BushCo. Lost Five Million Emails

Posted by BooMan | Apr 12, 2007 | 22 |

Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) has some pretty big news.

In a startling new revelation, CREW has also learned through two confidential sources that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over five million emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005. The White House counsel’s office was advised of these problems in 2005 and CREW has been told that the White House was given a plan of action to recover these emails, but to date nothing has been done to rectify this significant loss of records.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said today, “It’s clear that the White House has been willfully violating the law, the only question now is to what extent? The ever changing excuses offered by the administration – that they didn’t want to violate the Hatch Act, that staff wasn’t clear on the law – are patently ridiculous. Very convenient that embarrassing – and potentially incriminating – emails have gone missing. It’s the Nixon White House all over again.”

Read the whole thing.

Once again, we have a case of gross criminality that will only be considered criminal if Congress defines it as criminal. How would they do that? By bringing charges against those responsible, and by impeaching this administration from top to bottom. Is there such a thing as obstruction of justice that is SO FRIGGIN’ HUGE that it can’t even be considered obstruction of justice? Destroying over two years of records? This administration is so over-the-top criminal that it is hard to deal with.

About The Author

BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

22 Comments

boran2 on April 12, 2007 at 3:23 pm

Surely it must be Microsoft’s fault. /snark
Teacher Toni on April 12, 2007 at 3:28 pm

I think CREW’s site is down – I can’t open it.
- Books Alive on April 12, 2007 at 3:43 pm
  
  Same here. Too much traffic, or something evil and menacing?
  - chocolate ink on April 12, 2007 at 4:07 pm
    
    Same here but I thought it was my computer..as I’ve been having trouble this morning.
MikeInOhio on April 12, 2007 at 3:28 pm

The criminal snowball continues to roll. How much bigger does it have to get before the Democrats bring down the hammer on this whole rotten mess?

Leahy is right. The “dog ate my homework” excuse is just not going to work here. That is, if it is not allowed to work. This stuff is just spewing out more and more every day. It’s impossible to keep track of every corruptible instance ginned up by this Keystone Kops outfit. The dam has to break at some point along the way.

From Think Progress:

On March 27, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that the RNC had been archiving all emails being sent through their accounts. Perino underscored that the archiving had not begun in response to Chairman Henry Waxman’s request to the RNC to preserve all emails, but rather “this has been something that was in place long before that.” She added, “The archiving that would have been for any of these — over the past few years, of emails that had been going back and forth between people that would have these accounts to the outside.”

When pressed on how many White House staffers use political email accounts, Perino claimed, “I think it’s a handful, I don’t think it’s a lot.” Yesterday, the White House acknowledged both those claims were false:

1) The White House also admitted yesterday that “archiving” was not taking place. “The White House has not done a good enough job overseeing staff using political e-mail accounts to assure compliance with the Presidential Records Act,” White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said in an unusual late-afternoon teleconference with reporters.

2) The White House acknowledged yesterday that far more than a “handful” of staffers used the political email accounts. The White House said 22 staffers have e-mail accounts issued by the Republican National Committee. “Since 2001, about 50 staffers e-mailed using the system.”

Lies. Everything is lies. They say something in the morning and by the afternoon there is information out there and documented which contradicts what they said just a few hours earlier. It is absolutely out of control. This level of criminality is unprecedented. Is there anyone at any level of this administration who is without blemish?

I’m beginning to think not.
- chocolate ink on April 12, 2007 at 4:12 pm
  
  I’d say the short answer to that is a big NO….to get hired on with this crew you have to be some sort of twisted authoritarian nut job to start with…starting with hiring so many whacko religious(so called) nuts.
- Kahli on April 12, 2007 at 5:50 pm
  
  Is there anyone at any level of this administration who is without blemish?
  
  I think Bush has a dog. ; )
  - ceebs on April 12, 2007 at 8:09 pm
    
    and I bet if you looked into it you’d find even he managed to vote twice at the last election. 😉
    - dada on April 12, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Man Eegee on April 12, 2007 at 3:29 pm

And if they follow their usual modus operandi for criminal behavior, they’ll fully admit that they did it and dare the other branches of government to do something about it. The question is whether they’ll be met with crickets as they have in the past.
Oui on April 12, 2007 at 3:50 pm

.
See also recommended diary:

When Will Patrick Fitzgerald Start Sifting Through RNC Email? ◊ by Connecticut Man1

When will Fitzgerald start demanding any Emails that very likely will be in the RNC Email systems, because guys like Rove used that system about 95% of the time, and would be useful in prosecuting the fuck out of these lying traitors?

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Miss Devore on April 12, 2007 at 4:03 pm

the month (3/3) we invaded Iraq up to the month when Iraqi certified their new constitution (10/05)

strange coincidence.
MikeInOhio on April 12, 2007 at 4:10 pm

Dana Perino was like a deer in the headlights at this afternoons press gaggle. From Think Progress (emphasis mine):

In this afternoon’s press briefing, the White House press corps confronted spokeswoman Dana Perino about her previous misstatements regarding the White House’s use of RNC email accounts. On March 27, Perino claimed that there were only a “handful” of staffers with such accounts. Today, Perino claimed that her earlier statement was made despite her ignorance of what was actually going on. “Well, I didn’t know how many there were,” Perino said. “I grant you, it’s a very large handful.”

