Waxman Challenges White House E-Mail Claim
House Committee Chair Says Administration Assertions Conflict With Earlier Statements
A White House chart indicates no e-mail was archived on 473 days for various units of the Executive Office of the President, a House committee chairman says.Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., says a White House spokesman’s comments suggesting no e-mail had disappeared conflicted with what congressional staffers were told in September.
On Thursday night, Waxman said he was scheduling a hearing for Feb. 15 and challenged the White House to explain spokesman Tony Fratto’s remark that “we have absolutely no reason to believe that any e-mails are missing.”
Fratto based his comment on the contents of a White House declaration filed in federal court casting doubt on the accuracy of a chart created by a former White House employee that points to a large volume of e-mail gone from White House servers.
The brief description of the chart in the sworn declaration appears to match Waxman’s description of what White House officials showed his staff at a Sept. 19 briefing.
There are 16 days of no archived e-mails from Sept. 12, 2003, to May 23, 2005, for the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to Waxman’s letter announcing the hearing. There are a dozen days of no archived e-mails for the White House Office inside the EOP, starting Dec. 17, 2003, and ending on Feb. 8, 2004, Waxman’s letter added.
Waxman said the White House officials took the chart on which the information is based with them, while indicating the White House was doing an additional analysis to determine whether the information in the chart was accurate.
Asked to testify are White House Counsel Fred Fielding; Alan Swendiman, director of the White House Office of Administration, and Allen Weinstein, archivist of the United States.
Waxman called the hearing after Fratto tried to tamp down the growing e-mail controversy.
Fratto’s comments shifted away from White House statements last spring that expressed uncertainty over whether the allegations were true or not.
“We tried to reconstruct some of the work” in the chart and “could not authenticate the correctness of the data,” said Fratto. “We have no evidence and we have no way of showing that any e-mail at all are missing.”
The existence of the chart surfaced Tuesday night in the White House declaration filed in lawsuits brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the private National Security Archive.
The declaration, which the White House was forced to file pursuant to court order, disclosed that before October 2003, the White House recycled computer backup tapes containing e-mail. Such a process would overwrite large numbers of e-mails. The White House said it began preserving backup tapes in October 2003, but recycled them before then.
If the chart of e-mail missing from archives turns out to be accurate, the backup tapes should contain substantially all e-mails sent or received in the 2003-2005 time period, the White House court declaration said.
“We have no reason to believe that there is any data missing at all” from White House computer servers, said Fratto. “And we’ve certainly found no evidence of any data missing.”
The court declaration said the White House was undertaking an independent assessment of a chart to determine whether any e-mail is missing.
The White House’s latest statements represent a shift from what it was saying last spring when it seemed uncertain whether e-mail was missing from the archives or not. The latest statements also represent a shift from what the White House apparently told prosecutors over two years ago in the probe into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name.
In January 2006, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald reported that “we have learned that not all e-mail of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.”
The White House says the e-mail matter arose in October 2005 in connection with the Justice Department’s CIA leak probe. Fitzgerald revealed it to the public three months later in preparations for the trial of Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was later convicted of four felonies in the Plame affair. President Bush commuted Libby’s 30-month prison term.
© 2008 Associated Press
The impeachments hearing will begin on the day before the present administration leaves office. Until than the stone-walling of the Cheney/Bush administration will go on. The congress will allow it and the present Republicans will flock to their masters like the sheep they are.
Depends on what the definition of disappeared is.
What a con game.
Impeach Cheney.
Do you really think people who are capable of stealing two elections are somehow incapable of cleaning up their email? It’s gone!
Agreed: Impeach both now and prevent the incipient pardon-fest.
White House recycles backup tapes and loses millions of e-mails:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-news/?p=1915
Impeachment is the way to find what truth is left. Would help Democrats too. Why won’t they impeach?
In Democratic terms, truth has a sell-by date and they’re not willing to pay for soiled goods.
Could it be that Dems know that if they impeach the corporate administration, corporations and Banks have threatened to REALLY ruin the country.
meanwhile…
more evidence is being destroyed RIGHT NOW.
but feb 15 sounds reasonable.
/sheesh
“If the e-mails were not saved, the White House might have violated two laws requiring preservation of documents that fall into the categories of federal records or presidential records.”
ahem….
make that two MORE laws
torture is a family value.
1.2 million dead iraqis is pro-life
no health care for OUR children is compassionate.
$3 billion per week in an unwinnable war is conservative.
vote democrat
It reminds me of those 17 minutes of blank tape…
It looks like someone hit him in the face with a skillet.
As long as there is resistance to impeachment, all of congress continues to look dirty. When are we going to clean house?
Let’s boot them all out and vote for independent or Green candidates in the next election. Being a member of the current congress - unless you are currently supporting impeachment - should be cause for removal in the next election. Dirty people can’t be expected to clean up their own houses.
No, the emails can be recovered, at least partially. Unless they destroyed the hard disks or did low level formatting. Remember that Germany was able to piece together hard drives that were blown up in the 9/11 demolitions of the World Trade Center. They found out who generated the PUT options.
It seems as if all of congress is being held hostage by this administration.
“President” should be replaced by “King for A Day”. This is intolerable in a first world nation of democratic citizens.
It is rare thing in this day and age. I am a constituent of Henry Waxman & I damn proud of my Congressman! How many Americans can say that these days?
the white house actions in this matter are a form of violence, naked, arrogant violence.
We thought Nixon was a crook, but these guys take the cake!
If someone made the decision to overwrite those tapes, then someone should go to prison because its clearly a violation of the law. Period.
“The White House’s latest statements represent a shift from what it was saying last spring when it seemed uncertain whether e-mail was missing from the archives or not. The latest statements also represent a shift from what the White House apparently told prosecutors over two years ago in the probe into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name.”
