Slashdot Mirror
White House E-Mail Hidden From Justice Dept.
TheSimon writes: "A former White House contractor, Betty Lambuth, alleged in court papers unsealed Friday that she was threatened not to reveal a problem with the White House e-mail system that concealed thousands of messages from the Justice Department and congressional investigators.
Here's
the full story from foxnews.com." This makes an interesting counterpoint to the calls for eliminating Internet anonymity by the same adminstration.
So its ok for the elite to have private email, but encryption might be dangerous in the hands of law abiding citizens.
But if you think Bush will be any better take a look at this website: GeorgeBush2000.com. I'm sure a bunch of it is fudging statistics and judging his record based on the current conditions in Texas versus Texas before he became governor. But the insider trading stuff is a little scary and has a ring of thuth to it.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
This has been on the Drudge Report for days. I'm still having a hard time deciphering what the point is. I have yet to see a calculation of the number of E-Mails discovered vs the number turned over to the special prosecutor. Not to mention the number with relevent content.
Without knowing if any of the e-mails had relevent content I'd say this is just a case of drudging up more dirt to use against Gore. As far as this being relevent to a discussion of anonymity it will never be allowed for official government correspondence. There are requirements for retaining documents and security regulations. On the other hand, the use of internet e-mail services would have to be curtailed.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Myself, I'm very skeptical of scandals which bubble to the surface during elections...just as I'm skeptical of the fact that NASA announces a new major "discovery" about Mars on the same day a Mars-related movie (for which NASA was a consultant) is making its premiere.
Timing, timing.
W
-------------------
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Don't forget that David Letterman almost died after Hillary visited. :-)
:)
She must have planted some anthrytax in his coffee
Finkployd
I wonder why the documents were unsealed. I wonder why they were sealed.
:)
As to why they werer unsealed, I have no idea. That is something I would like to have learned in the article, but they made no mention.
As to why they were sealed, I also don't know, but it's in keeping with this administration's policy of complete secrecy. Of course, they are also the most investigated admin in history (assumption), so I'd imagine I'd be sealing stuff too, knowing that everyone is coming after me. However, the actions on each side just fuel the actions on the other.
I still don't see any connection to Internet anonymity (timothy's claim, not yours).
I don't either, I suspect Timothy just wanted to post this and somehow justify it
Finkployd
This is interesting reading. The list HAS gotten out of control and yes, some of it is most likely fake. However, there is a good portion that CAN (and has been) verified. Sure, the extreamists have added (on some lists) just about everyone in Arkensas who has died!
:)
Like any politically motivated document, it must be taked with a grain of salt. I've personally looked into some of the names and found the claims to be baseless, others have been supported by traditional media and court and/or medial records. The strange claims of the Clinton appointed medical examiners is well covered in their local paper (decapitations ruled as "death by natural causes", people with multiple gunshot wounds to the body and head ruled as suicides, etc.)
Last, Vince Foster's case is strange in that almost everyone associated with the investigation has a different story of what happened. Only the FBI believes it to be a suicide, the park police began investigating it as a murder given that there was no weapon near the body. When the FBI took over, they announced the discovery of a gun and a suicide note (verfied by handwriting experts and his family as not being from him)
Ron Brown is an even stranger case. The Tribune Review (a major Pittsburgh paper) ran a story on the Air Force medical examiners where they told that he had a gunshot wound to the head and a "metal storm" of bullet fragments inside that hole. Their findings were taken by investigators higher up and they were told to forget what they saw. Now these are MDs with the Air Force, not some redneck militia guy who carries a gun for when the UN invades us
Like any story of this nature, it's to be taken with a grain of salt. Many of what I've read about the Iran-Contra scandel has been blown way out of proportion on the web also, that doesn't mean that it didn't happen.
Finkployd
If you in any way suprised that the Clinton Whitehouse got caught hiding documents from investigators, then you must not have been paying attention for the last 7+ years.
If there has been any consistancy in this administration at all, it has been their willingness to destroy/lose/play dumb about every document that has been requested in their back to back illegal activities. But they tell us the economy is good, so let him do what ever he wants right?
