Re: Obama's Email Problem
Two watchdog groups want answers on how millions of Bush-era messages vanished—and they're losing patience with the White House.
An old problem is back in Barack Obama's inbox: What to do about millions of missing Bush-era emails?
In March, two Washington watchdog groups agreed to suspend a lawsuit against the White House—a case the Obama administration inherited from its predecessor—that aimed to force the government to recover the emails and modernize its archiving of electronic documents. At the time, the Obama administration had indicated it was willing to work toward a settlement. But months have passed with little progress and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the National Security Archive now say they are beginning to lose patience with the White House and are considering reviving the case. At stake are records that could shed light on controversies including the lead-up to the Iraq War and the leaking of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity.
"It's very frustrating," says Anne Weismann, CREW's chief counsel. "Here we are, nine-plus months after [Obama's inauguration], and we're really not any closer to feeling the missing emails have been restored. It's kind of nutty to me that it's taken them so many months."
Among the plaintiffs' biggest gripes is that the Obama team is using the Bush administration's strategy—a flawed one, the groups say—to resurrect the missing emails. The White House has hired private contractors to conduct a statistical analysis of its archived email to determine on which days messages are unaccounted for. But that's not standard private-sector practice in these sorts of cases, says Weismann. It's far more common for businesses that have lost emails to restore their backup tapes and compare those results with their archives, she says.
The Bush and Obama administrations have already spent at least $9.4 million on this effort—$4.2 million more than was originally appropriated—and the watchdog groups are worried that the White House will run out of money for the job before tangible progress is made.
Where has the $9.4 million gone? The plaintiffs don't know enough to say for sure. The Bush administration said it had 38 boxes of documents that were potentially responsive to CREW's Freedom of Information Act request for information about how the emails were lost and what the White House has done to look for them. But the Obama administration has released only a fraction of the documents. That's not enough, says Meredith Fuchs, the National Security Archive's general counsel. "White House personnel have alluded to, but not fully explained from a technical perspective, how the emails went missing and were mislabeled during the Bush administration," she says. "Because they have all the information, it's really hard for us to say whether we think this is going to be resolved at all."
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
"My organization has sued every president since Reagan" over electronic record keeping, but the problem still isn't fixed, Fuchs says. "We don't want to be suing the Obama administration, but we want to know the problem is solved."
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not as easy as it sounds
Who is to say whether or not the current administration is dragging its feet on this issue. However, I do backup and recovery for a living. I know how incredibly HARD it can be to recover lost data - especially if the system is antiquated and/or was not properely configured or maintained. Anyone who thinks that just because you have a backup system you can recover from it is naive. I'm more inclined to believe that the Obama administration was left with a crappy system that was poorly documented.
Obama's Email Problem
@tracy:
and they seem quite satisfied with a F***ked-up system that will allow them to keep alive the Bush cult of illegal conduct and secrets keeping!
The Perfect Presidency
The failings of our government must be kept secret to support the principle of presidential infallibility advanced by corporate shill historians and MSM hate merchants. This corruption of executive branch communications is done to further the establishment of a sort of papal form of presidency, where His Holiness, the President, is both installed and informed by the astral powers and is most certainly never wrong about anything, ever. It’s the kind of authoritarian lunacy longed for by the weak-minded. You know, Republicans.
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not fair
My first career was in IT (at very high levels, published materials, research, etc.). A skilled and empowered individual can make retrieval of information nearly impossible. I don't think it is fair to characterize Obama's administration with foot draggin when it is extremely likely that there is another, and much worse, explaination.
I heard someone in DC
I heard someone in DC talking one night about how he was hired to erase emails--this was mentioned about two years ago. They hired people to do this work. Find them!
More Important Things
Maybe the emails have not been the number one priority on the White House to-do-list. Things like the economy, unemployment, war, a nuclear Iran, health care, and other minor problems have had a higher priority. I think the emails is an important issue, but definitely not the number one priority. Maybe we just need to wait a little longer for the issue to be resolved.
mom and pop
because our government is too busy? this isn't a mom and pop operation, this is the richest nation in the world! yes, they most certainly are dragging their feet. let's create some jobs which will also help the unemployment stats.
Torn on this issue...
I just wonder, in the information age, if it's such a hot idea to essentially be broadcasting every sordid detail of the inner workings of our government for the entire world to read. Maybe Obama will buy some carrier pigeons, or something...of course, there'll be someone outside with a bow and arrow 5 minutes later...LOL
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Obama's Email Problem
Why would CREW and the National Security Archive suspend their lawsuits? Especially after seeing the Obama administration's continuation of Bush policies across a broad spectrum of issues.
The pressure of the lawsuit is the only action that moves any administration to cooperate.
Suspending litigation makes CREW and the National Security Archive look more interested in self-promotion than getting to the bottom of criminal wrongdoing. There's been a complete breakdown of our democratic government, with no accountability to the people, and now we have to add to that the groups we used to count on to keep the system honest.
Who's watching the watchdog groups?
Obama's Email problem
I think a former President's e-mails should be kept secret and removed when they are out of office. They still need secret service protection when they are out of office, their emails need to be protected too. They could get into the wrong hands.
Obama's Email problem
Nikki,
You may think that, but white house e-mails are public business and public record, i.e. they belong to the public. That's why it is illegal to fail to keep copies of them or to destroy them. Right now they are not even available to the National Archives. If anything needs to be restricted for security reasons that is a separate question. Names or other specifics can be redacted. However I doubt if that would apply to any of these e-mails. The main point is, within these e-mails is, almost certainly, evidence related to matters under criminal investigation.
