by Deb Cupples | Despite the millions of tax dollars in its budget -- despite the legal duty under the Presidential Records Act to preserve records, the White House has had major troubles preserving emails.
In November, a federal judge ordered the President's Executive Office to preserve emails relevant to two lawsuits. The plaintiffs estimated that 5 million White House emails were missing.
Now, it turns out that the White House may have destroyed email records during key times that a curious public and Congress would like to see documentation of -- specifically during the weeks leading up to the Iraq war. This seems mighty convenient for the lame duck president who would likely prefer to not be thoroughly vilified in the history books. Truthout's Matt Renner reports:
"Whistleblowers have accused the White House of destroying email records from their internal servers. The Bush administration disputes this accusation, claiming instead that many emails were stored incorrectly.
"The storage system came under harsh criticism from former employees who called it 'primitive' and said it had deep security flaws that would inevitably lead to destruction of records. In September 2002, the Bush administration dismantled the Automatic Records Management System (ARMS) put in place by the Clinton administration and never replaced it....
"In response to a judge's orders, the White House Office of Administration (OA), which manages the networks and email systems in the White House, filed a statement (PDF Page 20), which revealed that no emails were saved between March 1 2003 and May 22, 2003.
"'Office of Administration is preserving 438 disaster recovery backup tapes that were written to between March 1, 2003 and September 30, 2003. Of those 438 tapes, the earliest date on which data was written ... is May 23, 2003,' according to the Bush administration filing.
If I'm reading it correctly, the White House threw out its old records-management system -- which would have preserved at least some emails, BEFORE bothering to arrange to put a new system in place. This was an odd decision, given the federal law that imposes a duty on the White House to preserve email records.
It's also like driving the somewhat out-of-date but still-functioning family car to the dump before making arrangements to replace it.
Frankly, I anticipate it but just cannot buy the "we were too stupid to do any better" argument, especially given the timing. Renner continues:
"This time period is perhaps the most historically significant of the entire Bush administration. It includes the run up to the invasion of Iraq, diplomatic jockeying to try and rally United Nations support for war, the possible planning for retaliation against former diplomat Joe Wilson, who was accusing the administration of lying about Iraq weapons of mass destruction claims, the use of harsh interrogations in the so-called "War on Terror", as well as the formation of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) - the ruling body in Iraq after the invasion - and the controversial policy decisions the CPA undertook." (Truthout)
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