White House Tape Recycling Possibly Erased Emails

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."

Comments

Wait

[ShakaUVM]

Wait, I keep forgetting: Is recycling a good thing?

Re:Wait

[someone1234]

What's good for someone is bad for someone else.
This tape recycling is definitely good for someone.

Re:Wait

[gowen]

Interesting that the Bush Administration's interest in protecting the environment begins and ends at the point where it enables them to destroy evidence, though. I'm sure the CIA didn't really mean to shred those documents either, but they needed some organic mulch for their sustainable vegetable patch.

Re:Wait

[vought]

Article Title:

White House Tape Recycling Possibly Erased Emails Real-world:

White House Tape Recycling Erased Emails

There. Fixed that for you.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by simple stupidity....except when it comes to the Bush White House.

Re:Wait

[Arancaytar]

they needed some organic mulch for their sustainable vegetable patch.

It's better that they use documents than secret prison detainees for that, I suppose.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by simple stupidity....except when it comes to the Bush White House.

Malice is the goal, stupidity is the mechanism, malice is the result, and stupidity permits it. It's an amazing little cycle they have going on there.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that a backup was a copy of the online system. Thus the online system may still hold all the emails?

A backup may be _another_ copy of "archived files" too.

Re:Wait

[fictionpuss]

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by simple stupidity....except when it comes to the Bush White House.

Well, technically it's the Office of Administration which is speaking here.. but agreed.. the sworn testimony which states that it is 'best practice' to recycle tapes containing archival data is quite astounding. There is at least one attempt to probe this, but accountability doesn't appear to be high on this administrations agenda.

Re:Wait

[Dever]

There is at least one attempt to probe this, but accountability doesn't appear to be high on this administrations agenda.

that's because then they would have to be the judge, jury, executioner, as well as the haplessly stupid defendant who forgot to wear gloves and cover their face.

Re:Wait

[hey!]

It's beyond stupidity to think that reusing backup tapes is OK in a situation like this.

Seriously, anybody who is involved with system administration for an organization like the White House understands the implications of not having archival backups of everything. There is zero chance that somebody did this as an economy measure. The practice of doing questionable White House business using RNC controlled email accounts indicates that people in the administration are very conscious of hiding records of what they do.

So, somebody made a policy decision to destroy archival backups, and cover their tracks by making it look like they're economizing on tapes and storage. The only question was whether that decision was meant to cover their tracks in specific instances, in which case we have obstruction of justice, or whether it was meant to cover a multitude of unspecified sins they might commit, in which case we have an intentional breaking of records retention laws.

In either case, at a minimum any person who physically took an existing backup and destroyed it by overwriting it has committed a crime. Everybody on the chain up from them who knew about it also committed a crime. The person or persons who set up the procedure committed at least one crime, and possibly multiple instances of obstruction of justice on top of that.

The only reason this is not a huge deal is that the administration is so completely and unabashedly lawless that they've convinced a lot of people^H^H^H^H^H^Hsheep that accepting this is not only normal but patriotic. It's like the Big Lie: you can't refute them because they have a ready answer to any refutation. They make everything personal. It doesn't matter how true what you say is, your saying it means you are unpatriotic. There's only one way to deal with people like this: you remove them from power. You can't talk them out of what they are doing. You can't debate them out of their positions. You have to take action, which is risky to you.

After 2006, Congress could have done something by bringing investigations to the point where impeachment would work. They didn't, and it's not going to be politically possible now. So, we have to wait out the term and sort through whatever evidence they leave behind.

Re:Wait

[PopeRatzo]

Malice is the goal, stupidity is the mechanism, malice is the result, and stupidity permits it. It's an amazing little cycle they have going on there.

You left out greed and arrogance. They are also defining parts of the cycle, just before rinse and repeat. Or more correctly lie and repeat.

Re:Wait

[jellomizer]

Not all information being backed up is vital information even in the white house. There is a lot of mundane information being passed back and forth that should be deleted over time. Email are a very insecure form of communication so (even back in 2003) Keeping Email Backups without hind sight seemed like a waist of time because it was almost all no priority stuff "Meeting at the Oval Office at 3:00pm" or "hey check out this funny joke" Having a year or two backup of this stuff is quite silly. For a considered low priority insecure form of communication... Including getting millions of peoples rants to the president. Back in the old days someone would have written a letter and it would have been destroyed by shredding it and/or incineration. Lets keep politics out of it or any irrational hatred of a person and or his policies, and think of it on an IT level here. Emails back in 2003 were considered junk messages. Backups kept were for cases of system crashes so they can restore data as it was left off, and maybe a year or two back in case something was deleted and needed to be retrieved.

Re:Wait

[MMC Monster]

My question is: Is this a new thing since Bush came into office, or is this a long-standing White House IT policy that just came to light?

Re:Wait

[hey!]

Not all information being backed up is vital information even in the white house

True, but irrelevant. You're arguing that the cost of buying and storing tape media exceeds the probability that they'll contain something valuable. I'm saying (a) this is not true and (b) recycling tapes is illegal and everybody involved in this know it.

You can fit a lot of "Meeting at the Oval Office at 3:00pm" on a 400GB tape, which you can buy for about eighty bucks. If, doing incremental backups, you use one 400GB (native) tape every day, you need fewer than 3000 tapes. This is admittedly a lot of tapes, and will set you back over a quarter of a million dollars. However, those tapes would only take a tiny corner of the Presidential Library, on which maybe one or two hundred million dollars will be spent. It's not unreasonable to spend a quarter of a percent or less of that cost to ensure there is a complete record, which admittedly does contain things like meeting announcements (valuable) and invitations to lunch (maybe not valuable), but also contain things like policy debates.

Lets keep politics out of it or any irrational hatred of a person and or his policies, and think of it on an IT level here. Emails back in 2003 were considered junk messages. Backups kept were for cases of system crashes so they can restore data as it was left off, and maybe a year or two back in case something was deleted and needed to be retrieved.

Thinking of it on an IT level, you'd keep everything because (A) it's not that expensive relative to even the historical value and (B) you'd be breaking the law otherwise. You don't blow of Sarbanes-Oxley or HIPAA because it's not convenient. The law says you retain everything, and history says you retain everything. This was a deliberate crime which is only justifiable if you need to cover worse crimes.

Re:Wait

[rtb61]

You should not consider archival records of government as historic, they should be considered as evidentiary. A legal record of the procedures of government to ensure accountability, and in the event of dispute either provide defence from litigation or as evidence for the prosecution of criminal offences.

It is clear when an administration destroys evidence of it's actions it is doing so to hide criminal and treasonous activities.

The person who destroyed those records should be held fully accountable, and as those records could show evidence of treasonous activities so they should be charged with treason, whether or not they testify against the person in the administration who gave orders to destroy a legal record of government activity.

Re:Wait

[necro81]

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by simple stupidity

Yes, but for something as important as this - is stupidity or incompetence any better than malice? Put differently: is there a meaningful difference between the two in this case? Is one more understandable or forgivable than the other? Should the penalties for those responsible be different?

[these are actual questions - I'm not throwing them out there to just rag on incompetents.]

Re:Wait

[jellomizer]

You are still thinking like it is 2008 not 2003. (Half a decade ago) Email was still considered a Toy Comunication which was just starting to gain accecptance as vital information. Emails were for informal information not worth historical recording and IT laws back then (and still are) very fuzzy. Many American IT Workers were loosing their jobs to outsource to other countries... So even if you did think it was a good idea to keep the tapes longer and change the policy you sure the hell wont bring it up. Fearing it could lead to you to be fired in a place where you jobs skills are no longer in high demmand. The IT policies are problably the same from the Clinton Administration (Where Email communication is like Instant Messaging today) and the guys doing the IT work just did what they have always been doing it. The 90s the internet got popular the 2000's is when the internet got useful. Governemt doesn't change quicly enough to account for this. Most likely they guy got fired for not chaning the policy but at least now he is in an envrioment where it is a bit easier to get an other job.

Re:Wait

[dintech]

Too true. If you can afford billions on a war, a few backup tapes are probably affordable.

Re:Wait

[Lemmy Caution]

Email was understood as evidential and historical since the 1990s, and Sarbanes-Oxley (which doesn't apply to gov't, but does give a sense of the public perception of the nature of email) dates back to 2002. They were archiving email during the Clinton administration - this pattern of mysteriously losing email is one unique to this administration.

Re:Wait

[Deadplant]

Actually, subby and the original reporter need a dictionary.
The tapes were re-used, not recycled.

Re:Wait

[fifedrum]

it would be totally sweet if we could charge/convict/execute people for treason, but you better damned well be sure that it applies to _everyone_ who does it.

pushing charges against one side of the aisle is treason itself.

Re:Wait

[hondo77]

You are still thinking like it is 2008 not 2003. (Half a decade ago) Email was still considered a Toy Comunication which was just starting to gain accecptance as vital information.

Government email was found to be vital information back in the eighties when the PROFS communications of Oliver North and Adm. Poindexter were found to be valuable evidence in the Iran-Contra affair. To think that in 2003 email was considered a "toy" in the executive branch is just wrong. Here is a good article on the topic.

Re:Wait

[Sloppy]

they've convinced a lot of people .. that accepting this is not only normal but patriotic.

Have they, really? I don't think I've met anyone who says that the next Democratic president should be totally unaccountable.

Re:Wait

[twenex]

Sorry, please don't lump the rest of us in with your level of incompetence in '2003. I've known the difference between routine backups and archival tapes for as long as I've been in the biz, and the original poster is correct - all of these emails were required by law to be archived. Email has been a critical part of most corporate and government infrastructures since the mid 90s.

You are right, though. Let's keep politics out of it. When you compare with the Clinton administration, you clearly must realize that the Clinton administration *did* manage to comply with the law, and when they realized that a few emails in the office of the VP were not being backed up, corrected that. They either hired the most incompetent system administrators out there (does Regent University have a computer science department?) or it was policy. Given the convenient timing, my money is on the latter.

Re:Wait

[sumdumass]

What law is being broken that makes recycling tapes illegal? This isn't the first time this was said so I figure we should at least be able to reference the law for perspective.

Re:Wait

[NeutronCowboy]

What galls me the most is that somebody will get punished - most likely the IT monkey doing the backups, perhaps even his /her manager. Everyone up from there will escape unscathed.

Yes, this is what I learned from Abu Ghraib and the water boarding scandals: Bush & Co will call down fire and brimstone on some low grunts who were operating in a designed vacuum of specific orders, but in an environment of nudges and winks that directly lead to the scandal. I am utterly convinced that every major scandal in the last 8 years - from bad information about Iraq to Abu Ghraib to torture to wire-tapping to CIA tapes to RNC emails to AG removal - was done through direct intervention from Bush, Cheney and Co. Why? After all, there is no direct evidence. To me though, the fact that the absence of evidence is patently illegal in many cases points to direct orders. Furthermore, Bush, Cheney and Co have done enough public weaseling to make me think that they are hiding something.

At this point, it doesn't even matter to me anymore whether these accusations are true. If nothing else, Bush has undermined my trust in the presidency more than any other person in the last 200 years - and that includes the communist witch hunts and Hoover's FBI activities.

Re:Wait

[BlueStrat]

Not all information being backed up is vital information even in the white house. There is a lot of mundane information being passed back and forth that should be deleted over time. Email are a very insecure form of communication so (even back in 2003) Keeping Email Backups without hind sight seemed like a waist of time because it was almost all no priority stuff "Meeting at the Oval Office at 3:00pm" or "hey check out this funny joke" Having a year or two backup of this stuff is quite silly. For a considered low priority insecure form of communication... Including getting millions of peoples rants to the president. Back in the old days someone would have written a letter and it would have been destroyed by shredding it and/or incineration. Lets keep politics out of it or any irrational hatred of a person and or his policies, and think of it on an IT level here. Emails back in 2003 were considered junk messages. Backups kept were for cases of system crashes so they can restore data as it was left off, and maybe a year or two back in case something was deleted and needed to be retrieved.

I like how this was modded "Flamebait". I think the act of modding here is more suited to the term "Flamebait" than his post was. His post was reasoned, articulate, and on-topic.

