Missing E-Mails May Never Be Found
Lawmaker says RNC won’t try to restore them
WASHINGTON - After promising last year to search its computers for tens of thousands of e-mails sent by White House officials, the Republican National Committee has informed a House committee that it no longer plans to retrieve the communications by restoring computer backup tapes, the panel’s chairman said yesterday.
The move increases the likelihood that an untold number of RNC e-mails dealing with official White House business during the first term of the Bush administration, including many sent or received by former presidential adviser Karl Rove, will never be recovered, according to House Democrats and public records advocates.The RNC had previously told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that it was attempting to restore e-mails from 2001 to 2003, when the RNC had a policy of purging all e-mails, including those to and from White House officials, after 30 days. But Chairman Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, disclosed during a hearing yesterday that the RNC has now said it “has no intention of trying to restore the missing White House e-mails.”
“The result is a potentially enormous gap in the historical record,” Waxman said, including the time leading up to the start of the Iraq war.
Danny Diaz, RNC spokesman, said in a statement that the committee “is fully compliant with the spirit and letter of the law.” He declined to comment any further.
Administration officials have acknowledged that Rove and many other White House officials routinely used RNC accounts for government business, despite rules requiring that they conduct such business through official communications channels. The RNC also deleted all e-mails until 2004, when it exempted White House officials from its e-mail purging policy.
The RNC dispute is part of a broader debate over whether the Bush administration has complied with long-standing statutory requirements to preserve official White House records - including those reflecting potentially sensitive policy discussions - for history and in case of any future legal demands.
A former White House technology manager told Waxman’s committee in statements released yesterday that the Bush administration’s e-mail system “was primitive and the risk that data would be lost was high.” Steven McDevitt, who left the White House in 2006, said he supervised an internal study that found hundreds of days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices from January 2003 to August 2005. The study stated a range when tallying the total number of days in which each office had no recorded e-mails, from 473 - which had been previously reported - to more than 1,000, McDevitt said.
Administration officials defended their efforts to fix the problems, and said they were still working to locate and identify e-mails identified as missing. “We are very energized about getting to the bottom of this,” said Theresa Payton, chief information officer at the Office of Administration.
© 2008 The Boston Globe
Another Nixionian coverup and destruction of evidence. Do our corporate terrorists really think they can evade charges of treason? It no longer maters who Diebolt installs as the next despot-in-chief. If at first we don’t secede then try, try again!
The administration is working very hard to get to the bottom of this, says Ms Payton. They are no doubt all putting in overtime so that the American people can find out exactly what took place between the Repubs and the administration.
They may as well stop as they are already as close to the bottom as any administration will ever get.
No one knows how to say “fuck you” better than Republicans.
We all know that Bush, Cheney et al lied to get us into war. This is no secret, so I wonder what else is on the tapes that is being deep sixed. Perhaps explicit deals about how contractors would get rich in Iraq? Perhaps descriptions of how opposition would be rounded up and silenced? Democrats do something.
This is an easy project. Here is what has to be done.
1. House or Senate finds someone with the authority and backbone to subpoena the backup tapes from Iron Mountain or wherever they keep them. (Actually, that might be difficult, the backbone part.)
2. Make copies in case originals are fragile.
3. Dump contents onto a disk.
4. Hire expert to parse and separate the emails.
Oh I forgot, Congress is too busy naming bridges after local heros and figuring out if sports stars got buff by using steroids.
Pablonium says “No one knows how to say ‘fuck you’ better than the Republicans.”
Nobody knows how to say “Oh yes, please do” better than the Democrats.
They have a primitive system.
Now that explains why they have to record all phone calls and emails of all americans so that they will have a record of their own emails and phone calls in the larger pool of backup.
Well, if the RNC announces that it has changed its mind and that it won’t try to retrieve the White House e-mails like it said it won’t, that probably means all is well, no crimes were committed, and there is no reason to think about it further. The Dems who control Congress should just go on their merry way and start thinking about the future not the past. The public should just learn to say “thank you,” Carl Rove.
