Last night, in a midnight filing, the Bush adminstration admitted that it did not properly archive emails. But, that's not all --- they also admit to taping over the back-up tapes containing the email records. [...]
So, there was a system in place to archive emails, and the Bush administration simply stopped using it. Is there really any doubt that this is deliberately criminal activity? Those emails contain the details of the invasion of Iraq, the outing of Valerie Plame and the endangerement of our vital intelligence network, and the scheme to fire competent US Attorneys who refused to do their dirty work. [...]
And what about all of those RNC accounts the Bush officials were using? Remember those other "missing" emails? By Dana Perino's own admission there were at least 5 million missing.
outrage fatigue
White House Missing Emails Were "Recycled"
Tags: big brother, computers, conspiracies, doomed
Current Music: Killing Joke -- Loose Cannon ♬
14 Responses:
But they were recycled! That's ecologically conscious, right?
So this may just be to balance out the President suspending environmental law for the Navy.
This should make front-page news, as it's the largest recycling effort ever lead by a Republican administration. Bush should do so well with his old beer bottles.
I think Mr. Bush should also be commended for his reuse of parts of old sayings to create entirely new ones (albeit occasionally lacking somewhat in coherency; such is the cost of being green!)
"The recycling of backup tapes by the Bush White House represents a reversal in policy from the final year of the Clinton administration. The Clinton White House halted recycling of backup tapes in March 2000, when it was discovered that some e-mail from the office of Vice President Al Gore was not preserved." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22685861/
So its not that outrageous. This makes it sounds like it was WH policy to recycle the tapes up until 2000. The Bush WH just decided that was a good idea and went back to that procedure. Sure, it may have been convenient as well to lose all that correspondence. The fact that this was WH policy for the last however many administrations is perhaps an outrage. But you're gonna kill yourself getting upset over all these people's abuses.
Really, the key thing is that they dismantled the email archiving system - intentionally and with no replacement. And that was a separate action. The tapes were more or less the backup, and an incomplete backup at that.
"Well, our predecessors used to do X, which in retrospect was either dumb or evil depending on their motivations. Then they decided to be less dumb/evil and stop doing X. Then we came along and decided, what the heck, let's just go back to doing X, which, c'mon, lots of people did before us. So no problem, right?"
But every fucking new item about their greedy lying-ass horseshit and incompetence makes me fantasize ever more that they'll all be gunned down in a massive attack by decorated angry black Iraq veteran Christian 18 year old amputees.
Not to illustrate the subject line or anything.
Doesn't 5 million seem like a lot? I know they're busy with all their scheming, but how many people can there be in the White House?
Also, how many of them are Cheney replying with "first", "lol"s from Rice, "ORLY?" from Rove, and Bush's lolcat of the day?
Must be fundraising list posts; the 5 million figure was for off-site RNC serves where campaign mail is allowed.
Jeez... it was so much more fun thinking about the _next_ administration and whether or not Obama is a crack head, Clinton hates MLK, Edwards's cash ties to Humana affects his policy...
Actually, a little good old fashioned Bush-hate is a pleasant respite from the primaries: it seems any of these new jokers has got to be better than what we've put up with for the last 7 years
it seems any of these new jokers has got to be better than what we've put up with for the last 7 years
This is why I was convinced Guiliani was going to be our next president, he's the only one I can imagine being worse. Of course, it's starting to look like Huckabee isn't a complete laughing stock.
Bush and Cheney have both been corporate CEOs, and as every corporate attorney will tell you (and as we learned the hard way at Netscape), email should never be archived indefinitely. You can't be compelled to comply with a subpoena for something you no longer have.
Should the government be run like a corporation? Of course not. But a lot of wrong-thinking people think it should be. This is a great example of why they are wrong.
CxO level folks (in my experience, anyway) never read or write email; everything is done in a "hands-on" manner with conversation instead, so there's no record of their shady behaviour.
No, I'm not bitter about anything.
I sort of think the press should start asking questions like "If you didn't do [horrible thing] why did you delete the emails that would have exponerated you?"