It has become pretty darn obvious that the White House has been breaking laws out the ying-yang in order to hide their “hard work” at the taxpayers expense. Below the fold Dan Froomkin lays out the basics and I wonder when Fitzgerald will start looking for more…
But when I asked Stanzel to read out loud the White House e-mail policy, it seemed clear enough to me: “Federal law requires the preservation of electronic communications sent or received by White House staff,” says the handbook that all staffers are given and expected to read and comply with.
“As a result, personnel working on behalf of the EOP [Executive Office of the President] are expected to only use government-provided e-mail services for all official communication.”
The handbook further explains: “The official EOP e-mail system is designed to automatically comply with records management requirements.”
And if that wasn’t clear enough, the handbook notes — as was the case in the Clinton administration — that “commercial or free e-mail sites and chat rooms are blocked from the EOP network to help staff members ensure compliance and to prevent the circumvention of the records management requirements.”
snip
Stanzel said that “some people” may have used their non-government accounts for official business due to “an abundance of caution” in order to avoid violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits the use of government e-mail for overtly political purposes, such as fundraising — and due to “logistical convenience.”
Let’s be clear on what Stanzel is saying here. They were trying to hide the fact that they were illegally doing political fundraising, etc., on our dollar by using outside Email services.
Now my biggest question here, since they seem to be using it for official government work as well which is illegal according to the Hatch act:
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?
According to one former White House official familiar with Rove’s work habits, the president’s top political adviser does `about 95 percent’ of his e-mailing using his RNC-based account. … The former White House official, speaking on background, said that although the RNC had a policy to purge e-mails after a short period of time, Rove’s e-mails on its system and those of a few other White House aides in sensitive positions were preserved by the RNC “to protect Karl.” Even with a policy of deleting e-mails from servers, information-technology experts say, organizations rarely erase data entirely.
There has got to be some great gems in there concerning these traitors and related to the outing of the entire spy network of Brewster and Jennings that Plame was involved in.
Why hasn’t anyone else noted this obvious probability yet? Fitz needs to get out his shovel and start digging all over again because if he only sifted through the White House Email system it is obvious he only got about 5% of the picture.
As a side note: The White House is claiming many relevent Emails are lost, but Leahy points out the obvious.
“They say they have not been preserved. I don’t believe that!” Leahy shouted from the Senate floor. “You can’t erase e-mails, not today. They’ve gone through too many servers. Those e-mails are there, they just don’t want to produce them. We’ll subpoena them if necessary.”
“Like the famous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes, it appears likely that key documentation has been erased or misplaced. This sounds like the Administration’s version of `the dog ate my homework.'”
(Think Progress has the video)
While I suspect that all they may have to do is check the hard drives of the users computers, etc., to come up with a lot of it, Leahy is on the right track here. You can never really completely delete anything unless you are a hardcore technology geek that knows where, and has access to everywhere, the info hides after deleting it.
You would have to work very hard to purposefully delete it completely from everywhere that information has passed.
I would also wonder if the federal government might have snifffed out many of the Emails in question with the systems thay have been illegally using to monitor the internet. That would be the would be the height of irony there, if the bush administration got caught by their own illegal wiretaspping schemes… heh
I am not saying that this is how Ken Krayeske ended up on “THE LIST” but it is definately a possibility.
FBI turns to broad new wiretap method:
“The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.
Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.
Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI’s Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what’s legally permissible.”
C’mon Fitzgerald! There is still work to be done. You haven’t even seen 5% of possible evidence if all of this information is true.
