-Caveat Lector- http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a01159d4c02.htm Free Republic Conservative News Forum Published: November 1, 2000 The Angelwood Report: LAMBERTH WARNS JUSTICE DEPARTMENT E-MAIL HEARINGS COULD END TOMORROW An incredulous Judge Royce C. Lamberth told Justice Department lawyer, Thomas Millet, that depending on the testimony of White House Counsel Beth Nolan tomorrow, the evidentiary hearing into the missing White House e-mails could end Thursday. This week Beth Nolan sent a letter to Representative Burton, the Office of the Independent Counsel and Congressional Committees informing them of several other White House e-mail systems that were not searched in response to subpoenas. At the end of the hearing today, Lamberth asked Millet what time Beth Nolan could be available. He told Lamberth she would be available at 10 a.m. on Thursday. Millet then said that he wanted to inform the Court that Nolan's letter was inaccurate, that they had learned things since the letter had been sent, that some of the systems that they thought had not been archived on ARMS had been, that some of the messages that were sent in the system were archived but the ones that were received weren't. Judge Lamberth started laughing in disbelief. He told Millet that he felt like he has been spinning his wheels for months with the revelations in the Nolan letter. Lamberth, responding to Millet's representation that the Nolan letter that was filed in his Court this week was "inaccurate," said that his "Court is not powerless and will not remain floundering." That capped a day that began with a witness from Northrop Grumman whose non-compliance with a subpoena to produce documents caused a one-hour delay while the documents were retrieved from his attorney's office. Now, back to the beginning. Day 25 of the Evidentiary Hearings on the missing White House e-mail began when the witness took the stand. Mr. Lucente (didn't catch his first name), a Vice President at Logicon, which is a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, was represented by John Bray and Anne Hart. Northrop Grumman itself was represented by Richard Oparil. There were more attorneys in the courtroom than spectators. At one point during a bench conference with the Judge, a total of twelve people rushed to confer - most of them were attorneys for the various parties. The only reporter observed in the courtroom, besides yours truly, was Pete Yost of the Associated Press, who attended the afternoon session. Under questioning, Mr. Lucente told the Court that he had received a stock grant in May from North Grumman and another stock grant in September, along with a promotion to Vice President. Lucente was transferred to a different business unit in December 1998 due to an internal reorganization and no longer had responsibility for Project X. Mr. Lucente was served a subpoena which included a document request. He told the court that he had searched his files and did not have any relevant documents. Lucente received the subpoena Monday night and did the search at that time. When asked if he had an assistant and if she had any copies of documents, Lucente said she had done a search and had none. Larry Klayman began asking Lucente about a final version of a letter to the White House which he had seen when he was interviewed by the House Committee two weeks ago. Lucente testified that he had seen this document with an exhibit number on it so he didn't think he had to produce it to the Court. Mr. Klayman asked him about drafts of the letter. Lucente said that he didn't have copies of the drafts; they had been destroyed. Lucente also said he had exchanged e-mails of the drafts with Mr. Pope, General Counsel for Northrop Grumman. Lucente asked Pope if he had a copy of the drafts and Pope said no. Mr. Lucente said he did a search for the e-mails and they were not on the server system. Lucente said the e-mail drafts should have been on the server. But when he was asked if he had done a search of the back-up tapes, he said no. He didn't ask anyone to do a search of the backup tapes. Larry Klayman asked if it was his practice to take notes at meetings. Lucente said yes. When asked if he had any notes about the e-mail matter, Mr. Lucente hemmed and hawed and was reminded that he was under oath. Then he said yes again. Mr. Klayman asked where the notes were. Lucente responded that they were in his briefcase (in his lawyer's office). With Lamberth's permission, Lucente left the stand to confer with Mr. Bray. The Court took a one-hour recess while Lucente and his attorneys left to retrieve the documents in question. The minutes ticked slowly by. The DOJ lawyers sat together in the gallery laughing and joking. I went out into the hallway and met another citizen who came to sit in on the hearing. He was disturbed about Lucente's testimony regarding his notes. He said he had attended several of the e-mail hearings. After the witness and his attorneys returned to the courtroom and while we waited for Judge Lamberth to resume the hearing, I observed James Gilligan, a DOJ lawyer, sitting at their table with his shoes off. He sat with his toes tucked into the heels of his shoes and nervously rocked his shoes up and down. He did this repeatedly - he'd slip out of his shoes, tuck his toes in the heels and rock, then put them back on. Judge Lamberth returned to the courtroom and asked the witness, Bray and Oparil to approach the bench to explain to him the documents that they had brought back to the Court. After the conference, Lamberth explained that he had been given a sheet with handwritten notes and that Lucente confirmed the handwritten notes were written by him. The notes were about a meeting on 9/28/00 with Pope and Northrop Grumman desired to make a claim of privilege on the document. Lamberth will rule on this privilege question later and no questions would be allowed regarding this document today. The second document was an e-mail from Joe Basta (not sure of the spelling of any names) to Ralph Pope in the General Counsel's office dated April 19, 2000 and copied James Dwyer - the copy the Judge had was Mr. Dwyer's copy. Northrop Grumman also wanted to claim privilege and the Judge will hold off on ruling. The third document had irrelevant notes from the witness on the bottom, but the Northrop Grumman lawyers claimed privilege regarding the top portion of the document to Pope and dated 9/28/00. Lamberth will take that under advisement. There was a 2-page attachment to the document which was titled, "Summary of Project X Discussions." Klayman pointed out that this attachment was produced to Congress but never submitted to this Court and thus raised questions again about Northrop Grumman production