Comply? Maybe George should try looking under his desk. We knew from day one those emails would never be “found”.
How many days left with these criminals plundering our country? Too many.
I saw a poll showing McCain 4% behind Obama. And apparently many Americans think the “surge” is working and we can stay in Iraq. What’s wrong with these people? Oh, I know, they don’t think they’re paying for it. I think the Democrats should tie the occupation and the economy together. If people think a $300 check for some of us (not including me) is going to haul our economy out of the gutter - nope. Just another bill to be paid by our children.
kathyodat
if, as it appears, rove and his minions used the rnc system to thwart the laws on preservation of state documents, wouldn’t a RICO prosecution be the appropriate remedy?
not that i expect it from the likes of pelosi and reed, i’m just hypothesizing here…
Unbelievable!
pablonion, Well said! Sometimes, terse comments say much about the issues.
For you older folks that were taught civics and social studies in grammer school, remember the phrase, “checks and balances?”
This thread led me to a querey about the Bush Fascist Index. - 20 characteristics of a fascist political party:
http://www.bushwatch.com/fascism.htm
“Checks and balances”?
More like, “check out our donors’ balances!”
So what will Waxman do? Will he say “okay” and let this crime slide?
The bottom line is that the law says the White House must preserve those e-mails. They did not. Since the e-mails would provide answers to the US Attorney Scandal, The FISA debate, the Iraq Occupation then those individuals who cannot provide the evidence must be charged with obstruction of justice and sentenced.
This would include almost every member of the Bush admin.
But we know Waxman is a coward.
Pablonion, why didn’t Nixon think of that? Congress moves to impeach, demands the Oval Office tapes, and Dick says “Fuck you.”
Congress slinks away, tail between legs, leaving Nixon to finish his term in triumph.
Call this okay, or call it high crimes and misdemeanours, if you wish.
I call it HIGH TREASON.
Conservatism is a conspiracy against the public and the White House knew that is was relying upon channels outside of accountability to use RNC channels. It operates as the headquarters of conspiracy in the US because the RNC can operate completely outside the law; its cooperation with law is merely at its leisure because enforcement against it is not possible since any attempt to even investigate it, let alone prosecute or punish it, would necessarily be “partisan.”
But Waxman got to the bottom of steroid use by athletes, didn’t he? How dare anybody take human growth hormone!
The important “crimes” go unpunished, as the investigations lead nowhere.
Northerner - Clinton should have done the same thing.
How come the Republicans can recover a two-year-old cum stain but can’t find their own mail?
No future president will ever cooperate with any investigation ever again, citing the actions of GWB.
And Bush, Cheney, Rove, etc. shouldn’t be in jail why?????????
Why am I not surprised? Impeach and Jail Bush and Cheney.
It seems that a crime was committed (White House officials routinely used RNC accounts for government business), so the tapes are evidence. Time to appoint a Special Prosecutor to seize the tapes and,…., no wait, the SP is appointed by the Attorney General. Never mind.
somebody, somewhere has those emails…
the ISP, another Server…..emails never totally disappear….
As I’ve written here many times before, e-mail passes from MTA to MTA in plaintext. This is the current set of RFC’s for e-mail. With any modern operating system you can issue a “traceroute” type command and find out which systems your IP packets pass through. The precise systems may differ for email, but the concept is the same.
Articles like this are essentially bullshit — I’ve long concluded that the missing e-mails investigations were shams. Until they subpoena probably the half-dozen (to a dozen or more) system operators whose servers the traffic probably passed through, and the NSA who SHOULD be monitoring DC traffic if they’re doing what they claim to be doing to us (mass data mining), we’re left to assume there never was a genuine investigation, nor any results to be obtained from it.
Furthermore, files aren’t deleted if they’re simply deleted. They need to be wiped many times over. Has a computer forensics expert examined the servers in an attempt to recover deleted material? Come, come. Where’s the real opposition here? If this investigation was a farce from the get-go, what else has been?
