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Doodles: The Lighter Side Of Presidential History

We've covered the serious news about the thousands of documents released by the Clinton Library Friday morning.

On the lighter side, one thing that struck us — and others — is that Jeff Shesol, a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, spent some of his time at meetings doodling.

We've scoured hundreds of pages of documents and tried to capture a few of his gems. One — a carrot — was drawn during a meeting about the Clinton administration's discussion on technology literacy:

Shesol drew a leek during a meeting about an assault weapons ban:

Shesol joked on Twitter that "historians & therapists will grapple with the question of why I drew a leek during a WH meeting about the assault weapons ban"

In another Tweet, he wondered: "Important" doodles? Or evidence that my retirement as a cartoonist in 1998 did not come soon enough?"

We'll leave you with a few more doodles. If you click on any of the images, it'll take you to the corresponding document.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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