Although I can understand a mod (or several) with a political axe to grind could see fit to mod this way, it does not do anything to improve the perception they might wish to convey of being open-minded, inclusive, and progressive. It smacks more of intolerance of differing points of view, which to me, speaks just as loudly to a fascist-like behavior as anything this administration may have done.

Cheers!

Strat

Re:Wait

[sumdumass]

I don't think incompetent comes into it. I have grabbed the wrong tapes before and notices it before placing it in the machines. It would be just as easy for someone else to do this and not notice. I don't know how many times I end up with Mondays tape backing up Tuesdays job because the person who was supposed to swap it out decided not to bother for whatever reason.

You can say they had a bad policy, or even a bad follow through with policy. But the competency of a person isn't necessarily at stake here. Confusion and everything else could be at play. I had one site that didn't do backups for 3 months because they consolidated positions and changing tapes for backups was not longer in her description. It was an oversight by whoever done this because it was flagged for follow up but got lost in th shuffle.

I don't know how else to put this but Shit happens sometimes. When it does, it could be good or bad but it doesn't necessarily reflect the competency of the people involved all the time.

Re:Wait

[FewClues]

After 2006, Congress could have done something by bringing investigations to the point where impeachment would work. They didn't, and it's not going to be politically possible now. So, we have to wait out the term and sort through whatever evidence they leave behind.

How naive to believe that there will be any evidence. The one thing that the Cheney Bush administration has proven is that they are experts at covering up their tracks. The WMD hunt should have proven that beyond any doubt. Cheney is a master at this, his Haliburton corporation comes under scrutiny over the heavy fraud and bribery charges in Iraq, so he moves them out of the country where the records cannot be viewed. There will be nothing but dust left behind!

Re:Wait

[cmacb]

Sorry, please don't lump the rest of us in with your level of incompetence in '2003. I've known the difference between routine backups and archival tapes for as long as I've been in the biz, and the original poster is correct - all of these emails were required by law to be archived.

Thanks for speaking up for us older and (I really believe) more responsible data processing professionals of the past.

Don't any of the posters above even read the Dilbert cartoons? I guess not. It concerts a clueless mid-level executive, numerous clueless underlings in a large organization of mostly clueless people, where there are approximately two people (not counting the janitor and some supernatural animal characters) who actually know what is going on.

First, let me say that when people speak of anything regarding data processing at almost any government organization (with some exceptions, but the White House isn't one of them) you are talking about a private contractor which usually means a large company with many subsidiaries, sub contractors and sub sub contractors (some of which is not technically allowed, but I know it happens anyway). Each of these organizations has business managers, task leads, specialists in various areas and a virtual army of people at the bottom who actually do things like manage archive tapes. Can you guess how technically competent some of the people in the middle of that chain are? Can you guess how technically competent some of the people who work the back-up shift are? (And of course nobody in their right mind things that most of the people with business school degrees have a clue about how to run a modern server network.) Do you suspect that they are all Republicans? Do you suspect that they are all so unethical that they would not question (or even subvert) an attempt to do something that was clearly unethical and possibly illegal?

Maybe one reason that so many people are so passive about the continued growth of government is that they don't realize just how enormous and unwieldy it is already. Sorry, but some of you just don't have a clue either.

I happened to have worked for the contractor (in a very general sense as alluded to above) responsible for e-mail at the White House during the Clinton administration. E-mail at that time was lost under almost identical circumstances. The media doesn't seem to be able to do any real research in these area, they just regurgitate press releases (if and when it fits their political agenda). News of the gaff which was purely technical in nature was all over the organization (because I didn't work at the White House or on that contract or even for that part of the organization and I heard about it). It just so happened though that it was handy for Clinton that those records were lost during the run-up to his impeachment. I don't know if the records were eventually found, because the media didn't seem to take an interest in the matter as they are doing now. What I do know, for sure, is that then, and now, the politics of the matter and the technology of the matter are completely isolated from one another.

Finally, it seems from reading most of the news stories, and many of the /. comments that the difference between backup and archive are muddled in the minds of many. A sad commentary on the state of the art in the US. That there was no archive, or that the archive was in some way mishandled is surely worth looking into, and by all means criminally prosecute or at least fire those who were responsible at all levels. If every time someone in government (whether a government employee or contractor) screwed up they would simply be terminated immediately (without generous lifetime pension benefits) you would be surprised how fast things would improve in America. I'm all for it.

Keep making it a mater of pure politics though, and things will continue to drift in the wrong direction as they have been for most of the last century

Re: Wait

[Black Parrot]

It's beyond stupidity to think that reusing backup tapes is OK in a situation like this.

Seriously, anybody who is involved with system administration for an organization like the White House understands the implications of not having archival backups of everything. There is zero chance that somebody did this as an economy measure. You're probably right, but the Bush administration doesn't exactly have a good track record on hiring for competence. The sysadmin is probably a VB programmer who got the job because he helped jam the phone lines on election day.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

if i have to keep my tax info for 7 years, they should have to keep this data for the same if not more time. hell they could even put together the best footage in a documentary format and screen it bringing in extra revenue

Re:Wait

[sjames]

but they needed some organic mulch for their sustainable vegetable patch.

That is the best description of a government office ever!

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Journalist cries wolf? I've literally been waiting for years for the smoking gun of all these insidious accusations so that they may finally come to a close. Disturbingly, to many of them have been forcefully kept alive beyond the natural news cycle of their life. It should be a crime for News media outlets to recycle their half-baked stories.

I don't give a damn how you feel about the President or what your politics are. All the CIA leaks and the recent NIE report on Iran is a crystal-clear indication that this Administration has enemies on the inside that are willing to embarrass, humiliate, and potentially endanger lives from the President on down. If history tells us anything, we can assume that if the Administration has in fact committed any of these alleged crimes, their enemies on the inside will do what they always have and lay and wait to strike when the political impact is at a maximum. Remember the '06 elections? I'm predicting we will see another attack from within near election day. Whether the smoking gun will be real or meticulously fabricated is the real question.

Re:Wait

[ptbarnett]

They were archiving email during the Clinton administration - this pattern of mysteriously losing email is one unique to this administration.

Uh, no.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200003/ai_n8887933

This doesn't excuse the Bush Administration. But don't pretend they invented it, it just makes you look like a lame partisan hack.

Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[jbridges]

Or will everyone just give up on email since everything you ever say must be preserved forever to be used against you.

Will they all move to Instant Messaging?

Or maybe go back to handwritten paper mail as the only place to have a frank written conversation.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[Adambomb]

The contested Presidential Records Act was to apply to the president and vice president. Not everyone.

Chill dude.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, unless you're the president or his staff engaging in public business. Then you have to comply with the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[coaxial]

When it comes to the government the answer is more often than not, a resounding no. With respect to the presidency and vice presidency, the relevant law is the Presidential Records Act. You must preserve all records, and can only destroy them after consultation with the Archivist of the United States.

These emails are of evidentiary value, and therefore should have been preserved. Destruction of these records is a federal crime. Not only is it obviously a violation of the PRA, but there is strong evidence that this is destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice. Furthermore, things like this don't happen by rouge low level staffers. Decisions to destroy vital records comes from the highest levels.

People go to jail for these crimes all the time. Will these people? Hell know, the dems are too spineless to actually bring indictments and begin impeachment proceedings, and so everyone will get off scott free.

As the saying goes, "In a democracy, you get the government you deserve."

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[eebra82]

Besides the Presidential Records Act, why shouldn't it be monitored and preserved? Is a president's doings not everyone's business? It's hardly a private conversation as long as it is the plans for a nation and its future.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[jbridges]

The same thing is happening anywhere someone can be sued, not just the President.

Many companies (like Microsoft) are trying to keep email useful by making it company policy that email is not preserved.

Once you have something that could be preserved... the temptation is powerful to require people to preserve it, and thereby stifle it's use.

Imagine what will happen once all phone conversations could be preserved. With all calls going over VOIP systems on computers, it's only a matter of time before it happens.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[tuxgeek]

It's ironic how these assholes are wire taping all of us and keeping records of it all and yet they deliberately destroy the evidence of all the criminal bullshit they're doing and getting away with.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[Anonymous Coward]

When they came for the president,
I remained silent;
I was not the president.

When they locked up the vice president,
I remained silent;
I was not the vice president.

When they came for congress,
I did not speak out;
I was not a congress man.

When they came for the lawyers,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a lawyer.

When they came for me,
I figured I probably had it coming.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[Anonymous Coward]

the dems are too spineless to actually bring indictments and begin impeachment proceedings, and so everyone will get off scott free.

The underlying problem is not the Democrats in Congress. The actual problem is that if they WERE to begin such proceedings, they would not have majority public support for them. The public right now cannot stomach believing that a straightforward and simple conspiracy has happened, and so there is no easy mechanism for bringing justice. There are also too many boneheaded news pundits who would grind those sort of proceedings into the dirt, because we don't have very many genuine journalists on the air who actually care about things like "truth". Impeachment proceedings without public support are predestined to fail.

If 65% of the country wanted impeachment, we would have it.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[novakyu]

I thought it was a simple common sense: if you are doing anything that can be slightly illegal or basis for a lawsuit, discuss them in person. No non-secure phone lines, and definitely nothing that leaves paper/log trails.

On the other hand, routine deletion of data such as email ... somehow seems very fishy to me: Google can keep lifetime's worth of email for any member of the public at no cost, and yet, these companies don't even have an IT structure to keep a decade's worth of company email? If this is not obstruction of justice and destroying of evidence, I don't know what is. (Although, legally speaking, I think they are safe until they have been served, and even then, what's deleted under the usual "data retention policy" is fine---not that I agree with that particular law.)

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[FredThompson]

Not exactly. You're confusing the difference between "private" and "disclosure."

The public has no more right to know all internal communications of the President than they would to know all the internal communications of the Chief of Police. The status of "public servant" does not mean every communication is, or should be, publicly available. Additionally, the status of "public servant" does not somehow remove right to privacy of that person.

Secrecy is simply a matter of disclosure. The police don't announce where they will be conducting sting operations, do they? Of course not.

Your last sentence is truly detached from reality. The vast majority of conversations concerning future planning most certainly are NOT suitable for the public, especially those which involve other entities. Privacy is an inherent necessity of negotiations of any sort, no matter who is involved in them.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[vcalzone]

What's wrong with redaction? You save all the documents, then "redact" the ones that aren't suitable for consumption by whatever level will be seeing it. There's no reason that presidential records should not be kept at LEAST for a few years after the term is over. If I remember correctly, Mr. Thompson, you were very much for record-keeping when it came to the 1996 Presidential campaign.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Destruction of these records is a federal crime.

I hereby pardon myself of all crimes.

Yours,

George W. Bush

Oh, and all the servants, or whoever they are, that deleted this stuff for me, yeah, I pardon them too. Don't mess with Texas!

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[WindBourne]

First, you are allowed private conversations, ON YOUR TIME. When you are on company, machines, etc. then no, you do not have private conversation (though you can use your cell phone). The POTUS/VPOTUS were hired for a 24x7 job. Because they were granted so many privalages, they have EXTREME power. As such, anything that they do officially is to be recorded. The problem is that W/Cheney/Rove/Libby have mixed their personal stuff with their professional. As such, ALL of it is to be recorded. Oh, btw, yes, their IM's are suppose to be recorded.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[Anonymous Coward]

These emails are of evidentiary value, and therefore should have been preserved. Destruction of these records is a federal crime.

You're right and wrong. We're not talking about the archive records here, we're talking about backup systems (btw, I didn't write the linked thread). So, you can spin an article about backup tapes being "destroyed" all you want, because that IS what they're suppose to do, not archive data. The real question is, WhereTF is the archived data?

Of course, let all the hate mongers and conspiracy theorists have their fun burning down common sense and keep being spoon feed the crap from both sides of the isle. "What backup tapes where erased? ZOMG!!!" Of course, it also defies logic that top secret incriminating details would be sent via emails in the first place. So, which one do you want? Stupid people or smart people? Smart people wouldn't send incriminating emails and erase data on purpose. Stupid people would send incriminating email and erase data. If you can believe there's incriminating emails, then you can believe data can be accidentally erased (which it wasn't, because it's a backup system, not an archive records system).

But feel free to keep acting like complete mindless idiots, because...

