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

[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

[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.

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.

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."

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.

yeah, I'm sure it was an honest mistake

[RelliK]

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

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: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.

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.

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..."

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: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.

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!