Unfortunately, while what Micah_303 says is generally true, it may not apply in this case. If the RNC runs (as I’m sure it does) its own server, it’s the ISP. And if both the sender and the recipient have RNC email accounts, there’s no reason for any message ever to go to another server.
Happily, the very absence of these emails is prima facie proof of a crime. Unhappily, every step the Dumbs take is prima facie proof of incompetence.
Last one out, please turn off the lights.
“MISSING E-MAILS MAY NEVER BE FOUND”
Because said e-mails are not “missing” for f**ks sake - they have been systematically and deliberately eradicated. Period.
Stop using the word “missing” as if this was all just some sort of crazy accident that went on for years and years and years.
Meanwhile, just for kicks, since the AG and the rest of the Bushcult do not “believe” Water-Torture is torture, let’s dunk a few of them RNC Patriots and see what kind of truth leaks out…
cygnusx1isahole:
Chill out on Waxman! He’s one of the very few in Congress who’s actually trying to do something. We could use more politicians of his stripe.
There is always a possibility that a Democratic administration will reinvestigate this in 2009 or 10.
Meanwhile, there is an election to win.
Ask Verizon and AT & T where they are. Since they have gobbled up every bit of information since 2002, I am sure they could still be found!
rjmart01,
You don’t understand how the internet is laid out. Unless the RNC servers and ALL recipients were on the same subnet xxx.xxx.xxx.ZZZ, the e-mail MUST BE ROUTED. That is, it’ll hit many machines on its merry way from A to B. Machines that are owned by various ISPs, backbone providers, etc. And, presumably, those with passive NSA traffic splitters, etc.
The missing e-mail scam hinges on a relatively technological illiterate public to have any meaning whatsoever. These investigations were clearly never intended to produce results. The question is why the issue was brought up in the first place.
The very fact they are missing/erased/sabotaged is by itself a violation of the law to keep records. The law means that ensuring proper record retention is part of the responsibility.
Bramscher has it right this time. Nobody in Gov wants them found - either party. They are all complicit in committing the war crimes this administration has coordinated since taking office.
My money is on just the right programmer who could probably find them in a New York minute.
All who log onto this website needs to go out and forcefully and intelligently confront ten others who are not concerned and explain to them that our country is being stolen from us. I did that last night, went to a newspaper office today and said same to sympathetic reporter; we have to proselyze - just like they do - except ours is based on truth - theirs is based on covering up a crime.
We literally have to force people to act; go to DC for the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq next month; and you say, what good will it do? And I say, what good will it do to continue to sit on our collective asses, continue to piss and moan, and do nothing? If you have guts enough to write on this website you surely have guts enough to make your presence known to those who would steal your liberty from you.
frank1569 is right………….they are not missing,they were destroyed so they could not be obtained at a later date
Anybody surprised?
Treason is the name for what this administration has been up to.
“…the Republican National Committee has informed a House committee that it no longer plans to retrieve the communications by restoring computer backup tapes, the panel’s chairman said yesterday.”
Why would they when the half-baked Democrats aren’t going to do anything about it and Republicans will go to any length to cover their asses?
Seriously, this one is a no-brainer!
It would appear as if the Republicans have learned one thing from history: destroy the evidence of the communications dealing with the illegal acts.
What will the emails prove? That the Bush administration is corrupt and lied us into a war? So what? We already know that.
Just end the damned war!
The word is TREASON when an entire week’s worth of e-mail from Cheney’s office goes missing. The week was Sept. 30, 2003, to Oct. 6, 2003, the opening days of the Justice Department’s probe into whether anyone at the White House leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame
Something that was deliberately misplaced or hidden is not “lost”. But with the democrats ‘running’ things we can’t expect more than we are getting.
Support the status quo and you will get the same thing.
