U.S. Archives Subpoenaed in E-Mail Case

The Whitewater special prosecutor has subpoenaed the National Archives for information on White House record-keeping practices related to an inquiry into thousands of missing e-mails, U.S. officials said Monday.

The subpoena, received last week from the office of independent counsel Robert W. Ray, is the latest avenue of investigation into how the White House failed to save thousands of electronic mail messages, including some potentially related to scandals such as the Monica S. Lewinsky affair and campaign fund-raising practices.

A government official said the subpoena was related to the independent counsel’s branch of the e-mail investigation.

White House spokesman Jim Kennedy reiterated the White House position that it was cooperating with investigations into the missing e-mails being pursued by the Justice Department, a congressional committee and the independent counsel.

“We’ve already made clear the fact that we’re fully cooperating on the e-mail issue and we’re continuing to work hard to reconstruct backup tapes to turn out any relevant information as soon as possible,” Kennedy said.

The U.S. Justice Department’s campaign finance task force last month launched a criminal inquiry into charges that the White House failed to hand over electronic mail sought by campaign finance investigators, and that it used intimidation to keep the failure secret.

Ray’s office also is known to be looking into the controversy, as is the House Government Reform Committee.

The White House said any omission of relevant material from the volumes of documents handed over to investigators of alleged Clinton misdeeds was due to an inadvertent computer programming error that left the computers unable to capture e-mails sent from outside the White House.