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22 Million Missing Bush White House Emails Found
ctmurray writes "Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush, and the Obama administration is searching for dozens more days' worth of potentially lost e-mail from the Bush years, according to two groups that had filed a lawsuit — which has now been dropped — over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record-keeping system. Earlier we discussed the Obama White House's opposition to the lawsuit that led to this discovery." The related links reflect our discussions about the missing emails over two years.
The tapes were all turned over to the National Archives, the existence of them has been known for over two years. It was just a matter of sorting through the sixty thousand or so to find the backups mentioned in the article. It doesn't appear any attempt was ever made to hide or destroy anything, just sloppy record-keeping. Will be interesting to see if anything significant is found, but I predict the conspiracy theorists are going to be very disappointed.
There are approx. 1,700 White House staff. This is not counting OEOB staff that works across the street or other Executive branch personnel that most likely would have there email grouped with the White House archives.
If you use your figures (approx. 7,500 emails per day) then with just the White House staff that is about 4.5 emails per person per day that were lost.
Now my understanding is that these emails were "lost" in only a couple years and not over the whole 8 years so the above figures would be a higher per person per day count than that. I do think you will agree that 5 emails per day is relatively easy to write/receive/edit/delete or what ever else you want to do.
Having said all that, I think that most likely issue here is that the IT staff were incompetent and didn't know A) where the emails were being stored, B) how to access them.
what exactly is the fucking point over a lawsuit to prove that one of the most secretive components of our Government actually saved data that is very well likely to be CLASSIFIED to begin with? Did these groups or the lawyers actually think they were going to be allowed to see the "hard evidence" of this? Give me a fucking break.
Your post, sir/ma'am, is full of fail.
If we were talking about e-mails on a classified network, then the data would be gone. The process for cleaning a hard drive of classified information is to randomly overwrite the HDD with random bits no fewer than five times ... and then degauss the son of a bitch.
Now, if we were talking about classified information on an unclassified system, that's practically a cyber-oil spill, and I imagine the press would have been all over it.
So, no. We're talking about information that's maybe For Official Use Only or Law Enforcement Sensitive. And the more of it the American public gets to see, the better.
Actually, the latest procedures do not allow for formatting and degaussing anymore, it must be destroyed. Furthermore, I was also referring to FOUO classified levels as well, which it is very well likely that we will not be privy to for another couple of decades, which by then, another 2 or 3 Administrations from now will make the Bush era look golden by comparison...IF our economy and the dollar last that long.
> If you talking about the Valerie Plame thing, it turns out that there was
> no cover up because it wasn't the administration that leaked the name.
> Remember Dick Armitage
Remember that Patrick Fitzgerald said he could not complete his investigation because of the conspiracy to obstruct justice, and that there was "a cloud over the Office of the Vice-President"? Remember that Novak testified that Armitage leaked the information to him, but that in no way proved that Armitage was the only person who leaked information, or even that Armitage was the first to leak? Remember the notes in Libby's handwriting on the typed minutes of his meetings with Cheney?
sPh
Clinton's Administration didn't seem to have a problem with archiving e-mails
... and our current Attorney General was right there helping. If you really think that the people running Clinton's administration were fresh as daisies and ethical, you're ... wrong.
Yeah, but they did have problems with "missing" legal billing records, sought after by special prosecutors for years, turning up on a table in the private residence in the White House after they'd been given up on. Gosh, how mysterious. They did have a problem with raking in cash from fugitives and felons, and then issuing them pardons in the last minutes of Clinton's presidency
I humbly disagree. Furthermore, I can actually provide a little evidence to contradict you. Check out Slashdot's Hall of Fame. 9 out of the 10 top stories all occurred in 2005 or earlier.
http://research.csc.ncsu.edu/efg/ethics/papers/ASEE02.pdf
(There is much more information on it, if you get off your couch and look for it...)
Two failed wars, a terrorist attack, the failure to capture, prosecute and imprison most of the culprits involved (far more were in the planning than were on the planes), Abu Ghraib, Guantanomo Bay, USA-PATRIOT Act, yeah, he did such a FINE JOB THERE BUDDY, NO ONE WILL EVER LOOK BACK AND CALL THAT PRESIDENT A BUFFOON, NOSIRREEBOB! /sarcasm
For your reading pleasure, http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/broken_government/articles/full_list/
Recommended to me by several of the 98% of historians who view Bush's presidency as a complete and utter failure.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.