of documents. No privilege was attached to this attachment and it was entered as Exhibit 113. Millet objected to the 2-page document being produced but the Judge overruled him because of information the witness had just given him in camera. Lucente testified that the documents in his briefcase were copies, not originals. They were kept in a folder in his office which contained other documents relating to EOP, contract documents and other information. Lucente explained that the contract with the White House was a task order contract with several task order requests which are separately funded. Lucente believed the contract began in 1997 and was worth somewhere around $50 million. This was the contract to manage the ARMS system. Mr. Klayman's questioning tried to establish the importance of this contract to Northrop Grumman and the necessity to have good relations with the White House. Lucente said he was not privy to a lot of discussions and did not recollect how important it was. He was aware that Northrop Grumman endeavors to have high customer satisfaction on every contract. Lucente was asked if high customer satisfaction meant not turning your client in for committing a crime. He said that wasn't what he was referring to - he meant delivery in a timely fashion, good management, delivery of technical data, managing the cost. He continued to deny that there was any understanding at Northrop Grumman about not angering the White House because the contract could be terminated. When asked if Pope ever told him that Northrop Grumman had to maintain good relations with the White House, the DOJ lawyer objected and the Judge sustained the objection until he had ruled on the privilege question. Larry Klayman asked Lucente if there were more documents in his briefcase which had not been produced to Lamberth. Lucente had a folder about an inch thick which contained contract face portions of the schedule, portions of the schedule pertaining to the Schedule of Work, task requirements, skill level requirements, a package that was prepared which is the award fee plan, the award fee evaluation team, award fee criteria with a cover letter of his which was produced at the May session for the Congressional attorneys and which was delivered through Northrop Grumman. Klayman asked if there were handwritten notations on the documents and Lucente said he didn't believe so but wasn't sure. Larry Klayman asked that this inch of documents be produced. He and the Judge had a discussion regarding the responsiveness of this material. Lamberth asked Bray to look over the documents and argue whether they are responsive or not after the lunch break. Lamberth also said Oparil should check to see if they were produced also to Congress. Oparil said plaintiffs had received everything that was produced to Congress. Klayman told the Judge that there was a document that a Congressional report mentioned that was not produced to plaintiffs. Lamberth asked Oparil to check for Northrop Grumman numbers and check with Larry Klayman over lunch to see if everything was cleared up about the document production. (When Court resumed after lunch, it was reported that the document in question had not been produced to plaintiffs.) There was a discussion about Lucente's calendar. He keeps his calendar on Microsoft Outlook. He did not check his calendar regarding the subpoena because he had moved several times and he does not have access to his old computer. He did check his new computer in May. He was aware that he was required to produce documents, but one day (after receiving the subpoena) was not enough time to respond. He doesn't know if the calendars were kept or archived. Lucente was asked about whether he keeps telephone message slips. He said yes to that but no to the question of whether he checked those message slips in response to the subpoena. He said there is no record of fax logs so he didn't check for them. He keeps a chron file and searched it prior to the subpoena. Lucente was asked if he knew or had contact with a number of people and if he had discussed the e-mail Project X issue with any of them. He spoke to a former secretary and to the General Counsel, Ralph Pope. Lucente was asked if it was normal practice at Northrop Grumman to meet with employees as opposed to their supervisors. His answer was from time to time they did and stated that he had met with employees a couple of weeks ago. When specifically asked if he had met with the Project X employees, he said he did not. Judge Lamberth called for a recess for lunch until 2 p.m. He asked Millet to handle one other item during lunch. He told Millet he wanted to hear testimony from Beth Nolan and asked if she was available tomorrow for up to two hours. Lamberth said Nolan was scheduled to testify before the OIC grand jury but that he had asked them to defer to him so Nolan could testify at the e-mail hearing. When Court resumed, Lamberth reviewed the documents that Lucente had been questioned about earlier in camera at the bench. He said there weren't any documents that he could tell were responsive, except for those where privilege had been claimed. However, there were some contractual documents that he believed would be responsive to a previous subpoena issued to Northrop Grumman. When Northrop Grumman lawyers objected, Lamberth gave leave for a new subpoena to be issued to cover them, if necessary. One of the clauses in the contract stated that Northrop Grumman employees were to assist in document searches. It was also revealed in testimony that Millet had contacted the witness last night and spoke with him for 15 minutes. Lamberth instructed the witness not to answer questions about the conversation because Millet claimed work-product privilege. In another development, Lamberth ruled that a limited portion of former Assistant White House Counsel Michelle Peterson's OIC grand jury testimony be made available to the plaintiff and defense lawyers before her scheduled testimony in the Court tomorrow afternoon. Lamberth set strict parameters on the use and distribution of Ms. Peterson's testimony if it is allowed into evidence. Lamberth said that after her testimony, he will review her previous testimony and tomorrow's testimony against her grand jury testimony for inconsistencies. One last item of information, Lucente's attorney, John Bray, was recommended to him by Northrop Grumman counsel and he is being paid by Northrop Grumman. Tomorrow is another day in the saga of the evidentiary hearing on missing White House e-mails. It should be interesting and perhaps revealing. ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: *Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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