Well I don't know who this would surprise anymore, but still probably worthy of discussion whether you the act was one of incompetence, deliberate, or just a perfectly understandable mistake. Apparently for some unknown reason the policy of actually keeping copies of email communication from a Presidency was changed when President Bush came into office. In reply to:
Accident or change in policy ? Probably neither. If these emails and backups were deliberately deleted, Theresa Payton's (complete) statement reveals that the date when the deletion occurred was no later than October 2003. This corresponds to the exact time when the DOJ started investigating the Plame leak. .
In a letter to Libby's defense attorneys who were demanding more information from the prosecution, Patrick Fitzgerald revealed he was aware of this email archiving 'problem' and hinted at it in an attached exhibit: "In an abundance of caution, we advise you that we have learned that not all e-mail of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system." .
I'd much rather have a President covering up and lying about sleeping with some intern than lying about Constitutional infractions, broken laws, and breeches of national security. We didn't know how good we had it when all we were concerned about was a cigar....
This administration (and supporters) has come along way from their outrage & rancor regarding missing "W" keys on computer keyboards to their blasé attitude about missing/covered up/destroyed files.
In this, the Information Age, we are facing serious problems of What to keep and How to keep it. We can keep more information than ever, but it's also easier than ever to destroy, virtually (pun?) without trace, inconvenient information. While I have little doubt that this particular administration is one of the most venal, dishonest, and corrupt in our nation's history, this is actually a systemic problem rather than a specifically Bushco problem. Bushco is merely the poster child for all of the ways that a government can go wrong. But, make no mistake, the temptation will be there for subsequent presidents and their minions to carry on in the Bushco tradition. How EXACTLY is an administration to be credibly prevented from doing this? What sanctions can be implemented, and how are they to be enforced? And WHO does the enforcing? We will see much more of this in the future, or, most probably, we WON'T see it when it is done most of the time. Electronic documents aren't REAL the way printed documents are. Our technology is double-edged. In addition to its clear benefits, it has created completely new and ingenious ways for our government to screw us over.
FWIW... Once you wade through alll the Bush is the Devil hits on Google, you can find things like this, which point out that tape recycling IS a standard practice...(search for recycle - it's a long white paper)...
Yes, recycling media is a standard practice. No, media recycling, particularly in the FOIA government, isn't some careless process that can be initiated on a whim. If you're arguing human error as the cause with an Oracle white paper as your support, you've got a long way to go toward explaining just how this convenient accident just happened without any authorization information being left behind.
The only comment I'm making here is that their assertion that they recycled tapes up until Oct 2003 is plausible. That has been questioned...
While the White House is supposed to preserve all of its documents that pertain to official business including records of communication using officials lines such as the White House email and phone system, it's one thing to lose something in some kind of mistake and another to intentionally delete records that by law have to be preserved. If they are destroyed as a result of an investigation, that would be another different kind of lawbreaking. Still another legal problem arises when records of official business conducted by the White House are not destroyed, but rather were 'never created' because of on the job deals being organized using 'non-official lines of communication' such as email accounts stored on RNC servers. Take this example from an ongoing Congressional investigation:
Also, the previous admin only stopped recycling tapes in 2000, so for the first 7 years of that admin, they were not preserved. I'm not using that to damn the previous admin, but rather to show that, even with the FOAI, it's not unheard of to recycle the tapes...
and all the while when the day is done, all the pubs and dems are hanging out at cocktail parties laughing at all the internet conspiracy theorists.
Ag-with-kids: I've always liked your posts, though we often disagree, but you are verging on becoming an apologist.
