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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Trump Psst - COVER-UPS BY FBI/JUSTICE DEPT. - SOUND FAMILIAR Insight Magazine FBI & Justice Charged With Hiding Facts From Judge Lamberth About Lost Emails and Separate Telephone Logs -- Some Charge Games Played. The head of the Justice Department/FBI Campaign Task Force, along with the department's lead attorney, James Gilligan, are being charged with playing a game of hide & seek with U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth on the matter of "lost" White House emails, Insight has learned. Moreover, high level federal law enforcement sources have told Insight that neither the Campaign Task Force nor the Justice Department have been completely above board on a separate matter that has yet to garner much press attention concerning "lost" White House telephone logs detailing virtually every long distance call made from the Executive Office of the President between January 1992 through at least December 1998. Robert J. Conrad Jr., the head of the Task Force, along with Gilligan, have effectively told Judge Lamberth as recently as March 24 that to release any information concerning the now-infamous White House emails would seriously impede new investigations launched by the two law enforcement groups into recent allegations in the press involving a cover up (and threats to contract employees who have known about the emails) going back at least two years. Gilligan also told the judge that the Justice Department and Independent Counsel Robert W. Ray want to delay any judicial intervention or review into the White House emails because of separate new probes they are conducting into the latest allegations. The requests to Lamberth by Conrad and Gilligan were in response to a civil suit brought by Judicial Watch in its $90 million "Filegate" case against the White House. But Insight can now reveal for the first time that the statements made to Lamberth raise troubling ethical and legal issues for the Task Force and Justice Department because, since at least February 1999, senior agents of the FBI personally met with White House lawyers and officials and confidential witnesseses to discuss the emails, along with separate so-called lost telephone logs that long had been under subpoena by congressional panels, grand juries, and others. In other words, the implications of statements made before the judge that the investigative bodies are just now looking into these matters has been drawn into question, based on over a dozen interviews with confidential sources in and out of government in recent days. For example, Insight has recently confirmed that senior Justice Department officials and high-level FBI officials were briefed on the existence of the emails and telephone records back in early 1999 -- but they did not pursue or reveal the information to others further down the chains of command. "It's a lie what they are telling the judge," a high-level federal government source intimiately familiar with the 1999 meetings and related conversations tells Insight in an exclusive interview. "They've known about these things for a long time and even got some of the information. It's just that they didn't follow up on it," this source charges. Indeed, recalls a former White House contractor interviewed by the FBI: "One of the agents from the Task Force told me he didn't care about the emails because they just dealt with Monica and nobody cared about that but the politicians. I kept trying to tell him there was much more there but he didn't care." Said a second federal worker interviewed by another team of FBI agents also from the Task Force: "They only wanted certain long-distance records and not the rest of the logs somebody I knew had because one of the agents said it wasn't his area. He was working on only one small section of the much larger investigation and, besides, he said, nothing was going to happen anyway." Witnesses to what these two workers' told the federal agents corroborate their statements to Insight, as did a former FBI agent familiar with both the Task Force's work and information shared with the Starr camp. "People generally don't know that all these guys talk to each other and share information, but it's true, we did," said the former agent. In fact, interviews conducted by Insight with some of the current and former federal agents assigned to both the Task Force and separate Starr investigations said similar things about the motives and methods of operations of their colleagues and superiors. As one agent summed up the feelings of many interviewed: "There were certain agendas and the rest wasn't to be bothered with; there was a sense by most of us that the deals were already cut." These comments echo charges raised by the Task Force's former head, Charles LaBella, who wrote a scathing report to Attorney General Janet Reno that recently was leaked to the Los Angeles Times. In his memo, that Congress has been trying to obtain for nearly two years, LaBella chided his superiors for playing games and for allowing others at the Justice Department to interfer with the pursuit of the truth. One well-placed source familiar with the LaBella memo and others from him and other lead investigators, said it comes as no surprise to hear about the FBI agents' disinterest in the White House emails and stories from witnesses recounted by Insight such as this one: "They [the FBI agents] said that the emails were somebody else's problems but that a report had been filed and 'they' would get back to us. They never did call back." Another high-level federal law enforcement official who confirmed these damning charges, said he also knew that high-level officials at the Justice Department and the FBI were aware of both the emails now in the news plus the missing telephone records. "There was a lot of politics over this and most other areas of these investigations that in the end were killed to protect the higher ups," this law enforcement official shockingly claimed. "We blew it and we're just trying to cover our asses on this," the federal law enforcement official bluntly confessed to Insight. When asked about the statements made before Judge Lamberth that no information could be released to the court or to Judicial Watch because it could compromise new probes, the official had this to say: "Listen, when Insight first broke these stories there was a lot of scrambling and worry because nobody knew