White House E-Mail Hidden From Justice Dept. 107
TheSimon writes: "A former White House contractor, Betty Lambuth, alleged in court papers unsealed Friday that she was threatened not to reveal a problem with the White House e-mail system that concealed thousands of messages from the Justice Department and congressional investigators.
Here's
the full story from foxnews.com." This makes an interesting counterpoint to the calls for eliminating Internet anonymity by the same adminstration.
Some additional articles. (Score:1)
White House e-mails are verified [washtimes.com]
White House issued threats [washtimes.com]
Overheard Comment (Score:1)
The "Clinton deaths" have been debunked (Score:1)
hmm... (Score:1)
rbf aka pulsar
Hypocrisy (Score:2)
Re:Old news again (Score:2)
But if you think Bush will be any better take a look at this website: GeorgeBush2000.com [georgebush2000.com]. I'm sure a bunch of it is fudging statistics and judging his record based on the current conditions in Texas versus Texas before he became governor. But the insider trading stuff is a little scary and has a ring of thuth to it.
Old news again (Score:3)
This has been on the Drudge Report [drudgereport.com] for days. I'm still having a hard time deciphering what the point is. I have yet to see a calculation of the number of E-Mails discovered vs the number turned over to the special prosecutor. Not to mention the number with relevent content.
Without knowing if any of the e-mails had relevent content I'd say this is just a case of drudging up more dirt to use against Gore. As far as this being relevent to a discussion of anonymity it will never be allowed for official government correspondence. There are requirements for retaining documents and security regulations. On the other hand, the use of internet e-mail services would have to be curtailed.
Re:Over-Sensationalized Journalism (Score:1)
According to everybody's favorite 'lynx -source http://... > grep Gore', Gore is mentioned five times on that page
1) The indep clause of the lead: "Al Gore's 1996 campaign fund-raising was back in the news Friday."
2) The caption: "Some of the e-mails allegedly involve Vice President Gore's involvement in campaign finance controversies."
3) Once in the article: "Lambuth claims a subordinate told her some of the e-mails deal with 'Vice President Al Gore's involvement in campaign fund-raising controversies'
4) The phrase "Clinton-Gore re-election campaign"
5) The phrase "Clinton-Gore White House"
Very little of the article's substance is actually about Al Gore. Instances four and five are superfluous because "Clinton White House" and "Clinton re-election campaign" are more common phrases. Instance two is a copy of instance three, and both are based on hearsay. Instance one is meaningless media-reporting-on-media fluff.
Certainly, a connection between lost email about legal misconduct and Al Gore would be important, but -- despite all the author's implications -- the article hardly deals with Al Gore on a substantive level. The point may seem obvious, but it must be understood if we are to interpret the picture.
The picture shows an ugly image of Al Gore waving and looking to his right. The blue backdrop suggests that he is speaking at some event to some "Puerto Rican/Hispanic" group. (Of course, you can't actually tell, and the caption doesn't explain the picture.) The article does not tell me a blessed thing about Al Gore's relations with Puerto Ricans or Hispanics, about the event, about hand-waving, or about looking to the right. The picture has absolutely nothing to do with the article, except this: The article weakly references Al Gore a few times, and the picture tells us what Al Gore looks like. And boy does he look ugly!
Thank you Fox News, but I see Al Gore's picture all over the place. I don't really care how long you can sift through wired images to find an unflattering shot.
There are lots of useful ways to avoid gray matter, and that picture was not one of them. Betty Lambuth is a new person to me, and I'd like to know how she looks. I'm not sure I understand who Lambuth's boss is, or how she fits into that strange buraucracy of White House officials and extra-governmental contractors. A diagram would really help. Heck, a timeline comparing the email system to allegations of misconduct would be nice.
Tim
Re:Dirt and Drives (Score:1)
Hehehehe (Score:1)
Am I the only who cracked up laughing when I read this? Hey, pay attention, they did impeach him...sheesh, these kids today. :)
-David T. C.
Election-time scandals (Score:2)
Timing, timing.
W
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Uh huh... (Score:3)
I had heard rumours that we had threated to format the staffer's hard drives, this is simply untrue.
