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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."
What's good for someone is bad for someone else.
This tape recycling is definitely good for someone.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
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.
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.
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.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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."
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.