White House Must Answer For Missing Emails

Lucas123 writes "A District Court judge this week ruled in favor of a Washington-based watchdog group, allowing them to question White House officials about missing emails involving controversial issues. The subjects include the release of the identity of a former CIA operative, the reasons for launching the war in Iraq and actions by the US Department of Justice. The group had filed suit [PDF] last May against the White House Office of Administration, seeking access to White House email under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The discovery ruling is bringing to light issues of email retention in businesses and other private organizations. We've previously discussed the White House's difficulties with email."

Comments

Expected answer

[Protonk]

"They are missing, and we can't retrive them. We forget what was on them. Oops."

Sorry folks, but political operators learned from nixon. Don't keep evidence of malfeasance. Don't lie explicitly, just claim to not remember or not be in the loop. Delay, delay, delay, delay. This isn't going to be a watershed event. Odds are if those emails really ARE incriminating, then they are long, long gone.

Re:Expected answer

[Protonk]

and what's the end result of that? Is karl rove in jail for violating presidential records acts? Are those emails in the hands of prosecutors? Is there a prosecutor assigned? Are we likely to have an honest answer as to what happened before 2009? No. Rove et al used RNC email addresses to avoid archiving requirements as they engineered US elections by steering justice dept actions. That much is patently clear. When it looked like this was going to backfire, those emails got deleted and the participants either 'forgot' their content or refused to testify.

We agree on one thing, there was (and still is), very little oversight. It should stand as our enduring shame that senate and house oversight committees are spending time going after baseball and football scandals while our constitution burns.

Re:Expected answer

[fm6]

then they've broken the Presidential Records Act

So what? There are no criminal penalties involved. It would be worth noting if this violation could be noted for impeachment proceedings, but Congress isn't going to impeach W. Not unless he does something really evil, like having sex with an intern.

Re:Expected answer

[Protonk]

That's because that wasn't part of an attempt to undermine our system of government. I don't care WHO you are, there hasn't been a president like gwb in office for at least 100 years. They have literally wrecked the place. I'm not talking about NCLB, Iraq, or whatever. That's all normal stuff. That's the kind of stuff that most of the presidents we remember would have done. Keenedy/Johnson got us into Vietnam. Roosevelt packed the supreme court. Hoover precipitated the great depressesion. Wilson effectily resegregated the federal government. Etc. That kind of stuff is easy to recover from.

They just smashed the joint up. They fired or forced to resign what amounts to hundreds to thousands of person-years of experience in government. They politicized every office they could get their hands on. they enriched cronies in brazen fashion. They used a national fucking tragedy to secure political control of congress. They pushed a TRIPLE FUCKING AMPUTEE who was a Vietnam veteran out of office because he had the temerity to stand up to their bullshit. They completed the circle of lobbyist control in congress started by Tom Delay. they made supine the court system and the legislature, and now they stand to do it again.

Getting dome in the white house doesn't begin to compare. We will go decades and not be able to access the wreckage honestly.

Re:Expected answer

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't prosecute Clinton for the sex, they prosecuted him for lying under oath. The only time Bush ever lied under oath was when he took the oath to uphold the Constitution. But no one takes that one seriously anyway.

Re:Expected answer

[Protonk]

No, it doesn't. I've never seen anything so patently absurd in my whole life, and I've seen a lot of absurd things. To accuse the democratic congress of organizing a witch hunt is preposterous. Show me the witch hunt. Show me the weeks of dogged congressional action. Show me the impeachment proceedings. Show me the honest, hardworking americans forced into jail because of the partisan hackery of the democrats, I defy you.

There isn't a witch hunt. The fact that the democrats are willing to excercise a modicum of oversight should come as a slight relief, not rejected. Think about it:

This is what CLinton did:
Lied about getting dome in the white house while under oath. Suggested that his mistress lie under oath in order to protect him.

This is what bush did:
Used political operatives in the white house and the justice department to prosecute democrats during election seasons. Fired uncooperative prosecutors.
Used 9/11 to illegally wiretap large volumes of conversations over telephone and email. Didn't even use a secret court designed for such surveilance SIMPLY TO DECLARE THAT THE WH WAS BEYOND THE REACH OF THAT COURT. Lied about it even after it was discovered by the NY times 4 years later.
Deliberately moved a detention facility outside of US court jurisdiction in order to prevent detainees from getting basic human rights afforded to them. Violated the geneva conventions. authorized and lied about torture.
Replaced government professionals with political operatives and like minded conservatives. Used appointed officials to stifle press releases AND to eliminate oversight, resulting in (likely) the mine collapse disasters and the mismanagement of Katrina.

The list could go on. Those aren't partisan accusations. They aren't crazy conspiracies. They aren't unsubstantiated attacks. they are fucking facts, confirmed by former WH officials, members of congress, informants, or statements of the presidents adivsors while still in office. I didn't even include most of John Woo and David Addington's rape of our constitution or the iraq war. How has the partisan, liberal, democratic congress responded to these blatant examples of misconduct? About as meekly as a churchmouse.

How will they enforce it?

[jollyreaper]

White House to court: Make us.

