Year’s Worth of Gore’s E-Mail Lost Due to Backup Breakdown

The White House has discovered that an entire year’s worth of Vice President Al Gore’s e-mail and that of his staff was never put on backup tapes and most of it has been irretrievably lost.

White House officials said Thursday that they learned of the lapse, which they blamed on “a technical configuration error,” in response to inquiries from the House Government Reform Committee.

President Clinton’s senior associate counsel Steven F. Reich told the committee this week that the gap extended from late March 1998, when a new operating system was installed for Gore’s office, through early April 1999.

White House memos indicate the problem was discovered on April 2, 1999, only because Gore, who is known as an e-mail enthusiast, was unable to send or receive messages for seven hours.

White House lawyers, who were responsible for searching electronic messages in response to various congressional and criminal investigations, say they were unaware of the e-mail backup failure until last month, after other White House e-mail breakdowns had come under congressional investigation.

Just when Gore learned of the failure and other record-keeping difficulties is unclear. House Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton (R-Ind.) said he understood that “the vice president himself was warned in April 1999 about problems with his records management.” One White House information system supervisor, Dorothy Cleal, has told the committee she was instructed to write Gore directly about the matter.