E-mail records for fifty-eight out of eighty-eight White House officials are missing, leading to the possibility that "extensive" violations of federal law may have been committed. (Excerpt) What did the President know, and when did he know it? See: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8PRDSOO0&show_article=1
I think that this is the White House's IT Department's problem. People read emails, they delete them. That's the way it goes. Maybe the server should automatically back this stuff up.
What do you think he does, ask each member of his staff if the emails are still in their inbox? If you're qualified to work in the White House, you probably don't nee your boss hand holding you all the time.
In seven years of being President, he's never asked for an old e-mail, or at least made sure that there's a record of what's being said? I can just imagine: [Never finds it.]
No doubt some heads will roll at IT, and that will be the official story. But really, for those messages to be completely gone would require some intentional shredding. Is IT drone # 23 gonna stick to that story when facing jail time?
The tide of resignations at the old Executive Mansion or thereabouts is pretty telling. Notice how some of the younger staff are leaving. With less than two years left before the White House is rescued, there's not much attraction in taking a hit for the team. And that whole Libby thing can't be too encouraging. The words "slowly," "twisting," and "wind" are indubitably being bandied about.
i doubt places like the white house make it easy to completely erase an email - they'll maintain multiple backups for auditing reasons, and, especially after slicks days, any potential sex-orientated lawsuits... as for the difficulty in getting rid of emails, just ask M$, they had a great one the other year where in one case they were claiming certain emails had been 'accidentally' deleted, yet at the same time those very same emails were getting used in another case, which certainly made one prosecutions day when they found out
Funny how similar "accidents" happen all the time, and particularly where it's so convenient, too. Some people must be very, very accident-prone.
As I understand it, the White House is supposed to by law preserve its e-mail communications for posterity. That so many apparently have disappeared isn't the result of just "Oops, I accidentally hit delete" or "Oops, I let that old e-mail expire" but would take either heavy incompetence or deliberate scrubbing.
Posted by Gul: Oops! Sorry. (Sure glad to know he doesn't love Bush, though.) Posted by HenryHill: I'll try (despite the fact that it's so fun and convenient).
There's an entire agency devoted to archiving. Here's a sample page from its website: http://www.archives.gov/executive/research.html#know Bush also signed what appears to have been a routine Executive Order in 2001 regarding the archiving of materials that defined in meticulous detail the responsibilities of the Archivist of the United States so as to, among other things, assure the protection of Presidential privilege. Presidential records are clearly a big deal.
