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White House Says Hard Drives Were Destroyed
wanderindiana brings us an update on the White House missing emails mess, which we have discussed before. It seems the hard drives of many White House computers are gone beyond the possibility of recovery. Is it unusual in your experience for, say, a corporate IT department to destroy hard drives by policy? "Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005. The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed."
If they are arrested now, they can (and likely would be) pardoned.
Much better to wait a year, when a new administration is in office, and then go after the lawbreakers.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
There is a law related to the preservation of all presidential records, however, that should supercede any 'standard' policy. For more information, search for "Presidential Records Act."
This offered excuse does not hold water and should finally put an end to the question about whether or not to prosecute the executive. This is no simple 'mistake.' It was willful and intentional destruction of evidence. And let us not lose sight over what this ultimately comes down to. If you consider yourself to be a patriotic citizen of the U.S., you should be outraged and infuriated at the thousands of U.S. lives wasted at the hands on this administration brought on by an illegal and deceitfully based war. It is no trivial matter to send even a single soldier to face his or her death. And it is certainly no trivial matter when even a single person dies because this president has lied to congress and entered us into a war. Forget that this war has harmed the global economy and the U.S.'s standing in the world and all other fall-out.
If there were justice to be had, it would be in the form of "demoting" our commander-in-chief down to a foot-soldier, put a rifle in his hand and let HIM fight his damned war in person.
So at what point does the silliness of excuses stop and we start calling "destruction of evidence"?
When the next administration need something to distract the public from their own nefarious deeds.
National Security supersedes the Presidential Records Act. There was likely e-mail on those drives that could've had a massive negative effect on the President and his administration, thus it is in our national security interests to see that those records were destroyed.
Given the amount of security-sensitive or financially-sensitive documentation on the computers, OF COURSE they should be destroyed, or else wiped beyond recovery.
Read your regulations. HIPPA (medical record) regulations alone require the destruction of any data like that using national-security level tools. Either you break the drive itself, you push it through one hell of a magnetic field a certain number of times, or you use one hell of an overwriting tool that makes 16+ passes on the drive to ensure that traces of previous data are completely gone.
This is a non-story, and the only reason it's being pushed time and again is as a kludge to try to attack Bush. I'll admit there are a hell of a lot of reasons to attack Bush (the bribery and scams over illegal immigration/amnesty alone!), but this one isn't it.
Most people who want power want it for a personal reason. They believe they are right, they are better, they can do better.
Let's be honest: I look at the current administration and I'm quite sure I could do better - and I'm an anonymous troll typing this post with my dick.
I'm fairly sure that a lot of damaging info to the current administration would be found on those drives.
Privacy for ordinary citizens is a right, but our officials that WE ELECT, their job is our business and we should have the right to know what they do. If they've done nothing wrong, then why hide anything. This does not apply to citizens on ordinary, routine matters e.g. we should not have to voluntarily have our cars searched cause we're innocent.
We elect our officials - they work for us, and therefore need to have accountability.
..........FULL STOP.
The reason that this is a huge issue is that the destruction of presidential records is illegal. The Presidential Records Act mandates that all records from the President and Vice President are owned by the public, and that the President is not allowed to destroy any records without specific authorization from the Archivist of the United States stating that the records do not have any historical, informational, or evidentiary value.
There is a great desire on the part of many Americans to impeach Bush for his part in prosecuting the disastrous $2 Trillion+ debacle, the Iraq War, which is currently sinking our economy. Nixon wss easy to impeach because he left a lot of evidence in the form of tapes for his prosecution, but Bush and Cheney are not making that mistake -- they have both had very "convenient" situations where their records regarding among other things the Iraq War planning that have been "accidentally" destroyed.
If the American people were to have more evidence about White House activities, there would be many more people joining Scooter Libby in jail, and we would find out more about things like "ex" gay prostitute Jeff Gannon's entries and exits at the White House .