White House Ordered To Provide E-Mail Info

(AP)  A federal magistrate ordered the White House on Tuesday to reveal whether copies of possibly millions of missing e-mails are stored on computer backup tapes.

The order by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola comes amid an effort by the White House to scuttle two lawsuits that could force the Executive Office of the President to recover any e-mail that has disappeared from computer servers where electronic documents are automatically archived.

Two federal laws require the White House to preserve all records including e-mail.

Facciola gave the White House five business days to report whether computer backup tapes contain e-mails written between 2003 and 2005.

The time period covers the Valerie Plame affair in which at least three presidential aides were found to have leaked Plame's CIA identity to the news media.

"Do the back-ups contain the e-mails said to be missing?" Facciola asked.

In a four-page order, Facciola said he needs to know "if the missing e-mails are not on those back-ups."

Facciola noted the importance of acting quickly since e-mails that might be retrievable from individual computer workstations in the White House "are increasingly likely to be deleted or overwritten with the passage of time."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto declined comment while reviewing the magistrate's order. In the past, the White House has said there could have been some e-mails that were not automatically archived because of a technical issue.

In their lawsuits, the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington suggest the e-mails were improperly deleted from White House computer servers. Over 5 million White House e-mails are missing, CREW alleged. Recently, the group said it has been told by reliable sources that the actual figure of missing e-mail is over 10 million.

In asking that the complaints be dismissed, the Bush administration says the president's record keeping practices under the Presidential Records Act are not reviewable by the courts. Also, the Federal Records Act does not allow the far-reaching action the two private groups are demanding, the administration contends.

Two months ago, the two private groups focusing on issues of government secrecy obtained a court order directing the White House to preserve the backup tapes.

The Bush administration had offered to have the government file a sworn declaration stating that the White House is safeguarding all backup materials. Instead, Facciola recommended that the judge in the case, Henry Kennedy, issue a court order because "a declaration is not punishable by contempt. In other words, without such an order, destruction of the backup media would be without consequence." Kennedy did as Facciola suggested.

The subject of missing White House e-mail arose early in 2006 when the prosecutor in the Plame investigation, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, disclosed that not all electronic message traffic of the EOP and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney "for certain time periods in 2003" was preserved through the normal archiving process.

[sgtrds]

Shoot, are the courts even on our side?

Posted by offtheback at 12:02 PM : Jan 09, 2008

No.

[sgtrds]

The Bush/Cheney gang not only needs to be removed from office, they need to be vigorously prosecuted for treason, malfeasance, theft, election fraud and murder.

Posted by mick7744 at 04:13 AM : Jan 09, 2008

If there was any real justice in America that would be exactly what would happen. Sadly however Bush and Cheney have declared themselves to be above the law and have stacked the Supreme Court even further to enforce this new version of the Nazi justice system of the 1930''s. As it was back then we can only hope the other nations will find a way to drag them in front of an international tribunal for the punishment the so richly deserve. I for one would be proud to be the one to hand them over personally.

[offtheback]

manage and ownership are not the same words.

Yeah, manage means you get all the benefit and profit and don''t have to deal with the negatives of ownership, like taxes and liability.
That about got it?

[offtheback]

Too bad liberals don''''t have the stomach to demand from Sandy Berger what documents he stole out of the National Archives for Bill Clinton.

Must be a cover-up or something going on..

Posted by One_American

Yeah, I need to see the *** stains too. BC''s *** got him into trouble with his wife. GW''s *** earned us global distain.

[offtheback]

I can hear the conversation now "***, did you know there could be backups of those emails that accidently went missing?" "No I didn''t G W." "Well better look into it before they get here shouldn''t ya?" "Now that we know they might exist, they won''t for long Mr. Prez"

Ya dummies, you just told them where to find and destroy the rest of the evidence.
Shoot, are the courts even on our side?

[superdem]

I''d love to see these e-mails, but I bet we never do. The Republicans will see to that, one way or another. Open government is the key to democracy - the Republicans don''t believe in democracy. They want a sham state where sham elections are held to imitate a democracy, but essential information is suppressed and the outcome is never in doubt. Like in Iraq and Israel.

[hungry1968]

Those emails are not gone...they are on a server somewhere.

Posted by jh6379 at 11:19 AM : Jan 09, 2008



And Bush is trying to figure out how to delete them....

[lochlan-2009]

More contempt for the law from the white house... Never saw that coming. Any other American would have been in jail and through the system months ago. People supporting this administration are not American, they are traitors to every citizen in this countryand everything the country stands for.

[tejasdemo]

I''m holding up 3 fingers. Pick one George.

[knyghtwolf]

I can hear it now, "but I was over yonder, bein'' the tallywacker kid in mah cowboy duds, what''r e-mails", singing, "Ah am mah own grandpa". Lil'' dikkie cheney all the while plans the take down of the infamous White House Mails scandals, planting evidence all over, blaming others to take the fall, this ought to be a riot. Sort of like blending the Three Stooges comedy with Zombie movie themes.