Another day, another revelation of blatant obstruction of justice by the Bush administration. The White House admitted yesterday that they had destroyed email tapes that including the period of March to October, 2003. This is the time period related to the leak of a CIA operative's name to the press. According to the White House, they lost the originals and recycled the backups from this critical period. The announcement came minutes before a court-ordered deadline for turning over the information. Oops.
The story, covered by the AP, is pure Bush audacity. Here is the gist of the disclosure:
Among the e-mails that could be lost are messages swapped by any White House officials involved in discussions about leaking the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Before October 2003, the White House recycled its backup tapes "consistent with industry best practices," according to a sworn statement by a White House aide.
Backup tapes are the last line of defense for saving electronic records.
Separately, the statement reveals the extent to which the White House is apparently unable to answer how many e-mails are missing from White House servers.
Immediately, the White House giggled and said it was just following industy best-practices.
Before October 2003, the White House recycled its backup tapes "consistent with industry best practices," according to a sworn statement by a White House aide.
[snip]
White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that "there is no basis to say that the White House has destroyed any evidence or engaged in any misconduct."
[snip]
"Of course the disaster recovery backup tapes were, at one time, recycled," said Fratto. "However, since October 2003, the Office of Administration has retained and preserved its disaster recovery tapes. The disaster recovery system is set up to regularly back up everything on the network for the Executive Office of the president at the time of each backup."
What an amazing coincidence. They started preserving records immediately after the period they were required to provide to the court.
It appears that the White House has now destroyed the evidence of its misconduct," said Anne Weismann, the chief counsel for CREW, the other private group that sued.
"The White House declaration raises more questions than it answers, specifically the likelihood that for a very significant period of time — March 2003 to October 2003 — the White House recycled its backup tapes," said Weismann.
"As a result there may be no way to recover the missing e-mails from a period in which the U.S. decided to go to war with Iraq, White House officials leaked the identity of Valerie Plame and the Justice Department started a criminal investigation of the White House," the lawyer said.
The Washington Post story describes the period of destroyed emails as from January of 2001 to October of 2003.
From 2001 to October 2003, the White House's practice was to use the same backup tape each day to copy new as well as old e-mails, he said, making it possible that some of those e-mails could still be recovered even from a tape that was repeatedly overwritten. "We are continuing to analyze our systems," Fratto said last night.
How unbelievably convenient. All those email records pertaining to Plame, the run-up to the Iraq war, approval of torture, and electronic warrantless wiretapping in violation of the FISA law are now missing. Well, it is a good thing Pelosi took impeachment off the table. Imagine the embarassment at the White House in trying to explain a 32-month gap in records. Poor Rosemary Woods. She caught so much flak for erasing 18 minutes.
One other interesting tidbit from the Post article.
Since the controversy arose, the White House has acknowledged that some of its e-mails may be missing but that it is unsure how many because officials are still investigating possible "anomalies" in the records. Payton said in her affidavit that the recycling of backup tapes was "consistent with industry best practices related to tape media management."
Payton, who said she oversees the computer system relied on by 3,000 "users and customers" in the presidential and vice presidential offices, said the backup tape system was created to preserve records in case of a disaster. She did not cite any other federal agencies subject to records preservation requirements that routinely recycle such tapes.
So an industry "best practice" of destroying backups was only used in the Bush White House, but no other federal office required to preserve records. It is enough to make my tinfoil hat twitch and smoke.