In a democracy, you get the government you deserve.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[RedHat Rocky]

Which part of public office do you not understand?

This isn't about privacy rights for PRIVATE citizens.

This is about the holders of PUBLIC office not following the very laws that pertain to them.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[RedHat Rocky]

See, they can't impeach Bush, because next in line is Mr. Dickhead Cheney.

Better the dumbass you know then the secretive scary guy that hides in plain site.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[CmdrGravy]

When they came for the president,
I remained silent;
I was not the president.

When they locked up the vice president,
I remained silent;
I was not the vice president.

When they came for congress,
I did not speak out;
I was not a congress man.

When they came for the lawyers,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a lawyer.

When they came for me,
I was quite worn out with doing all those lawyers so I thought I'd put my feet up for a bit and reflect on the good that I had done.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[tbannist]

It's simple, you make it policy to delete it because then you don't have to turn it over during discovery for a lawsuit, and it's not obstruction because you had the policy to delete them before the lawsuit began.

Mostly, it's to limit fishing expeditions and the limit the cost of turning over that information. If you archive everything than you have 2 choices: Give the person who wants to sue you everything, or have people go and find the specific emails that the person suing you is asking for. It's much cheaper if you can tell them "Sorry, that's more than 3 months ago, we routinely delete that information".

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[mrjatsun]

> Imagine what will happen once all phone conversations could be preserved.

If it is not already being done, it's only a matter of time until
all phone conversations are recorded and kept for as long as they
can until they need to re-use the storage. They can get a court
order and be able to go through your phone conversations. If they
tape, but do not listen, is it illegal (I have no idea)?

I would imagine in the farther future voice to text functionality
with some google like search interface.

No matter if you on a phone, cell phone, IM or e-mail, you should
always treat the conversation like someone is listening. It's a
good habit to get into.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic? No. Deliberate? A resounding YES.

You don't get to the top of the political machine by luck and simple handshaking. Try rhetoric, manipulation, and planning. For ANYONE to assume these things are happening by accident is not only idiotic, it's downright dangerous.

Do you really think that knowing that any communication you put out is subject to indefinite preservation, and possible future question does not effect the nature of that information?

If the powers that be pushed their agenda in a compressed time-frame, and were forced to communicate by means that are preserved indefinitely, wouldn't you think they'd take a long hard look after that agenda was in place and make sure nothing crossed the line into the land of illegal?

I've seen way to much complacency and disregard for responsibility on the net and in the media in lieu of the current Administration, and I'm beginning to form the conclusion that the public is getting what they deserve. Whether they like it, and know it, or not.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Furthermore, things like this don't happen by rouge low level staffers. Decisions to destroy vital records comes from the highest levels.

My friends, we must act now, and we must act decisively. It is clear that communist agents have infiltrated the highest levels of government.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Handwritten paper mail is required to be preserved as well. All White House records are, because they are *public* property. Destroying them is destroying public property.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Many companies (like Microsoft) are trying to keep email useful by making it company policy that email is not preserved.

Once you have something that could be preserved... the temptation is powerful to require people to preserve it, and thereby stifle it's use."

i'm sorry - but you can also use those emails to prove you're innocent.

and i'm not sure why you would use convicted monopolist as an example of the "poor downtrodden corporation that can't use email anymore - oh woah is me."

also, government is held to a higher standardard of accountability then a private corporation (much less a convicted monopolist). there are perfectly good laws in place governing the retention policies of elected government officials (especially the president and vice president).

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[NeutronCowboy]

Ironic? No. Deliberate? A resounding YES.

Thank you. Everyday, I'm more and more astounded at how Bush and Co feel like they are above the law. It's to the point where I'd still like to impeach them all, despite all the potential damage this could do.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[gknoy]

New protocol:

A: "F--- Hoover."
B: "F--- Hoover."
{A and B Converse.}
A: "F--- Hoover."
B: "F--- Hoover." ;) Apologies to George Carlin -- he was the only thing I could find on a quick google search for that phrase.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[FredThompson]

Redaction is a different issue. Redaction is one method of following the principles I stated which are the only way any organization can properly function.

Re-read the post I replied to and my comment. My comment was in response to the statement that anything and everything outside of PRA should be available to the public, what is appropriate for disclosure. Methinks you missed that as the gist of my post.

Here's a simple example which illustrates: Suppose you are playing cards with the President. The values of the cards the President has are not covered by the PRA. Should you get to see those cards because the President is a public servant (assuming you are a U.S. citizen)? Of course not. Should U.S. citizens be privy to the brand of toothpaste or magazine subscriptions or other non-PRA aspects of the personal life of the President? No. Should any and every U.S. citizen be privy to any and all discussions not covered by PRA? No.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[Anonymous Coward]

the dems are too spineless to actually bring indictments and begin impeachment proceedings

I've heard this argument made many times.

It has nothing to do with spinelessness.

It has everything to do with playing politics - the slow bleeding drip, drip, drip of the albatross around the neck of the Republican party, the water torture (sorry, bad choice of words there) of investigations, subpoenas, contenmpt citations, special prosecutors, the whipping up of the Democratic party base (which would come to a stop if impeachment finally happened), the prevention of the whipping up a sympathy contingent in the Republican party base that has abandoned W, all serve to increase the power and influence of the Democratic party so that they can take the place of the Republican party at the great feeding trough that is the United State budget.

Re: Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[Black Parrot]

The same thing is happening anywhere someone can be sued, not just the President.

Many companies (like Microsoft) are trying to keep email useful by making it company policy that email is not preserved.

Once you have something that could be preserved... the temptation is powerful to require people to preserve it, and thereby stifle it's use. It's called "records retention policy", and it has been around since long before e-mail was common.

Most big companies have an annual "records retention day", i.e. a records _destruction_ day, where everyone has to destroy stuff and confirm to their supervisor that they are in compliance with company policy. The policy is written to ensure that almost all communications are destroyed as soon as the law allows, and they make no bones about the fact that it's to make sure nothing comes back to bite them when there's a lawsuit.

The law requires different retention periods for different kinds of stuff. The idea that the oilmen running the White House would be unaware of this is ludicrous.

Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation?

[FredThompson]

Troll? Nope, not at all.

Not exactly. You're confusing the difference between "private" and "disclosure."

The public has no more right to know all internal communications of the President than they would to know all the internal communications of the Chief of Police. The status of "public servant" does not mean every communication is, or should be, publicly available. Additionally, the status of "public servant" does not somehow remove right to privacy of that person.

Secrecy is simply a matter of disclosure. The police don't announce where they will be conducting sting operations, do they? Of course not.

Your last sentence is truly detached from reality. The vast majority of conversations concerning future planning most certainly are NOT suitable for the public, especially those which involve other entities. Privacy is an inherent necessity of negotiations of any sort, no matter who is involved in them.

Seeing that its on tape

[MichaelSmith]

They will be lucky if they can get the last thing written to it. There goes with my data. Out with the isopropyl alcohol. Nice clean heads again.

The 18 1/2 month gap?

[opencity]

It's longer but that would have been so cool.
Or if the gap lasted until January 22, 2005.

WH

[Atreide]

When a corp looses data, what do they face ? Justice is harsh on thoose who do not follow law, will white house face the same ?

Re:WH

[Eddi3]

No.

Also revealed at the same press briefing...

[Eternal Vigilance]

"White House spokesman Tony Fratto also said to keep sucking, he has no reason to believe the Bush Administration intends to cum in America's mouth."

Re:Also revealed at the same press briefing...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because the White House is behind you, raping your ass. That cock you're sucking? Corporate. Probably defense contractors, although I'd imagine after a few it gets hard to tell...

Now if only our country wasn't so keen to be just as much of a slut for government and corporations as America is...

Plausible incompetence

[AsciiNaut]

The cock-up theory of history is widely believed. What better way, then, for administrations to circumvent the law and get away with it than by means such as this?

Plausible incompetence is just as useful a smokescreen as plausible deniability.

Re:Plausible incompetence

[dc29A]

Butchering Clarke's 3d law: Any sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from incompetence.

Re:Frosty Piss says...

[bwd234]

"And you guys voted for the asshole!"

Ah... NO, we didn't! Gore won the election in 2000, and had it stolen from him, and the 2004 election was fixed. I don't know one fucking person that I've asked that has admitted to voting for that douche bag!

White House statement...

[secretwhistle]

I believe that orginally read "...hopefully destroying email records from that time period."

Before you complain ...

[Derling Whirvish]

Let me see your e-mails from 2001-2003.
"Let he who is without sin throw the first stone."

Weren't White House e-mails reconstructed from erased tapes in the Paula Jones lawsuit?

Re:Before you complain ...

[Cyberax]

I have a 5Gb archive of every email (including spam) from 2002. Where do you want me to send it? :)

Re:Before you complain ...

[d_i_r_t_y]

it's a bit different; this is a national government with a pretty herrendous record in just about all aspects of office, including baldface lying and distortions of facts directly to the people over Iraq WMDs, saddam having anything to do with al qaeda, chemical weapons factories, etc etc.

For the record I do have all my emails archived dating back to before 2000... on a $1 CDROM. "Losing" emails right around the period when the administration were busy lying their pants off about Iraq is pretty damn suspicious.

Re:Before you complain ...

[Pecisk]

I am not elected power. Go figure.

Re:Before you complain ...

[KJSwartz]

No - Former President Clinton had to have his backup tapes scanned for word sequences, and it was a running battle to agree on the regular expressions used. Back in those days there were noises about the back-up system, but the problem was only with a FEW tapes.

Tapes can save OR damn this Presidency. I vote subjecting ALL President Bush's tapes to scrutiny and prove how many times they were recycled - and when.

In the words of Ronald Reagan: Trust, but verify. Access to history may be lost; there is much explaining to be done.

Re:Before you complain ...

[nguy]

I have all my E-mails going back to the early 1980's, and I believe the same is true for many people. It's trivial to do.

But I'm not actually required to keep my E-mails, the president is required to by law.

Re:Before you complain ...

[TheRaven64]

With a couple of short (one week) gaps between a backup and a hard drive failure, I have every single email that's been sent or received by me since around 1997 (when I started using email regularly). When I'm next accused of starting an illegal war, I'll be happy to provide copies of my mail spool to the court.

Re:Before you complain ...

[amRadioHed]

Weren't White House e-mails reconstructed from erased tapes in the Paula Jones lawsuit? It doesn't seem like it. The only reference I can find to such a thing is from nutcasecentral, err worldnetdaily.

Even if it were true, which isn't likely, the absolute contempt this administration has for oversight compared to the Clinton administration would makes the circumstances incomparable.

Re:Before you complain ...

[Genda]

Let me see your e-mails from 2001-2003. "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone."

We are all sinners, that doesn't excuse the criminals currently inhabiting the white house.

I seiously doubt you'll find anything in my email in that time period that compares with colluding with Exon to financially rape the American public, starting a false war, ignoring dire threats of terrorism resulting in a national disaster, or selling the nation to Halliburton wholesale. Of course there may in fact be an embarrassing note or two in my save email folder, and I'm again just guessing, nothing that would justify my being stood up against a wall and shot.

I can't imagine the current administration can make the same claim.

Re:Before you complain ...

[amRadioHed]

Trust but verify would have been appropriate in 2001. These fuckers are well past the point where any further trust is merited.

Re:Before you complain ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you want me to send it? Nakia T. Harden
2570 Beechwood Avenue
Plainfield, NJ 07060

Email Address: NakiaTHarden@fontdrift.com

Phone: 908-791-7492
Mother's maiden name: Hawkins
Birthday: October 28, 1977

MasterCard: 5493 2996 9902 2340
Expires: 9/2009

SSN: 154-14-0942

UPS Tracking Number: 1Z 233 E67 87 6813 678 9

(Courtesy of Real Name Provider)

Re:Before you complain ...

[igb]

Let me see your e-mails from 2001-2003. "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone."

I have the vast majority of my personal email back to 1986 on-line, although I don't have the stuff prior to that in a usable form. I have all of it from 1999 onwards. Corporately, we retain all correspondence with our customers and suppliers indefinitely, with an archiving milter I wrote applied at the border, so we've got all of the stuff that's useful back to when we started that policy in about 2000. We have ~2TB of email on our central IMAP server and we have backup tapes of the mail spool monthly back since forever, so if we absolutely had to we could recover any piece of mail that wasn't deleted with 32 days of arrival (it's Cyrus, so the format is probably more tractable than Exchange).

