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White House Tape Recycling Possibly Erased Emails
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Jan 18, 2008 02:27 AM
from the gee-thats-a-shame dept.
from the gee-thats-a-shame dept.
Pojut points us to a Washington Post story which details the White House's admission that it routinely recycled backup tapes from 2001 to 2003, possibly destroying e-mail records from that time period. While the tapes are being analyzed to determine if any of the data can be recovered, the White House also indicated that some e-mail through 2005 may not have been preserved. We discussed the beginnings of this investigation a few months ago. From the Post:
"During the period in question, the Bush presidency faced some of its biggest controversies, including the Iraq war, the leak of former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson's name and the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed."
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Your Rights Online: White House Ordered to Preserve All Email 259 comments
Verunks writes "A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether e-mails have been destroyed in violation of federal law. The issue surfaced in the leak probe of administration officials who disclosed Valerie Plame's CIA identity. ' The Federal Records Act details strict standards prohibiting the destruction of government documents including electronic messages, unless first approved by the archivist of the United States. Justice Department lawyers had urged the courts to accept a proposed White House declaration promising to preserve all backup tapes. The judge's order "should stop any future destruction of e-mails, but the White House stopped archiving its e-mail in 2003 and we don't know if some backup tapes for those e-mails were already taped over before we went to court. It's a mystery," said Meredith Fuchs, a lawyer for the National Security Archive.'"
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Wait (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait (Score:5, Interesting)
This tape recycling is definitely good for someone.
Re:Wait (Score:5, Informative)
White House Tape Recycling Erased Emails
There. Fixed that for you.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by simple stupidity....except when it comes to the Bush White House.
Re:Wait (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, anybody who is involved with system administration for an organization like the White House understands the implications of not having archival backups of everything. There is zero chance that somebody did this as an economy measure. The practice of doing questionable White House business using RNC controlled email accounts indicates that people in the administration are very conscious of hiding records of what they do.
So, somebody made a policy decision to destroy archival backups, and cover their tracks by making it look like they're economizing on tapes and storage. The only question was whether that decision was meant to cover their tracks in specific instances, in which case we have obstruction of justice, or whether it was meant to cover a multitude of unspecified sins they might commit, in which case we have an intentional breaking of records retention laws.
In either case, at a minimum any person who physically took an existing backup and destroyed it by overwriting it has committed a crime. Everybody on the chain up from them who knew about it also committed a crime. The person or persons who set up the procedure committed at least one crime, and possibly multiple instances of obstruction of justice on top of that.
The only reason this is not a huge deal is that the administration is so completely and unabashedly lawless that they've convinced a lot of people^H^H^H^H^H^Hsheep that accepting this is not only normal but patriotic. It's like the Big Lie: you can't refute them because they have a ready answer to any refutation. They make everything personal. It doesn't matter how true what you say is, your saying it means you are unpatriotic. There's only one way to deal with people like this: you remove them from power. You can't talk them out of what they are doing. You can't debate them out of their positions. You have to take action, which is risky to you.
After 2006, Congress could have done something by bringing investigations to the point where impeachment would work. They didn't, and it's not going to be politically possible now. So, we have to wait out the term and sort through whatever evidence they leave behind.
Re:Wait (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but irrelevant. You're arguing that the cost of buying and storing tape media exceeds the probability that they'll contain something valuable. I'm saying (a) this is not true and (b) recycling tapes is illegal and everybody involved in this know it.
You can fit a lot of "Meeting at the Oval Office at 3:00pm" on a 400GB tape, which you can buy for about eighty bucks. If, doing incremental backups, you use one 400GB (native) tape every day, you need fewer than 3000 tapes. This is admittedly a lot of tapes, and will set you back over a quarter of a million dollars. However, those tapes would only take a tiny corner of the Presidential Library, on which maybe one or two hundred million dollars will be spent. It's not unreasonable to spend a quarter of a percent or less of that cost to ensure there is a complete record, which admittedly does contain things like meeting announcements (valuable) and invitations to lunch (maybe not valuable), but also contain things like policy debates.
Thinking of it on an IT level, you'd keep everything because (A) it's not that expensive relative to even the historical value and (B) you'd be breaking the law otherwise. You don't blow of Sarbanes-Oxley or HIPAA because it's not convenient. The law says you retain everything, and history says you retain everything. This was a deliberate crime which is only justifiable if you need to cover worse crimes.
