White House whinges to judge
THE WHITE HOUSE told a federal judge late last Friday that it shouldn't be ordered to copy hard drives to preserve its zillions of missing emails because it destroys the older computers that it replaces, that emails are missing is merely speculation and doing that would be too expensive and cause it too much work and it has a bit of a headache and is going for a lie down.
US Magistrate Judge John Facciola had last week ordered the administration to show just cause why it should not be required to produce copies of computer hard drives in response to lawsuits filed by citizen watchdog groups.
In a sworn affidavit filed just before the deadline, Theresa Payton, CIO of the White House Office of Administration, may have said: "When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired... under the refresh program, the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for the forced imposition of democracy or physical destruction, whichever occurs first."
In another filing, the White House claimed that "the allegation of missing e-mail from archives is unconfirmed,... the allegation of missing e-mails from backup tapes is conjectural", and even if some older computers were still in use, finding them and copying their hard drives would "impose a significant burden."
This is just the latest development in a long saga stretching back at least five years. Harpers has a brief take on it here, noting that most of the US media is conveniently burying the story. Tenacious investigative reporter Jason Leopold goes back over much of the longer version at Online Journal, and that's here. µ
See Also
Judge
hands White House deadline on missing emails
Whitehouse
"lost" email scandal gains traction
White
House routinely destroyed emails
Bush
team deletes embarrassing emails
White
house wiped important emails
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We're afraid what disk platters were not shredded, were used as skeet clays for Vice President Chenney's shooting practice. The White House should really be commended for recycling!
If the USA exec branch put the Iraq occupation on hold for one single day, the money they would save would buy them enough computers and drives to last at least a decade.

Bush & co. are lying. They make that other Republican, Nixon, look almost like a choir boy.
What can a federal judge do, they only enforce the law. The White House follows their own agenda and follows no laws.
Does anyone have a clue as to what is meant by "Forced imposition of democracy"? Sounds like something that is more applicable to describing the current regimes policy on the Iraq. "Forced imposition of democracy or physical destruction, whichever occurs first"
Heaven forbid that anyone should impose a "significant burden" on the weary shoulders of the White House.
No really ? That's the best excuse they have ? They have imposed a VERY significant financial burden on the whole country, one which will take decades to get over, and they want to weasel out of recovering a few hard disks because it'll be a week of work for the White House IT staff ?
And what is week of worth to support democracy ? Do the current and future occupants still remember the meaning of that word ?
I agree, what a phrase that one is.

There's an upside to this series of events though - why not take the issue of spying on individuals communications, and enforce democracy there too.

You can read my e-mails (unless I've scrambled and / or erased them, or otherwise maybe have them on an old hdd someplace that it's way too much trouble to hook up to my current setup) and I can read yours. 

Of course, that my emails wouldn't be nearly as interesting as any deleted government correspondence is completely besides the issue.

It's a shame that a government meant to have been set-up to be in charge of a republic is still entirely imperial and monarchic in its thinking and execution.
than whingeing (I presume them to be the same word with different spellings... not real sure though since I've never encountered the 'g' variant)