Re:Before you complain ...

[that this is not und]

Their credibility is way down at the level of Sandy Berger ** by this point.

(** the Clinton junta guy who was convicted of stealing records pertaining to the 9-11 attack from the National Archives and destroying them)

Re:Before you complain ...

[that this is not und]

the absolute contempt this administration has for oversight compared to the Clinton administration

I take it you are maintaining that Sandy Berger acted as an individual when he stole and destroyed original documents from the National Archives that pertained to the 9-11 investigation.

Re:Before you complain ...

[JoeZeppy]

Let me see your e-mails from 2001-2003.

"Let he who is without sin throw the first stone."

Yeah. I work for a financial services corporation. Our email policy is a 60 day retention.

Except for the ones we are required *by law* to keep for 3 years or seven years, by the SEC or Sarbanes-Oxley.

In a format that can be guaranteed not to have been tampered with, selectively deleted or altered.

So, I definitely call shenanigans on this. Somebody somewhere, in whatever the government equivalent of the auditing department is, knew this was against the law.

Re:Before you complain ...

[The Angry Mick]

Not only do I have my e-mails from that period (and well before), but I also have all the company e-mail from the same time.

Why, you ask? Because I'm the admin, and it's the fucking law.

Re:Before you complain ...

[amRadioHed]

I take it you got no other way to defend Bush then with discredited accusations about Clinton.

I know reality is tough for the few remaining Bush supporters, but face the facts. Clinton was a popular and fairly successful President who actually cooperated with investigators like Starr even though they were grasping at straws in an obvious witch hunt. Bush is a deceitful, unpopular, uncooperative failure. There is no comparison.

Re:Before you complain ...

[that this is not und]

Committing perjury in a sexual harassment case is now termed 'cooperating with Starr'??

That's really weird. For those of us who deplore Sexual Harassment, Clinton set a fairly awful precedent. I guess he did a favor for serial sexual harassers, though, who should thank him.

Re:Before you complain ...

[amRadioHed]

Nice try. How many millions of pages of subpoenaed documents did the Clinton administration turn over? How many hours did Clinton and others spend in hearings?

Yeah, Clinton lied about one personal and (and irrelevant to whitewater) matter when he should have just refused to answer the question. yeah, it was stupid of him to lie about it but it's also really pathetic how the Clinton haters blow it way out of proportion since it's all they seem to have on him. And by the way, in the end Clinton wasn't found guilty of anything.

Do you seriously want to compare Clinton and Bush's administrations when it comes to obstruction? So be it. This administration already has one person (Libby) tried and convicted for obstruction of justice. Several others (Meiers, Rove) were issued subpoenas and have ignored them in blatant contempt of Congress. Then you have Gonzales's who showed up to testified but lied, err conveniently forgot about everything he knew. In addition to the ignored subpoenas for testimony there have been many requests for documents that have also been ignored. And we can't forget about the millions of destroy... i mean accidentally overwritten emails and the countless other emails illegally sent using RNC accounts. Then we have the torture tapes, also destroyed despite being needed as evidence in ongoing investigations. That's just off the top of my head, so I'm sure I'm missing plenty.

You may now return to ignoring all the facts and say some foolishness about how beyond the pale the evil Clinton was.

Re:Before you complain ...

[that this is not und]

Do you seriously want to compare Clinton and Bush's administrations when it comes to obstruction?

I wouldn't mind doing so. Instead you just rattled off the standard partisan list of the incidents and wrongs of one of the two administrations. If you don't think there were similar infractions during the Clinton administration (obstruction of justice charges, etc.) then you're living in a partisan dream world.

You see, I'm not a suckup for _either_ administration. I'm just here to point out that Bush is nothing new. You're the dude taking sides.

Re:Before you complain ...

[amRadioHed]

And bringing up Sandy Berger was not partisan hackery on your part?

I did not just rattle off a list of Bush's wrongdoings, I was comparing them to Clinton's documented attempts at cooperation with Congressional oversight. Please provide one example of Bush doing the same if you think he has been equally cooperative. You can simplistically dismiss my short list of Bush's crimes against our nation if you like, and you can say their is nothing new under the sun but then how do you explain Bush's abysmal approval ratings. Maybe almost everyone in the country has figured out how exceptionally bad he is except for you.

As for taking sides, I question the reasonability of anyone who doesn't take a side in opposition to what's happened to our country over the past 7 years. So hell yeah I've taken a side against Bush.

BTW, what administration do you allege I am a suckup for? The closest I came to lavish praise for Clinton was acknowledging that he was a "fairly successful president". I'm no big fan of him personally, but facts are facts.

o/t - parent was foolishly modded as trolling

[Infonaut]

Hiding behind screwups is a classic government maneuver to hide malfeasance. I don't understand how AsciiNaut's statement is trolling. It's very annoying to see moderators knocking someone down for voicing an opinion different from their own. If you don't think "the cock-up theory of history is widely believed" than debate AsciiNaut. Don't mod him down.

Re:o/t - parent was foolishly modded as trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

are you his brother or somethin?

Luckily there's a backup

[supachupa]

It's a good thing Bush approved the illegal interception of domestic internet traffic. Now they can just ask the NSA for a copy.

Re:Luckily there's a backup

[TTURabble]

Actually, this is true. If the NSA is really monitoring all of our communications then they should have a backup. That would be irony/coincidence if their own wiretapping law was used against them.

Re:How convenient

[Eternal Vigilance]

There's an old joke that, sadly, is far too applicable here.

A mobster is on trial for multiple murders. The prosecutor, frustrated he may lose the case because of the ease with which the mobster and his associates lie under oath, finally tries to threaten him on witness stand:

DA (sternly): "Sir, are you aware of the penalty for perjury in this state?"
Mobster (smugly): "It's less than the penalty for murder, isn't it?"

Too bad for us there won't even be a penalty for perjury.


Stay tuned for another exciting episode of Presidential Idol! Who will be eliminated this week? Call in and vote for your favorite!"

Implausible

[1 a bee]

Give me a break.. Lose email? Could this happen at the company you work? Not if it's a company with a half-competent IT staff. To think the White House IT staff is so incompetent that they'd do this by mistake is unthinkable. No, it's not a technical mistake. If it were, White House officials would be running for cover and would hang it on the poor bastard who made the mistake.

--
They should subpoena the NSA. Surely *they* have copies..

Re:Implausible

[tinkerton]

Unless the IT department employed one of those stingy pinko commie green liberal people who want to recycle everything in sight. That must have been it.

Re:Implausible

[gander666]

Oh yeah, it can happen at my company (which shall remain nameless)

True story: We had an senior manager leave a couple years ago. During his tenure, he had done some business development work with another company, and we wanted to get access to his notes from the time in question, pretty much all in email.

BZZZZZT: Wrong answer. IT just deleted his account, and the next time they did a backup, (actually they have a few sets that they roll through) the overwrote his mail store on the exchange server. Flash forward 2 years. His email is gone, they didn't ghost or even keep his HD from his laptop (the policy was to recycle laptops for new people), so all his data and all his communications are wiped out. That was an employee who had 12 years of time at the company.

Yep, I can believe companies have really poor ability to archive and retrieve email.

Re:Implausible

[Anonymous Coward]

The IT workers are government employees. Nobody ever gets fired from a government job. Ever worked with government IT people? I have. You would be surprised about their capabilities...

oh sure...

[VariableGHz]

Yeah, because I'm sure those e-mails took up just soooo much space, they *had* to re-use the tapes because they were just bursting with petabytes of data...

Re:oh sure...

[rabbit994]

You would be surprised how big email gets when it's a bunch of people sending around documents to each other. I've had bosses where everything is word doc attached to an email. Even 2 and 3 sentence stuff was word docs. After a while, that starts to add up even if they are using something like Exchange/Lotus with single instance storage. Since it's politics and they were archiving email for CYA purposes, I'm sure mail files got large quickly. I'm sure it's simple stupidity with some malice thrown in. "Hey Backup person, these tapes are to be recycled, we have additional copies of their contents."

Idiots or Criminals?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. The While House with a budget of $$$$ has to recycle 'tapes'. How charmingly frugal! I don't have a White House budget but I never recycle my archival DVDs or tapes.

In any case, I am sure the CIA, NSA, or FBI will have copies.

If I were a significant honcho in one of the above I would damn well make sure I had several copies of White House emails, regardless of the legality (and there aint never been much prosecution of CIA, NSA, FBI individuals for doing so which is good proof that they do so and get away with it!). In any case, possession of such illegal copies would automatically guarantee immunity from prosecution.

Criminals have the reigns of power in the USA? Never! Why would a criminal want power and money?

Re: Idiots or Criminals?

[Black Parrot]

Interesting. The While House with a budget of $$$$ has to recycle 'tapes'. How charmingly frugal! I don't have a White House budget but I never recycle my archival DVDs or tapes. Yeah, but you don't have to fund a war you screwed up.

If I'm in a public office that's required to?

[msimm]

Sure. Or someone should hold me or someone on my staff accountable.

Poor americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor americans can't seem to impeach their president when it really matters. I guess this stands as one more fact testament for who and what kind of people are in power and how americans are unable to fix things.

What's in a name?

[TheBearBear]

Allow me to replace the current adminstration with a different government in this summary.

Pojut points us to a Washington Post story which details the Kremlin'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 Kremlin 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 Putin administration faced some of its biggest controversies, including the Chechnya war, the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, as well as murder of former KGB officer Alexander Litvenko. Kremlin spokesman Tony "Fat Knuckles" Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed."

Re:What's in a name?

[Murphy(c)]

That has to be one of the best analogies.

If I could I would simply say : +1 Insightful

Murphy(c)

Re:What's in a name?

[The Conductor]

I get the creeps from Putin every time he is in the news, and recycling of backup tapes and even here seems innocuous. The backup regimes I have seen typically have daily incremental backups, monthly full backups, etc, and each sort of backup has a retention policy. Daily backups might be retained for six months, monthly backups for 10 years, and every sixth month forever. Even if the media is unspeakably cheap, it still is a hassle purchase, handle, & store securely. If you have stacks of redundant copies, you have more chances that someone will (even accidentally) walk off with something that should be kept confidential, even worse with leakers who will grab a copy of everything and leak only the parts most amenable to their own position to a credulous reporter. So when you do a daily backup, you just re-write the six-month-old daily backup media.

It's hard to see how a policy like this can be used to advantage by some bigwig. How can anyone keep track of what is on the long-retention backup vs the nightlies? And besides that, anything made that day and deleted before the nightly backup is lost anyway. Retaining only the monthly backup is only a matter of degree in the granularity.

not-so-plausible deniability

[EjectButton]

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed
Right, they only had the means, the motive, and the opportunity. But we are supposed to believe it was all an accident. Also we are supposed to believe that years worth of email disappears for the White House and no one notices until congress asks for it. Most places I have worked as a sysadmin if everyone's old email disappeared in multi-month/year blocks my phone would be ringing within the hour.

Re:not-so-plausible deniability

[esper]

While I agree with your final conclusion, I think it's very believable that it could go unnoticed for quite some time if the backup tapes of old email (or, really, of anything) started disappearing. Aside from the sysadmin staff, nobody ever looks at the backups unless they actually need to restore from them and something's seriously wrong if you're doing restores every hour. (I spent a few years as the sysadmin at a mid-sized company of ~600 employees and only had to do restores about once a year on average.)

Re:not-so-plausible deniability

[elrous0]

Sadly, some people will buy anything. Through willful denial, inate gullibility, or just sheer stupidity; some people seem completely incapable of making simple connections no matter how glaringly obvious they are. These are the same people who think that Jeff Gerstmann's firing was completely unrelated to his review of Kane & Lynch.

yeah, I'm sure it was an honest mistake

[RelliK]

Cause I can summarize the current administration with one word: honest.

STFU

[uhlume]

My failure to retain records of my communications isn't a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Re:STFU

[tsotha]

No, but it may be a violation of Sarbanes-Oxley. So, do you have those emails?

