From: http://www.foxnews.com/elections/050300/whemail.sml White House Says Y2K Got in the Way Of Investigation Into Missing E-Mails Updated 5:31 p.m. ET (2131 GMT) May 3, 2000 By John P. Martin WASHINGTON - The White House considered telling Congress as early as February 1999 about a flaw that had prevented its computer system from storing thousands of e-mails, but scrapped the plan because it wasn't a "priority," an administration official told congressional investigators Wednesday. Memos released Wednesday by the House Government Reform Committee showed that the Office of Administration initially included a reference to the glitch - and the $600,000 cost to reconstruct the missing messages - in a five-page draft of talking points that director Mark Lindsay planned to use before a Congressional budget committee. The request was the only one deleted from the talking points after being reviewed by Office of Administration counsel Kate Anderson. Lindsay never mentioned it in his testimony, and only in recent months has the administration disclosed that potentially hundreds of thousands of e-mails from 1996 to 1998 escaped review from investigators seeking evidence on issues ranging from campaign fund-raising to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Michael Lyle, who succeeded Lindsay as director, insisted Wednesday that his office didn't recognize the significance of the e-mail problem and was instead focused on ensuring that White House computer systems were Y2K compliant. "That was our number one priority," Lyle told the committee, which opened its third day of hearings on the issue. In March, three White House computer specialists testified that they discovered the e-mail problem in 1998. The project to fix it was so secretive it was dubbed Project X, and they said they were warned they could be jailed if they discussed it with anyone. One of the witnesses, Betty Lambuth, met Wednesday with the Independent Counsel Robert Ray. Administration officials have denied the allegations of threats and insisted that they didn't realize the scope of the problem, still don't know how many e-mails were affected or if they were pertinent to investigations. They say a contractor has been hired to retrieve the lost e-mails but the project could take at least six months. The Justice Department has also launched a probe into the case. But in a statement to the committee Wednesday afternoon, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Raben declined to release any details of the investigation, except to say it is ongoing. Also testifying Wednesday was Karl Heissner, the chief of systems integration and development who is responsible for overseeing the White House computer systems. Republican committee members repeatedly pressed Heissner to explain a Feb. 5, 1999 internal memo he wrote to a supervisor about the declining number of information requests his office had received from investigators. "We may not want to call undue attention to the issue in bringing the issue to the attention of Congress..." wrote Heissner, a career civil servant who worked in the Ford, Carter and Bush administrations. In parenthesis, he added, "Let sleeping dogs lie." U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, D-Ga., questioned whether the comments could be construed as an attempt to obstruct the ongoing investigations. "There was no intention or intent of obstructing justice in any form," Heissner replied. He insisted his comments referred not to the e-mail flaw, but to the avalanche of requests that had burdened the office. In 1998, he said, members of his office spent 500 hours researching information related to requests from investigators. "My perception was that the requests for information we received were detracting from our regular work, and if we had fewer of them we could get done the work we needed to do," he told the panel. Democrats flocked to Heissner's defense. U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., charged that the probe was a frivolous misuse of power and part of a smear campaign. U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn. apologized to the witnesses, adding, "We have become obsessed and intoxicated with the notion of investigating." But the Republican members of the committee have been skeptical. Committee Chairman Dan Burton, R-Ind., argued that "for almost two years the White House knew that subpoenas weren't being complied with and nothing was done about it." "The American people ought to be outraged," he added. 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