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

Re:Wait

[someone1234]

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

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?

[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: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: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.