Re:STFU

[uhlume]

As a matter of fact, I do. Since when does Sarbanes-Oxley apply to private individuals?

(I can assure you as well that my employer, a financial institution, has email records extending at least that far back, and we would be in serious trouble if we "recycled" them.)

Re:STFU

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but it may violate SOX.
Nice that the president has more lax records retention than publicly held companies.

Re:STFU

[Enry]

My e-mails are not covered by the PRA, SOX, or HIPPA.

That being said, I have records of all my e-mails at $EMPLOYER since I started. I think the only things I deleted were those that were clearly spam or contained not-directly-work-related information.

Last year was well over 30k e-mails.

Re:Frosty Piss says...

[Kandenshi]

Well, even with Gore winning the popular vote it was fairly close. Quite a few millions of The People did vote for him.

I'll agree to the 2004 election having some irregularities that could/should have been investigated/punished better, but I'm also pretty confident that a hell of a lot of people voted for him in that election too.

As for your last comment, remember that your circle of friends and acquitances are a self-selected sample, and not representative of the population at large down there :P None of my friends would have voted for Bush if they were American, but I know that polls up here indicate that *some* people support him. Not a great many, but some certainly do.

Spin is Spun

[Swift2001]

First of all, it is against federal law to erase emails. What they did with them is irrelevant. Six presidents had obeyed federal law, and we're supposed to be put off by "they meant well"?

Re:Spin is Spun

[samsonov]

Bush probably figured he couldn't seal the records like he did with his records while governor of Texas...

The computer ate my homework

[ElGanzoLoco]

Those dirty, scheming, lying, backstabbing bastards are at it again - covering their ass, just in time before the White House changes hands. Blaming it on 'recycling' too - what a nice "fuck you" to Americans... This administration will go down in history as the most egregiously shameful, dishonest, dirty in the history of the United States. I still can't get over the fact that he managed to get elected again after he stole an election, started a war on fake motives, and let his rich friends get richer on the back of troops and taxpayers.

Re:The computer ate my homework

[nguy]

This administration will go down in history as the most egregiously shameful, dishonest, dirty in the history of the United States.

I wouldn't be so sure; it's been a pretty steady decline over the last half century and it might just continue like that. Even a loser like Bush Sr. looks pretty good compared to his son.

Re:The computer ate my homework

[moosesocks]

Although I'm no fan of the Bush administration by any stretch of the imagination, I imagine that they're blaming their own actions on what is a relatively standard practice.

Every tape backup operator I've ever encountered recycles backup tapes to some degree. Granted, this shouldn't be done as to destroy a considerable portion of historical data that was marked to be preserved/archived, but the sort of tape backups that one keeps around to prevent against a system crash are very routinely recycled, given the prohibitively high cost of purchasing a new set of tapes every time you do a backup.

Of course, I do imagine that malice is somehow involved, but that the backup operator is almost definitely not at fault here.

Re:The computer ate my homework

[iminplaya]

I wouldn't be so sure; it's been a pretty steady decline over the last half century and it might just continue like that.

If ANY of the current front runners win the election, you can bet on it.

Even a loser like Bush Sr. looks pretty good compared to his son.

This guy is making Nixon look good. The spirit of Rosemary Woods lives on.

Re:The computer ate my homework

[Anonymous Coward]

I still can't get over the fact that he managed to get elected again after he stole an election, started a war on fake motives, and let his rich friends get richer on the back of troops and taxpayers.

What's even more of a question is how, after all of what has gone on (and wrong) during this presidency, does the president still maintain about a 30% approval rating - where people think he's doing a good job and the country is on the right track?

Re:The computer ate my homework

[roblarky]

The most irritating thing about this *cough* administration is that everyone is just sitting on their fucking hands and doing nothing about it? I mean, why the hell these jackasses have remained in office is not their fault, but the people of this country, thanks to constant financial struggle (too busy) and distraction (consumerism); who has time to think about anything else, it'll be fine in the morning.

I fully intend to leave this country in the next year as I'm not only disgusted with the direction the so-called government is heading, but the fact that 90% of the people I encounter on a daily basis will accept nearly any shit you push on them, as long as you've presented it in a way that requires no actual thought: "Well, that seems to make sense.."

We need to hook turbines to the graves of Americas founders, we could power a small nation from the amount rolling they're doing.

::disgusted::

Re:The computer ate my homework

[tbannist]

Is there anybody who doesn't look good compared to Bush Jr.?

In the words of the Comic Book Guy:
"Worst. President. Ever."

Re:The computer ate my homework

[iminplaya]

Is there anybody who doesn't look good compared to Bush Jr.?

Cheney - Yeah, I know, not president, but probably the brain.
The people that voted for them - for thinking only of themselves.
The front runners - who will carry on the same policies, but look much more competent and will be able to put a much better spin on the degradation.
Satan, maybe

Re:The computer ate my homework

[sedmonds]

[blockquote]This administration will go down in history as the most egregiously shameful, dishonest, dirty in the history of the United States.
[/blockquote]

Until the next administration, which realizes that the line for what the American public will tolerate has not yet been reached. If there's one thing politicians are good at, it's finding new ways to fuck the public.

Re:The computer ate my homework

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure these things happen. The big question for me is whether or not the administration is acting in good faith. Waiting until one day before a court order to turn over evidence and then claiming it was accidentally destroyed is not good faith. How long have then been withholding this information? I see this obstruction as malice continued against oversight. The president is not a king.

Re:The computer ate my homework

[ToasterMonkey]

Moosesocks is on the right track. Tape recycling is standard practice. The EOP (probably) didn't have a proper email archiving solution in place at the time. They have a very honest IT staff, and there's reason to believe they performed the best they could with the resources they had. They also wouldn't archive email if they weren't told to, so it's hard to call it negligence on the IT staff's part. At some point the requirement to archive mail one way or another apparently DID come down, so I have a hard time blaming upper levels as well. However, this "using RNC email for official business' stuff I keep hearing in the news IS negligence IMHO. I believe it was done BECAUSE the White House really did have good IT policy.

Re:The computer ate my homework

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a tough call, but Dan Quayle might qualify.

Re:The computer ate my homework

[heybo]

I still can't get over the fact that he managed to get elected again after he stole an election,

I totally argee with you but I must say. How do you think he won in the first place. Remember Joesph Stalin said "Its not how you vote, but counts the votes."

Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed."

To this I must say. "Do you REALLY expect me to believe this shit?"

When are the people of the US going to wake up and get the rope.

For those who don't read the fine print

[martin-boundary]

Tony: "So then, what's the reason why those emails were destroyed?"

Dick: "I'm not gonna give you any reason for that."

Journalist: "White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed."

Of course not...

[Mystery00]

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed.

Of course it wasn't deliberate! Destroying evidence is standard procedure.

Remind me...

[Yvanhoe]

... are we for or against log conservation ?
I guess some politicians discovered that it was not that convenient...

Dont Worry...

[learningtree]

Dont worry, just ask the Chinese intelligent agencies. I am sure they must be having copies of all these emails ;-)

Re:Frosty Piss says...

[El Yanqui]

I don't know one fucking person that I've asked that has admitted to voting for that douche bag!

When you asked that question were you flailing your fists in the air as well? Just thinking it might not really be an objectionable survey.

Look for the originals then!

[OMG]

Same thing happened in Germany recently. But not with the White House (of course) but with the armed forces (Bundeswehr) AFAIK.

They were able to recover the "lost" backup data from the originals from which the backups were taken (after the CCC told them to look for the originals) :-)

CRAP ANOTHER MINICITY SPAM

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap. Not another minicity spam. If you don't pay for your crimes against humanity in this life, know that you will in the next.

say it!

[biscon]

Never attribute to Alice what can be explained by Bob... Yeah well people are not that stupid and in this case I think Alice knew exactly what she was doing.

Re:Frosty Piss says...

[rbanffy]

"Not a great many, but some certainly do."

It's a huge tragedy that exactly half of mankind have average-and-below IQs.

I worked on this during the Clinton Administration

[Zeinfeld]

Well, technically it's the Office of Administration which is speaking here.. but agreed.. the sworn testimony which states that it is 'best practice' to recycle tapes containing archival data is quite astounding. There is at least one attempt to probe this, but accountability doesn't appear to be high on this administrations agenda.

I spent 18 months working with the EOP on the security of the email system used to send out presidential press releases. The story that this happened by accident is just not credible.

First the archives, the archives were a pervasive force that was felt throughout the EOP. Every piece of paper, every tape, every scrap of information had to go to the archive. It was a whole cultural thing. And it was clearly a pre-Clinton culture. The people I was working with had been there since Reagan. They never refered to this as a Clinton mandate, it was the law.

The idea that a tape could be recycled for any purpose was a total departure from the Clinton era culture.

Second FOIA, was a constant issue.

Now we could assume that these changes were only due to the goal of 'restoring' executive power that Cheney and other Nixon era accomplices have advanced. Or it could be that they knew they had much criminality to hide.

I don't think these legal issues are going to go away after Bush leaves office. We are going to see a constant attempt to suppress government papers that implicate Bush in the criminality of his administration.

Typo

[conureman]

"White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed."

"White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no intention to admit any e-mails were deliberately destroyed."

There, fixed it.

Re: Typo

[Black Parrot]

"White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed."

"White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no intention to admit any e-mails were deliberately destroyed."

There, fixed it. I don't know why the media even bothers quoting a politician or spokesman when what they say is 100% predictable. What did they expect him to say? "Yes, it is a clear violation of federal law, and we suspect the orders came from Cheney's office."

I've been there

[LM741N]

They are just doing what I used to do. That is until I accidentally taped over my favorite Black Sabbath album. Dohh!

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[that this is not und]

You sound like you could be in the unique position to help explain the email backups lost or erased during the Clinton administration. Although I don't know if you'd refer to the actors as 'Clinton era accomplices' as would be appropriate.

At least this isn't as deliberate and malicious as Sandy Berger stealing original documents pertaining to the investigation by the 911 Commission from the National Archives and destroying them.

Actually...

[conureman]

Non-accountability is primary on their agenda.

Backup tapes get recyled ALL THE TIME

[Anonymous Coward]

Get over it. I have been doing Disaster Recovery and Backup planning and adminstration for almost ten years. Every place I have worked recycles backup tapes. (which includes 3 large multinationals as well as the government) Backups are mostly to protect you from loss of data in the event of hardware failure or disaster they are not designed for archiving data for compliance with the various regulations. Those would be completely differant system (such as NetApp Nearstore with SnapLock and ASIS deduplication).

Re:Backup tapes get recyled ALL THE TIME

[andy.ruddock]

From the article :

Although the White House said in the filing that its practice of recording over the tapes ceased after October 2003, it added that even some e-mails transmitted through the end of 2005 might not have been fully preserved. "At this stage, this office does not know" whether additional e-mails are missing, said the affidavit filed minutes before a court-ordered deadline of midnight Tuesday night by Theresa Payton, chief information officer in the White House Office of Administration.

which rather implies that there was no archiving procedure in place.

Re:Backup tapes get recyled ALL THE TIME

[Stonent1]

I work for a company in an industry that is subject to regulation by a federal agency and we have a policy that e-mail is not retained in backups after deletion for more than 21 days. And they are very strict about that. It is company policy and it has been signed off by the legal department. I'm guessing for legal reasons if a discovery is done they can say "this is our policy and it has been in effect for x years"

Re:Backup tapes get recyled ALL THE TIME

[Anonymous Coward]

well buddy, you sound like a junior inexperienced tech so you better rush out and tell your clients that they are breaking the law doing it - otherwise YOU are going to be liable.

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[Zeinfeld]

At least this isn't as deliberate and malicious as Sandy Berger stealing original documents pertaining to the investigation by the 911 Commission from the National Archives and destroying them.

It is highly unlikely Berger was attempting to destroy the documents, he knew there were copies.

More likely he was wanting to either make sure that the Bush administration was unable to destroy them or to make them public.

A Joke

[conureman]

Arlo got it.

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[that this is not und]

Berger has not revealed what documents were destroyed.

You do put a rather ludicrous twist on the issue, though. Burger destroyed the records to 'protect' them from the Bushies?

