White House e-mail tapes being turned over to prosecutors
By PETE YOST
The Associated Press
6/30/00 5:57 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House has yet to recover any missing
e-mails being sought by investigators and is turning over backup
tapes that might contain the messages to Independent Counsel
Robert Ray and the Justice Department, a judge disclosed Friday.
The FBI will now step in and try to retrieve the missing e-mails,
two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.
The latest twist in the controversy over the missing e-mails
played out in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Royce
Lamberth, who is presiding over a civil case involving the
messages.
The White House belatedly disclosed earlier this year that
thousands of e-mails, including some from Vice President Al
Gore's office, were not properly archived because of a computer
glitch.
As a result, the messages were never reviewed by White House
lawyers to determine if they should have been turned over under
subpoena to investigations ranging from impeachment and
Whitewater to campaign fund raising.
Presidential aides have tried for months to retrieve the messages
from the backup tapes.
Congress, Ray and Justice are investigating whether the e-mail
problem was an innocent mistake, as the White House contends, or
part of an effort to obstruct their investigations. The White
House denies wrongdoing.
At a court hearing Friday, Lamberth authorized presidential aides
to release some of the computer tapes to Justice Department
campaign finance investigators.
A government lawyer told the judge the White House is running
into technical problems that will indefinitely delay the
retrieval of missing e-mail. The White House had hoped to have
the first batch of e-mail ready for investigators by June.
E-mail will be provided to investigators in a "rolling
production," Elizabeth Shapiro, the Justice Department attorney
representing the White House, told the judge.
"But when does it start rolling?" Lamberth asked.
"Now you've got me," Shapiro answered.
Two law enforcement officials told the AP the FBI will use its
expertise to try to extract messages from the backup tapes. "The
FBI has the facilities; they'll take a run at it," one official
said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The chief Republican investigator on the House committee probing
fund-raising criticized the White House for further delays.
"We are very disappointed that the White House has not been able
to move forward with greater dispatch," said Jim Wilson, chief
investigator for the House Government Reform Committee. "Given
these new developments, at a very minimum, they should have kept
Congress informed of the fact that they were making no progress."
Just two days ago, the committee sent to Attorney General Janet
Reno a letter complaining her department had not interviewed
numerous key witnesses in its probe of the missing e-mails.
The White House e-mail controversy erupted when two former White
House computer experts said that much of the White House's e-mail
had not been stored in computer archives.
The White House hired outside companies to pull the e-mails off
computer backup tapes, but the preliminary copying of the tapes
hasn't started, the judge was told Friday.
Shapiro explained the machinery used to copy the tapes is "not
able to withstand the amount of copying" necessary for the 3,000
backup tapes in question.
"It is clear the Clinton-Gore White House is attempting to delay
the e-mail production until after the election," said Larry
Klayman, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch that
brought the lawsuit against the Clinton administration that
prompted Friday's hearing.
Copyright 2000 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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