“According to Pete Yost’s article from the Associated Press, regarding the ‘millions of missing emails’: “The Bush administration had offered to have the government file a sworn declaration stating that the White House is safeguarding all backup materials. Instead, Facciola recommended that the judge in the case, Henry Kennedy, issue a court order because “a declaration is not punishable by contempt. In other words, without such an order, destruction of the backup media would be without consequence.” Kennedy did as Facciola suggested.”
It’s interesting how statements “shift” once a “court order” is issued.
The challenge will remain just a challenge, as usual. Vote independent or Green
Let’s apply the competence test of spying on Americans by the White House and its friends to this case. Now, let’s see — they generally procure (without permission) the e-mail records of questionable Americans as a means of arresting or disappearing people in the United States. They say this underhanded procurement is a good process for case building reslting in people being brought to “justice.” But on the other hand, they somehow lose vital e-mail records in the case of the above matter in which the finger points at them. Hmmm. Seems we’re dealing with some plotting crooks or incompetent idiots in the upper ranks of the Administration. Let’s be inclusive in our assessment –they are BOTH! Boy, what a shocking realization. More shocking is that they are not brought before justice — or maybe this is the current state of justice in America. Maybe? Ahem!
NateW–
Yup, I do like your Congressman. Mine’s lousy. Do you think you could get Waxman to vote yes on HR 676? Mine won’t.
No use putting anyone in prison for overwriting tapes-G.W. would just pardon them.
ezeflyer January 18th, 2008 2:53 pm
Impeachment is the way to find what truth is left. Would help Democrats too. Why won’t they impeach?
The Democrats will not impeach Bush because they are complicit in his crimes. Bush would never have gotten away with as much as he has if the Democrats had not voted in favor of his measures. Fact of the matter they are both owned by the same masters. They give to one side and the other. Diebold controls the vote or butterfly ballots are installed. Doesn’t matter anymore. Republican judges then rule in their favor just like our last election (1984).
Only solution is to dump the Democrats and start building an independent party of the people not the corporations and the elites.
If I were to guess, I would think that Nancy Pelosi’s personal ambition of possibly becoming the first female president is clouding her judgment regarding the impeachment question. I cannot imagine her freezing the House in it’s tracks on impeachment. The corruption may be so widespread that the House fears a backlash from the public and the wholesale loss of public trust. She and others are betting that the public will ignore their stealth and vote for them in the next election. Unfortunately I suspect that she is right.
Tailcap - Doom n Gloom You are both right. The current officeholders are so involved with each other it would mean a wholesale revamp to outfit our every senator and state official. They are all sleeping together and they know we know. They won’t do a thing, otherwise they are all indicted. It must be hard to admit to your self you are the cause to so much of the worlds grief.
How about a poem to lighten the tone:
entitled: retribution
___________________________________
The show must go on yelled the pompous who;
Wield the strings for we are the elite few.
They did as told and chuckled with spittle;
Oh how stupid are the small and little.
What a marvelous lot we are on top;
Superior we are; we can’t be stopped.
Pass the wine; the wine of blood;
We’ll do as we please for the rest are but mud.
******
Out in the field toiling away;
A lonely voice cried out – there shall be a new day.
A gentle wind blew from the east;
The pompous who was nothing but a beast.
The voice was pickup up by the wind;
And carried aloft across lands and ocean.
Others chimed in and soon there was song;
Music of harmony no longer lonesome.
*****
The numbers grew exponentially;
The strings were cut discriminately.
Flapping in the wind the strings wound together;
The chuckles were hushed by the foul weather.
Ropes had been formed in mysterious solution;
The time had come for justified retribution.
The few felt fear…it was all they knew;
The ropes pulled them in; a solution so true.
Does any note that Cheney kind of looks like and definitely sounds like Simon Bar Sinister of the old Underdog cartoon series. I can hear him now: “Cheney sez, destroy the emails.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Bar_Sinister
underdog and ultraman - two of my old-time favorites
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraman
Where are they now????
Peace,
Ken
BUSH and The Republican National Committees Family Values
Leave No Child Behind = Let them all learn the answers to a stupid test so we can speak as fluently as George W. Bush
Clear Skies Initiative = Let all our buddies, the Fossl Fuel boys and major oil companies, dump all their garbage and refinery waste into diesel fuel, and sell our garbage to the consumers for great profit, who cares if it gets dumped into the atmosphere. We’ll all be partying at the country club anyway. Turn on the air conditioner.
If you don’t Vote to give all the money we want, and we don’t have to tell you where we are spending it, your not a patriotic American! = Screw the American People, shit on the constitution, We will take all the money, all the power, forget about the 200,000 veterans sleeping under bridges, who put their lives on the line for this once proud nation.
The entire administration, the Republican Senator bush Lap poodles, and their pub clone democratic followers, who keep ignoring the impeachable offenses that this administration have committed, are Terriorists, Traitors, and Treasonous bastards, against The Constitution of the United States of America, which the swore an oath of office to support.
You are them most vile of outhouse scum on the planet, and you should be treated as such, Impeach, remove, Investigate, and this goes for all you corrupt judges too, and your records speak for them selves, fat boy corrupt supreme court cheney rat Scalia, your the most corrupt supreme court justice in the history of the Once Proud Country
God Bless American Impeach these bastards now
WEXLERWANTSHEARINGS.com
go there and show your support
Nothing will get done about this. We’ll read a couple more articles about the White House denying the existence of anything while the Democrats will make a couple of empty threats involving hearings and subpoenas. And then it will all go away and we will forget.
http://www.ryanhartman.wordpress.com