Re:Wait (Score:5, Insightful)
It is clear when an administration destroys evidence of it's actions it is doing so to hide criminal and treasonous activities.
The person who destroyed those records should be held fully accountable, and as those records could show evidence of treasonous activities so they should be charged with treason, whether or not they testify against the person in the administration who gave orders to destroy a legal record of government activity.
You will like Grey's Law (Score:5, Funny)
I worked on this during the Clinton Administration (Score:5, Informative)
I spent 18 months working with the EOP on the security of the email system used to send out presidential press releases. The story that this happened by accident is just not credible.
First the archives, the archives were a pervasive force that was felt throughout the EOP. Every piece of paper, every tape, every scrap of information had to go to the archive. It was a whole cultural thing. And it was clearly a pre-Clinton culture. The people I was working with had been there since Reagan. They never refered to this as a Clinton mandate, it was the law.
The idea that a tape could be recycled for any purpose was a total departure from the Clinton era culture.
Second FOIA, was a constant issue.
Now we could assume that these changes were only due to the goal of 'restoring' executive power that Cheney and other Nixon era accomplices have advanced. Or it could be that they knew they had much criminality to hide.
I don't think these legal issues are going to go away after Bush leaves office. We are going to see a constant attempt to suppress government papers that implicate Bush in the criminality of his administration.
Re:Wait (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait (Score:5, Funny)
It's better that they use documents than secret prison detainees for that, I suppose.
Also revealed at the same press briefing... (Score:5, Funny)
Plausible incompetence (Score:5, Insightful)
Plausible incompetence is just as useful a smokescreen as plausible deniability.
White House statement... (Score:5, Insightful)
Luckily there's a backup (Score:5, Funny)
Implausible (Score:5, Insightful)
--
They should subpoena the NSA. Surely *they* have copies..
What's in a name? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pojut points us to a Washington Post story which details the Kremlin's admission that it routinely recycled backup tapes from 2001 to 2003, possibly destroying e-mail records from that time period. While the tapes are being analyzed to determine if any of the data can be recovered, the Kremlin also indicated that some e-mail through 2005 may not have been preserved. We discussed the beginnings of this investigation a few months ago. From the Post:
"During the period in question, the Putin administration faced some of its biggest controversies, including the Chechnya war, the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, as well as murder of former KGB officer Alexander Litvenko. Kremlin spokesman Tony "Fat Knuckles" Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed."
not-so-plausible deniability (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, they only had the means, the motive, and the opportunity. But we are supposed to believe it was all an accident. Also we are supposed to believe that years worth of email disappears for the White House and no one notices until congress asks for it. Most places I have worked as a sysadmin if everyone's old email disappeared in multi-month/year blocks my phone would be ringing within the hour.
The computer ate my homework (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation? (Score:5, Informative)
Chill dude.
Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Many companies (like Microsoft) are trying to keep email useful by making it company policy that email is not preserved.
Once you have something that could be preserved... the temptation is powerful to require people to preserve it, and thereby stifle it's use.
Imagine what will happen once all phone conversations could be preserved. With all calls going over VOIP systems on computers, it's only a matter of time before it happens.
Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation? (Score:5, Interesting)
These emails are of evidentiary value, and therefore should have been preserved. Destruction of these records is a federal crime. Not only is it obviously a violation of the PRA, but there is strong evidence that this is destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice. Furthermore, things like this don't happen by rouge low level staffers. Decisions to destroy vital records comes from the highest levels.
People go to jail for these crimes all the time. Will these people? Hell know, the dems are too spineless to actually bring indictments and begin impeachment proceedings, and so everyone will get off scott free.
As the saying goes [blogspot.com], "In a democracy, you get the government you deserve."
Re:Is it possible to have a private conversation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How convenient (Score:5, Insightful)
A mobster is on trial for multiple murders. The prosecutor, frustrated he may lose the case because of the ease with which the mobster and his associates lie under oath, finally tries to threaten him on witness stand:
DA (sternly): "Sir, are you aware of the penalty for perjury in this state?"
Mobster (smugly): "It's less than the penalty for murder, isn't it?"
Too bad for us there won't even be a penalty for perjury.
Stay tuned for another exciting episode of Presidential Idol! Who will be eliminated this week? Call in and vote for your favorite!"
STFU (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Before you complain ... (Score:5, Insightful)