Now after a legal edition:
"... we had threatened to format the staffer's hard drives
Two entirely different statements with entirely different connotations.
Re:"campaign finance reform" hypocrisy (Score:2)
Yes, but the American corporation that you're talking about is Loral. The head of Loral, Bernard Schwartz, was the single largest contributor to Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Re:Factory in Sudan (Score:2)
Here's a link to a New York Times article [cornell.edu] which raises serious doubts, including the doubts within the administration itself, about the legitimacy of the Sudan bombing raid.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I could clean that drive quite easily. (Score:1)
Yes, that's a normal method. You can do it with diskettes too. Even broken ones (as in pieces).
However, give me half an hour with a disk that I want to be sure no-one will ever see, and it will never be seen by any means whatsoever. Could be as simple as running it thru an alternating magnetic flux (with a nice big coil and a lot of juice), depending on the disk. Might even have to build some minor circuts to do some wacky stuff with magnetic fields, but it's not hard to do, if you really really want to. And hell, there's always the rotary sander. Grind that sucker into dust. Let 'em try to read those pieces.
Anyway, the point IS that anyone can remove electronically stored evidence if they want to remove it.
Ah well. I'm rambling now..
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AP, right wing? (Score:1)
The fact I thought it was funny as hell also doesn't make me a card carrying member of the conspiracy, but I've been to a few of the meetings.
-- Rob O'Neal
Re:Just a quick reminder: Bill Clinton is a rapist (Score:1)
I can only hope that the guilty party, whichever one it is, gets what's coming to them in the afterlife, because justice is unlikely to be served in this one.
Re:Just a quick reminder: Bill Clinton is a rapist (Score:1)
Re:Interesting timing. (Score:1)
Re:Over-Sensationalized Journalism (Score:1)
That is a bold statement... Just look at the last few administrations. I can still not believe Bush (Sr.) could pardon his co-conspirators and not have received a public lashing. (At Christmas time... BRILLIANT!)
As for Gore... Well, I weep for the future. We'll see how well he does without help from the Federal reserve.
And Bush jr.? Why not just eliminate the middleman and vote for Texaco as president?
Re:anonimity? what's that? (Score:2)
Re:Dirt and Drives (Score:1)
[ snip ]
Remember, encryption of drives works better if you don't want to be caught.
If they can recover information after eight formats, do you really think that encrypting your HD will stop them?
Correct use of the apostrophe(OT) (Score:1)
JMR
Re:Old news >> is REALLY OLD NEWS (Score:1)
Look everyone, I agree that the Clinton administration is FAR from honest. I'm sure they're being as sneaky and underhanded as they can get away with (or can't) in order to do what they feel they 'have' to do -whether you or I believe it's in the country's best interest or not.
Thing is, what has changed? Certainly NOT the integrity of the Presidency (aside from public view of), nor the federal government in general. I have no way of proving this, but history surely indicates that the Fed. Gov't has done such sneaky and underhanded deals since its inception!
What HAS changed is our ability to learn about such things. With all the high-handed morality of the 50's, you think that JFK's mob connections and philandering WOULDN'T have caused national scandal?
Iran/Contra. Watergate. Viet Nam. McCarthyism.Slavery..all the way back to when our government cheated, lied, and mass-murdered the Native Americans two centuries ago...
And fill in here _______ the wrongful government behavior you like to comment on.
Perhaps the ability of our traditional and NONtraditional media will have the effect of restoring the integrity of our government. But until that's true, I'm pretty sick of people saying 'well, THIS administration takes the cake!'. Whatever. They're just as sneaky as everyone else, with better tools. Our job is to make sure our tools counter that as often as possible to keep the balance.
Clinton's Admin sucked, Reagan's Admin sucked, (Carter was a god), Ford/Nixon's Admin sucked...before that I was too young to care
And here's to AL GORE's Admin sucking- but at least it'll keep our water drinkable and air breathable.
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Re:anonimity? what's that? (Score:1)
According to the article, her testimoney was unsealed. There was no mention in the article of when she actually made the statements.
