Judge to unseal e-mail documents

October 11, 2000

WASHINGTON — Just when it appeared the Project X e-mail mini-trial
had come to a close — with President Clinton’s top aide yesterday
denying he knew about a trove of unsearched e-mail during the Lewinsky
probe — the federal judge hearing the civil case announced he will
unseal documents from a related criminal probe.

Independent counsel Robert Ray and special Justice Department
prosecutor Robert Conrad have been briefing U.S. District Judge Royce
Lamberth on their investigations into obstruction charges in the e-mail
scandal. They’ve also shared evidence with him.

Lamberth said he’ll “unseal” the evidence and release it starting
today. It wasn’t immediately clear what information the documents hold,
but sources say it may relate to new clues uncovered by a federal grand
jury.

After recent grand-jury questioning, a former White House lawyer was
forced to file a three-page affidavit to the court revising her previous
claims that the White House had turned over all e-mail records under
subpoena in 1998. She now says she was “mistaken.”

In yesterday’s court testimony, White House Chief of Staff John
Podesta acknowledged that the White House has not fully complied with
subpoenas for e-mail records.

He also admitted Clinton misspoke when he asserted to the press in
February — after news of the missing e-mail broke — that “we have
complied with every single request.”

In fact, Podesta revealed that in briefing Clinton, he and former
White House press secretary Joe Lockhart never told Clinton they’d fully
complied in producing e-mail records under subpoena.

“We never used those terms,” Podesta said. “We had produced thousands
of pages of e-mail. That’s all I said to him.”

Yet right after the Feb. 15 briefing, Clinton assured the press: “We
are in full compliance.”

It also seems that Podesta ran into a conflict with Clinton’s top
lawyer in 1998, when subpoenas were flying over the Lewinsky scandal.

A new impeachment book by Washington Post reporter Peter Baker claims
that Podesta was irked that White House Counsel Charles “Chuck” Ruff was
lying to him about various aspects of the case.

“I’m going to kill Chuck,” Podesta is quoted as saying.

But Podesta said he has “no recollection” of saying that, although he
did recall “great tension in the White House at that time.”

Both Ruff and Podesta were briefed in June 1998 about the Mail2
server “glitch” that caused thousands of West Wing e-mails under
subpoena to escape a computerized archiving system and go unsearched.
They never informed Congress, independent counsel Kenneth Starr or
Lamberth, then hearing Judicial Watch’s Filegate lawsuit, about the
problem.

Computer contractors who discovered the problem say they were told to

keep it secret or face jail. Podesta says he never heard about the threats at the time, nor did he have any idea how many e-mails were unrecorded.

He also claims he takes no notes during meetings and doesn’t store notes in his office.

An audit at the time shows a gap of more than 246,000 e-mails, including 157 of Podesta’s incoming messages from March 1997 to June 1998. The bleeding wasn’t fixed until November 1998, even though it was a simple fix involving a spelling change.

Under questioning by Judicial Watch general counsel Larry Klayman, Podesta also revealed that he picked the subcontractor hired in March by the White House to restore and search the missing e-mails from back-up tapes. His testimony contradicts earlier statements by a procurement officer that the decision was given careful deliberation and went through technical channels.

The subcontractor Podesta picked — SRA International Inc. — employs two former White House officials involved in records management, as

first revealed by WorldNetDaily.

The head of the prime contractor on the job, ECS Technology, told WorldNetDaily that White House officials picked SRA for him. ECS, a minority vendor, was awarded the job without bidding.

“So the goal was to hire SRA through a minority contractor?” Klayman asked.

“No, the goal was to get the job done,” Podesta shot back.

The owner of ECS also told WorldNetDaily that he had

little
experience in copying back-up tapes and retrieving lost data and was
looking forward to SRA being a “mentor.”

But both contractors have been beset by technical delays in copying the tapes and producing the missing e-mail, and full production isn’t expected until after Clinton’s out of office.

Now the White House is asking Lamberth to let a Defense Department lab in Maryland have a crack at restoring some of the data. Klayman objects to the proposal, arguing the Pentagon under Secretary William Cohen is too political and can’t be trusted to maintain the integrity of the tapes.

Lamberth asked Podesta how it is that a “whole string” of technical employees knew e-mails hadn’t been searched in 1998 and that the bleeding was allowed to continue, yet the “lawyers” didn’t know and the problem was hushed up “for another two years.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Lamberth said.

Podesta simply replied, “No one ever brought it back to my attention.” He says he never followed up to see if the bleeding had stopped.

Podesta’s testimony was cut short by a two-hour limit imposed by the court and agreed to by Judicial Watch, so as not to unduly burden such “high-level officials.”

As the gaunt, bespectacled Podesta stepped down from the stand and walked toward the courtroom door, he broke out in a wide grin as he spotted what seemed to be an old friend among the spectators. He stopped and gave the man, identified as Washington Post reporter George Lardner, a hearty handshake.