The Obama administration, is siding with former President George W. Bush and Karl Rove, trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails.
Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush's eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama's Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration's bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.
During its first term, the Bush White House failed to install electronic record-keeping for e-mail when it switched to a new system, resulting in millions of messages that could not be found. The Bush White House discovered the problem in 2005 and rejected a proposed solution.
The steps the White House took are inadequate, one of the two groups, the National Security Archive, told a federal judge in court papers filed Friday.
"We do not know how many e-mails could be restored but have not been, because defendants have not looked," the National Security Archive said in the court papers.
"The new administration seems no more eager than the last" to deal with the issue, said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the other group that sued the EOP.
Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, noted that on his first full day in office President Barack Obama told the public that he stood for greater transparency in government.
Obama's Justice Department "apparently never got the message" from Obama, Blanton said.
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In a stunning departure from his rhetoric on Guantánamo Bay prison, President Barack Obama signaled Friday he will continue Bush Administration policy with regard to detainees held at a US airbase in Afghanistan, saying they have no right to challenge their detentions in US courts -- and denying them legal status altogether.
"This Court’s Order of January 22, 2009 invited the Government to inform the Court by February 20, 2009, whether it intends to refine its position on whether the Court has jurisdiction over habeas petitions filed by detainees held at the United States military base in Bagram, Afghanistan," Acting Assistant Obama Attorney General Michael Hertz wrote in a brief filed Friday. "Having considered the matter, the Government adheres to its previously articulated position."
The move represents a reversal from Obama's much-trumpeted announcement to close the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba in January, in which he promised to return the United States to the "moral high ground" and "restore the standards of due process"
The US Supreme Court previously ruled that it was unconstitutional to hold detainees at Guantánamo Bay without giving them access to US courts.
The Obama Administration announcement would appear to fly in the face of that US Supreme Court ruling. The Court, while often supportive of previous Bush Administration terror policies, has strongly resisted efforts to curb its role in the legal aspect of US detention systems.
Bagram prison, where approximately 600 detainees are being held without charge or even term limits on their stay, is located about 30 miles north of Kabul in a coverted Soviet Union base. The US is mulling a $60 million plan to expand the facility, which would double its current size.
It's been closed to journalists and human rights activists.
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