Re:Interesting timing. (Score:1)
I think the bombing of the factory in Sudan ranks up there, as abuse of power, as the stuff done during Watergate and Iran/Contra.
When all ther reporters were making "Wag the Dog" analogys, Clinton said that he would shortly release information showing that the factory was used to make nerve gas. I am still waiting.
During Watergate, Nixon put the military on alert in hopes of taking the pressure off the investigation. He was severly taken to task for the measure. At least he didn't kill innocent third parties.
Accountability vs. anonymity (Score:2)
I agree that people need to have more information about what their government but perhaps the amount isn't the problem. It is the difficulty in getting it. Who really researches voting records? Who watches CSPAN? All of these things take time. I have always wondered why even during an election, the only way to find a simple summary of a canidate's voting record is to check out his competition and then you only see the bad. This ends up making the decision trying to choose the lesser of two evils.
We really need a new style of press that is beholden to no one and gets the answers that people need. The Associated Press is pretty good but all to often many of their stories and others like them are not noted by the major distributers (CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, ect). We have a public television channel and although it has news we need more. We need a public news channel/web site that has all the information sorted and catagorized for easy searching.
Re:Old news again (Score:1)
could it be OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE? i.e., the same thing that nixon did?
the clinton/gore whitehouse has repeatidly acted as if the laws of the US do not apply to them, and when caught, have used every means possible to keep themselves in power.
THAT'S the point.
Re:Dirt and Drives (Score:1)
um, yes.
i could leave it at that, but what makes you think that the ability to read old stuff on a HDD has anything to do with breaking cryptography? of course, it may be the case that NSA can in fact break all of the known ciphers, but their ability to read old drives hardly provides evidence of this.
cheers,
sh_
Re:Is it just me... (Score:1)
What do you expect from Rupert Murdoch's Fox News? All the major U.S. news media companies are biased but Murdoch's stuff is so nakedly and vertiginously biased it leaves you dizzy and disoriented. Fox News should not be used while driving or operating heavy machinery.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Re:Over-Sensationalized Journalism (Score:1)
Re:Accountability vs. anonymity (Score:2)
I don't fully agree with Brin, because as a libertarian, I can't see how you can say "you don't have a right to secrets" (not that Brin actually says this). My position is that:
1. anyone in government, in their capacity as a government official, should be monitored to the fullest extent feasible. That means running recorders going into voice recognition software and posting it all to the internet for all activities as a part of the government. Since this isn't totally technically feasible, I'd settle for all internal memos, and corrospondence with outside agencies. Because someone working for the government freely accepted that job, and because we, the people, are delegating our power to the government (this is Hobbes account of the origin of government power), we are free to hold our employees accountable in any way we please.
Secrecy, as in military secrets, I haven't considered.
2. Corporations should be subject to this, but at a lesser level. Incorporation is a special exemption from certain laws. The government sells special legal status for favors. One of these favors is corporate income tax. We can add another, that all memos must be preserved, all business plans and contracts, etc. must be kept for like 20 years. Depending on the type of information, it can be required to be released after a certain time period.
Realistically, we may have gotten to the point where there is a need for different degrees of incorporation. (Which protects against lawsuits, is the main thing, but also gives an existence to the company longer than any of the people.)
3. Private citizens, non-incorporated businesses, and anyone not covered, should be totally exempt. Of course, if they work for a corporation, they will know that stuff they write to their boss will become public record in X years, and if they work for the government, it will be public record tomorrow. To answer your specific question -- no I have no right to know what's in George W.'s bookmarks, or Al Gore's, if we're talking about his home computer.
We would probably need an agency more or less separate from the government (not controlled by any existing agencies or branches) to monitor the government. Should be directly elected by the people.
--Kevin
Transparent Society (Score:4)
What can we do? Public, highly intrusive, monitoring of all aspects of government. If we (the people, you know) are delegating power, we need to watch how that power is used.
--Kevin
Clinton/Gore == so many lies, so little time (Score:1)
I will, however, smile from ear to ear while I vote Republican.
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Re:Balanced Journalism (Score:1)
Doing so would require a person of substance, something Algore clearly is not.