Clearly you've taken sides. I was just maintaining that the Clintonites were just as bad a gang of crooks as the Bushies.

You will like Grey's Law

[beetle496]

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by simple stupidity...

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

Re:You will like Grey's Law

[AaxelB]

They're actually both named variants of each other. His version is Hanlon's Razor. Probably my favorite "razor," though the only other one I can think of is Occam's.

Anyone Know?

[N8F8]

Since these are the backups, what happened to the primary copies?

Re:Anyone Know?

[ToasterMonkey]

Exchange can't grow forever.

Yes, with 3rd party archiving software/hardware it technically might be able to, but this is a somewhat recent possibility.

let me translate...

[realkiwi]

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed."

I am out of my mind (have no reason)

I believe (halleluya!)

all (any, who cares...) e-mails were deliberately destroyed!

In fact

[WindBourne]

The other person who is lying here is Theresa Payton, the WH CIO. She claimed that she did not understand that these were archive tapes. ALL of clinton's email was taped in this fashion. Has been since the internet got commercialized. That means that she changed protocol. She would not have done so unless she was told that it was not an archive (zero chance of that), or she was ordered to do this by someone above her. I suspect that before this is done, she may be found guilty of perjury, conspiracy, and willful destruction of data.

Re:In fact

[NeutronCowboy]

And just like Scooter Libby and Gonzalez, the worst that will happen to her is presidential pardon. Yes, she did that under orders, I'm convinced of that. But like a good crone, she will get a pat on the back for taking the fall. Maybe even a cushy job in a lobby agency. But I can guarantee you there will be no jail time whatsoever.

Re:In fact

[ShakaUVM]

At least Ms. Payton showed more technological literacy than Sandy Berger, who "backed up" national security files by stuffing them in his pants and walking out.

As the lady said ...

[andy.ruddock]

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed.

Well, he would, wouldn't he?

Re:Frosty Piss says...

[jonaskoelker]

It's a huge tragedy that exactly half of mankind have mean-and-below IQs.

Fixed.

i'm not liking this trend...

[Anonymous Coward]

Another sysadmin scapegoat? i'm starting to notice a pattern of blaming important data loss and failure of public systems on sysadmins. They are going to ask the sysadmin who authorized tape recycling and the sysadmin will reply "i have an email...Oh wait..."

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[Zeinfeld]

You do put a rather ludicrous twist on the issue, though. Burger destroyed the records to 'protect' them from the Bushies?

It was never established that he 'destroyed' the documents, he was accused of attempting to remove them.

Strange that you would see this as worse than the destruction of all email records from the EOP over a period of several years. Or maybe not so strange. You were pretty wuick to attribute a partisan motive to me, looks to me like you are projecting like mad here.

Projection is a major Bushie trait. The man who started a war of choice in Iraq calls Iran a threat to world peace.

Best IT Practices

[bsandersen]

The White House claimed that the erasures were part of a tape rotation that represented "Best IT Practices". Last time I checked, Best IT Practices didn't call for breaking Federal law. This is especially galling in the era of Sarbanes-Oxley, where the government (in 2002, under Republican control) placed significant burdens on businesses and their record-keeping. Seems like it is time for somebody to go to jail.

Re:Best IT Practices

[ToasterMonkey]

It is "Best Practice" to reuse backup tapes. They could have implemented email archival in a number of ways, separate from backup tape retention.

placed significant burdens on businesses The EOP on the other hand, pretty much writes it's own rules. Believe it.

Not saying this is all a good thing, but don't pin it on backup admins or politicians being savvy enough to understand how backup retention really works. Even when the policy from above is to keep for "three months", there is no guarantee that backups wont be kept longer than that.

AFAIK, they don't ever reuse tapes now, and haven't for the past couple years. They may or may not also have a separate email archiving system.

Remember, retention is only part of the problem. The archived email still has to be easily accessible, so relevant documents can be produced in a timely manner. A normal tape backup system, even with infinite retention, doesn't ensure this by itself.

Re:Best IT Practices

[haapi]

Best Practices are to spin the data onto other tapes periodically before reusing those old tapes. NO DATA IS LOST, just rewritten with "fresh bits", and the tapes themselves are regularly cycled through the system, with new tapes injected into the cycle as needed.

We lost the 1970 Census data because that practice wasn't followed by the government agency in charge, and the IT departments of the world went, "WTF were they thinking?".

Which is exactly what we should be thinking now.

Re:Best IT Practices

[ToasterMonkey]

What are you talking about? You do lose data anytime you overwrite tapes unless you backup something static. Data == point in time snapshot. How large your tape pool is determines how far back you can keep those.

If you are constantly adding new tapes to the system, that is another thing. You don't need to ever overwrite tapes in that case, so I don't know what you meant. You might copy an old tape to a new tape after a couple years or something, but not juggle them around.

With a fixed number of tapes, YOU LOSE DATA after X days.

Someone please explain to me...

[HaloZero]

...why they aren't using a live-capture system to make a mirror of every message the White House SMTP system handles? Yeah, I realise that that sort of thing is daunting from a general IT perspective - storage, maintenance, uptime, logistics, but it's one of those necessary things.

If this happened in corporate America...

[zerofoo]

Those responsible would get their asses sued or go to jail (ask the ENRON guys). As an IT manager in corporate America, I can tell you that SARB-OX, GLBA, and HIPAA, requires us to keep all audit trails, backups, and emails for AT LEAST 7 years. We keep our stuff at Iron Mountain for 10 years, just to be safe.

Why doesn't our Government have to adhere to the same standards? These laws were enacted to provide transparency and accountability to public companies, financial firms, and the health care industry.

It would be sensible for those rules to be applied to ALL government agencies. Government works for the people. The people should demand that all Government data (emails, meeting minutes, documents....etc) should be archived for a VERY long period of time. There should also be CRIMINAL penalties for failure to comply. It might keep politicians honest if they knew that EVERYTHING could come back to haunt them later.

What's good for the goose.....

-ted

Re:If this happened in corporate America...

[Sillygates]

Thats pretty good. I don't think that most companies and organizations are keeping the audit trails they are required to, (in some cases, even by the govt directly). It's not convenient, and its not even possible in many cases.

Guilty but unprovable

[dpbsmith]

Do we see a pattern here? Not just with this administration, but in general.

Some authority engages in controversial, borderline activity that might be illegal. It transpires that the activities were recorded (taped, logged, written in memos). Investigator tells entity to save those records. The mills of justice grind slowly. It then transpires that the records have been shredded, deleted, bulk-erased, recycled, whatever.

Authority's spokeperson smirks*. Everybody knows darn well that the destruction was deliberate, but everybody knows darn well that there's absolutely no way to prove it.

Nobody even needs to tell subordinates what to do in any detail. In many cases, all that's needed is to do nothing. It takes exceptional action to stop the janitor from emptying the wastebasket, stop the operator from reusing the tapes, whatever.

In the Boston area there is a controversial school, the Judge Rotenberg Center, which uses electric shocks to train kids with behavioral problems. Recently, a kid at the center who had not done anything disruptive was subjected to a long series of shocks, on the basis of telephoned instructions from a "prank" caller. The shock treatment was taped. State investigator ordered the center to preserve the tapes. Surprise, surprise: they were destroyed. Because, in the opinion of the head of the Institute, the investigation "seemed to be finished."

I don't think there's a thing to do about this sort of stuff. But I just hope that once, just once, one of the bastards gets taped in the act of ordering the destruction of those tapes, and--

--destroys that tape too?

Oh well, never mind.

*OK, I'm just imagining that smirk.

NOW I Get It!

[Anonymous Coward]

When they said 'you only have to fear increased surveillance if you have something to hide,' they were talking about White House archiving policy!

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent the last six years deep undercover for the CIA. You don't know what you're talking about. Whore.

Memories are so short

[Quila]

Clinton had emails relating to current investigations deleted, even though there was a permanent archival system in place. The case over the FBI records was dropped due to insufficient evidence of wrongdoing. Coincidentally, emails about it were among those somehow deleted even from the archival system. The investigating committee called it the most significant obstruction of congressional investigations in U.S. history.

Come Out of Your Closet, "Conservatives"

[Doc Ruby]

Where are all the people who used to defend all the early signs that Bush was worse than Nixon?

You got us into this mess, by voting for Bush twice, and convincing other people it was OK to to do so. When your boys were riding high, you were unstoppable, especially in your bragging. Now where are you, when Bush is obviously worse than Nixon, and as bad as (or worse than) the rest of us said he was?

Re: Come Out of Your Closet, "Conservatives"

[Black Parrot]

Where are all the people who used to defend all the early signs that Bush was worse than Nixon?

You got us into this mess, by voting for Bush twice, and convincing other people it was OK to to do so. When your boys were riding high, you were unstoppable, especially in your bragging. Now where are you, when Bush is obviously worse than Nixon, and as bad as (or worse than) the rest of us said he was? In case you haven't noticed, some people are *still* defending him.

I know a guy who, having donated his brain to the RNC, wanted to argue that WMD justified our presence in Iraq after a cache of pre-1991 chemical munitions were found a couple of years ago.

Now he argues that the California wild fires are because "the ecologists" won't let the logging companies go in and thin out the forests around all those rich people's mountain villas.

Re:Come Out of Your Closet, "Conservatives"

[photomonkey]

That's part of the problem with this Democracy. A turd gets elected (twice) and it's a game of fingerpointing, blaming the other 'team' for everything. This is not football.

I, as a registered Republican (but not one who has ever even comes close to voting a straight ticket) voted for Bush on the first go-around, and against him on the second.

The Democrat bastards I helped vote into office on the second go-around appear to be every bit as colluding, impotent and worthless as the last lot of idiots on the other side of the aisle.

It's ok, though. You don't like the way things are going? Just blame the party you're not a part of (right or wrong) and hang the rest on everyone else. Thou dost protest too much.

You know, we can keep ourselves busy bitching, or getting out there and doing something about it. The national politicians, almost without exception start their careers at the local and state level. In addition to writing letters to the people currently holding Federal office, be proactive in your state and community to make sure the people presently getting elected at the State and local levels are the kinds of people you might eventually want on the Hill or in the White House.

Also, get involved with whatever party your a member of, and start actively setting standards and goals at the lowest levels of the party.

Not many people are happy with this administration, and I'm certainly not either. But every moment spent bitching, complaining and blaming is time detracted from getting out there and making a difference.

For what it's worth, the current crop of buffoons vying for the White House are nearly imperceptible from the last bunch of idiots. With the possible exception of John Edwards.

But that's fine. We can just all sit back and treat this like the Super Bowl, throwing popcorn at the TV when our guy wins or loses, and then quite possibly spending the next four years wishing things had gone differently, passing our time with childish infighting.

Re:Come Out of Your Closet, "Conservatives"

[/dev/trash]

When they start real impeachment proceedings, he'll be level with Nixon and Clinton.
Conviction would make him worse than both.

Re:Come Out of Your Closet, "Conservatives"

[Doc Ruby]

Oh, you're one of those "it's only a crime when you get caught" Republicans. Who thinks getting caught lying about a blowjob is as bad as lying us into a war and fascism. So speaks "/dev/trash".

Re:Come Out of Your Closet, "Conservatives"

[/dev/trash]

Not at all. I voted ALL Democrat this last election because I THOUGHT I was going to see some change, and perhaps even an impeachment. But what have I got instead?

Re:Frosty Piss says...

[ajs318]

It's a huge tragedy that exactly half of mankind have median-and-below IQs.

Fixed.

The median (average calculated by lining up values in order from lowest to highest and taking the one at the halfway point) IQ is 100 as a matter of definition.

Nut Cases are Out

[Anonymous Coward]

I just love these kinds of stories that flush out all the Bush Hating, DailyKos, Left Wing, Anarchist, shit bags.

People! Wipe your chin, it's got spittle all over it!

Re: Nut Cases are Out

[Black Parrot]

I just love these kinds of stories that flush out all the Bush Hating, DailyKos, Left Wing, Anarchist, shit bags. Be sure to delete your post from your computer's cache, Dick.

Re: Nut Cases are Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Look! There's a Bush Hating douche bag! This place is lousy with them.

Recycling my arse!

[Anonymous Coward]

They expect us to buy that?

