WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House has yet to recover any missing e-mails being sought by investigators and is turning over backup tapes that might contain the messages to Independent Counsel Robert Ray and the Justice Department, a judge disclosed Friday.

The FBI will now step in and try to retrieve the missing e-mails, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.

The latest twist in the controversy over the missing e-mails played out in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who is presiding over a civil case involving the messages.

The White House belatedly disclosed earlier this year that thousands of e-mails, including some from Vice President Al Gore's office, were not properly archived because of a computer glitch.

As a result, the messages were never reviewed by White House lawyers to determine if they should have been turned over under subpoena to investigations ranging from impeachment and Whitewater to campaign fund raising.

Presidential aides have tried for months to retrieve the messages from the backup tapes.

Congress, Ray and Justice are investigating whether the e-mail problem was an innocent mistake, as the White House contends, or part of an effort to obstruct their investigations. The White House denies wrongdoing.

At a court hearing Friday, Lamberth authorized presidential aides to release some of the computer tapes to Justice Department campaign finance investigators.

A government lawyer told the judge the White House is running into technical problems that will indefinitely delay the retrieval of missing e-mail. The White House had hoped to have the first batch of e-mail ready for investigators by June.

E-mail will be provided to investigators in a "rolling production," Elizabeth Shapiro, the Justice Department attorney representing the White House, told the judge.

"But when does it start rolling?" Lamberth asked.

"Now you've got me," Shapiro answered.

Two law enforcement officials told the AP the FBI will use its expertise to try to extract messages from the backup tapes. "The FBI has the facilities; they'll take a run at it," one official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The chief Republican investigator on the House committee probing fund-raising criticized the White House for further delays.

"We are very disappointed that the White House has not been able to move forward with greater dispatch," said Jim Wilson, chief investigator for the House Government Reform Committee. "Given these new developments, at a very minimum, they should have kept Congress informed of the fact that they were making no progress."

Just two days ago, the committee sent to Attorney General Janet Reno a letter complaining her department had not interviewed numerous key witnesses in its probe of the missing e-mails.

The White House e-mail controversy erupted when two former White House computer experts said that much of the White House's e-mail had not been stored in computer archives.

The White House hired outside companies to pull the e-mails off computer backup tapes, but the preliminary copying of the tapes hasn't started, the judge was told Friday.

Shapiro explained the machinery used to copy the tapes is "not able to withstand the amount of copying" necessary for the 3,000 backup tapes in question.

"It is clear the Clinton-Gore White House is attempting to delay the e-mail production until after the election," said Larry Klayman, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch that brought the lawsuit against the Clinton administration that prompted Friday's hearing.