-Caveat Lector- http://www.ctrl.org/">
-Cui Bono?-
"In fact, a White House official told one of the contractors they
had a jail cell with his name on it if he discussed the matter,"
she said.
February 15, 2000
White House accused of cover-up
By Jerry Seper and Andrew Cain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The White House hid thousands of e-mails containing
information on Filegate, Chinagate, campaign finance abuses and
Monica Lewinsky, all of which were under subpoena by a federal
grand jury and three congressional committees, a former White
House computer manager says.
Sheryl L. Hall, chief of White House computer operations who
has since moved to a similar position at the Treasury Department,
said administration officials covered up the fact that electronic
messages from August 1996 to November 1998 had not been
surrendered, as required by law, deciding instead to label them
as "classified" documents. She said the cover-up was part of a
bid to delay the investigations into 2001.
"Contractors working at the White House discovered the
glitch showing that 100,000 White House e-mails involving nearly
500 computer users had not been located during the document
search," said Mrs. Hall. "When the contractors told the White
House about the problem, they were threatened, warned not to
discuss it. They were told the documents were classified.
"In fact, a White House official told one of the contractors
they had a jail cell with his name on it if he discussed the
matter," she said.
At least 4,000 of the e-mails involved or related to Miss
Lewinsky, the former White House intern with whom President
Clinton has admitted having a sexual relationship, she said.
The veteran computer manager, who left the White House after
being demoted for questioning the propriety of the
administration's use of a database system for political purposes,
has since become a critic of the White House.
She has accused first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and nine
White House political appointees in a pending lawsuit of job
harassment and reprisals for her complaints. The suit has been
filed in U.S. District Court in Washington by Judicial Watch, a
public interest law firm.
In addition to the Lewinsky messages, she said hundreds of
other e-mails included references to the White House's receiving
secret FBI files on former Reagan and Bush administration
officials; information on the selection of corporate executives
for overseas trade trips; and messages concerning campaign
finance activities in the 1996 election.
She said the glitch was first discovered in May 1998, when
the contractors traced a programming error on one of four White
House servers back to August 1996. The error involved e-mails to
and from 464 White House computer users and the problem was not
fixed until November 1998.
The White House e-mails had been sought under subpoena by a
federal grand jury, the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate
Governmental Affairs Committee and the House Government Reform
Committee.
They also were sought by Judicial Watch in separate pending
suits involving Filegate and Chinagate.
Mrs. Hall, who was assigned to the White House in October
1992 from the Naval Sea Systems Command, said the missing e-mails
were discovered when the contractor, Northrop Grumman Corp.,
found that one of the four White House Lotus Notes e-mail servers
handling the mail for about 500 computer users had been
mislabeled and that a White House search of electronic messages
under the subpoenas was incomplete.
She said e-mails from that server were not properly managed
for a two-year period meaning they were not collected by the
mainframe computer during the subpoena record search.
Mrs. Hall said White House project directors, Mark Lindsay
and Laura Crabtree, were told by Northrop Grumman of the glitch
but chose not to make the problem public.
"There's no doubt they knew the search had not been
complete, and the missing records included those involving Miss
Lewinsky and other matters of concern," she said. "They could
have retrieved the documents, and they should have done it
forthrightly."
Mr. Lindsay, head of the White House Office of Management
and Administration, did not return calls seeking comment.
Miss Crabtree, customer support branch chief at the White
House who has since moved to the Labor Department, was
unavailable for comment.
White House spokesman James Kennedy said administration
officials made "a good faith effort to respond in a timely
fashion to all requests for information" sought under subpoena,
but declined to elaborate.
"We generally do not discuss the details of particular
requests," he said.
Mr. Kennedy would not address Mrs. Hall's accusation that
100,000 electronic messages were not turned over, saying he was
"not going to get into the specifics of any allegation."
Northrup Grumman spokesman Larry Hamilton, who said he was
unfam
