Judge Demands Information About Missing White House Emails

Lucas123 writes "A District Court judge has ordered the Executive Office of the President to tell the court by May 5 whether any e-mail server backup tapes were kept for a period from March to October 2003 to cover controversial issues such as reasons for starting the war in Iraq, the release of a former CIA operative's name and the US Department of Justice's actions. The White House has been working for months trying to fend off a lawsuit filed last May in federal court in Washington by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. The judge cited what he called an apparent contradiction by White House CIO Theresa Payton as to whether backup tapes had been preserved. He also recommended that White House employees be ordered to turn over any flash drives or other portable media that may contain e-mails. The White House missing email scandal has been developing for some time now."

ask TT&T and the NSA... they got everythig!

Why not just ask AT&T, the NSA, and all the telecoms that got their hands (or other appendages) caught in the cookie jar (data-pipe). They probably have some copies running around somewhere 8-/

Re:ask TT&T and the NSA... they got everythig!

If I had mod points, I would mod you up.

The Bush administration's deliberate use of the RNC e-mail system, and the amazing coincidence that the White House allowed the e-mail records to get overwritten (or at least claims they have).

It's a blatant coverup not unlike Nixon's 18 minute gap in a tape recorded conversation between him and H.R. Haldeman.

The American people need to demand Bush surrender all evidence or that he and his administration be held in contempt of court.

Re:ask TT&T and the NSA... they got everythig!

They've done what, 37 debates already?

And how did that last debate turn out?

45+ minutes of retarded 'gotcha' questions. He isn't "afraid" to debate Clinton, he just has nothing to gain by it. Another debate would just rehash the same right wing talking points about his former Pastor and some guy he met when he was 8 years old.

Hillary on the other hand has everything to gain. She can go on the offensive and be as nasty as she wants. Sure, some of it will bounce, but as we've seen, negative adds will stick, if she (and the republican party) continues to repeat them long enough. But since Obama is taking the "high" road (err, only needing muck boots instead of waders to walk down), if he gets nasty and offensive, he loses the good guy appeal.

In any case, for the vast majority of Americans, a vote for Hilary (NAFTA) or McCain (Bush tax cuts) is a vote against their financial best interests.

The difference between Obama's "uhms" and Bushes is simple. Obama is THINKING of what he is about to say while Bush is trying to REMEMBER what he was told to say. Really, taking a second to collect your thoughts while talking where any 5 word phrase taken completely out of context can sink the future of your career seems like a pretty acceptable thing to do IMO.

And Obama's elect-ability issues aren't that big. The only reason that it looks so bad at the moment is because he has both the Republican party AND the Clintons firing against him. And he isn't getting all that negative on Hillary. The Republicans have 20 years of dirt on her, and they have the money to put it on every open advertising space that can from June to November. I am far far more worried about Hillary's elect-ability than I am Obama's.

-Rick

Re:

Why can the Bush administration do illegal and unconstitutional things but be so high and mighty about their need to monitor every American citizen to make sure they don't do illegal things?

How can the Bush administration invade countries and kill innoc

Re:ask TT&T and the NSA... they got everythig!

Your reply brings up some valid points. Let me help you tie it up in a nice neat little package that will bring you back to your last question.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121004A.shtml [truthout.org]

Here you are, there is just one of BILLIONS of examples of why this make sense, and why there is a big difference between the two.

Oh and in case you were wondering, Dick and Bush have nothing to do with any of these companies getting billion dollar contracts. Anyone who tells you that is a democratic heathen.

Re:ask TT&T and the NSA... they got everythig!

"The terrorists already hated the USA prior to the conflict in Iraq & Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden's main complaint was that Americans were in Saudi Arabia and contaminating the land by their presence"

OBL did want the US out of Saudi Arabia but he stated in a letter to the US that 911 was revenge for "US bombs raining on Lebanon" in the 80's. OBL had no connection at all to Iraq nor has it been shown that Iraq sponsered terrorists, however it is well known the CIA sponsered OBL and many other tinpot warlords to push the soviets out of Afghanistan.

Also if you want to be pedantic about the definition of words let's not be one sided, Iraqis attacking US troops are not terrorists they are a resistance force (ie: irregulars who's aim is to get the occupation to leave).

"On the other hand, there haven't been any terrorist attacks in the USA since then. Of course, correlation & causation are different things..."

Yes they are, here in Oz we haven't had a single Polar Bear attack since we sent troops to Iraq to stop Saudi born terrorists from attacking the US out of Afghanistan. OTOH we now have something I never thought I would see in Australia, a political prisoner [wikipedia.org] who's 'crime' was to break a retrospective law that was written after he had already spent five years in Gitmo.

Greg Palast?

