White House, Senators to Confer on E-Mail Expert"The White House said yesterday that it has accepted the Senate Judiciary Committee's proposal on how to choose an outside consultant to help recover lost e-mails involving official presidential business.Fitzgerald Cited Missing Emails During Plame Probe:
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The White House acknowledged last week that aides to President Bush improperly used e-mail accounts created by the Republican Party to conduct official White House business, and that an undetermined number of those e-mails have been lost...."
"In late January 2004, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was suspicious that White House political adviser Karl Rove had hidden or destroyed an important document tying him to the leak and to the effort to discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. The document was an email Rove sent to Stephen Hadley, then deputy national security adviser, in early July 2003...."Fitzgerald Urged to Reopen Plamegate, Rove's Involvement
"On Friday, a watchdog group called on Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, to reopen his investigation into whether Mr. Rove was involved in leaking the name of a C.I.A. agent. Mr. Rove had been cleared in the inquiry, but the group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said this week's revelations about missing e-mail raised questions about whether he might have destroyed or hidden documents...."Attorney-gate, Democracy & Closed Doors:
"As the blossoming scandal over the U.S. Attorney firings upstages Washington's annual Cherry Blossom Festival, it is important to view the scandal in its proper context. Attorney-gate, whose genesis can be traced to the administration's first weeks, is a microcosm of all the tensions and contradictions that define the Bush presidency. Ultimately what is truly at issue in Attorney-gate is not the merits of firing any single U.S. Attorney, but rather three key questions that go to the core of the Bush presidency - (i) whether the Bush administration is accountable to anyone (today or decades from now); (ii) does the public or its representatives have a right to truthful information from their government; and (iii) what does the administration have to hide? ..."Panel Asks Rove for Information on '08 Election Presentation:
"The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sought more information yesterday about a presentation by a White House aide given to political appointees at the General Services Administration that discussed targeting 20 Democratic congressional candidates in the next election.Rove E-Mail Sought by Congress May Be Missing:
In a letter to White House political affairs director Karl Rove, the committee chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), asked about the Jan. 26 videoconference by Rove deputy J. Scott Jennings, which was directed to the chief of the GSA and as many as 40 agency officials stationed around the country.
Jennings's 28-page presentation included 2006 election results and listed the names of Democratic candidates considered beatable and Republican lawmakers thought to need help. At a hearing Wednesday about the GSA, Waxman said the presentation and follow-up remarks allegedly made by agency chief Lurita Alexis Doan may have violated the Hatch Act, a law that restricts federal agencies and employees from using their positions for political purposes...."
"A lawyer for the Republican National Committee told congressional staff members ... that the RNC is missing at least four years' worth of e-mail from White House senior adviser Karl Rove that is being sought as part of investigations into the Bush administration, according to the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.Deleting embarrassing e-mails isn't easy, experts say:
GOP officials took issue with Rep. Henry Waxman's account of the briefing and said they still hope to find the e-mail as they conduct forensic work on their computer equipment. But they acknowledged that they took action to prevent Rove -- and Rove alone among the two dozen or so White House officials with RNC accounts -- from deleting his e-mails from the RNC server. Waxman (D-Calif.) said he was told the RNC made that move in 2005.
In a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Waxman said the RNC lawyer, Rob Kelner, also raised the possibility that Rove had personally deleted the missing e-mails, all dating back to before 2005...."
"If Karl Rove or other White House staffers tried to delete sensitive e-mails from their computers, experts said, investigators usually could recover all or most of them.E-Mail Identified G.O.P. Candidates for Justice Jobs:
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating whether the White House or the Republican National Committee erased "a large volume of e-mails" that may be related to the firings of eight U.S. attorneys...."
"Emails Contradict Testimony, Show Gonzales Picked Replacements Before Attorneys Were Fired... Political Allegiance Was Weighed In Choosing Replacements...."Leahy: 'I Do Not Believe the White House' (VIDEO):
"President Bush's aides are lying about White House e-mails sent on a Republican account that might have been lost, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy suggested Thursday, vowing to subpoena those documents if the administration fails to cough them up...."Millions of White House Emails Missing:
"A report Thursday details steps taken by the Bush administration to intentionally subvert the mandatory archiving of official email.The Dog Ate Our E-Mail
The report, issued by the watch-dog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), entitled 'WITHOUT A TRACE: The Missing White House Emails and Violations of the Presidential Records Act,' states that, 'The White House has willfully ignored evidence of a systematic problem with its internal email archiving system,' resulting in the loss of approximately five million emails. The report also states that, 'Top Bush administration officials have deliberately used outside email accounts to avoid creating a record of their actions,' a charge that is being investigated by Congress.
The Presidential Records Act requires presidents to preserve all records that relate to the 'activities, deliberations, decisions and policies that reflect the performance of [the president's] constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties....'
The report indicates that the Bush administration willfully dismantled the email archiving system put in place by the Clinton administration and did not replace it with an adequate method to keep track of administration email, resulting in the loss of millions of messages. A detailed plan to recover the lost messages was presented to then-White House Counsel Harriet Meiers, but was never acted upon. This, along with the use of outside email addresses for official business, could be criminal behavior in violation of the Presidential Records Act.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW said, 'It's clear that the White House has been willfully violating the law - the only question now is to what extent?'"
"...the White House has admitted: 1. Using a shadow email system set up through the Republican National Committee. 2. Allowing 22 White House officials to maintain email addresses on this system. 3. Possibly some staffers "used the political account to communicate about official White House business." 4. Possibly those email accounts were used to discuss the prosecutor purge. 5. Possibly some of the emails from those external accounts, possibly including the possible emails about the prosecutor purge, were "lost."Cartoon Credit: zencomix.blogspot.com
Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is neither impressed nor fooled: "This sounds like the administration's version of the dog ate my homework. I am deeply disturbed that just when this Administration is finally subjected to meaningful oversight, it cannot produce the necessary information."
You and me both, Patty.
What remains to be seen is whether ...
... whatever incarnation of the I-don't-recall-I-can't-remember-Not-to-my-recollection-It-was-just-an-oversight-It's-not-what-it-looks-like-Oops-we-broke-the-law-but-we-didn't-really-mean-it-we-swear-Can't-produce-the-requested-info-because-it's-lost-Unintentional-Inadvertent-Accidental-Whoopsy-Daisy bullshit excuse is invoked by the administration this time will yet again allow them to weasel their way out of any real consequences...."
Technorati tags: White House, Karl Rove, Abuse of Power, White House emails, Plamegate, Patrick Fitzgerald, Impeachment, news
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