Why can’t Henry Waxman just come out pushing on the coalitionization with a contempt of congress type thang for these dawgs before W could come out saying fake gay marriage in the White House to “da Terminator”?
I should have put the word “thang” in between the words “type” and “for.”
A former White House technology manager told Waxman’s committee in statements released yesterday that the Bush administration’s e-mail system “was primitive and the risk that data would be lost was high.
The issue is not a “primitive” email system. The data in any email system is very simply copied with a filesystem command or script, and a $100 harddrive. The issue is the will to comply with the law which is severely lacking in the White House and the RNC.
Another issue is the corporate media, including the Boston Globe, routinely failing to include in reports the information needed by the public to self-govern, such as relating the administration’s compliance failure directly with the statement of the law and with the compliance record of preceding administrations.
The public is left confused at best, and apathetic at worst. A well-trained journalist could research and add the sentence needed in just a few minutes.
Excuse me, ya’ll. I think I was quicker on this editing dawg than I thought I would be on the dawg.
Changing the subject (kinda), considering that Bush has detained people in secret facilities one wonders if they will all be found. Or just erased like inconvenient email.
odoco, I’m with you.
In the end it’s the Democrats who have to have the will to force compliance. Waxman can’t do it alone, but given that they’ve let the Bush administration get away with more corruption than any other administration in history it’s quite unlikely. We spend a lot of time blaming the Bush administration, but the Democratic congress is possibly more to blame for standing by and letting it happen, even after Bush’s approval went down. That’s why they are less popular than him.
The key phrase here from the RNC is “no longer plans to retrieve” not that they can’t retrieve the emails. And will supreme pussy Waxman force the issue? Of course not. Yeah, he talks the talk but can’t walk the walk. As for ‘liveandlearn’ defending Waxman and politicians of ‘his stripe’, it’s a big yellow stripe down their backs. Just ask old Waxy when he’s ever going to follow through on his promise to investigate the allegations and testimony of Sibel Edmonds. They’re all bums and every vigilant and patriotic American has a moral and legal duty to not support the actions of a criminal and terrorist government by not not sending them a penny this March. The revolution will not be podcast.
I was always taught that the best way to destroy computer files is to use a power drill through the hard drive. I don’t see how they can’t retrieve something that was sent from those outside the White House. Have we been able to check the computers of all those involved?
Intent is the name of the game. Either the missing files are non retrievable due to negligent conduct or intentional conduct.
“Intent is the name of the game. Either the missing files are non retrievable due to negligent conduct or intentional conduct.”
They are not unretrievable. As Paul Bramscher noted, all this stuff is somewhere (probably in more than one location) and most of it can be retrieved. Getting the physical hard drives is another story.
Which brings me to this:
“No one knows how to say “fuck you” better than Republicans.”
And no one knows how to say “Oh, okay” better than Democrats.
msmutt wrote: I was always taught that the best way to destroy computer files is to use a power drill through the hard drive.
Sorry, that technique will destroy only a part of a drive, and with striping used in RAIDS, one may even recover the whole disk.
Technology to recover disk drives has become extremely advanced. Information can be recovered from disks made soft in fires or extremely corroded from sea water is possible. Drives recovered from the Twin Tower ruins could be interrogated.
Shredding, followed by 1200 degree F heat will do it.
Oh, and for those of you who thing erasing your drive and writing to it will keep the previous contents from being read, please think again. You can do this process up to 10 or so times and information from 10 erase/write cycles ago can be recovered. Some groups have claimed 15 erase/write cycles is needed.
This entire conversation is redundant. The Republicans don’t want the information revealed and the Democrats don’t want to insist. End of story. Can’t wait to find what the next administration has in store for us.
kathyodat
I will say the DNC in collusion with the DLC is working overtime to make sure the number of progressive troublemakers is kept to a minimum.
I want to contribute to Steve Novick here in Oregon, but it’s probable that I would do better to spend my money wisely where the contests aren’t so uneven.
kathyodat
Have they looked under the desk of cheney in his bunker? They might be hard to find among all the other stuff parked there to keep from prying eyes, he be the keeper of secrets.
