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White House Must Answer For Missing Emails

Posted by Soulskill on from the show-me-the-deleted-emails dept.

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."

14 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Expected answer by Protonk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.

    1. Re:Expected answer by GodfatherofSoul · · Score: 5, Informative

      If they lost them, which they couldn't have (and after Senator Leahy called them out on this they somewhat admitted that they were lost not destroyed), then they've broken the Presidential Records Act. Actually, we probably have evidence of this already since White House staffers like Karl Rove have been circumventing official record keeping by using Republican National Committee email accounts for official business. Amazing how a little oversight uncovers so much dirt...

      --
      I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
    2. Re:Expected answer by Protonk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Expected answer by Zollui · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There's a government mechanism for dealing with such matters which people here might find surprising.

      In fulfilment of a legal obligation. a request will be made to administrators and office staff to check their email accounts for the 'missing email'. The managers will accept the word of the staff under them, who will typically eyeball their inbox in Outlook before reporting 'no, haven't got it'.

      Don't assume they're grepping through their servers because if they're just responding to a freedom of information request, they're not. They will restrict themselves to a search that seems 'reasonable' in the eyes of a technological illiterate, that's all.

    4. Re:Expected answer by flyingsquid · · Score: 5, Funny
      So what? There are no criminal penalties involved.

      You don't get it, do you? When you mess with the Presidential Records Act, you're messing with the entire National Archives system. That means they take away your National Archives Library Card. Want to check out that official copy of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill, or the Marine Mammal Protection Act? Sorry, buster. You're gonna have to make do with a photocopy. And guess what? Without that card, you can still get in to see the Constitution... but not after hours.

    5. Re:Expected answer by Protonk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:Expected answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    7. Re:Expected answer by Protonk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    8. Re:Expected answer by PixelScuba · · Score: 5, Informative

      When the Clintons left office, their staff broke equipment before leaving and violated the rest. For example, they would leave pornographic images in the photocopier. Think of it as the previous management of SlashDot leaving Goatse as the new logo when they left. Of course, let's not forget about all the silverware and furniture that Hillary stole like it was cheap hotel towels.

      Not even remotely true. I have work tomorrow and it's late. You're a blatant troll and I don't have time to discredit all of the obvious Clinton lies you've spouted. It should be enough to just throw out your first argument... but I'll even add a bonus link... Clinton Did not fire attorneys in the middle of their terms. Yes, all presidents fire attorneys when they begin... but only the current president hid conversations using RNC accounts and fired attorneys in the middle of their term for purely political reasons (The only attorneys fired in the middle of their terms from 1981 to 2006 were for misconduct... which was never cited as a reason for the current firings).

      Like I said, it's late and I have work. Quit trolling and read some real information.

  2. How will they enforce it? by jollyreaper · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
    1. Re:How will they enforce it? by jollyreaper · · Score: 5, Interesting

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGpWtTJmfvY

      Ah, here it is. We don't torture, never tortured, oh wait, we tortured three people. So now will we investigate? No. Fucker.

      --
      Kwisatz Haderach
      Sell the spice to CHOAM
      This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  3. Well... by martinQblank · · Score: 5, Funny

    Waterboarding shouldn't be out of the question to get the answers. Right?

  4. How do you lose email? by v(*_*)vvvv · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Well... by jwietelmann · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you believe Greg Palast, those emails aren't so lost after all. His claim is that Rove and company messed up and accidentally sent a bunch of those emails to http://georgewbush.org/ addresses instead of http://georgewbush.com/. If these emails are genuine, they detail, among other things, how Republican operatives used a practice called caging to suppress probable opposition voters.

    Of course given the nature of email, it's probably not provable that the email is genuine. And it doesn't help that Palast has a bit of a muckraker reputation. From what I've seen, he does have a bit of a bias, but I've never known him to fabricate his evidence. Personally I'm inclined to believe the emails are real, but, like I said, I'm not sure you can prove that. Unless of course they also turn up in the White House archives.

    Oh, right. Nevermind.