From: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_sperry_news/20000907_xnspy_secret_off.shtml WorldNetDaily Thursday, September 7, 2000 Secret off-site e-mail tape depot revealed White House halted rotation of back-ups, putting evidence at risk by Paul Sperry WASHINGTON -- Contrary to official denials, the White House has been rotating emergency back-up tapes of e-mail to and from an off-site storage facility in Maryland every two weeks -- until now, WorldNetDaily has learned. In a move that concerns career White House computer operators, officials recently put an end to the practice, leaving potential evidence under subpoena vulnerable to mass destruction. A federal judge seeking White House e-mails from 3,400 back-up tapes recently expressed his own concerns about their safety. "The public has a right to be concerned about the integrity of the tapes," said U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who is hearing the $90 million class-action Filegate lawsuit against the White House. The Office of Administration, the custodian of all White House records, has been storing the e-mail back-up tapes off-site to guard them against a White House disaster such as a fire or a bomb. Even air conditioning problems -- something the White House reportedly had to deal with recently, during a patch of very humid weather -- can harm magnetic computer media. Gaithersburg, Md.-based First Federal Corp. is the contractor the White House hired to store the tapes. The computer-media storage company maintains facilities in Gaithersburg and Rockville, Md., says First Federal Vice President Sandy Guidera, who declined to comment on the White House contract. White House computer operators say that until recently, the back-up tapes had been taken to the Gaithersburg site, located on West Watkins Mill Road. Northrop Grumman contractor Bill Berky has been handling the rotation of tapes from the White House side. Those not previously stored at the Maryland site are stored in the New Executive Office Building across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. "Currently there are no tapes being sent off-site. None," a senior White House computer operator told WorldNetDaily. "It's potentially dangerous. It leaves us without any way of restoring any system that's lost." Added the career White House employee, who wished to go unnamed: "Federal law requires us to have a way to recover data from a catastrophic event." The White House, which has maintained there's no off-site storage facility, did not return calls for comment. The previous rotational cycle was set up to ensure that at least the latest year's worth of tapes were always stored off-site. "If I take Friday's tapes out there (to the Maryland storage site), then what I'd bring back with me would be this week's a year ago," said a White House computer worker familiar with the operation. "So you're bringing back a year-old set of tapes." An estimated million-plus e-mails generated by President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore and their staff have not been properly archived and thus never searched for compliance with subpoenas from the court, Congress and the independent counsel. Still, the e-mails are stored on more than 3,400 back-up tapes, which are kept in the sub-basement of the New Executive Office Building and in the custody of White House Security Officer Charles Easley. White House Counsel Beth Nolan has promised authorities that the White House will restore the e-mail from the back-up tapes and search it for relevant information before the election. But the project has fallen far behind schedule, thanks in large part to the inexperience of the contractors the White House hired to do the $8 million-plus job. Meantime, the entire batch of back-up tapes sits in Room SB-234 in the NEOB. The room is climate-controlled and secured with Defense Department-spec cipher locks. But the tapes are not stored in a vault or any type of fireproof chamber. In fact, they're kept inside "printer-paper boxes," a source who has seen them told WorldNetDaily. "They'd all be wiped out if there were a serious fire in that building," said a White House computer worker. Asked for comment, a spokesman for Judicial Watch, the public-interest law firm litigating the Filegate case, says the storage conditions only heighten his suspicions the tapes are not being properly safeguarded. "This information increases our concern that the tapes will be harmed from some kind of 'technical glitch,'" said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. AC on the blink Fitton says that his investigators recently learned that the air conditioning went out in the New Executive Office Building, which he fears may have affected the integrity of the tapes. "They had an AC problem a few weeks back," he said. "I understand that the basement of that building is a swamp when it's humid out. It's not the best for storing media that has a short shelf life." The White House did not return calls attempting to confirm the air conditioning problem. Magnetic media such as the 8-millimeter and 4-millimeter back-up tapes the White House uses, which look like camcorder cassette tapes, don't keep an image very long -- even in cool environments with low magnetic fields and low static, experts say. Hot and humid conditions would only speed the degradation process. That's because the tapes are basically nothing more than strips of plastic with rust on them. (Technically, it's metal oxide.) Judicial Watch has petitioned Judge Lamberth to turn the White House's e-mail tape reconstruction project over to a special master. The watchdog group has recommended data-retrieval specialist Ontrack Data International Inc., which has demonstrated to the court that it can copy the back-up tapes 25 times faster than the White House's contractors. Before the e-mail back-up tapes can be restored to a searchable format, they must first be copied. Once they are copied, the originals could be put back into off-site rotation for their protection. And the sooner they are copied, the better, say White House computer operators. But Easley has assured the court that the tapes are safely stored in "an environmentally controlled space designed to protect the integrity of the data." What's more, only he and unnamed "deputized" staffers have access to the room. White House officials claim the tapes have never left Easley's sight when contractors have checked them out of the secured room, nor even when they've worked with them. (Actually, the White House recently removed some of the original tapes from Easley's custody. The FBI has them.) Who is Charles 'Chuck' Easley? An Army veteran and one-time used-car salesman, Easley replaced Craig Livingstone as security chief in 1996 when the former bar bouncer, Democratic operative and Friend of Hillary got in hot water for stockpiling confidential FBI background files on former Republican White House officials. As it happens, it was Easley who issued Livingstone a top security clearance in 1995. Easley, a 14-year White House vet, was in charge of giving such clearances at the time. But Easley, in a 1996 House deposition, admitted failing to review Livingstone's own FBI background file before giving him clearance to top-secret data. He said he took White House lawyers' word that "there were no problems" in Livingstone's file. In fact, Livingstone's file contains references to occasional drug use, FBI agents have testified. "It was a mistake," Easley confessed in the deposition. Easley, 60, is not very computer literate, White House insiders say. One computer operator said he "has a hard time turning on his computer." Easley referred a call for comment to the White House press office. ### "Multimedia News Portal" - The center of the info world PortalCheck.com: http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/NaltyNews/index.htm NEWS FETCH: All Hillary, Lazio, Gore and Bush articles daily! Campaign 2000: http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/NaltyNews/elect2000.htm ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day. ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. 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