WASHINGTON, March 22, 2008
White House: Old Computers Were Destroyed
Admin. Tells Judge Seeking Missing E-Mail Data That Hard Drives Were Removed For Physical Destruction
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(AP/CBS)
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Interactive The Leak People and events surrounding the leak of a CIA officer's name.
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.
"When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction," the Office of Administration's Chief Information Officer, Theresa Payton, said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola.
It has been the goal of a White House Office of Administration "refresh program" to replace one-third of its workstations every year in the Executive Office of the President, according to the declaration.
Some, but not necessarily all, of the data on old hard drives is moved to new computer hard drives, the declaration added.
In proposing an e-mail recovery plan Tuesday, Facciola expressed concern that a large volume of electronic messages may be missing from White House computer servers, as two private groups that are suing the White House allege.
Facciola proposed the drastic approach of going to individual workstations of White House computer users after the White House disclosed in January that it recycled its computer backup tapes before October 2003. Recycling - taping over existing data - raises the possibility that any missing e-mails may not be recoverable.
At a House committee hearing last month, a computer expert who previously worked at the White House called the e-mail system "primitive" and said it was set up in a way that created a high risk that data would be lost from White House servers where it was being archived.
Under pressure to provide details about its computer system, the White House told the congressional committee that it never completed work that began in 2003 on a planned records management and e-mail archiving system. The White House canceled the project in late 2006 and says it is still working on a new version.
In the absence of a permanent archiving system, the White House has been archiving e-mails on White House servers since early in the administration.
The White House says it does not know if any e-mails are missing, but is looking into the matter.
It would be costly and time-consuming for the White House to institute an e-mail retrieval program that entails pulling data off each individual workstation, the court papers filed Friday state.
The White House said the judge's request that forensic copies of hard drives in use during the period of March to October 2003 be made, with the goal of finding any existing e-mail data, would be "draconian" as it would require expensive and time-consuming steps that would need to be outsourced to a third party.
The government said that CREW and the National Security Archives, the plaintiffs in the case, "simply can't justify" that the Office of the Chief Information Officer and the EOP
"incur significant time and resource expense on the mere possibility (however unlikely) that some useful material may be restored. Because the allegation of missing e-mail from archives is unconfirmed, because the allegation of missing e-mails from back-up tapes is conjectural, and because the computer workstations are unlikely to house significant, if any, relevant material the costs of a forensic copy process would far outweigh any speculative benefits."
Read the White House's response. Read Theresa Payton's affadavit. © MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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See all 117 CommentsSend all the above comments to Nancy Pelosi at AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov and tell her you want them all impeached and for her to PLEASE start it NOW! This should be the last straw!
How fvcking convenient.
Again.
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Posted by cbsblogger at 10:11 PM : Mar 22, 2008
+ report abuse
You don''t think the chances of getting anything through the Senate was next to impossible had anything to do with it? That''s pretty insulting!
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Posted by singingrick
I disagree.
Nixion was a saint compared to bush/chaney.
This administration is the most corupt of all time.
So shut your spin-doctor pie-hole.
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Posted by TheGateway1 at 10:37 PM : Mar 22, 2008
+ report abuse
ROFLMAO You are a very testy FASCIST my friend. Well you can run but you can''t hide and the American Public hasn''t heard near the end of your Fuhrer''s trash. NOT CLOSE. If there''s one thing you can count on with a Nazi, it''s that when they are close to being out of power, when someone has punched the bully in the nose, all those who have been bullied, who have been trashed, start crawling out of the cracks. No my bootlicking friend the fall for you has JUST started. The longer you wait to accept that the longer the fall and the harder the impact. You can try to appear superior to me all you want, the PUBLIC will make the final decision I guess. Sieg Heil Bush. Come on you pathetic Nazi... sing it out so the fuhrer can hear you!! SIEG HIEL BUSH! Good little bootlicker.
Now I can see that they''ve gotten away with this type of *** is that we''re all waiting for the deluge of Post-Administration books that will proliferate once Bush/Cheney leaves and the semblance of truth will eek out, entertaining us for decades. But don''t we already know the truth? What will Myers and Card and Gonzales and the rest of the gang tell us that will be new. Hell, Libby will right about things National in scope and secure in nature to finish paying for his law license to be re-enstated in a year or two.
You know...I think we''re gonna miss these times in some sad way.
You get a clue. It is called the Presidential Records Act, and by law the White House was supposed to be archiving all their official emails (not destroying hard drives). This just proves again how completely lawless and comtemptuous the Bush criminals are toward the american people. They should be impeached and then tried for treason.
Posted by enoughya at 12:06 AM : Mar 23, 2008
And to compound it - the WH may have been using RNC computers to conduct government business. Using a RNC computer for emails would not be backed up by the government system and make it harder to track. It also violates a number of laws.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/002998.php
If the Bu$h administration has nothing to hide, why do they hide or destroy everything?
This is the most lawless administration since Nixon.
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