Greg Palast already published many of these emails in his last book Armed Madhouse. The whitehouse sent them to whitehouse.org instead of whitehouse.gov who then forwarded the mails to Palast. Check out the book and read them yourself. Why the U.S. Congress seems completely unaware of this book's existence is beyond me, but that one student who was tazered at the Kerry rally had one.

Time

The longer they manage to keep the law at bay the greater chance that whatever "evidence" remains is distorted, manipulated or just outright deleted.

Public information?

At least it's good to know a government is willing to go a long way to keep you from knowing if they fucked up.

For the Future...

It's fairly obvious that the tapes have been misplaced (misplaced into the shredder next to the giant electro-magnet and then shot into the sun). There's really no hope of seeing them again. If a copy turns up, it will only be because of a sudden outbreak of morality on some stooge's part, not because a court orders it.

That being said, what can we do to ensure this doesn't happen again? One obvious method would be to have each branch of government actually run the backup for another branch. For example, the Judicial would backup the Legislature, the legislature would backup the Executive, and the Executive the Judicial.

I know this has flaws; how do we keep everybody from peeking into the backups, for example. I'm sure the Legislative branch wouldn't want the Executive branch to be flipping through its emails, and vice-vice-versa for the other branches.

In any backup scenario, those that could be incriminated by the backups, should NEVER be allowed to manage them. An independent organization should be tasked with managing the IT behind the scenes, it should not be left in the hands of the administration. Someone like the library of congress, the secret service or some agency that is not directly under each branch's control would be vastly superior.

Let's figure out which scape-goat will be ritually sacrificed for this screw up, then move on to a real solution that makes this sort of thing a whole lot more difficult in the future.

Re:

What is needed is a Government for the People By the People; where the people have good solid oversight over all the actions taken, laws enacted, appointments made; and the background for these decisions. If the Governing body is not transparent then it ca

IT Infrastructure at the Gov

Keeping backup tapes for more than 2-3 years including housing all corporate email on worm drives has been a common practice at large companies for years now. Those practices obviously don't apply to the White House. Of course the CIO will likely take the fall, get fired and be rewarded with a post as the new CIO at Exxon.

Re:IT Infrastructure at the Gov

WRONG.

Tell me what the official policy is on dara recovery? If the servers with email on them were to explode, is the stance that "those emails are lost"? Or is there a backup strategy in which tapes with data are kept? If these tapes are kept, and an email is subsequently deleted, it could be recovered from these tapes. The email undelete policy is irrelevant to the questions being asked here. The court isn't saying "as long as it's within your policy to undelete, please undelete the messages we want. They are saying "we know you back up your servers, produce those backups now." To which the response is "against our policy, those tapes were destroyed. We don't know when, by whom or how, but we can't produce that which we, by policy and law, are required to have." Do you understand the issue now? Your limited experience with one company's undelete policy is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

No company in their right mind will retain emails unless for those reasons stated.

Most companies in their right mind keep email backups for 7 years as documentation in case of specific audit types that can go back 7 years. To delete them if they stored documents or contained specific information is illegal, and most people that play in the corporate IT world know this.

I have the information

Here it is:

a) We short circuited the whitehouse email by using GOP addresses
b) There was stuff we didn't want anyone to know in there
c) We deleted it all and trashed the server storage just in case

Does that answer your question?

Copies of emails proliferate

A challenge for many record retention policies, especially with email, is to prevent the proliferation of copies and avoid "unplanned retention." Many (most) of the emails being sought in this case were long iterative threads with large cc lists. When you factor for network distribution mechanisms and the variety of personal practices (use of various POP clients, personal folder management, people who still insist on printing stuff, desktop archive and cache settings, etc.), it is quite humorous and implausible to believe that the emails are gone. In fact, you can't practically make them go away.

You can, however, wipe the server and make the "Backup Tape" go away, and then try to keep people focused on that.

No, the rabbit really isn't in the magician's hat, and no, the rabbit didn't really disappear.

Re:Data retention acts

It's not the entire U.S. government that's the problem. Usually the government keeps pretty good records. The problem is this administration believes itself above law and order. It also has infected large portions of other parts of the government with it's political appointees whose only quality is loyalty the administration. Whatever was on those e-mails was likely to be more damning the "hand slap" they're getting now for erasing, er "losing" the e-mails. I suppose it could have been an innocent mix-up, but if the administration is so incompetent that they can't make back-ups of data they're required to, I suppose it's no suprise they've failed miserably in just about every other enterprise they've attempted in the last seven years (except of course, smearing their opponents, they're rather good at that).

Re:Data retention acts

It's the government! Do you really expect gov't to be efficient or do things correctly?

