Paper Says White House Has Lewinsky Grand Jury E-Mails

The White House possesses a previously undisclosed computer disk with e-mails from former intern Monica S. Lewinsky to two grand jury witnesses while her affair with President Clinton was under investigation, the Washington Times reported in today’s editions.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth was told Monday of the existence of the disk by Justice Department lawyer James Gilligan and will decide when and if it will be released, and to whom, the paper reported.

The newspaper quoted Gilligan, who represents the Executive Office of the President, or EOP, as saying the White House had no information or knowledge about the specific contents of the e-mails.

“EOP has not yet reviewed the contents of the disk but has been advised by counsel for Northrop Grumman that it contains copies of e-mails from Monica Lewinsky to Betty Currie and Ashley Raines,” the paper quoted him as saying.

Currie, the president’s personal secretary, and Raines, a Lewinsky confidant who worked in the White House Office of Policy Development Operations, were witnesses before the Lewinsky grand jury.

The disk was compiled after a manual search of the Lewinsky e-mail file by Robert Haas, a contract employee of Northrop Grumman Corp., which ran the computer system. Haas gave the disk to the firm’s corporate counsel, who passed it on March 17 to Charles Easley, EOP security chief.

No comment was immediately available from the White House about the Washington Times report.

Clinton was impeached in December 1998 for lying about his affair with Lewinsky. He was acquitted by the Senate on Feb. 12, 1999.