Finkployd
Instead, substantiate your claims with facts. Care to provide references?
Foster - (Suicide, right)
Ron Brown
Now for the ones you don't know about
Kevin Ives & Don Henry: Initial cause of death was reported to be the result of falling asleep on a railroad track in Arkansas on August 23, 1987. This ruling was reported by the State medical examiner Fahmy Malak. Later it was determined that Kevin died from a crushed skull prior to being placed on the tracks. Don had been stabbed in the back. Rumors indicate that they might have stumbled upon a Mena drug operation.
James Milam: Milam had information on the Ives & Henry deaths. He was decapitated. The state Medical examiner, Fahmy Malak, initially ruled death due to natural causes.
Paul Tully: Tulley was on the Democratic National Committee. He was found dead of unknown causes in his hotel room on September 24, 1992. No autopsy
was ever allowed.
Steve Willis, Robert Williams, Todd McKeahan & Conway LeBleu: Died Feburary 28, 1993 by gunfire at Waco. All four were examined by a pathologist and died from identical wounds to the left temple. All four had been body guards for Bill Clinton, three while campaigning for President and when he was Governor of Arkansas. They also were the ONLY 4 BATF agents killed at Waco.
Sgt. Brian Haney, Sgt. Tim Sabel, Maj. William Barkley, Capt. Scott Reynolds: Died: May 19, 1993 - All four men died when their helicopter crashed in the woods near Quantico, Va. - Reporters were barred from the site, and the head of the fire department responding to the crash described it by saying, "Security was tight," with "lots of Marines with guns." A videotape made by a firefighter was seized by the Marines. All four men had escorted Clinton on his flight to the carrier Roosevelt shortly before their deaths.
John Wilson: Found dead from an apparent hanging suicide on May 18, 1993. He was a former Washington DC council member and claimed to have info on Whitewater.
Jerry Luther Parks: Parks was the Chief of Security for Clinton's national campaign headquarters in Little Rock. Gunned down in his car on September 26, 1993 near the intersection of Chenal Parkway and Highway 10 west of Little Rock. Parks was shot through the rear window of his car. The assailant then pulled around to the driver's side of Park's car and shot him three more times with a 9mm pistol. His family reported that shortly before his death, they were being followed by unknown persons, and their home had been broken into (despite a top quality alarm system). Parks had been compiling a dossier on Clinton's illicit activities. The dossier was stolen.
Barbara Wise: Wise a 14-year Commerce Department employee found dead and partially naked in her office following a long weekend. She worked in the same section as John Huang. Officially, she is said to have died of natural causes.
Jim McDougal: Bill and Hillary Clinton friend, banker, and political ally, sent to prison for eighteen felony convictions. A key whitewater witness, dies of a heart attack on March, 8 1998. As of this writing allegations that he was given an injection of the diuretic lasix has not been denied or confirmed. Died on March 8, 1998
There are dozens more, look on the web. Yes, most of this is from right wing sites, but some of the better ones provide news paper and offical document links or images to back this up. Not that Clinton is to blame for any of this, it's just he has had more friends die in suspicious circumstances than I have friends.
Assuming she believed the alleged threats to be credible, what has changed? If there was something for her to fear then, there is surely something for her to fear now. Why the sudden change of mind?
She gave this deposition several years ago (if you read the story), only recently have then been unsealed. She hasn't "come forward" publicly at all. Please read the story before you assume this is just an opportunist trying to hurt Gore, she had nothing to do with the timing of the unsealing of court documents.
Anyways, in this instance, what exactly did the Clinton whitehouse do?
Allegedly, they hid evidence (nothing new). Other than that, I'm not sure what you mean.
Finkployd
the large number of ...'s in the article make me suspicious about the accuracy of some of the statements. Here is an example: ..."
I had heard rumours that we had threated to format the staffer's hard drives, this is simply untrue.
