White House officials say e-mail problem was not a high priority at end of 1999

Y2K computer fixes dominated White House's technical agenda

By Ian Christopher McCaleb/CNN

May 3, 2000
Web posted at: 5:08 p.m. EDT (2108 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The House Government Reform Committee restarted its series of hearings into the missing White House e-mails on Wednesday, with panel members grilling administration technical aides on just how much they knew about an estimated 246,000 lost electronic messages, and whether anyone had taken any action to suppress information about the problem.

Rep. Dan Burton

Committee Chairman Dan Burton (R-Indiana) and a handful of committee Republicans pressed Michael Lyle, director of the White House Office of Administration, and Karl Heissner, a career civil servant who is an expert in computer databases, about when they learned there was a problem with the White House's e-mail archiving system, and why Congress wasn't notified.

"For almost two years, the White House knew subpoenas weren't being complied with," Burton said as the day's hearing opened. "Nothing was done about it until the Washington Times reported (the e-mail system problems) and this committee started interviewing people."

Burton is exploring whether the White House deliberately withheld e-mails that had been subpoenaed or otherwise requested by his committee, as well as former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and Justice Department investigators.

The White House says the e-mails fell though the cracks when an its "automatic records management system," an electronic mail archiving system, failed.

Michael Lyle, director of the White House Office of Administration

White House officials blame a "disconnect" between their technicians, who diagnosed the e-mail problem, and their lawyers, who apparently did not understand that the problem might affect pending subpoena requests.

Burton and his fellow Government Reform Committee Republicans say they are trying to determine if more sinister forces were working to hide behind the computer foul-up, saying that many of those 246,000 e-mails are relevant to the investigations of the Monica Lewinsky matter, alleged campaign finance improprieties, the firing of a number of White House travel office employees, and other matters between 1996 and late 1998.

"The White House is behaving exactly the way they do when they know they've done something wrong," Burton said.

White House line upheld

In his testimony Wednesday, Lyle stood by previous arguments made by the White House that technicians, administrators and administration lawyers may have miscommunicated once the problem was diagnosed, and insisted that in his capacity as director of the Office of Administration, he was not necessarily concerned with the contents of subpoenas.

Rep. Christopher Shays

"I didn't know what was on the backup tapes, and I didn't know what was in the subpoenas," Lyle said in response to a challenge leveled by Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Connecticut), who said he was "blown away" that White House employees might not take such matters into account.

The backup tapes Lyle referred to may contain the full compliment of e-mail messages that were not archived by the retrieval system. The White House, with the aid of contractors, will have to go back through those tapes -- perhaps six months worth -- to extract the missing e-mail messages.

Rather, Lyle said that the White House Office of Administration was knee-deep through most of 1999 -- after the e-mail problem has come to light -- in feverish efforts to make all White House computer systems "Y2K" compliant.

"We were in the midst of dealing with the Y2K crisis," Lyle said. "(That) was an extraordinary undertaking. Our main purpose was to ensure Y2K compliance."

Lyle's comments echoed those made to the committee more than a month ago by Mark Lindsay, an assistant to the president and director of White House management and administration.

Had his office not done that work, Lyle said, computer systems throughout the White House may have faced catastrophic failures on Jan. 1, 2000.

The Office of Administration was not able to turn its attention to correcting the e-mail problem, Lyle said, until the first quarter of 2000.

But Shays and other Republicans weren't satisfied.

"These e-mails are from some very interesting people," Shays said, indicating that many of the messages could be appropriate to several committee investigations.

Karl Heissner, center, with his attorney, left, and Michael Lyle, right (partially obscured)

"They include [secretary to President Bill Clinton] Betty Currie, [Clinton advisor] Ira Magaziner" and others, he said.

Heissner was quizzed by panel Republicans on the contents of a document he wrote to Mark Lindsay, assistant to the president and director of White House Management and Administration, that urged Lindsay to "let sleeping dogs lie" when it came to discussions about the malfunctioning e-mail system.

While Burton and Rep. Bob Barr (R-Georgia) said that sentence could illustrate efforts within the White House to cover up the problem, Heissner insisted that the letter was being misinterpreted.

The phrase "let sleeping dogs lie," Heissner said, referred to funding granted by Congress to the Executive Branch during the yearly appropriations process. Heissner said he was telling Lindsay to not ask for extra funding to fix the problem, and the letter was intended to prep Lindsay prior to his appearance before either the House or Senate Appropriations Committee last year.

"I meant," Heissner said, "that we did not have to go before Congress to ask for funding to pay for the cost of information requests."

"That could be considered an obstruction of justice," Barr said in reference to the memo.

Panel Democrats take up the defense

Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who serves as the committee's ranking member, accused the Republicans of "impugning the integrity" of the witnesses in the faint hope of stirring up some evidence.

Rep. Henry Waxman

The committee, Waxman continued, has traced White House activity in the campaign finance, FBI files and Travel Office matters, and has turned up next to nothing. Still, he said, it continues to rain requests for information down upon the White House, distracting employees from their regular daily tasks.

"You have spent [months] of your time working to honor requests put forth by this committee, Waxman said to Lyle and Heissner.

Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tennessee) apologized to the two witnesses because the panel was "pestering" them.

"We have become obsessed and intoxicated with the notion of investigating," Ford said.

Later in the afternoon, the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs, Robert Raben, told the committee that Attorney General Janet Reno was still considering whether to appoint an independent counsel in the e-mail matter.

"My official response is that we are continuing to work on it," Raben said. "No decisions have been made."

The hearings will continue Thursday, with an appearance by White House Counsel Charles Ruff.