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Law = hill of beans . . (Score:1)
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Re:What? Politicians are two face (Score:1)
anonimity? what's that? (Score:4)
Interesting timing. (Score:1)
The difference between that scandal and the so-called "Clinton scandals" is that Iran/Contra ended up amounting to more than a hill of beans. Power was truly abused in the Iran/Contra scandal.
Let's see how this new scandal plays out. Frankly, Clinton's Republican opposition has gone off half-cocked so often that they have no credibility left. They are just sore losers, IMHO. Also, let's get off the administration's back on encryption and CDA. A lot of techies just have the most absurd knee-jerk response to that. Even if these initiatives are hopeless, they still must be tried. It's just a no-brainer.
Suppose, for example, Clinton had just openly done nothing WRT export restrictions on encryption. The very first time a terrorist used strong encryption in an e-mail, the administration would have been hung out to dry by the same yahoos who now attack him every time he adjusts his tie.
Sure, we all know that such export restrictions are futile, but that's, unfortunately, beside the point.
Don't even get me started on star wars.
Re:Interesting timing. (Score:2)
Perhaps, but, in my view, what distinguishes Iran/Contra from those other episodes is that the raison d'etre for the "sins" included the attempted return of American hostages and the defense of the American hemisphere against the encroachment of Soviet-supported communists.
Disagree with the effectiveness or desirability of either of these motives all you, dear reader, might want, but you're unlikely to convince me that they in any way approach the seething selfishness of the motives for Watergate or, even worse (since Nixon was covering up for others at first), the various Clinton scandals.
(More and more, I'm amazed this country managed to elect someone as comparatively uninterested in obtaining and wielding personal power as Ronald Reagan to President. As we all do -- something we're always reminded of when discussing Clinton but somehow by people who inevitably chime in contrariwise vis-a-vis Reagan -- he had his faults, but constantly representing himself as everyone's personal source of happiness wasn't even close to one of them. And that seems to explain, more and more, the confusion of so many historians/biographers, who are thoroughly accustomed to the sort of egos that typically seek high office, as well as the seething hatred directed towards him by those on the Left, who resent his "demonstration" that, indeed, it is the sincere efforts of each and every free citizen, rather than a comparatively small ruling intellectual elite designated as infallible, that is needed for our species to survive and prosper.)
Re:Dirt and Drives (Score:1)
Formats, encryption, anything. As you say, the data was recovered 16 re-writes deep. What's to stop anyone from recovering the same data before it was encrypted?
Personally, I've seen drives that were involved in a house fire recovered. I had experience with someone who's doctoral thesis was on his computer, and his machine was in his house when it burnt down. The case, everything was melted! It was soaked from all the water and foam. We sent it off, and it was recovered - completely!
The only way I've seen to totally destroy data, is to take a 3/8 steel bit and drill through all the platters. That is the way my company handles sensitive data. In certain departments, such as HR, if there is a problem with a users machine that requires removing the box from their office, we can ask if they want this to be done. And we do it, on the spot, in front of the user.
No arguing with the fact that the data is G O N E!
Off topic - Navy eh! The best part about being in the Navy is never having to say you're Air Force!
Re:Dirt and Drives (Score:1)
Clinton Administration (Score:1)
The fact that these e-mails were covered up probably has something do to with the Lewinsky affair among other things. The Clinton Admin is all about cover ups... Of course, its only natural considering all the illegal and immoral things they are involved in.
I'm sure the American Public would love to get their hands on this stuff, I know I would.
Let's just hope the next administration will be an improvement over this last one.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com [npsis.com]
Over-Sensationalized Journalism (Score:1)
As for sensationalism: look at the picture of Al Gore in the Fundraising article. That's just offensive.
It would be nice if they would do some real reporting for once. Emails from 1996 don't concern me much.
Re:anonimity? what's that? (Score:1)
I'm not sure why people who have been threatened not to do something will often resurface *years* later to tell about it. How come Lambuth didn't go to the authorities when these events happened 5 years ago? How come she has only come forward now, during an election year?
