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Judge to Bush Admin: "You Rolled the Dice...and You Lost"
"You rolled the dice that you'd win, and you lost." That's what Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola told lawyers for the Bush administration at a hearing on Wednesday afternoon in the ongoing case over millions of missing White House emails. By this he meant that if the White House had followed the recommendations [PDF] that the judge had laid out last April—suggesting that the administration search workstations and portable media devices for the missing messages—it might not be in its current predicament. Instead, Bush officials apparently gambled that they would be able to get the case thrown out, an effort that was rebuffed in November. That bet came back to haunt the administration on Wednesday morning when, with days left before Bush officials vacate the White House, it was hit with a last-minute order (issued by Judge Henry Kennedy, who's also presiding over aspects of the case) to search workstations and collect portable memory devices containing saved emails from departing staffers.
During the status hearing before Judge Facciola, government lawyers shed some light on the scope of the missing email problem. In the past, the White House has issued contradictory statements on the subject, once even denying that any emails were missing. "We have absolutely no reason to believe that any emails are missing; there's no evidence of that," White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters last January.
But on Wednesday Justice Department lawyer Helen Hong told Facciola that, to date, the administration has recovered 14 million missing emails, at a cost of $10 million. The number of recovered messages is far higher than the original estimate (over 5 million) reported by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which, along with the National Security Archive, is suing the administration over the missing emails. It remains unclear how many messages are stll unaccounted for.
Hong told the court the Bush administration's email recovery efforts would allow it to meet its statutory obligation to transfer its email records, along with a host of other presidential documents, to the National Archives. But lawyers for CREW and the National Security Archive are skeptical. "For the past year and a half, they said, 'Don't worry, don't worry, leave us alone,'" says the National Security Archive's general counsel, Meredith Fuchs. "Now they say, at the last minute, they have solved it. I want to see the evidence."
It appears Judge Facciola would like to see the evidence, too. He issued an order [PDF] Thursday morning that, among other things, directs the White House to create an "inventory of all backup tapes and additional media they have collected or will collect" and provide copies to the National Archives and the court. In an accompanying memorandum opinion [PDF], Facciola remarks on the true urgency of the situation: "The issues that have now arisen are now confronted in true emergency conditions. As this is being written, there are two business days before the new President takes office and this case deals with the records created by the administration that is leaving office." He notes that there is a "profound societal interest" in preserving the Bush administration's email records. "They are, after all, the most fundamental and useful contemporary records of the recent history of the President's office," he writes. "If Napoleon was right when he said that he did not care who wrote France's laws if he could write its history, then the importance of preserving the e-mails cannot be exaggerated."
Photo courtesy of the White House.
Hmmm ... $0.71 per message ... who says email is free?
And if they're saying they have them, now, then that means that they never lost them ... they lied to the Court and to the Congress. Heads should roll, and because their jobs are going away, the heads should roll right into prison.
And the emails by Rove and staff on the RNC servers which are not legal for government communication? Where are they?
ivy22: Excellent question. Last February, the RNC told the House Oversight Committee--which was then investigating both the use of RNC-email addresses by administration officials and the missing White House Emails--that it was abandoning an effort to recover the messages from back-up tapes, as it had previously promised to do. Part of the RNC's argument had to do with the cost of the recovery project. Heading into the 2008 election, the GOP certainly didn't want to foot the bill. It's unclear whether a deal has been worked out since then to obtain the messages, but that's something we intend to ask the relevant parties. Check back in the coming weeks to find out what has--or hasn't--been done to locate the fabled RNC emails.
I would like to suggest a searchable list of " CONFLICTING STATEMENTS " This data base of e-mail shows any false statement made after an e-mail showing contradicting knowledge. The public should be able to visually review how many times republican operatives used deceit.
It's a general truism that stupid persons assume that other persons are stupid. The Bush-Cheney gang has always assumed that the American public is stupid.
They claimed that they accidently erased emails. How stupid is that?
We all know that even if accidently erased, data goes to the waste basket. Then one has to deliberately empty the waste basket, after which it resides without a reference heading on the hard drive. The only way to eradicate it then is to use a program like BC Wipe with DOD standards. All along the way, one is taking deliberate steps to erase the data.
They claimed that they accidently erased emails. How stupid is that?
The obvious stupidity won't conceal the criminal intention.
exposing the frauds, blackcoptermedia.com
http://PremiumForFree.com/index.php?referral=543712
Even o, sadly, nothing will ever become of it. Bush isthe biggest War Criminal of ALL time and it will all be neatly swept under the rug!
RT
www.privacy.de.tc
Accidentally deleted? That is the same as" my dog ate my homework." Didn't work then doesn't work now. The only truthful words I ever heard G W Bush utter were, "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
And I must say they were most successful.
Terrytom
But the question remains. Will anything be done with this? Probably not. The criminals will move on to their new corporate jobs and laugh about what they got away with at board meetings.
I believe when these emails are released to the public, we will understand the roles many of the key players have played in our present set of negative circumstances. I plan to keep insisting through change.org and other gov't accountability web sites that the last 8 years of Bushco be investigated. Four years can fly by in a short period of time, and although I voted for Obama this time, my vote is not set in concrete. I also plan to keep the heat on Reid, Pelosi and others to do their jobs or face losing their seats in the next election cycles.
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Talk about a Freudian slip...
HHmmm....... Wonder if this will be in Dick's memoir.... Better put lots of pictures for you know who.
The Judicial Branch of Government has no power over the Executive Branch which makes this colorful entertainment , but that's all.
When are we going to get someone in tech to have some balls to not bend over when wrong and right presents itself. It only takes one tech in the right place to undermine the whole establishment. They are NO ONE with those that provide the opportunity at power. Grow some people!
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/12/death_of_republican_computer_s.h...
Biggest war criminal of ALL time? Bush has been pretty awful but i didn't expect someone with a .de in their URL to forget about the biggest war criminals of modern times.
Let's not get too carried away with the bush-hating. (I know it's easy and fashionable)
When it comes to producing true war criminals - the Fatherland is still without peer.
Isn't it obvious that the Bush Administration is simply trying to avoid providing the courts with any incriminating evidence?
When can We, The People be assured that the government is held to the same level of accountability as we are? It sure looks like there are two sets of laws, one for the privileged and one for the rest of us.
It would be tempting to simply let the email scandal and the rest of it (Plame, torture, Iraq WMD lies, etc etc etc) go into the waste pit, but we NEED to know what happened and we NEED to prosecute where applicable.
If Obama fails to do that, he will never reconstruct faith in our legal system. At least not with ME.
-Wexler
A short list of recent American administrations that supported or waged illegal and immoral foreign wars based upon false flag attacks, secrecy, lies and media propaganda is: LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. While our representative Congress has been either complicit or ineffective, these high crimes have gone unpunished. So far, in 50 years, only one of these men was even somewhat punished, and more importantly, he was definitely not punished for the murderous terror war at the foundation of his crimes against humanity.
We must ask ourselves, where is this disastrous pattern going with the most recent addition to a lawless and murderous time line? It really does not look good for the peaceful future most Americans claim they all want. Unless these most recent and public crimes are prosecuted while the bodies can be found and the dead remembered, we should watch out for the next dot on this determinant graph of deception and self deception. With FISA, the Patriot Act and the ever growing Department of Homeland Security, a Bush III could fulfill Bush I's overt yet cryptic promise of a New World Order. The emergence of a corporate funded world police state is not at all very far fetched. Transnational corporations already largely own 'our' Congress via The Lobby, the military industrial monopoly and their legally illegal corporate campaign contributions. The Supreme Court is every bit as compromised, or worse. Just check out how quickly the TARP corporate giveaway passed.
Remember, one out of five Americans still support and admire Bush, Inc. America actively supports dozens of murderous dictatorships, democracies in name only, all around the world. All have natural and labor resources these corporations covet. By supporting and enabling Bush, Americans enforce and protect the hundreds of illegal actions and tens of thousands of deaths and the expanding immoral outcomes this administration has perpetrated on the rest of humanity. It could happen here. If we let it. If we let these men get away with these inhuman crimes again and again and again, why should others be deterred?
Hitler's Germany, Stalin's USSR and Hirohito's Japan have shown us that men can and will be 'that' evil. Whether in Poland, China or the Ukraine, some men will carefully plan and deliberately do horrible, unspeakable things to other men, women and children. Not just for power and money, but oddly enough , because they want to. It can happen again. Because, if we let it, it surely will.
100% Spot On!
J. Bridy has it exactly to the point.
When is the murderous reality going to end?
We need justice and rule of law for all ... everyone ... no exceptions what so ever! If we allow our government to keep secrets then we have no idea what our government is doing and can no longer do our parts as citizens; instead we become hapless spectators in our own government and it's affairs.
In regards to the "lost" emails. I've worked in IT over 15 years, every modern mail server has archive functions. Even tiny businesses retain all of the email traffic in this manner; for the government to do otherwise is unthinkable.
If the server archives have been erased or never made to start with ... this is proof of criminal intent from that moment. A full inquiry needs to resolve why not? Maybe we need to add more heads to the chopping block's basket.
We can not allow our country to be run in such a reckless manner ... it must stop and now is the best time to stop it. I don't want to 'look forward' for a millisecond more. We need to clean up our government and set it back tracks ... to operation by rule of law.
The facts of what was done, by whom and with who's direction all needs to be resolved and rendered into facts ... now ... and not a moment later.
This made-to-order depression is a on going effort to thwart the public's effort to bring our government back to control by the citizens. We should not take our eye from the ball ... otherwise we'll loose our own nation to corruption.
bush was always trying to
bush was always trying to hide something. no wonder there was tons of emails missing. I am so glad he is out of office.