Gore e-mail guru ran afoul of law

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S SCANDALS
Gore e-mail guru ran afoul of law
Aide who lost records had run-ins with computer staff, Secret Service

Posted: October 05, 2000
1:00 am Eastern

By Paul Sperry
© 2009 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON -- The political aide who failed to properly archive Vice President Al Gore's e-mail not only lacked computer-systems experience, but also posed a security risk, White House and other sources say.

Gore hired Michael Gill, who had worked for him on the '92 campaign, over the objections of the Secret Service, sources say. Gill left the White House in December 1996.

"Gore got into a major fight with the Secret Service over keeping this guy, because they had some serious problems with his background," a federal law-enforcement agent familiar with the case told WorldNetDaily.

"Three guys had serious (security-clearance) problems with the Secret Service," he said. "And he was the worst one."

Gill, who did not return calls to his Denver office, also was at odds with White House computer experts, who repeatedly warned him he wasn't managing Gore's e-mail records as required by a 1994 law.

"Michael got chapter and verse from all of us -- including the Office of Administration's (former) legal counsel, Bruce Overton -- on what he needed to do for records-management of his e-mail under the Armstrong decision," said James MacDonald, who headed White House computer operations at the time.

Yet, Gill ignored their warnings and never tied Gore's office e-mail server into the Automated Records Management System (ARMS) used by the rest of the White House to archive and search e-mail to comply with subpoena and other document requests.

"He certainly let us know that he would be taking care of it on his own," said MacDonald, who described Gill as a "lone cowboy."

As a result, Gore's e-mail documents don't reside on ARMS, which is mainly where White House lawyers have been searching for such documents in response to subpoenas.

That means investigators -- including Robert Conrad, who's heading the Justice Department's campaign-finance task force -- haven't reviewed all e-mails sent by Gore, who used his e-mail account regularly. (In fact, the Washington Post has described Gore as an "e-mail addict" who keeps one eye on his in-box during staff meetings.)

Gore and White House lawyers claim they only recently learned his e-mails weren't being electronically archived.

But Hill investigators aren't so sure, and are continuing to interview witnesses. Gill has been questioned, though not under oath.

He told investigators that former Gore counsel Todd Campbell made the decision not to tie Gore's e-mail into ARMS. But Campbell, now a Tennessee judge, says he only did so after consulting with Gill, who recommended against it.

Was Gore involved in the decision?

"We don't know how high up it went, but the vice president was very involved in IT (information-technology) matters," said a House Government Reform Committee lawyer.

For example, Gore personally interviewed at least three Northrop Grumman computer contractors, according to committee documents.

"Mr. Gore calls upon our technical staff while on business trips for updated software or to troubleshoot a problem he might be having with one of his laptops or his new palmtop machine," wrote Northrop Grumman Program Manager Steve Hawkins in an Oct. 9, 1998, e-mail.

Other documents suggest Gore was worried that his e-mail was being recorded, and even sought ways to avoid it.

A handwritten note from associate Gore counsel Kumiki Gibson to former Gore counsel Jack Quinn reads: "As you know, VP is very concerned about e-mail."

And in a February 1996 e-mail to Gore, one of his staffers offered a way for Gore to exchange e-mail with Carter Eskew, one of his political advisers, without their messages being recorded:

"Reminder: All Internet e-mails are recorded on the White House computers [via emergency back-up tapes]. According to Michael [Gill], the only way not to have your e-mails backed up on government computers would be to get a Clinton/Gore computer in your office and set it up for private e-mails. QUESTION: How would you like to proceed on this?"

(It's worth noting that any reply by Gore to this e-mail would not be recorded on ARMS.)

Also, Gore and Gill appeared to clash with the same career computer specialists in the Office of Administration (OA), suggesting Gore and his political aide-turned-e-mail guru were operating from the same technical page.

"As you know, I pressed hard to get Internet features other than normal e-mail available through the system, and OA would not budge," an Office of Administration staffer quoted Gore saying in a 1995 e-mail.

"It appears that OA is being made to be the bad guy," the OA staffer said. "Perhaps we could arrange a meeting with the VP's staff to explain why we have to be concerned about capturing external e-mail."