The Social Security has administration costs less than 10% of the average retirement fund. Yes, the government is 10 times better than private practice. Also, schools (when you exclude administration and things private schools don't do like transportation) are more efficient than private schools. The USPS will get my letter cross country for less than any other option. The organizations made by the government and falling under the government that are insulated from elections and such are quite efficient. It's when you have politicians involved that the government fails (elected school boards make problems, not solve them). If you could find a way to govern a democracy without elected officials messing it up, then you will have found the perfect government. But don't blame "government" for the problems that politicians make.

Re:Data retention acts

That's a lie. Well, or maybe you were hoodwinked by liars to where you think that's the truth, but it isn't. They take in money, invest it, and pay out some. They take in more than they pay out. They have all the functions of a mutual fund, plus some, and function below the cost of a mutual fund. There is no shorfall in Social Security.

So how were the first Social Security recipients paid when the system was first started? They hadn't been paying into it since it hadn't existed when they were working. They were simply paid with the money put into it by the current workers at the time. Yes if you fudge with the accounting you can make it look like your payments are being invested, just like one can pretend everything is fine since your monthly income equals your monthly expenses, while ignoring all those credit card bills demanding payment on $20k outstanding debt. If you honestly believe the money you put into it is all being invested and sitting waiting for your retirement, I'm sorry but you're the one being hoodwinked.

The reality is that the bulk of the money goes to pay current recipients, and only the leftover invested (and prior to the government separating it from the general fund, it wasn't even invested, it was simply used for other purposes with an IOU left in its place). If it were all held and invested, it'd be impossible for it to go into a shortfall -- after all, the original money plus interest would still be there. The only reason it's set to become a problem is because it's mostly not invested, it's used to pay current recipients. And when the payments to recipients exceeds the receipts from current workers, the system starts to fall apart.

With a couple minor tweaks (very minor) SS could be made to be fully funded. It would take at least another generation or two, but making it fully funded is easy

The only way to fix it is for the government put in enough new money into it to offset all the people who got paid out of it without paying into it (complete and partial). At that point the system would have zero past debt and the money you put into it would be held for your retirement. Unless you do that, you're essentially shuffling $1000/mo into a savings account then immediately cashing out $900 of it to pay past debts, all so you can claim "I'm putting aside $1000/mo for retirement."

There are some issues with the random nature of death and uncertainty of duration of payout, but as you say those are tweaks. I don't have a problem with a socialized retirement net per se, but it's in no way comparable to a fully privatized personal retirement account in how it's administrated.

Re:Data retention acts

this administration believes itself above law Lay off the kool-aid, dude. At least this administration hasn't had the FBI files of the opposing party "somehow" appear in the White House.

Are you seriously comparing the stupid Clinton "Filegate" scandal to the Bush Administration's abuses of the justice system, which includes selective prosecution and actual imprisonment of people based on their political alignments? Even as Bush listens to your phone calls, monitors your financial activity, and records every web page you visit, with your open acquiescence?

I personally dislike the Clintons but the Whitewater Independent Counsel found in 2000 that there was no evidence of criminal activity or impropriety in "Filegate", nor was there evidence that anyone in the White House had actually requested any of the files. There was no hit on Vince Foster either.

Huh? It's the government! Do you really expect gov't to be efficient or do things correctly?

I guess we should just shut the government down if you idiots are too ideologically handicapped to run it.

Re:Data retention acts

That is either a serious error in judgement, or sheer political bullshit. This partisan b$ has to stop, regardless of which party, which gender or whihc race, corrupt politician should be pursued, prosecuted and incarcerated.

The sickening party lie, that somehow it is acceptable today because someone from another political party did it a decade ago but not quite so bad is just a disingenuous lie.

All those absolutely corrupt idiots who fail to demonise any corrupt official often have their snout right in the trough with them.

Quailty government is all about the continual audit and review of every action of government and where applicable, the public disclosure of those actions so that htye can be publicly debated and based upon those debates, far more sensible choice about who you should elect.

It is the standard lie of the politically corrupt to claim all politicians are corrupt whilst they and the slimy cronies cook elections to ensure the worst and most criminally politicians of the lot get elected. So why mod idiots who say do nothing, idiots who look at failures a decade ago while ignoring what is going on today, or disingenuous idiots who would allow their own country to fail as long as they profit.

Re:Data retention acts

Well said John :) If I had the points I'd deffinitely mod you up. All these idiots who are currently demonizing the Bush admin seem to have been born in 2001. Either that, or their memory is so faulty that they've forgotten all the scandals of past administrations.

Either that, or they don't buy the "But they did it too!" argument you typically hear from children on the playground.

Re:Dig deep enough and maybe the honesty of 9/11 .