What's next? the library of congress?

No original information was destroyed

[spun]

Nice attempt at the standard neo-con "But Clinton did it!" defense, but the truth is murkier than you make it out to be. From the wiki article on Sandy Berger:

After a long investigation, the lead prosecutor Noel Hillman, chief of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, stated that Berger only removed classified copies of data stored on hard drives stored in the National Archives, and that no original material was destroyed. I know facts are utterly unimportant to people like you, and perception is everything, but you could try a little harder than that, it took me all of a minute to debunk.

The word for this administration has always been

[lupine]

Strategery as correctly anticipated by Will Ferrell on Saturday Night Live

Re:Frosty Piss says...

[esper]

Ah... NO, Gore didn't! He got the plurality of the popular vote in 2000. However, US Presidential elections are not, and have never been, decided by the popular vote. Which has made the electoral college system somewhat unpopular in recent years, but, popular or not, it's still the way the Constitution says elections are to be run. If you don't like it, work on getting the Constitution amended to change it, don't deny that its results are (legally) correct.

Personally, I think the electoral college is one of the lower priorities for election reform in the US, and that it may even work reasonably well if the states allocated their electors in proportion to the popular vote instead of winner-takes-all, but that's just me.

Bush Library

[alfredo]

If they keep "accidentally" losing and erasing eviden---- history, all that will be left for bush's presidential* library will be a once read copy of "My Pet Goat" and a Lee Greenwood CD.

Re:Bush Library

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the pretzel!

If my boss can read my email

[Enrique1218]

then every american can read the email of every politician and bureaucrat in the US government. Our votes put them in office. Our taxes pay their salary, the computers they use, office supplies, etc. Any email they send on our time and through our equipment must be open to any American and thus be preserved for future investigation and historical study. Especially the top secret stuff that for reasons of national security are restricted from contemporary open examination. Anything else and the government is not ours and thus its mandate to govern us is nulled.

And even Grant had won a war

[elrous0]

I never thought I would like to see an administration more corrupt and incompetent than the Grant administration. But here we are.

Re:How's That Impeachment Coming Along?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to that.

Of course, if Hilliary is elected, I'm sure they will have no problems with her erasing shit. It's a criminal thing if Republicans do something, but it's just this or that or not important when the Dims do it.

I'd love to see Cheney elected just to see all the Leftists whiners drop dead from strokes.

Absent SCOTUS, Gore won the electoral vote

[MarkusQ]

If they'd taken the time to do a full and fair recount, Gore would have won. We know this because after the fact the recounts were done. While Bush would have won under some of the deals the lawyers were kicking around Gore would have won had the simply followed the laws as written.

-- MarkusQ

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[Spazmania]

The laws regarding communications from the White House are completely asinine.

On the one hand, its illegal to undertake political activities using government paid resources. This means that every White House employee that engages in politics must have a separate PC on a separate network with a separate email account. This is the White House. Almost every employee has a political role.

On the other hand, the law compels the White House to keep a record of all official activities. Thus every official email must be saved by the White House system administrators.

Somehow every White House employee is supposed to magically know whether that call to the lobbyist about trying to get the administration's favorite bill passed is an official function or a political function. Not only that, everyone who sends email to someone at the White House is supposed to know which of that individual's email addresses the message should go to so that it can be properly archived.

To cap it all off: the political committees who run the "political" email systems (RNC, DNC) try to stay to a 30-day retention policy after which emails not deliberately saved are deleted. They get sued constantly so if they didn't, the legal discovery across backup tapes would be destructively expensive.

And God help you if you get it wrong because the Congress certainly won't.

Government accountability is a joke. There's so much accountability that it wraps around to zero.

Whooops!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"I made an accident. Careless me!"

"It's not like I lost BILLIONS in cash (small bills) or anything like that!"

"I have to stop having these little 'accidents'."

They don't even have to pay for the tapes...

[Entropius]

... I'm sure our Swedish friends would be glad to host it for them.

Damn

[jandersen]

What rotten luck! That's just the time periods needed for the investigations. Well, that just goes to show - accidents can happen to anybody, even the president himself is not immune.

Re:Wait x 2

[plsander]

You are still thinking like it is 2008 not 2003. (Half a decade ago) Email was still considered a Toy Comunication...

Youngsters... 1987, Iran-Contra hearings -- Oliver North was tripped up by copies of email recovered from backup tapes of the PROFS.

Email was certainly not a toy in 2003...

Re:Wait x 2

[plsander]

must read preview before submit.

PROFS email system - which ran on S/370. Later it became OfficeVision (/370, /400, /2 depending on the platform).

Re:How's That Impeachment Coming Along?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please gtfo of my country if you think promoting Cheney for four years is anything even remotely close to the best thing for this country. In fact, thinking or saying that should be paramount to treason as you obviously have 0 interest in what is good for America and it's people.

Sheep like you are exactly why this country is the fucking laughing stock of the world and our economy/global influence/national integrity/basic human rights/etc/etc/etc are all circling the drain with next to 0 chance of rebounding this decade.

Thanks a ton for your thoughtless contribution to fucking up the country my and your kids will inhabit. You must be so proud...

Go down in history?

[Britz]

Ahm, Reagan?
(Iran-Contra, Grenada, spending)

Wait for a couple years. I bet Bush will be remembered as the guy guided by god and not by opinion polls. And Jeb will succeed him in 2016 or 2020.

Re:How's That Impeachment Coming Along?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's a criminal thing if Republicans do something, but it's just this or that or not important when the Dims do it."

Here's the problem with "you types". You're too caught up in partisan bullshit to see past your own nose. See, to the rest of the THINKING world, it's a criminal thing WHEN THE LAW IS BROKEN, no matter who the fuck breaks it. It's a law. It was broken. There are consequences that every American has to pay for breaking the law. Oh, unless your a Republican I guess. Then you can just play the nancy boy whiner card and blame it all on "dem durdy librals and thar libreral medea's!11!!1!"

You jerkoffs crucified Clinton for getting a friggin blowjob but seem more then happy to ignore heaps and heaps of treasonous (sp?) acts simply because you hold fast to some antiquated party line bullshit. Newsflash, today's republican party is no more conservative then Michael Moore. The party, it's tactics, and it's sheep followers are leading this country into complete and utter ruin. Are the dems much better? Not really, but that's far from the point here... not that I'd expect someone so obviously spoonfed Limbaugh and Colter to understand an intelligent point when made to you.

Re:How's That Impeachment Coming Along?

[Anonymous Coward]

Booring.....you were supposed to drop dead after reading that. You left wingnuts can't get anything right.

Alternative Investigation Method

[Fujisawa Sensei]

I recommend using an alternative method of interrogation, one that has already been approved for use by the administration, water-boarding.

Re:Nut Cases are Out... and you're one of them

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, god forbid when the truth comes out. I do so hate when that happens.

The sad thing is, the republicans that think this is no problem are victims the same as the democrats. ALL Americans should be worried about this stuff. Sheer stupidity (here's looking at you), apathy, and some silly notion of "belonging" to a political party are why this, just like every other criminal investigation into this administration, will be swept under the rug.

Funny you mention Anarchists, as your very attitude of not caring about obviously illegal activities is far more indicative of an Anarchist mindset then the very valid criticism you see in this thread.

When they came for the liberals, i said nothing...

They'll come for you too buddy. Your smug, cocksucking little attitude won't save you from the Corporate-Military Machine that YOU let happen willingly and happily.

Re:How's That Impeachment Coming Along?

[Anonymous Coward]

"You jerkoffs crucified Clinton for getting a friggin blowjob"
Dumbass: It was for perjury and obstruction of Justice. Monica had nothing to do with it.
But if you want, we can talk about the utter silence from the Dems, NOW, and other mixed Feminazi's when it came to a federal employee having sexual relations with a subordinate. If that was a Republican, well, you know the hell that would have broken lose in the Left's ranks.

"Oh, unless your a Republican I guess"
Or Sandy Burger I guess.

Ahh...and whip your chin please, all that froth is disgusting.

How to find the missing data

[operagost]

Looking for other copies of that missing data? Try checking Sandy Berger's pants.

White House: By Coincedence, We Use Quest!

[rewinn]

White House spokesmodel Dana Perrino noted with regret that the White House had switched to Quest during the period of the missing tapes: "They had like an awesome promotional rate!" So unfortunately the traffic was not intercepted. What a coincidence!

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[NeutronCowboy]

I was just maintaining that the Clintonites were just as bad a gang of crooks as the Bushies.

And in the current discussion, this is a completely irrelevant opinion. Not to mention that the scale and results are vastly different. You might not have taken sides, but you are completely blind to problems of scale the impact various actions have on national security.

Re:How's That Impeachment Coming Along?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dumbass: It was for perjury and obstruction of Justice."

So we agree that obstruction of justice is an impeachable offense then right? Think carefully before answering as you may be surprised that the convenient destruction of data tapes requested by Congress for an ongoing investigation is THE definition of obstruction of justice.

Oh noes, logic and reality are messing up your little bubble world again. Run for the hills!

"If that was a Republican, well, you know the hell that would have broken lose in the Left's ranks."

Yeah, like the Republican who pled guilty to soliciting sex in a men's bathroom and is not only NOT paying the time for his crime, but he refuses to even quit his job. I bet most other convicted felons had such an easy time with life after pleading guilty. Don't talk double standards to me son, the Republican party in the last decade is the prototype for applying double standards and getting away with it.

You have absolutely no leg to stand on in this argument, despite your flailing attempts to do so.

How to find missing millions of emails 101

[WillAffleckUW]

1. Waterboard officials that sent, received, and/or processed said emails until they tell you what they want to hear.

2. Use forensic investigation tools used by any data recovery unit on the originating computers, all servers, all servers for the ISPs, all receiving computers and devices, and all archives and backups for all said computers.

3. With the resulting emails, hire an independent prosecuting attorney to have testimony under oath by all said participants and those referred to in the 999,999 emails found. Grant limited immunity only on condition of the guilty being sentenced.

4. Hold a nationwide lottery for the resulting firing squads after the impeachment, indictment, and convictions of the guilty party - this should raise enough to reduce the national debt significantly.

5. Party like it's 1999!

It just goes to show

[hairyfeet]

That buying off all the major media outlets worked. Nixon was hounded for losing 18 minutes and here The Shrub loses more like 18 MONTHS and the media cares more about "Oh Noes, the Britney may be crazy!" than the wholesale thievery and war mongering by the President. It makes me wonder how much longer before the big corps destroy the Internet with 400 tiers and "walled communities" that they can control.

The really sad part is the office of the Presidency has become such a "Coke or Pepsi" farce that I don't think I'll be able to stomach voting this time. BOTH sides have become so corrupted that I doubt that either of them will do anything differently.It will simply be a matter of which big businesses get favored-defense and oil for republican and big media for democrat. Either way it will be "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Re:It just goes to show

[LinuxLuver]

I have to agree with you. This is confirmation that the President (provided he is a Republican) can break the law and not fear any comeback at all. Bus hahs lied, tortured, murdered, destroyed evidence, perverted and subverted justice (by appointing obedient cronies as Attorney General). The media have snoozed through it all and a large chunk of the American people have been complicit and most of the rest have been negligent - either voting for him or not voting at all.

Re:It just goes to show

[hairyfeet]

I agree with everything you said except for the voting part. That is where the big media being owned by a few mega corps comes in. I live in a poor state(AR) and in the run-up to the 2004 election the amount of bold faced lying I saw on the main stream media was incredible. According to them-the war was going great, Iraq started 9/11, Bush and his tax cuts were going to help the poor,etc. You have to remember that these are poor working folk and many of them don't have the Internet. So the only sources of news are television,radio,and newspapers. And EVERY single one was spreading the same BS, down to the last word!

You can't blame folks who vote based on the only information given to them when all they have been told is lies. And BOTH sides are so badly corrupt now that the whole thing is "Coke vs Pepsi" so I don't think that even if we were all told the truth it would make much of a difference now. I do think it would be nice if the Shrub was held accountable for his actions, but I just don't see any of that happening. I think after the Bill and Monica fiasco that neither side will do anything to the other for fear their own dirty laundry will come out. And with all the kickbacks, earmarks, etc I wouldn't trust either side as far as I could throw them.

