Posted on 01/22/2002 2:36:58 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2002 12:08 a.m. EST
Ashcroft Faces Quandary Over Clinton Scandal Secrets
Sometime in the next three months Attorney General John Ashcroft is expected to decide whether to make public still-secret evidence in an array of Clinton-Gore scandals, including Whitewater, Filegate, Chinagate and the Monica Lewinsky imbroglio.
The evidence comes in the form of nearly 2 million recovered e-mails that Justice Department lawyers will review with attorneys for the former president and vice president.
In a Jan. 9 filing with U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, the Bush Justice Department revealed that Corbett Technologies of Alexandria, Va., had completed the process known as the "Tape Restoration Project."
"From 189 failed [e-mail] tapes, 53,149 unique e-mails were restored and added to the TRP. In total, the number of unique TRP e-mails is 1,844,242," the DOJ said.
Nearly half the 189 tapes, 71, were blank.
"White House whistle-blowers who have talked to people who have seen this e-mail believe it contains incriminating evidence," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told NewsMax.com Monday.
The e-mails cover critical periods in the late 1990s and were under subpoena by Congress and the independent counsel. Sources familiar with their contents have described them as potentially very damaging.
Judicial Watch first revealed the White House e-mail scandal in 1999, when then-Clinton administration computer expert Sheryl Hall told the legal watchdog group that critical e-mail evidence was being withheld.
After Hall's revelation, another White House computer expert testified he was told to keep quiet or there would be "a jail cell with your name on it."
The restored electronic files also cover illicit Commerce Department trade missions in which tickets allegedly were sold to corporate donors to the Democratic National Committee, and may even contain evidence on Enrongate.
One odd coincidence: Attorney Earl Silbert, who now represents Enron CEO Ken Lay, also represented Clinton Chinagate kingpin James Riady as well as Northrop-Grumman, one of the independent contractors hired by the Clinton White House to help with e-mail retrieval.
"Now the question is will the Department of Justice under Ashcroft divulge what they find?" Fitton said.
A recent Bush executive order shielding materials of past administrations from discovery could be invoked in this case, he warned.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
Clinton Scandals
What is "Bush-bashing"? It must be more than disagreeing with a program or policy, must it not?
Yes indeed, Ashcroft has his quandary and we here at FR - now have one of our own...
Luis, seeing that this thread also pertains to Chinagate - I knew it would be acceptable to you to post a small reference here - anyway....thank you for the invite to be on the FR radio show to discuss Chinagate and Loral!!
You need to read "Compromised" by Terry Reed and John Cummings and then you would understand that the Bushes and clintons are joined at the hip in corruption and have a mutually assured destruction deterent in place to keep all this covered up.It's a good read and explains a lot of things.
most of the stuff has been destroyed
ChaseR, interesting episode you're dealing with... I have prior knowledge to some posters' styles of attack on FR. I may not say much, but I see much. LOL
I think you would make an excellent and very FR worthy guest!
Will the Slickster manage to slip out of this one?...Probably.
The eighteen minute gap on a key Watergate tape was found by technical analysis to be the result of dozens of individual erasure cycles.
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the same thing has happened to these tapes.
Despite the erasure on the Watergate tape, there was eventually a tape which contained Nixon being informed that there was a connection between the White House and the Watergate burglary and Nixon is heard to state that a million dollars could be raised to help those responsible. Nixon was finally forced to resign.
The number of emails is so enormous that I expect that there will be plenty of smoking guns found among them. Gore's statements regarding the fund raising at the Buhddist monastery were in conflict with appointment notations which later came to light.
As for Ashcroft making a decision regarding the emails, he will have little to say regarding emails which were previously subpeonaed and withheld. I believe that the Judicial Watch subpeonas would have to be challenged directly in order to withhold relevant emails.
Judge Lamberth has allowed plenty of lattitude to those who are supposed to turn over these emails. Despite the Judge's willingness to let the process run its course, he has supported the discovery process so far and I would be surprised if he doesn't continue to support it.
The end-game for this particular line of enquiry is nearing. Although some of us won't get everything that we might imagine out of this process, the vigor with which Clinton's people withheld these emails indicates to me that there was much to hide.
I also expect that there will be much finger-pointing at the late Charles Ruff. That is the way it works, isn't it?
I notice that 71 blanks out of 189 is 37%. If they deleted 3 years worth out of 8, that comes to exactly 37%. From and earlier article 2/27/00:
Earlier this month, Sheryl Hall, former chief of White House computer operations who has since moved to a similar position at the Treasury Department, said Clinton administration officials covered up the fact that electronic messages from August 1996 to November 1998 had not been surrendered to various investigators, as required by law, deciding instead to label them as "classified" documents.
Zazame! 3years worth.
If this turns out to be the case, Judge Lamberth is going to be pissed!
Thank you very much. (blush) "I may not say much, but I see much."
As do ALL FR posters and ALL FR lurkers/bttt
I don't know, perhaps not! We'll see soon, very soon.
Do you know what it alleges Hillery did wrong other than being the Fisrt Lady?
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