Shit, I'm forgetting what the the request was but Congress asked the Attorney General to investigate someone. The reply: "That was a pointed and direct request so I will make sure my answer is pointed and direct: no."

So, what's the next step, send the sgt. at arms to haul their asses in?

How do you lose email?

[v(*_*)vvvv]

I am curious whether email can even get lost accidentally in the first place. A handwritten letter, fine, but email gets written, saved, archived, sent to the server, copied, recopied, delivered, logged, saved, archived... Plus, even deleting doesn't get rid of the data completely until the disk is overwritten, scrambled, or dipped in lava.

If you *have* to conspire to completely delete emails of such mass quantities, then why isn't this all just a matter of finding the guilty party?

If they build their systems so that no trails are left, then that in itself is evidence of an intent to conspire.

theywontanyway

[slimjim8094]

See title. They'll do what they do every time the courts demand that they comply: nothing.

This administration needs a slap in the face with a nail-filled board. I don't see these courts doing that any time soon... although I'm sure that "they really mean it this time, you have to give it to us!" Unfortunately, that'd be compromising "national security". Must say I'm not sure how rigging an election qualifies as national security, but since I don't quantifiable know what's in those emails, I'll just take your word Georgie.

Sigh. If this is the price, I'd rather watch out for myself - it's cheaper that way.

OT: hardware? why?

Waterboarding anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I know the staff there can be FORCED into REMEMBERING every single one of those lost emails, it is simply a matter of a weekend at Gitmo for the ENTIRE staff and that fantastic new waterboarding sport, as the Whitehouse as stated, they are gonna do it, legal or not...

Re:How will they appeal it?

[Anonymous Coward]

What really bothers me about this constitution - torture debate is that it sidesteps the important issue.

Torture is wrong.

Its what the enemy is supposed to do, not us (or I should say you, since I'm Canadian), it doesn't matter if you can magic the constitution into yet-another-bible to be interpreted into supporting whatever you feel like.

And frankly, if you do torture someone to get important info, and you get caught: you say "sorry, it was wrong," and you fire/jail the guy that did it. What kind of government are you running down there anyway? Why are these guys still in power?

I was watching Red October the other day, and was amused that the 1st officer was looking forward to defecting because he could go from state to state without papers.... we'll see how long that lasts...

(I'm not wearing my tin foil hat, so posting anonymous)

Re:How will they appeal it?

[Harmonious Botch]

What kind of government are you running down there anyway? We made the mistake of letting people like you run it. Well, not exactly like you, but people who are like you in that they are absolutely sure that they know what is right and wrong.
And that was our mistake. We should have stuck with people who know what the constitution says. The US constitution, even with all it's shortcomings, at least provides some protection. Even allowing for differences in interpretation, it still provides some protection.
But if you put a guy in office who believes that he can do anything as long as it is right for his country, and who further believes that he gets to determine what is right and nobody can second guess him, then he can do anything.

You see, the issue is not 'is torture wrong?', the issue is 'is torture unconstitutional?'

Why are these guys still in power? Because we still have, embedded in our political processes, some remnants of respect for the constitution. And because of Monica.

We had a close call a few years back, almost impeaching a guy for a blow job. We scared ourselves on that one. Each self-rightous politician was determined to be greater in his criticism of the prez than the next guy, and it kinda got out of hand. Everybody knew that we really shouldn't do it, but nobody seemed to know exactly when to stop. I mean, nobody wanted wanted to be the guy who said 'Hey, I think blow jobs from interns are ok.' But eventually, enough people realized that if it went through, they wouldn't be getting blow jobs in the future, so it fell apart. When asked why they were changing their minds, they couldn't really come out in favor of blow jobs, so they invoked the constitution, noting that he really hadn't reached the constitutional definition of "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

Like a sailor who tacks back and forth across his intended course, sometimes to one side, sometimes to the other, we sort of follow the constitution. Sometimes we are too liberal, sometimes too cautious.
Right now, post-blow-job, we are erring on the side of being too cautious. So faced with a president who probably does deserve to be inpeached for incompetence and the pointless deaths of 4000 of his countrymen, we pretend that the best way to get rid of him is just to let him serve out his term and then we will put someone else in by election.

Re:How will they appeal it?

[Harmonious Botch]

You favor impeaching a Supreme Court justice for doing his job and providing his interpretation of the Constitution? I don't support the use of torture, but jesus, the consequences of impeaching justices for not interpreting the Constitution the same way you do are far, far worse. It is not for his interpretation of the constitution, but for completely ignoring it.

The whole idea of the constitution is to limit the government. This means that sometimes you have to let the guilty go free, because an unrestrained government is far more dangerous than the few criminals who go unpunished.

What Scalia is saying is the opposite: that you can ignore the constitution based upon individual circumstances: in particular, that you can duck the constitution based on an imminent threat. Who gets to decide if the threat is credible? Who gets to decide if it is really imminent? Well, apparently, the president. As Scalia sees it, the president can order the torture of anyone with no judicial or congressional review. This is what I mean by completely ignoring the constitution.

By contrast, interpretation of the constitution would be something like saying 'waterboarding is not cruel and unusual.'