I can perfectly understand Iraq was all about securing oil reserves for the future. Same for Afghanistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline [wikipedia.org].

Butwhat's wring about being honest about is, instead of coming up with lame excuses like "terro

Re:Dig deep enough and maybe the honesty of 9/11 .

Come on, that's just starting to stink of loopy conspiracy.

If there really was a conspiracy to destroy a whole bunch of documents, you're seriously telling me the simplest, easiest plan they could come up with was "Let's find and finance a bunch of nutjobs to fly planes into buildings - and make sure that two of those buildings are the towers of the WTC"?

Re:Dig deep enough and maybe the honesty of 9/11 .

For your loopy conspiracy thinking.

First you start with manipulating the world stock market and you proceed with draining southeast Asia, including 88% Muslim populated Indonesia.
you have put together a deal that requires investors to put in 1 billion just to get in and they have to stay in for 3 years.

Once you start having a very draining effect on the south east Asia economy and persistently ignore any effort of communication on those you are draining from and finally get a sign that you have drained them as much as you can via formula comming up wrong persistantly, and then offered them interest bearing loans thru the world bank whioch only pissed them off more.....and they make one attempt to take down the WTC but fail...

You have managed to set up the "loopy conspiracy"

Of course there are American investor losers in the deal too, such as enron worldcom and some califorina power company....etc...and this helps take suspicion off of your conspiracy motives. But you then buy the WTC with its asbestos sickness and insure it from terrorist attacks for way more then you are paying for it. And as you proceed to remove the deteriorating asbestos you also plant demolition explosives in the main shaft. As you know that there will be another attack, as the NSA has told you and its agreed upon to have the military not available during this inevitable attack. To of course let it happen.

Of course the SEC is investigating the dealing of this world stock market manipulation deal and ironically have the documentation under investigation in building seven. So the attack happens and damages some building worse than others but the worse continue to stand where the less damaged building seven was evacuated and intentionally taken down.

In summary and in full support of your "loopy conspiracy theory" It really was all about destroying some paperwork. And of course the paperwork had to first be created.
So it wasn't about a trillion dollars or draining south east asia economically or even about indonesia being by CIA reports 88% Muslim, but all about distroying some paperwork. For the sake of creating a "loopy conspiracy"

But that doesn't explain why the pentagon was hit and what some think was also a target "The White house"

There is no way it could all be based upon human greed, simple human greed.

I suppose the anthrax was a much bigger conspiracy, as it certainly couldn't have been done by some one person with enough authority and knowledge to access the anthrax store without being questioned and do this themselves. One person doesn't qualify as a conspiracy, but any fool could easily guess how the political parties would respond to this. But that doesn't support conspiracy theories, certainly not your loopy one.

There is no way it could possible be a retaliation of a wrongful world stock market manipulation that would backed by politically controlled military where our own NSA knew enough to assist by not doing anything to circumvent it. Greed figures out how to make a profit in loss they know will happen.

 

Re:It has happened before, and they didn't learn

That was actually a system problem that, rather importantly, did not ultimately result in any lost email.

Read it carefully, it says the backup wasn't storing email 'properly', whatever that means. I suspect format problems, the email system at the time was using a VAX. So they couldn't just 'restore' the email, they had to munge it to make it usable in whatever format Congress thought it was supposed to be in.

But in the end, all the email was recovered after a few months.

It is rather funny to read Republican complaints about a delay of months in turning over email in an investigation about Hillary Clinton possibly lying about firing people in the WH travel office, who are part of the WH staff and can be fired at will.

The WH claimed there were financial irregularities and that the FBI confirmed it, the people were quite correctly fired. The right claimed the Clintons made it up so family friends could take over or some really stupid nonsense, and used the FBI 'improperly'. The whole investigation was a precursor to Blowjobgate, where the Republicans do a bunch of investigating, throw wild accusations around, found nothing wrong, and finally get someone (Hillary, in this case) to state something (That she didn't have a lot to do with it.) and then investigate her for perjury. At worse, it was a little bit of attempted nepotism and then denial of said attempted nepotism...that showed up after it was realized that the WH travel office had been 'skimming'. Along with a bit of an overreaction of mass firing by the Clinton administration, which it corrected by rehiring the innocent people.

Yet the GOP is now blithely accepting the total loss of emails in an investigation of the politicalization of the justice department, which is, if not illegal, at least worth investigating, unlike some supposed issues in the WH travel office. And constantly refusing to investigate anyone for lying to Congress, which the Bush WH has done so repeatedly. (The most obvious, but not only, time is in the lead-up to Iraq, and it's worth noting lying during the State of the Union counts as lying to Congress.) And refusing to investigate nepotism and conflicts of interests, of which the current Administration has a lot more.