Missing E-mail Lies Exposed
Media Monitor | By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid | August 11, 2000
The fact that the e-mails were missing was first reported by Insight magazine in December 1998. Six months earlier, contract employees working on the White House computer systems had been warned that they could lose their jobs and be sent to jail if they told anyone about the missing e-mails.
The Clinton administration has been exposed for lying to the courts and obstructing justice. We recently commented on how federal district Judge Royce Lamberth sharply criticized White House Counsel Beth Nolan and other White House staffers who had told him last March that before the end of September they could produce copies of backup tapes of missing White House e-mails that were under subpoena. This was before Lamberth’s court in the class action law suit brought by Judicial Watch on behalf of over nine hundred individuals whose FBI files had been illegally obtained by the Clinton White House. The files were mostly those of persons who had worked in Republican administrations. The fact that the e-mails were missing was first reported by Insight magazine in December 1998. Six months earlier, contract employees working on the White House computer systems had been warned that they could lose their jobs and be sent to jail if they told anyone about the missing e-mails. Nothing further was said about this until early this year when Sheryl Hall, a former White House employee, spilled the beans to Larry Klayman. She described the lengths to which the White House had gone to keep anyone from knowing that hundreds of thousands of e-mails had not been searched for subpoenaed material. She said the missing e-mails include communications on Filegate, Travelgate, Monica Lewinsky and campaign fund-raising. Last March, White House Counsel Beth Nolan told Judge Lamberth that the White House would be able to produce copies of the misplaced e-mails before the end of September. On June 2, Judge Lamberth was told that the September deadline would not be met. He was not told that the White House had a secret timetable, one that would put the production of the copies of the misplaced e-mails off until after Clinton left office. Outraged by the White House stalling, Judge Lamberth agreed to observe a demonstration by experts from Ontrack Data International, a company that specializes in recovering computerized data for law enforcement agencies. White House officials had claimed that it was taking so long because each backup tape took fifty hours to copy. Michael Norby of Ontrack who did the demonstration for Judge Lamberth, completed one in two hours and nine minutes. The White House and Justice Department lawyers said the test was incomplete, so Norby made another one, this time at the courthouse, and he completed it in one hour and fifty one minutes. He said that it could have been done much faster had not the recording speed on the backup tapes was very slow. Norby said that he “believed the settings had been ‘intentionally altered’ and he doubted they were representative of the thousands of White House backup tapes containing the missing e-mail.” The White House dragged its feet for months in correcting its e-mail problem. It has given the job to a firm that will do its bidding, stretching it out. An employee of the firm has testified that he was never told there was any hurry. This appears to be a case in which the judge could charge White House officials with criminal contempt of court. It may come to that.
Reed Irvine is the former Chairman of Accuracy In Media and Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report.
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