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DOJ Confirms Secret "Firewalls" Exist for White House Computers
From: William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>
Date: Sat, 1 Jul 2000 00:24:33 -0500
http://insightmag.com/cgi-bin/ViewNews.cfm?Item=117 6/30/00 - A Justice Department lawyer June 30 admitted in federal district court that indeed there exists previously undisclosed inventories of White House e-mails captured by computer- system firewalls protective buffers on a computer system apparently unknown by the Clinton/Gore administration. Betsy Shapiro, the Justice lawyer defending the White House in the "Filegate" case brought by Judicial Watch, told U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth that though she was prohibited "for security reasons" to provide specific details on this previously unknown firewall protection system and its capture of e-mails, there are inventories of such e-mails stored on backup tapes. These would be in addition to otherwise normally stored emails at the White House. Insight was the first to disclose the existence of this firewall system and the fact that it was capable of capturing e-mail in early June (see Insight Online, "Electronic Skullduggery?" June 19). Shapiro said that while it appears backup tapes on this computer firewall system are maintained they only go back for about four months. She did not clarify whether such tapes are made every four months and stored or whether they are only maintained for up to four months. She also told Lamberth that while the firewall computer backups appear to store the outgoing and incoming e-mail of White House electronic traffic, they do not store the text or any attachments, but only the name of the sender and recipient and apparently the date and time sent. Insight learned of the secret White House firewall-system "inventories" when asking questions about why it appears to be so difficult for the White House to 1) capture e-mail, 2) maintain e-mail, 3) read stored e-mail and 4) reconstruct such e-mail as requested by various courts, federal law-enforcement agencies and Congress. Insight was the first to break the White House e-mail caper back in 1998 (see related stories located in Insight Online's Investigative Archives and in the Exclusive Reports section) plus the still simmering matter of overlooked telephone-record call-detail reports going back several years. Shapiro also told Lamberth that, despite its best efforts, the White House will not be able to comply with the courts order to turn over copies of e-mails requested by Judicial Watch for possibly another year. Interestingly, the White House secretly was ordered weeks ago based on an order unsealed June 30 by the judge to turn over original e-mail tapes to unknown federal law-enforcement agencies. Shapiro said that deals have been struck with these law enforcement sources to now accomplish the court's order. Effectively, Insight is told, the White House will turn over original tapes of stored emails and then "mirror" copies will be given back to the Clinton administration. Why the White House is capable of finding and turning over such e-mail tapes to federal law-enforcement authorities but not to Congress or the court in the Filegate case was not made clear by Shapiro, Lamberth or others by deadline. What is clear, however, is that the judge said waiting up to a year for the White House to turn over court-ordered copies of selected e-mails to Judicial Watch was unacceptable. What remedy Lamberth may seek is unknown. However, when Insight checked with sources within federal law-enforcement, it was made clear that based on early reviews of such materials (directly and through other sources) they did not find it difficult to retrieve the sought-after electronic messages. Much was the same two years ago when a White House computer contractor was able to reconstruct thousands of e-mails in short order. This was done under the guise of "Project X" a secret project begun once the White House was informed of a massive computer glitch that diverted up to 1 million e-mails to a default computer server instead of to an authorized backup system. The result of this glitch was that scores of subpoenas for White House e-mail traffic never were turned over to Congress, federal law-enforcement agencies, independent counsels and Judicial Watch (among others). Existence of the "secret" White House computer-firewall-system e-mail captures and backup tapes adds yet another layer of complications for Clinton/Gore administration officials who have been stung by the continuing revelations of hidden, secret or otherwise, unknown e-mails involving a cast of characters linked to various scandals. By Paul M. Rodriguez Managing Editor *-------------------------------------------------* "Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence without communications is irrelevant." Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC --------------------------------------------------- C4I Secure Solutions http://www.c4i.org *-------------------------------------------------* ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email LISTSERV () SecurityFocus com with a message body of "SIGNOFF ISN".
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- DOJ Confirms Secret "Firewalls" Exist for White House Computers William Knowles (Jul 01)