Slashdot Log In
White House Must Answer For Missing Emails
Posted by
Soulskill
on Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:03 PM
from the show-me-the-deleted-emails dept.
from the show-me-the-deleted-emails dept.
Lucas123 writes "A District Court judge this week ruled in favor of a Washington-based watchdog group, allowing them to question White House officials about missing emails involving controversial issues. The subjects include the release of the identity of a former CIA operative, the reasons for launching the war in Iraq and actions by the US Department of Justice. The group had filed suit [PDF] last May against the White House Office of Administration, seeking access to White House email under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The discovery ruling is bringing to light issues of email retention in businesses and other private organizations. We've previously discussed the White House's difficulties with email."
Related Stories
[+]
Politics: Thousands of White House E-mails Deleted 799 comments
kidcharles writes "The Washington Post reports that in the midst of an investigation by the U.S. Congress into the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys by the Department of Justice, numerous White House e-mails have been lost. Among them are communications from presidential adviser Karl Rove. Parallels are being drawn with the infamous '18 minutes' missing from the Nixon Watergate tapes. Also at issue is the use of Republican National Committee e-mail domains (such as gwb43.com and georgewbush.com) rather than the official White House domain. This is a violation of the Presidential Records Act."
[+]
Politics: White House Tape Recycling Possibly Erased Emails 251 comments
Pojut points us to a Washington Post story which details the White House's admission that it routinely recycled backup tapes from 2001 to 2003, possibly destroying e-mail records from that time period. While the tapes are being analyzed to determine if any of the data can be recovered, the White House also indicated that some e-mail through 2005 may not have been preserved. We discussed the beginnings of this investigation a few months ago. From the Post:
"During the period in question, the Bush presidency faced some of its biggest controversies, including the Iraq war, the leak of former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson's name and the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed."
[+]
Politics: White House Says Hard Drives Were Destroyed 408 comments
wanderindiana brings us an update on the White House missing emails mess, which we have discussed before. It seems the hard drives of many White House computers are gone beyond the possibility of recovery. Is it unusual in your experience for, say, a corporate IT department to destroy hard drives by policy? "Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005. The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Expected answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry folks, but political operators learned from nixon. Don't keep evidence of malfeasance. Don't lie explicitly, just claim to not remember or not be in the loop. Delay, delay, delay, delay. This isn't going to be a watershed event. Odds are if those emails really ARE incriminating, then they are long, long gone.
Re:Expected answer (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Expected answer (Score:5, Insightful)
We agree on one thing, there was (and still is), very little oversight. It should stand as our enduring shame that senate and house oversight committees are spending time going after baseball and football scandals while our constitution burns.
Re:Expected answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Expected answer (Score:5, Funny)
You don't get it, do you? When you mess with the Presidential Records Act, you're messing with the entire National Archives system. That means they take away your National Archives Library Card. Want to check out that official copy of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill, or the Marine Mammal Protection Act? Sorry, buster. You're gonna have to make do with a photocopy. And guess what? Without that card, you can still get in to see the Constitution... but not after hours.
Re:Expected answer (Score:5, Insightful)
/dev/null (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Expected answer (Score:5, Interesting)
In fulfilment of a legal obligation. a request will be made to administrators and office staff to check their email accounts for the 'missing email'. The managers will accept the word of the staff under them, who will typically eyeball their inbox in Outlook before reporting 'no, haven't got it'.
Don't assume they're grepping through their servers because if they're just responding to a freedom of information request, they're not. They will restrict themselves to a search that seems 'reasonable' in the eyes of a technological illiterate, that's all.
Re:Expected answer (Score:5, Insightful)
They just smashed the joint up. They fired or forced to resign what amounts to hundreds to thousands of person-years of experience in government. They politicized every office they could get their hands on. they enriched cronies in brazen fashion. They used a national fucking tragedy to secure political control of congress. They pushed a TRIPLE FUCKING AMPUTEE who was a Vietnam veteran out of office because he had the temerity to stand up to their bullshit. They completed the circle of lobbyist control in congress started by Tom Delay. they made supine the court system and the legislature, and now they stand to do it again.
Getting dome in the white house doesn't begin to compare. We will go decades and not be able to access the wreckage honestly.
Re:Expected answer (Score:5, Informative)
Not even remotely true. [commondreams.org] I have work tomorrow and it's late. You're a blatant troll and I don't have time to discredit all of the obvious Clinton lies you've spouted. It should be enough to just throw out your first argument... but I'll even add a bonus link... Clinton Did not fire attorneys in the middle of their terms. [thinkprogress.org] Yes, all presidents fire attorneys when they begin... but only the current president hid conversations using RNC accounts and fired attorneys in the middle of their term for purely political reasons (The only attorneys fired in the middle of their terms from 1981 to 2006 were for misconduct... which was never cited as a reason for the current firings).
Like I said, it's late and I have work. Quit trolling and read some real information.
Re:"I do not recall." (Score:5, Funny)
Why don't you make fun of Roosevelt for not jogging on the Whitehouse lawn?
Re:Expected answer (Score:5, Insightful)
There isn't a witch hunt. The fact that the democrats are willing to excercise a modicum of oversight should come as a slight relief, not rejected. Think about it:
This is what CLinton did:
Lied about getting dome in the white house while under oath. Suggested that his mistress lie under oath in order to protect him.
This is what bush did:
Used political operatives in the white house and the justice department to prosecute democrats during election seasons. Fired uncooperative prosecutors.
