed a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that he was passed over for promotion to senior chef. Mr Haddon, who is white, claims that this was because he had married a black woman. This is dismissed as "twaddle" by "people close to the kitchen". Chief Usher Walters says that Mr Haddon was a loner who "has a personal vendetta towards me for a reason that is preposterous and fallacious".
Mr Haddon's lawyer, Rodney Sweetland III, says that his kitchen enemies spread "malicious falsehoods" about him, saying that he had talked about poisoning the First Family. The Secret Service questioned Mr Haddon about this, naturally enough, and submitted him to a lie detector test which he passed.
Mr Sweetland told the New York Times that if he were invited to the White House, which he thinks is unlikely, "I'd have to have my food tested first".
But back to portly Monsieur Chambrin. Just 11 months after the Clintons arrived in the White House, there was a review of the kitchen staff on behalf of the First Lady and he got a favourable note from Chief Usher Walters. He wrote: "Chef Chambrin has been faithful to the desires of Mrs Clinton to serve American fare and cut out as much as possible the classical tendency to serve heavy foods with butter and heavy sauces." Yet it was Mr Walters who five months later fired Chef Chambrin while ensuring his silence with the payoff. Says Chambrin: "I didn't fit the profile of an American chef politically. You know, I'm overweight and I have a strong French accent."
He says that he was not too surprised to get the boot because the Clintons had sent word in a news article that they wanted an American-born chef. "When an American wants something, usually they get it," Mr Chambrin said in his deposition.
Another French-trained chef in the White House got very different treatment. This is pastry chef Roland Mesnier, who was praised to the skies by Mr Walters.
He said that Mr Mesnier had been at the White House over 13 years. "He is a major talent with tremendous creativity. His work is admired around the world. Like most extremely talented artists, he is moody, excitable and temperamental: but all within bounds. He would be hard to replace."
Mr Chambrin was replaced by Walter S. Scheib III who came from the exclusive Greenbrier resort at White Sulphur Springs. He is having a hard time this week as the main White House kitchen is being renovated and he had to prepare for a South Lawn picnic for 1,000 people. Having toiled over smoked scallops, curry-crusted swordfish and peppered mahi-mahi in a kitchen "the size of my mother's" Mr Scheib saw the picnic rained off.
Just as well he is not "moody, excitable and temperamental".