CNN’s White House correspondent Ed Henry then pressed her on why she had earlier stated that RNC emails had been archived for a very long time when the White House now claims that those emails have been lost. On March 27, Perino said RNC archiving was “something that was in place” for years. Today, she backed off that statement and said, “We have developed a better understanding of how the RNC archived or did not archive certain e-mails.” She refused to further elaborate.

Watch it:

Perino defended herself, arguing, “When I said a `handful,’ I was asked based on something that I didn’t know.” Apparently, Perino believes if you don’t know the truth, you’re allowed to make up whatever you want.

Transcript:

QUESTION: On March 27th, at this podium, you said that there were only a handful of White House aides who had used political RNC accounts. Now you’re saying 22; that doesn’t sound like a handful.

PERINO: Well, I didn’t know how many there were. And I think that, again, if you look at the number of people that work at the White House, almost 2,000, to have 22 people that — I mean, obviously, I grant you it’s a very large handful, but it’s still a relatively small number.

And it’s based on the people who have responsibilities — both White House official responsibilities but that also have responsibilities, in their job description, to do political activities.

And to make sure that they didn’t violate the Hatch Act, they had access to this other equipment.

QUESTION: But then the L.A. Times, today, quotes Scott (inaudible) as saying that there were about 50 aides.

PERINO: I think the 22 is current — current White House employees.

PERINO: We’re looking — if you have 50 over the course of the administration.

QUESTION: At that March 27th briefing as well, you said that Fred Fielding, the White House counsel, was in touch with the RNC general counsel to make sure that there was archiving taking place. And when pressed on it, you said that these were not archived just since Henry Waxman had asked you about it on the Hill, that they had been archived for a very long time. So how would…

PERINO: And I think that’s going back to those a few weeks ago. This is how we have developed a better understanding of how the RNC archived or did not archive certain e-mails. As I said, folks like Karl Rove, e-mails using this equipment, go back to being archived to 2004.

The extent of how many people had these accounts, I didn’t have it readily at my fingertips. I understood it to be a handful of people. I knew that it would be at least some, if not all, of the people that worked in the Office of Political Affairs.

[…]

QUESTION: But what you’ve said has shifted even over the last couple of weeks.

PERINO: Give me an example of that.

QUESTION: Fifty, 22, handful.

PERINO: And I explained that. I think — you have to admit that when I said a handful I was asked based on something that I didn’t know.

Incredible!! Absolutely incredible!! I am, amazingly, speechless here.
- ceebs on April 12, 2007 at 8:55 pm
  
  Right so five million emails have gone missing, I can think of a couple of ways that that could be completely legitimate, but it would be a bit of a stretch,involving multiple pieces of Hardware failing simultaneously, and operators ignoring the warning messages, and we would have seen some IT department staff kicked rather spectacularly out of the door for a fuck up of that magnitude.
  now five million emails sounds like a lot, but over three years that’s only about 5,000 a day and about 10 Gb of storage space (that’s an extremely rough figure pulled out of nowhere in case anyone wants to argue with it, and could easily be off by a factor of ten depending on the proportion of attatchments in the emails)
  
  How many people are employed by the executive office of the President? and is this different to the number of people employed at the white house? you would assume that the Secret Service wouldn’t be included as they would have their own email system, likewise a variety of other staff can be rationally excluded. So how many people actually get onto the server to get their email lost?
Brendan Skwire on April 12, 2007 at 4:37 pm

Pardon me for being pedantic, but “lost” usually refers to something or someone that goes missing by accident. “I lost my subway fare, anyone have an extra token”?
“I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and now I’m lost in the desert.”

“Lost” suggests an unintentional nature.
There is NOTHING unintentional about these 5,000,000 missing emails. Nothing unintentional at all.
dada on April 12, 2007 at 4:37 pm

I’ll bet the good folks over at NSA could resurrect those…and nothing ever completely disappears, unless of course, the servers have been smashed and are now sleeping with the fishes.

Abu, aka: [Fredo in Bushspeak™] Gonzales shouldn’t be getting on any small air or water craft.

Let’s see what all those forensic computer experts at the fbi, etc, can come up with, shall we….mr Leahy?
cruz del sur on April 12, 2007 at 4:56 pm

Use this and this and problem solved.
louisianagirl on April 12, 2007 at 5:36 pm

All employees of the Executive Branch have to receive training on the Hatch Act, and I believe a signed document testifies to one’s completion of that training. If staff were not aware of the Hatch Act, then they should not have been in the White House’s employ. And is not a violation of the Hatch Act an impeachable offense, given that it is a violation of the law?
- cruz del sur on April 12, 2007 at 5:40 pm
  
  But impeachment is off the table :0(
  - Kahli on April 12, 2007 at 5:52 pm
    
    Not my table. ITMFA!
  - louisianagirl on April 12, 2007 at 7:15 pm
    
    It is the centerpeice of my table.
    - cruz del sur on April 12, 2007 at 7:40 pm
      
      Send your table to Congress!!!

BushCo. Lost Five Million Emails

About The Author

BooMan

22 Comments

Recent Posts

Recent Comments