In fact, Gore apparently gave Gill the authority to completely shut the Office of Administration out of his office's computer operations, even though OA is normally supposed to run such things.

In fact, Gill set up a separate local area network for Gore and a different e-mail system called "CC: Mail," say career computer operators.

"Everything he did was non-standard to what we had with everyone else," said Sheryl Hall, a former OA computer manager. "He had the vice president isolated from the very beginning."

The deliberate isolation ultimately led to Gore's e-mails escaping the eyes of congressional and criminal investigators.

Investigators say the gaps in Gore's e-mail are even more troubling than those in President Clinton's and his staff's, which appear to be "unintentional." Due to a computer "glitch," some 246,000 intergovernmental and other e-mails sent mainly to the West Wing escaped ARMS between August 1996 and November 1998.

"Rather than being the product of merely technical errors, the OVP (Office of the Vice President) problems appear to have resulted from conscious decisions by policy makers about records-management," said a report to be released today by the House Government Reform Committee.

"OVP decided shortly after the creation of ARMS that it would not use ARMS to manage its electronic records," the report said. "Instead, the OVP decided to rely on back-up tapes as the sole method of electronic records-management." It also relied on printouts of undeleted e-mail from staffers' individual computers.

"This decision guaranteed that the vice president's records would never be properly reviewed to ensure compliance with subpoenas and document requests because back-up tapes are, by nature, not readily searchable," the report said.

Relying just on back-up tapes also led directly to the permanent loss of at least a year's worth of e-mails -- incoming, outgoing and internal -- from Gore and about two dozen staffers.

After Gill left, the Office of Administration eventually took over management of Gore's e-mail server. But in the conversion, a Northrop Grumman contractor failed to include Gore's e-mail in a schedule of nightly backups.

So no Gore e-mail are stored on tape from late March 1998 to early April 1999. (The rest of Gore's unarchived e-mail, in contrast, is stored on some 625 cartridges, mostly in 4 mm format. But they must first be reconstructed before they can be searched.)

House investigators want to know "who at the OVP knew about its failure to records-manage its e-mails, what they knew about it, when they knew about it, and why investigative bodies were not informed in a timely fashion that e-mail records were not being properly searched."

Gore, for his part, pleads ignorance.

He told Conrad during his April 18 deposition over illegal fund-raising that he didn't know his office wasn't archiving his e-mail until he read about it in the "newspaper."

"We don't have any firsthand e-mail messages that you sent," Conrad complained.

'Mad Deleter'
MacDonald says he and Sparks had "a lot of discussions" with Gill about bringing Gore's archiving system into the "mainstream" of the White House. But Gill wouldn't budge.

In fact, MacDonald recalls one visit to Gill's office in the early days of the administration that ended in Gill telling MacDonald and one of his computer specialists to "get lost."

Howard Sparks, a White House network specialist, recounted what set Gill off.

"We carefully explained to Mr. Gill the legal requirement that the Office of the Vice President manage its electronic records," Sparks said in a June 19 court affidavit. "Mr. Gill did not care about these legal requirements and essentially told us to get lost, that the vice president's office would take care of its own records."

He added: "Being in no position to contradict a top political aide to the new vice president, we let the matter drop."

Sparks says Gill, who was known for deleting e-mail, earned the nickname "Mad Deleter."

He and other White House computer experts were "taken aback" by Gill's cockiness, in spite of his twenty-something youth and limited computer-networking experience.

"When he showed up in early 1993, everyone was really taken aback at his confidence," Sparks said.

Gill, who also was in charge of archiving Gore's Senate office e-mail, "had more responsibility than he should have had," he said.

"But he had worked on the Clinton-Gore campaign," Sparks said, "so we figured it was all political."

"Gill acted as a systems administrator despite the fact he had absolutely no formal training, which is of course interesting," the House committee investigator said.

At the same time, he was a security problem -- someone the FBI and Secret Service didn't even want in the White House.

"He was one of the top, top problems," the federal law enforcement officer said. "He should not have stayed there. And look what happened -- he went on to violate the (Armstrong) law."