about these files and they had egg on their faces. These guys just went through the motions to get you off their backs ... because the rest of the press didn't pick up the stories, they figured no one would find out about the screwups. But don't believe it when they tell you that they only now are looking into it. They've done work on this before but never got full access the information and now they're trying to cover up." When asked about these charges, a second Justice Department source put it into context: "This Sheryl Hall suddenly appears out of no where after two years and it's front page news and everybody gets scared about blame." So what asked Insight? "The problem is that if they admit they knew about these emails and telephone logs all along then they have got to explain to the judge why they didn't investigate ... hell, they've got to explain to Freeh and Burton why they dropped the ball. This goes straight to Starr, too," the official said. (Editor's Note: The reference to Freeh is Louis Freeh, director of the FBI. The reference to Burton is Rep. Dan Burton, Indiana Republican and chairman of the powerful House Government Reform Committee. The reference to Starr is to former Independent Counsel Ken Starr.) When asked if such matters had been discussed once Hall and others came out publically to confirm Insight's stories from December 1998 and January 1999, several FBI and Justice Department officials said yes and claimed that there were "political decisions" arrived at to present arguments to Judge Lamberth to stall the information getting to Judicial Watch's general counsel, Larry Klayman, before the federal agents got on the stick and reviewed materials they had known about for two years but decided to ignore. "The stall is on," charged one of these sources. "This is a mess," admitted one of the Justice Department sources who asked like the others not to be further identified. "We're damned if we do and damned if we don't and in this case, we're damned either way because too many people knew about these [emails and telephone logs] but did nothing about it other than file reports." A cover up? "Call it what you want, you figure it out," the Justice source snapped. Indeed, Hall and others now being questioned by lawyers, federal agents, and Dan Burton's committee are learning much about what appears to be a cover up on this issue not just by the White House but also the very people and organizations charged with investigating the cover ups. "What's interesting to me is that Ray is playing along," said an FBI agent familiar with Starr's earlier investigations and the matter of the emails and long-distance telephone records that have yet to be turned over. "Ray and the staff have known about these for quite some time but now are pretending they just found out. That's not true," the FBI agent tells Insight. Yes, Insight has confirmed that several agents did look into the issues of emails and telephone records but, according to Justice Department sources familiar with these matters, the agents and their superiors at both the Campaign Task Force and at Starr's office did not pursue the evidence whistle-blowers were trying to share at great peril to careers. Why? "That's the real scandal in all of this," a disgruntled former FBI agent tells Insight. "They've known all along about what's in those records or at least what the potential has been but they didn't care to followup until now when it explodes in their faces...Now they want to pretend they never knew about it and never looked into it and never interviewed witnesses who had access to the records. They're trying to hoodwink the judge," this former agent told Insight in a fury of anger. Klayman, when presented with these new allegations said: "It's clear that the only tribunal that is not conflicted and can effectively investigate the email controversey, particularly under the circumstances, is the court of Judge Royce C. Lamberth. The judge has experience in understanding how the Clinton/Gore White House and Justice Department operates and is thus well equiped to get to the bottom of the matter." "He's also the only one with the authority and power to hold the guilty responsible free of politics and gamesmanship," Klayman added. Finally, when it comes to Independent Counsel Ray, many are beginning to question his decision to issue a final report on the so-called Filegate case which found no credible evidence that any wrongdoing had occurred or that anyone at the White House or First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had done anything wrong. What troubles many of the federal law enforcement officials, including one who was involved in trying to bring the emails and telephone logs issues to higher authorities is this: How could Ray issue a report with findings of no wrongdoing if he and his staff knew of the emails and long-sought telephone records but never obtained such critical evidence? Given that the Ray-Starr offices knew for at least two years, along with the Campaign Task Force, about the emails and long-missing telephone logs, such questions are being raised not only by private attorneys and the press but also within the FBI and at some senior levels of the Justice Department given that such records strike at the integrity of some of the highest officials in government, including the president and the vice president. According to current and former White House sources still afraid to come out publically to reveal what they know, Al Gore and many others have made statements that when compared to lost emails and telephone records may raise equally troubling new questions. "People tend to forget what they write and who they called and when you figure nobody's got any records you'll say anything without thinking," a current White House source said. "That's why everbody is nervous over here about what's in those emails and whose numbers are on the telephone logs. Trust me, they'll fight over these records for a long time to avoid embarassment." Burton and even some Democrats on the Government Reform Committee are troubled by the latest revelations and, according to even an investigator in the Conrad group over at the Task Force, "there's a cover up going on here about who knew what and when and it'll take more than lip service to reveal it all. Even the good guys are playing games." 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#1. To: Uncle Bill (#0)
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