What was that fire in Cheney’s office of Dec. 19, 2007 about? The serious news story…
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8TKL7E00&show_article=1
and humorously…
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2007/221207_b_cheney.htm
If the NSA is snooping into everyones’s emails that would be the place to find the missing ones.
The congressional ability to cleanse the system is overwhelmed by the level of political corruption. It’s just another example of the inadequacy of the 20th Century klinker system attempting to address 21st Century systems of corruption. Congress has become dysfunctional and inadequate to the needs of today. They are getting chewed up and we are paying the price. The dollar is falling at a rate guaranteeing a splat at the end. The transition to a new vision is usually proceeded by the crash of the old one. We are in that process.
These are both exciting and unnerving times we are living in. Each day brings a new mind-shattering revelation. Problems grow and solutions evade us, so we do what we can to insulate ourselves for the eventual crash most of us sense is near. Change is often bitter-sweet.
I don’t believe that any emails are actually missing. BushCo is far too conceited to let any of it’s magnificent work disapear.
It makes me wonder about the suspicious fire in Cheney’s off a few months back. Doesn’t anyone wonder what was destroyed (or claimed to be destroyed)? Dropped from the radar screen of the media after just a passing mention, it screams for deeper investigation. Was it a sheet of paper intentionally lit and dropped in a wastecan so it could be claimed that there was an actual fire?
The shenanigans of this Admenstruation begs for the Congress to get a little spine and do their duty. I realize that just backing down is easier, they wouldn’t want to be called partisan, but they are just giving away their constitutionally guaranteed power. Once given (or lost), it will be nigh unto impossible to regain. Conversly, the next occupant of the executive office will not voluntarilly return the rights claimed by this appointed one. The most effective operation of our government requires a balance of power, not an aggregation in one branch with support of another, spelled judiciary.
“Danny Diaz, RNC spokesman, said in a statement that the committee “is fully compliant with the spirit and letter of the law.” ”
Perhaps the RNC doesn’t understand either the letter or the spirit. Well, no perhaps about it.
As noted above by hazmat, this was an organized evasion of the recording laws by going to an outside system and should be prosecuted under the RICO laws against organized crime. Since this organization (the RNC) is clearly intent on undermining US law, perhaps they should also be prosecuted as a terrorist organization by the Department of Homeland Security.
Lastly, if you want to destroy those files, consult with Mike Huckabee, whose final act in office as governor of Arkansas was to destroy all the hard drives on their computers.
IMPEACH NOW!
WHAT DO WE WANT? IMPEACHMENT
WHEN DO WE WANT IT: NOW!
Could we call the Europeans and have them take away The Chimp-n-Cheney Show?
Extra-Rendition them all the way to the Hague.
Please.
impeach
IMPEACH YESTERDAY
IF THERE IS NO TIME TO IMPEACH, THERE IS DEFINITELY NO TIME FOR BASEBALL B.S.
Sweep all the dirt under the carpet! Disgusting! There isn’t a carpet big enough to hide all this dirt. Shame on anyone who doesn’t agree to impeach!
Ask the NSA or the DIA if they have copies and if they do not..surely this is a gapping hole in US defense operations. What if a terrorist was communicating with someone from the white house? Who is going to check those emails out?
Sound the alarms, ring all bells, leave no leaf untouched!
Demerara–
Good point. If the NSA isn’t tracking outbound e-mails, apparently they’re not tracking inbound messages either? I guess Al-Qaeda, hackers, etc. are hammering at D.C. mercilessly, and without any worry about being traced, eh?
Something is grossly wrong with the texture in this story as well. I get the feeling that 75%+ of what I read each day is propaganda. Would be a sad, sad, commentary on American culture if the most truthful stories involved Paris Hilton or Britney.
@Paul Bramscher I get the feeling that 75%+ of what I read each day is propaganda.
Ouch! Reality bites.