Used 9/11 to illegally wiretap large volumes of conversations over telephone and email. Didn't even use a secret court designed for such surveilance SIMPLY TO DECLARE THAT THE WH WAS BEYOND THE REACH OF THAT COURT. Lied about it even after it was discovered by the NY times 4 years later.
Deliberately moved a detention facility outside of US court jurisdiction in order to prevent detainees from getting basic human rights afforded to them. Violated the geneva conventions. authorized and lied about torture.
Replaced government professionals with political operatives and like minded conservatives. Used appointed officials to stifle press releases AND to eliminate oversight, resulting in (likely) the mine collapse disasters and the mismanagement of Katrina.
The list could go on. Those aren't partisan accusations. They aren't crazy conspiracies. They aren't unsubstantiated attacks. they are fucking facts, confirmed by former WH officials, members of congress, informants, or statements of the presidents adivsors while still in office. I didn't even include most of John Woo and David Addington's rape of our constitution or the iraq war. How has the partisan, liberal, democratic congress responded to these blatant examples of misconduct? About as meekly as a churchmouse.
How will they enforce it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shit, I'm forgetting what the the request was but Congress asked the Attorney General to investigate someone. The reply: "That was a pointed and direct request so I will make sure my answer is pointed and direct: no."
So, what's the next step, send the sgt. at arms to haul their asses in?
Re:How will they enforce it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah, here it is. We don't torture, never tortured, oh wait, we tortured three people. So now will we investigate? No. Fucker.
Re:How will they appeal it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How will they appeal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
And that was our mistake. We should have stuck with people who know what the constitution says. The US constitution, even with all it's shortcomings, at least provides some protection. Even allowing for differences in interpretation, it still provides some protection.
But if you put a guy in office who believes that he can do anything as long as it is right for his country, and who further believes that he gets to determine what is right and nobody can second guess him, then he can do anything.
You see, the issue is not 'is torture wrong?', the issue is 'is torture unconstitutional?'
We had a close call a few years back, almost impeaching a guy for a blow job. We scared ourselves on that one. Each self-rightous politician was determined to be greater in his criticism of the prez than the next guy, and it kinda got out of hand. Everybody knew that we really shouldn't do it, but nobody seemed to know exactly when to stop. I mean, nobody wanted wanted to be the guy who said 'Hey, I think blow jobs from interns are ok.' But eventually, enough people realized that if it went through, they wouldn't be getting blow jobs in the future, so it fell apart. When asked why they were changing their minds, they couldn't really come out in favor of blow jobs, so they invoked the constitution, noting that he really hadn't reached the constitutional definition of "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
Like a sailor who tacks back and forth across his intended course, sometimes to one side, sometimes to the other, we sort of follow the constitution. Sometimes we are too liberal, sometimes too cautious.
Right now, post-blow-job, we are erring on the side of being too cautious. So faced with a president who probably does deserve to be inpeached for incompetence and the pointless deaths of 4000 of his countrymen, we pretend that the best way to get rid of him is just to let him serve out his term and then we will put someone else in by election.
Re:How will they appeal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole idea of the constitution is to limit the government. This means that sometimes you have to let the guilty go free, because an unrestrained government is far more dangerous than the few criminals who go unpunished.
What Scalia is saying is the opposite: that you can ignore the constitution based upon individual circumstances: in particular, that you can duck the constitution based on an imminent threat. Who gets to decide if the threat is credible? Who gets to decide if it is really imminent? Well, apparently, the president. As Scalia sees it, the president can order the torture of anyone with no judicial or congressional review. This is what I mean by completely ignoring the constitution.
By contrast, interpretation of the constitution would be something like saying 'waterboarding is not cruel and unusual.'
Re:How will they enforce it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How will they enforce it? (Score:5, Informative)
If you're referring to John Conyers asking Mukasey about the CIA tapes, then that was the question. Conyers asked if Mukasey was prepared to begin an investigation into the possibility of criminal wrongdoing in the case of destroyed CIA tapes. Mukasey said "that's a direct question, so let me give a direct answer: no I am not."
The Daily Show may be a fake news show but there's information there.
Re:How will they enforce it? (Score:5, Informative)
Wilson Livingood [wikipedia.org] or Terrance W. Gainer [wikipedia.org]
I say send in Gainer to 'em soften up before Livingood can come in and finish the job.
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
How do you lose email? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you *have* to conspire to completely delete emails of such mass quantities, then why isn't this all just a matter of finding the guilty party?
If they build their systems so that no trails are left, then that in itself is evidence of an intent to conspire.
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course given the nature of email, it's probably not provable that the email is genuine. And it doesn't help that Palast has a bit of a muckraker reputation. From what I've seen, he does have a bit of a bias, but I've never known him to fabricate his evidence. Personally I'm inclined to believe the emails are real, but, like I said, I'm not sure you can prove that. Unless of course they also turn up in the White House archives.
Oh, right. Nevermind.
theywontanyway (Score:5, Insightful)
This administration needs a slap in the face with a nail-filled board. I don't see these courts doing that any time soon... although I'm sure that "they really mean it this time, you have to give it to us!" Unfortunately, that'd be compromising "national security". Must say I'm not sure how rigging an election qualifies as national security, but since I don't quantifiable know what's in those emails, I'll just take your word Georgie.
Sigh. If this is the price, I'd rather watch out for myself - it's cheaper that way.
OT: hardware? why?
Waterboarding anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)