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Hard Ball
March 31, 2000, 11:34 AM
03/30/00- Updated 09:15 AM ET

Burton says he will make criminal referral

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Republican House committee chairman says lawyers at the White House and Justice Department may have helped a government computer specialist file a false statement in the case of the missing White House e-mails.
Rep. Dan Burton said Wednesday he is sending a criminal referral accusing White House employee Daniel Barry of perjury for his written declaration last July to a federal court.
Barry gave no indication in the four-page document that many White House e-mails weren't being reviewed to see if they should be turned over to investigators. ''I am concerned that the lawyers who assisted Mr. Barry in the preparation of his affidavit, and who counseled him at the time the affidavit was signed, were aware that the information was misleading,'' Burton wrote.
Burton cited lawyers in the White House counsel's office as possibly being ''involved in this deception.''
White House counsel Beth Nolan was scheduled to testify today before Burton's House Government Reform Committee.
Burton outlined his plan for a criminal referral in a letter to U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who earlier Wednesday found President Clinton committed a criminal violation of the Privacy Act.
Lamberth's ruling came in the same lawsuit that Barry filed the declaration in, a case filed by former Reagan- and Bush-era appointees whose FBI background files were gathered by the Clinton White House.
Barry's declaration states that the White House e-mail had been archived in an automated records management system. In fact, from August 1996 through mid-1998, computer glitches kept many e-mails out of the archives. Many aides inside the White House knew of the problem in 1998.
''Mr. Barry was aware as early as July of 1998 that a large universe of e-mails had not been archived,'' Burton wrote Lamberth.
Congressional sources said House investigators are trying to determine whether there was discussion of the e-mail problem with Barry by the Justice Department or the White House counsel's office at the time Barry signed the declaration to Lamberth's court. The
Just another Whitw House cover up to prptedt Clinton and Gore