Judge hands White House deadline on missing emails
19 Mar 2008 | 16:24 GMT
Cough 'em up, George
THE WHITE HOUSE was ordered by a federal judge yesterday to show just cause within three days why it should not be required to produce to the court forensic copies of all its data storage media used by any employee between March 2003 and October 2005.
Public interest groups sued to obtain White House emails from that period but the Bush administration claims it "lost" all those emails and can't recover them.
In 2002 the Bush administration dismantled the Lotus Notes based Automatic Records Management System that the Clinton administration had installed in 1994. Between 2002 and 2004, the White House migrated to an email system based on Microsoft Exchange, according to testimony last month before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee by Theresa Payton, CIO for the White House Office of Administration. She testified that the Lotus Notes based email archiving system did not work properly with Microsoft Exchange.
We can almost see Karl Rove slapping his forehead and laughing, "Who knew?"
Consequently, potentially millions of White House emails generated just before and after the start of the Iraq war, as well as during the period when covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's cover was blown, have been discovered as missing.
The Bush administration has offered varying and conflicting stories about the "lost" White House e-mails. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said last April, "I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential 5 million e-mails lost."
Two citizens watchdog groups, the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, are pursuing a federal lawsuit against the administration to force disclosure of the missing e-mails and installation of effective email archiving at the White House.
Yesterday's ruling by US Magistrate Judge John Facciola gives the White House three days to "show cause in writing ... why it should not be ordered to create and preserve a forensic copy of any media that has been used or is being used by any former or current employee who was employed at any time between March 2003 and October 2005."
A "forensic copy" means an exact duplicate of a physical data storage device.
The White House has until the close of business on this Friday, March 21st to respond to the judge's order. µ
L'Inq
InformationWeek
© 2007 Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 2007