Now after a legal edition:
"... we had threatened to format the staffer's hard drives
Two entirely different statements with entirely different connotations.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Yes, but the American corporation that you're talking about is Loral. The head of Loral, Bernard Schwartz, was the single largest contributor to Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Here's a link to a New York Times article which raises serious doubts, including the doubts within the administration itself, about the legitimacy of the Sudan bombing raid.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Don't forget that David Letterman almost died after Hillary visited. :-)
Is your position that there should be a total lack of anonymity for all people or just people in power? I always think of the , "With great power comes great responsibilities line." Do you mean that one of those responsiblities is a lose of privacy? What a goverment employee's personal life? The press seems to follow the idea that high level goverment employees (senators, independent councils, etc.) are like celebreties and have choosen a public lifestyle that precludes privacy. Is this fair? If so, does this include Internet transactions like e-mails and web browsing? Do we have a right to know what is in George W.'s bookmarks?
I agree that people need to have more information about what their government but perhaps the amount isn't the problem. It is the difficulty in getting it. Who really researches voting records? Who watches CSPAN? All of these things take time. I have always wondered why even during an election, the only way to find a simple summary of a canidate's voting record is to check out his competition and then you only see the bad. This ends up making the decision trying to choose the lesser of two evils.
We really need a new style of press that is beholden to no one and gets the answers that people need. The Associated Press is pretty good but all to often many of their stories and others like them are not noted by the major distributers (CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, ect). We have a public television channel and although it has news we need more. We need a public news channel/web site that has all the information sorted and catagorized for easy searching.
-- soldack
Just wanted to take this moment to recommend David Brin's The Transparent Society, a well supported argument about why accountability is even more important than anonymity. Think about it -- this is a case where a government agency was investigated, and still they missed a lot of stuff. If they were a little better at it, they wouldn't have been investigated at all.
What can we do? Public, highly intrusive, monitoring of all aspects of government. If we (the people, you know) are delegating power, we need to watch how that power is used.
--Kevin
big brother is watching you-but you can't watch him back. what's the deal? do they have any idea how hypocritical this makes them look? i am all for internet anonimity, and it appears they are not-unless it deals with themselves. go figure.
Perhaps, but, in my view, what distinguishes Iran/Contra from those other episodes is that the raison d'etre for the "sins" included the attempted return of American hostages and the defense of the American hemisphere against the encroachment of Soviet-supported communists.
Disagree with the effectiveness or desirability of either of these motives all you, dear reader, might want, but you're unlikely to convince me that they in any way approach the seething selfishness of the motives for Watergate or, even worse (since Nixon was covering up for others at first), the various Clinton scandals.
(More and more, I'm amazed this country managed to elect someone as comparatively uninterested in obtaining and wielding personal power as Ronald Reagan to President. As we all do -- something we're always reminded of when discussing Clinton but somehow by people who inevitably chime in contrariwise vis-a-vis Reagan -- he had his faults, but constantly representing himself as everyone's personal source of happiness wasn't even close to one of them. And that seems to explain, more and more, the confusion of so many historians/biographers, who are thoroughly accustomed to the sort of egos that typically seek high office, as well as the seething hatred directed towards him by those on the Left, who resent his "demonstration" that, indeed, it is the sincere efforts of each and every free citizen, rather than a comparatively small ruling intellectual elite designated as infallible, that is needed for our species to survive and prosper.)
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
First off, that pic of Gore is a riot...
:)
Secondly, the NSA can recover data 16 rewrites or formats deep on a HDD. I know firsthand of eight layers, while in the Navy we had a HDD with data from two crash investigations stolen by a contractor, who used it for 2 months before it was recovered. We sent it in (I was told later to the NSA labs), and the data was recovered through 8 format/rewrites. Has to do with track edges and the head mechanism not tracking perfectly every time. Remember, encryption of drives works better if you don't want to be caught.
So... if drives were reformatted, they could have the data recovered. More emails about illegal crap. Hell, you'd think Gore would've thought of this, since he did invent the internet
I wonder if they will ever get to going through the emails to find the real dirt. If they do, it'll get classified as secret so it won't get released to the press. They'll stand by the "it's about national security, stupid" approach, so we'll never get the real story.
I hope the lady who was fired sues, at least she'll get some vindication.
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who