[Blitzer:] The turf war in the race for the White House. Senator Barack Obama spending today on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's home turf, raising money and making a high-profile TV appearance. Here is CNN senior correspondent Allan Chernoff. Allan?
[Allan Chernoff, Cnn Correspondent:] Wolf, Barack Obama will be appearing on "The Late Show with David Letterman" this evening. It will be a chance for Americans to get to know the candidate and for the candidate to potentially attract more political donors.
[Chernoff:] Barack Obama arrives on Hillary Clinton's turf as more than a political sensation. He's proven that he's a heavy hitter in the all-important fund-raising race.
[Sen. Barack Obama,  Illinois:] What's happening in New York City?
[Chernoff:] And he's hoping New York Clinton country will be fertile territory for more cash to come.
[Doug Muzzio, Political Scientist, Baruch College:] Everybody comes. You have to. You have to raise the bucks here. If you have any shot at winning.
[Chernoff:] Nationwide, Senator Obama raised $25 million during the first quarter. Nearly as much as Senator Clinton's $26 million.
[Muzzio:] He can raise the bucks, the fundamental element of politics, the mother's milk of politics. He's got gallons and gallons and gallons of it.
[Chernoff:] And delivering those gallons? About twice as many donor as Hillary Clinton has. Important in presidential primaries, because of a $2,300 per person donation limit. That means Obama has more donors than Clinton who have yet to top out of.
[Larry Sabato, Univ. Of Virginia:] He can go back to those people again and again because they've given less. A lot of room before where they've given and the ultimate limit.
[Chernoff:] But Hillary Clinton has the ultimate Democratic cash cow fund-raising in her camp, husband Bill Clinton who will be shaking hands on behalf of his wife later this week. The race for cash in New York is more competitive than the race for votes. Recent polls show Clinton at least 30 percentage points ahead of Obama, among registered Democrats in New York State whose primary has grown in importance.
[Obama:] Thank you very much, New York City.
[Chernoff:] Governor Elliot Spitzer today signed a bill moving the primary date up to February 5th. Obama had one fund-raiser before taping the show. As soon as he's finished chatting with Dave, Barack Obama has a full evening. Three fund-raising parties at private homes, including one co-sponsored by Bob Pittman, the former chief operating officer of CNN's parent, then known as AOL-Time Warner. Wolf?
[Blitzer:] Thanks for that, Allan Chernoff reporting from New York. One secret e-mail account at the heart of some new allegations that the White House may have tried to hide information about some of the biggest scandals it's now facing. Our national correspondent Bob Franken is standing by live. Bob, why would this e-mail account possibly, possibly, be illegal?
[Bob Franken, Cnn Correspondent:] Well, Wolf, it's about the Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of all official records of and about the president. It was passed during the Nixon administration and it is becoming an issue for the Bush administration.
[Franken:] Like so many of us, top White House officials seem to be all thumbs, constantly dealing with the blur of e-mail. But now there are charges they may have been trying to illegally hide some of it.
[Melanie Sloan, Citizens For Responsibility And Ethics:] They wanted to make sure that no record could ever be found of what they were really up to in the White House.
[Franken:] At issue, a non-official Republican National Committee e-mail account called gwb43.com, where private sector and congressional investigators say they've found communications from top White House aides dealing with official matters. Matters like the firings of U.S. attorneys. There is traffic about that to Kyle Sampson, who has now resigned as chief of staff to attorney general Alberto Gonzales. There are also messages to and from lobbyist Jack Abramoff, now in prison. At one point, according to investigators, after an e-mail was apparently sent by accident to the white house account of an assistant to Karl Rove, Abramoff fired another one saying, "Damn it, it was not supposed to go in the White House system." Neither administration aides nor Republican Party officials would agree to be interviewed on camera after repeated requests from CNN. But a White House spokesman, Scott Stanzel, in a statement, called the use of different computers to have the separate e-mail account for political activities, "appropriate, modeled after the historical practice of previous administrations." But this is different, says the chief of staff from the Clinton administration.
[Unidentified Male:] It doesn't appear they're doing what we did, which was to segregate political activity using political systems from official activity.
[Franken:] The Democratic chairman of the House Government Reform Committee is demanding access to gwb43. Reportedly, though, many messages are automatically purged after 30 days and there is no penalty for violating the Presidential Record Act, except for maybe another political penalty. Wolf?
[Blitzer:] So, Bob what are you learning from your Republican sources on this?
[Franken:] They say this was appropriate, that it was not being abused, that there had to be something to stop a violation of the Hatch Act, which would be using official resources for political reasons. They say, in fact, the Clinton White House did basically the same thing, which as you heard, the Clinton White House denies.
[Blitzer:] All right, Bob. Thank you. Bob Franken reporting. Coming up, Senator John McCain in full-scale damage control mode. We're going to show you how the Republican presidential candidate is now dealing with the fallout from those controversial remarks he made right here in THE SITUATION ROOM about Iraq. And new fallout as well from the dramatic sinking of that cruise ship in Greece. Did the crew wait too long before evacuating passengers? Stay with us. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM.