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The White House Email Controversy Heats Up

The hidden scandal in the administration’s already scandalous purge of eight U.S. Attorneys is the discovery that White House officials have been regularly communicating using nongovernmental email addresses, some of them administered by the Republican National Committee. As we reported a couple weeks ago, this seems a blatant attempt to prevent emails from being archived by the White House computer system and potentially flouts the Presidential Records Act, a law enacted after Watergate to ensure that the papers of presidents and their advisor's are adequately preserved (and eventually made available to the public).

Now that congressional investigators are turning up the heat on the White House to explain this practice and Henry Waxman has asked the RNC to preserve White House communications archived on its servers, the email controversy is "creating new embarrassment and legal headaches for the White House," the Los Angeles Times reports. The paper explains that this "back-channel e-mail and paging system, paid for and maintained by the RNC, was designed to avoid charges that had vexed the Clinton White House — that federal resources were being used inappropriately for political campaign purposes."

Perhaps, but that's just one part of the story. There's evidence to suggest that White House officials aren't simply concerned with separating their political and policy duties. As U.S. News & World Report noted in a brief item in 2004, White House staffers have turned to Web-based email accounts specifically to keep their emails from entering the public record. "I don't want my E-mail made public," one White House "insider" told the magazine.

Not only did White House officials think better of using their official emails, they also instructed the lobbyists who did business with them to avoid the White House system. "...It is better to not put this stuff in writing in their email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc.," one lobbyist to wrote to Jack Abramoff in August 2003 after Abramoff accidentally pinged former Karl Rove aide Susan Ralston on her White House address. "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her rnc [Republican National Committee] pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system," Abramoff replied.

The White House is trying to play down the controversy, spinning the use of outside email addresses as an honest effort to avoid breaching the Hatch Act, which prohibits most federal employees from engaging in political activity on the job. But here’s the thing: Staffers whose salaries are paid from an appropriation for the Executive Office of the President are exempt from certain strictures of that law and are allowed to conduct political business. That is, under most circumstances, White House officials would have no need to use alternate email addresses when talking politics.

Overshadowed by the U.S. Attorney firings, the email controversy has received scant media attention. But it’s the email scandal, with its potential to pull back the curtain on the White House’s political operation and possibly unveil other scandals, that really has the GOP’s teeth chattering. According to the Times:

Some Republicans believe that the huge number of e-mails — many written hastily, with no thought that they might become public — may contain more detailed and unguarded inside information about the administration's far-flung political activities than has previously been available.

One “GOP activist,” in what seems a vast understatement, told the paper, "There is concern about what may be in these e-mails.”

Comments

None of us should be surprised at this revelation. I am not surprised. Another thing to consider, does anyone doubt that all this information gathered by the Bush administration under the guise of national security is not also going into the Republican Party computer system.

Posted by: Bob DAmico on 04/10/07 at 11:38 AM Respond

What unAmerican Bushist abuse is sufficiently abysmal to initiate their IMPEACHMENT?

Posted by: Vic Anderson on 04/10/07 at 8:00 PM Respond

As constitutionally worrisome
as the Bush/Cheney admin's
hidden actions are, isn't it
time to ask "when have they ever been on the level with
the American people?" This latest E-mail scandal can be
classied as their latest serial screw-up of the week.

Let's remember it in 2008.

Posted by: speedtospare on 04/10/07 at 8:06 PM Respond

If George W. Bush's White House is in Washington to restore civility (like GWB first told the American People) and he is honest and truthful and has absolutely NOTHING TO HIDE, than all he should do is habdover the emails to congress.

The shenanigans at Washington Post, NY Times, MSNBC. NBC, ABC, FOX, CNN, CBS, and other media outlets are worried that their employees working as PSEUDO-JOURNALISTS (& also as clandestine GOP Political Hit People) are afraid that their correspondence with White House staff on non-governmental computers will be revealed and thus they are afraid and are working hard to suppress this news.

Unfortunately, TRUTH has no place to hide. So it will come out and these shenangians are afraid of the TRUTH.

GOD BLESS THE HONEST & TRUTH TELLING PEOPLE OF AMERICA.

Honest Abe Lincoln

Posted by: Abe Lincoln on 04/10/07 at 10:12 PM Respond

What is surprising is not that this administration would do anything to hide their paper trail. What is surprising is that they would leave a paper trail at all. One would think someone who is as bright as "Kill-Them-All Karl" is supposed to be, would come up with a more clandestine way of communication than email. At the very least they could have devised some type of code that would cause an email to appear harmless if one didn't understand the code. As experienced detectives in law enforcement will tell you, often the craftiest of criminal minds eventually make the most obvious of mistakes.

Posted by: Richard Aberdeen on 04/11/07 at 11:51 AM Respond

Isn't Karl Rove's very job description and his entire raison d'etre in the White House and the administration a violation of the Hatch Act?

Posted by: matt on 04/11/07 at 4:38 PM Respond

It is much worse now.

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/17062173.htm

"WASHINGTON - The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business."

Posted by: Mike on 04/11/07 at 6:16 PM Respond

Why are we surprised? This is a "Duh!" moment. If they didn't have anything to hide, why would they be hiding it? And...the e-mail servers have the info, we can just buy it as businesses do. Another "Duh!" moment.

Posted by: james secor on 04/12/07 at 6:59 AM Respond

The house needs to subpoena the WH computers, their ISP records/computers, AND the illegal wire- and e-mail taping info scarfed up by the NSC. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the warrantless email and wiretaps contained all the WH traffic. As they say, "Hoist with their own petard."

Posted by: RememberThe9th on 04/12/07 at 12:38 PM Respond

Shades of the Nixon era. Bush and his crooked cronies have broken endless laws. They don't want any paper trail which could result in evidence against them. The desperate nature of their present whining, flailing, and stonewalling illustrates how much they have to hide. The truth will come out eventually, and when it does, the members of this criminal administration should be proscuted to the full extent of the law. If convicted, they should serve long prison terms, and their assets should be seized! As for congress' statement taking impeachment off the table. That has to change. As evidence of criminal activity is revealed, the congress is bound by law to take action to remove the culprits. To do any less would be a violation of the oath they swore to uphold the constitution.

Posted by: ChingarraSan on 04/12/07 at 4:05 PM Respond

Not "Duh!" but rather clever. Waxman's crew should best issue those subpoenas yesterday, unless the RNC be as technically incompetent as it is arrogant and power mad. Ever hear of 'data retention policy'? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence

Posted by: Xavier Dominique on 04/12/07 at 5:21 PM Respond

This Administration is a case study in the abuse of power. I can't imagine these criminals not abusing the RNC computers. Just another lid finally coming off this can of worms. The only thing more outrageous then Bush's abuse of power is Congress helping Bush out by re-writing the Constitution and legalizing his abuse of power instead of doing their job and IMPEACHING him. May you all go down by 2008, but the time is now for this President to go down.

Posted by: Davol on 04/12/07 at 5:28 PM Respond

I wonder if the folks at the RNC know just how easy it is to catch someone in a lie when the issue involves an electronic trail. Most folks have no idea how much information is left behind even when diligent efforts are made to destroy it. I used to be in the data retrieval business (in the context of litigation) and spent many an hour reconstructing fragments and uncovering hidden log files and such. I can only hope that the folks digging into this misbehavior are smart enough to know where to go looking for the evidence!

Posted by: Deacon on 04/12/07 at 5:39 PM Respond