The truly sad part is I don't see how any of this will change without something catastrophic, such as economic collapse or violent revolution. How do you change anything by voting when all the main candidates are bought and paid for and the big media shuts out those like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich who don't toe the party line?

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[cayenne8]

"I don't think these legal issues are going to go away after Bush leaves office. We are going to see a constant attempt to suppress government papers that implicate Bush in the criminality of his administration."

I'm not fan of Bush's, I hate the policies which are eroding our privacy and civil liberties, but, really...what crimes do you accuse him of? What specific laws do you think he and his administration have broken and could be tried and jailed for?

I keep hearing people calling him a criminal, but, I don't ever hear of specific charges of laws that he's broken.

Re:Frosty Piss says...

[rbanffy]

"The median (average calculated by lining up values in order from lowest to highest and taking the one at the halfway point) IQ is 100 as a matter of definition."

Which, IIRC, in a Gaussian distribution, is the same as the average for the given population.

Re: Frosty Piss says...

[Black Parrot]

Personally, I think the electoral college is one of the lower priorities for election reform in the US Yeah, the first priority is making sure peoples votes actually get counted, so that the correct electors are seated.

When Bush's people went to court to prevent people's votes from being counted, that should have warned us what priorites would guide the way they would run the country.

Re: How's That Impeachment Coming Along?

[Black Parrot]

The best thing about Bush leaving the White House at the end of his EIGHT YEAR TERM will be not having to listen to you morons go on and on and on about Bush. Like the Republicans who still go on and on about Clinton after seven years?

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[Alyred]

How about wiretapping without a warrant? Or we could work with Cheney's record, very simply -- fixing prices on oil and energy, and refusing to turn over documents to prove otherwise, even to a secret court? How about keeping correspondence on unofficial RNC servers rather than official government ones, where they can be archived as is the law? Perhaps throw in a bit of international anti-torture/anti-rendition law, since legal treaties entered into by the United States are constitutionally defined as U.S. law? That's just what immediately came to my head, verifiable evidence that they have directly broken the law.

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[jafac]

I don't think these legal issues are going to go away after Bush leaves office. We are going to see a constant attempt to suppress government papers that implicate Bush in the criminality of his administration.

Have we all forgotten Bush's FIRST ACT as President?

To secure the papers from his father's administration, which were about to become public as mandated by law?

In their minds - they have every right to TAX us, in order to BRIBE the Telecom (Government Granted) Monopolies, to gather all of our personal electronic communications, for them to indefinitely archive, peruse, and examine, without any oversight, review, or accountability, and we have NO right, to lawfully subpoena evidence from them when there is clear probably cause of massive lawbreaking on their part.

America got precisely the government we chose. Precisely the government we deserve.

Pay attention next time?

Go on your way

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all just a huge coincidence. Everything is a coincidence.
Just go on your way now.

Re:How convenient

[jafac]

This administration has already commuted the sentence of a convicted perjurer and obstructor of justice.

Why should anyone be surprised that they would do the same again?

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[Thuktun]

And in the current discussion, this is a completely irrelevant opinion. A new form of the Chewbacca Defense?

If the standard for impeachment...

[big_paul76]

I can't remember the name of the stand-up comedian who said it, but it was something like "If the standard for impeachment is covering up/destroying evidence or lying to congress, then Bush should've been beaten to death on the white house lawn with Aerosmith playing in the background."

Seriously, I realize that there's something to the point that politics have become far to partisan, it's easy to blame the party you don't belong to and all that, but c'mon, Bush and co. are beyond any historical precedent. The NSA wiretapping scandal, extraordinary rendition, gitmo, destroying tapes of CIA interrogations, and an economic policy that amounts to "robin hood in reverse".

But, it's not fair to paint all republicans with the same brush. It's also fair to point out that at some point in the mid-90's, the GOP has been hijacked by a bunch of people who call themselves "conservatives", but really what they are is warmongers, kleptocrats, and evangelicals who have a genuinely transformative agenda. Any resemblance to actual conservatives is purely co-incidental.

It's sounds incriminating

[rfc1394]

Basically, you keep copies of files in order to be able to restore them if something happens to your originals. But, outside of disposing of redundant or useless information (like, say, a copy of a receipt for payment after the time they can sue you for non-payment and it's no longer needed for tax purposes), disposal of information in large organizations has a strong implication that it's done for nefarious purposes.

What I mean by that is that typically large organizations keep voluminous records in case they're going to get sued (or are questioned about their actions before congress in the case of a government agency, which can amount to the same thing for your career), which means destroying records often indicates you fear the information will be detrimental to your side if it gets subpoenaed.

I kind of learned this accidentally because of my own practices. When I was going on-line and talking to women, I kept everything; e-mails, transcripts of IM chats, anything dealing with anyone I spoke to. The simple reason was that if I ever met the lady, and it turned out she was underage, I would have regular, documented proof that I was under the impression she was at least 18. I found out later some guys got busted because they talked on-line to some girl, and went to meet her to go to a motel, and got busted when they showed up, and evidence from on-line communication showed they clearly believed the girl was jail bait, in some cases, under 14.

Which goes right along with the whole point: If you're doing something wrong, your paperwork is what's going to hang you; if you're not into wrongdoing, your paperwork is what's going to save you.
Paul Robinson - My Blog

Nixon all over again.

[Neanderthal Ninny]

Just like those "magic" missing seconds of the those tapes that Nixon has reminds me of what GW Bush is doing to all of us. It is a pity that we don't have time to a impeachment hearings and finally impeachment proceedings before GW Bush is out of the office. Also the democrats don't have enough backbone to do start these proceedings so we have next generation Nixon in the White House.
If any of us system administrators did overwrite or destroy backup tapes at any company that SEC monitors we would be in prison.

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[daemonenwind]

Yeah, that attitude clearly explains Clinton administration handling of the Rose Law Firm files.
Or the following chronology:
May 22, 1993
- Judge Richey cites the Clinton White House and the acting Archivist of the United States for contempt of court for failing to carry out his order to issue new and appropriate guidelines for the preservation of the computer records of the Reagan, Bush and Clinton White House staff.

August 13, 1993
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacates Judge Richey's contempt orders but upholds his overall decision that the Federal Records Act (FRA) requires that complete electronic copies of e-mail messages be preserved by the White House, and by extension, government agencies in general. The appeals court remands the case to Judge Richey to decide the issue of the dividing line between "agency" records covered by the FRA and presidential records covered by the Presidential Records Act.

March 25, 1994
- In a brief filed in federal court, the Clinton administration declares that the National Security Council is not an agency, and should be accorded the protection from public scrutiny given to the President's personal advisers. This argument attempts to remove the Clinton administration's White House e- mail from the reach of FOIA requests and the FRA, arguing that all its documents are subject only to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and therefore not to court oversight.
------------
Meanwhile, the site you link to in your homepage has a poll up:
Who would make the worst president? Giuliani, Paul, Kucinich, Nader, Huckabee.
It also makes arguments about why Hillary is a wonderful human being.

I call BS Astroturf on your entire post.

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[Zeinfeld]

March 25, 1994 - In a brief filed in federal court, the Clinton administration declares that the National Security Council is not an agency, and should be accorded the protection from public scrutiny given to the President's personal advisers. This argument attempts to remove the Clinton administration's White House e- mail from the reach of FOIA requests and the FRA, arguing that all its documents are subject only to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and therefore not to court oversight.

I was refering to the civil service culture, the political appointees could have their opinions but the civil service view was that every email was subject to the PRA and there was a presumption that every email was obtainable through FOIA.

I don't think it is completely crazy to claim that the NSC is not subject to FOIA, virtually all the information is classified. FOIA has a national security exception.

But to my knowledge nobody ever claimed that the PRA did not apply to email records. On the contrary, there was already precedent created by Ollie North.

Meanwhile, the site you link to in your homepage has a poll up: Who would make the worst president? Giuliani, Paul, Kucinich, Nader, Huckabee.

I chose the five candidates I thought would be the worst. My blog, my poll. I added Paul and Huckabee for pandering to the racist vote. Kucinich and Nader because they are whacked and Giuliani because he gave a humanitarian award to a terrorist.

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[Ffakr]

Hey dumb ass. Berger destroyed NO documents. None. Zero.
So says OUR GOVERNMENT. Thats Our Government under Bush.

Berger had access to all the information he viewed. He was there to reference documents before testifying before congress.
Berger was not, however, allowed to remove copies of documents or even take notes that were removed from the archives.

What did Berger really do?

He took notes. He shoved the notes "In my pants". That's his pants pockets.. it was his excuse for why he left with notes.
He also viewed printed out ELECTRONIC documents (aka. copies) and left the archives with them. Berger later destroyed the copies by shredding them at his office.

Now, how did Fox News and the rest of the Lunatic Fringe sexy up the story?
Berger put them in his pants.. literally, he shoved them down his pants..
Then Fox announces he shoved them in his underwear.
Then Fox says on air that Berger put them in his socks. How do you make that jump unless you're completely making shit up?
Of course, there was immediately a war cry over Berger shredding documents. Of course, par for the course, he shredded COPIES not the original documents.

Berger was found guilty of being so arrogant that he didn't think the rules applied to him. He had the clearance to view all that material, he just didn't think he should have to do his research in the archives so he put notes in his pockets and printed documents in his briefcase.

Berger DID NOT DESTROY ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS.
In a July 21 article, Washington Post staff writer Susan Schmidt reported, "The documents that were removed were copies; the National Archives retained the originals."

Berger was found guilty and fined $50000 and his classified access was revoked for 3 years. If Berger destroyed archival documents, do you believe a federal judge would give him back his Classified clearance? I believe that by now, Berger should have his access back.

P.S. WTF does Sandy Berger have to do with the Bush Administration's gross violation of the Presidential Records act? Does that make what they've done LESS ILLEGAL? Oh wait, no it doesn't. They destroyed archival data in direct violation of the law. They removed procedures that were put in place by Clinton's administration to prevent the accidental deletion of email and they put noting in place to prevent the loss of email.
If you have forgotten, they've also stated that they used RNC email to conduct business on Whitehouse machines but that Mail is missing too. Use of RNC mail for government matters is also an illegal circumvention of the Presidential records act.
Most corrupt government Ever. There are spans of weeks and months where there are Zero emails from various offices in the Executive branch. Bush's administration makes Nixon and his missing 8Minutes look like a childish prank in comparison.

Corrupt President might lie? Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, you mean the President that deliberately lied so he could continue his family history of war profiteering (which goes back to at least the bundle the Bush' made selling arms to the Nazis), and who hires sleazebags and incomptetents so they won't betray him, might be covering his ass? Gee, that must be breaking news.

Re:I worked on this during the Clinton Administrat

[that this is not und]

There's no way for Berger to prove what he did and didn't remove or destroy, since nobody apprehended him immediately and searched him.

But it's fine for you to quote a little snippet from one journalist to 'clear' him. Of an offense where he got a $50,000.00 fine (clever move, typing 50000 to make the number look smaller). It was, uh, a Felony, dude.

And you misspelled 'Evah' in your "Most corrupt government, evah!" line there.

But this isn't about Sandy Berger or the corruption of the Clinton administration, so let's keep piling on. Everybody knows only Republicans are corrupt scum.

I should have pulled the full quote

[beetle496]

Yes, I have heard of Wikipedia. It is how I came by the common name for that gem. Probably I should have pulled the full quote to make that a little more clear:

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by simple stupidity... except when it comes to the Bush White House.

Vought (perhaps unwittingly) turned Hanlon's razor into Grey's Law. The former is pretty well known, not so much the latter, and seemed especially on topic. It is less a variant than a derivation meant to refute the other. Of course, it follows the form of Clark's Third Law.

I work in government. In the beginning I was quite routinely distressed by the bureaucracy. A variant of Hanlon's (one mis-attributed to Napoleon) gave me real sense of perspective when I first heard it. More recently, Grey's Law has me doubting my compliancy.

If anyone has etymology for Grey's Law, I would much appreciate it being shared. Wikipedia and Google give up only trivialities.

Tapes

[psibrman]

"We have not had sexual relations with these tapes. This is a lefy wing knee jerking plot."