Re:anonimity? what's that? (Score:1)
Only two of Clinton's close associates have died in anything close to strange events, one a plane crash, the other a suicide. On reflection, these are not such strange events as people die every day. When you know as many people as our president does, you will be subjected to loss on a fairly routine basis. It comes with the job.
If Lambuth had come forward, supposing she thought to back in 1996, it seems rather unlikely anything would have happened to her. The media's attention quickly shifts to anyone who has something bad to say about our president. These people's lives fall under rather intense scrutiny, much like the president himself, and if anything unexpected occured we would know about it. I just don't buy Lambuth being scared. Scared of what?
Assuming she believed the alleged threats to be credible, what has changed? If there was something for her to fear then, there is surely something for her to fear now. Why the sudden change of mind?
Anyways, in this instance, what exactly did the Clinton whitehouse do?
Please, be clear on that last part.
Re:anonimity? what's that? (Score:1)
Yeah, I have my biases and tend not to look too closely at right wing sites. Could you provide some specific web links? Your firm laying out of the dead associated with Clinton does make more credible your assertion. I wonder how many were taken out by the administration versus how many were taken out by the enemy camp? That many with those strange of circumstances does look suspicious.
One of those circumstances where it would be nice to have more info.
I did read the article. She learned about the problems in May 1998 before leaving the White House in July 1998. Apparently the problems were reported in the December 1998 issue of Insight. You are right about the coming forward. I was wrong. I wonder why the documents were unsealed. I wonder why they were sealed.
Allegedly, they hid evidence (nothing new). Other than that, I'm not sure what you mean.
I asked the question because the reporting of these circumstances does not seem very newsworthy. It does seem unfair that the right wing has been routinely able to review the private communications of a presidential candidate. When the other side has full knowledge of your activities, it makes putting on an effective campaign a difficult task.
I still don't see any connection to Internet anonymity (timothy's claim, not yours).
Re:Dirt and Drives (Score:1)
Re:Over-Sensationalized Journalism (Score:1)
--Error: Bad mood or funny name. Hit any user to continue
Re:Old news again (Score:1)
Without knowing if any of the e-mails had relevent content I'd say this is just a case of drudging up more dirt to use against Gore. If I read the AP story correctly, the issues are:
- A number of messages were kept on a system that was not part of the global backup/indexing system, and thus not subject to a full-text search.
- The contract employee was allegedly notified that the existence of these files was NOT to be divulged, and some specific threats of dismissal, arrext, and prosecution were made.
- Some of the messages in question are said to relate to Gore's fundraising, Lewinsky, and other sensitive topics.
Is any of this true? Who knows?Is it worthy of discussion? Ask your self what the answer would be if the players were different.
Consider the ramifications if Alexander Butterfield had been told by Haldeman and Ehrlichman to keep his bloody mouth shut about the existence of a White House taping system back in 1973.
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Re:I could clean that drive quite easily. (Score:1)
Zapping it with huge mag fields will usually kill the drive, at least that's my experience when killing drives with confidential info. Spark-gapping it also works, but kills the drive. When trying to re-use the drive, start with encrypted and stay with it if it's something you want to keep secret, unless you live in the United Kingdom, where it'll now be illegal to not turn over the decryption key (even if you really forgot it).
Re:Dirt and Drives (Score:1)
Dirt and Drives (Score:5)
Secondly, the NSA can recover data 16 rewrites or formats deep on a HDD. I know firsthand of eight layers, while in the Navy we had a HDD with data from two crash investigations stolen by a contractor, who used it for 2 months before it was recovered. We sent it in (I was told later to the NSA labs), and the data was recovered through 8 format/rewrites. Has to do with track edges and the head mechanism not tracking perfectly every time. Remember, encryption of drives works better if you don't want to be caught.
So... if drives were reformatted, they could have the data recovered. More emails about illegal crap. Hell, you'd think Gore would've thought of this, since he did invent the internet
I wonder if they will ever get to going through the emails to find the real dirt. If they do, it'll get classified as secret so it won't get released to the press. They'll stand by the "it's about national security, stupid" approach, so we'll never get the real story.
I hope the lady who was fired sues, at least she'll get some vindication.
Anonimity (Score:1)