WASHINGTON - July 2 - The White House defendants have released additional documents in CREW’s long-running lawsuit, CREW v. EOP, regarding the millions of emails that went missing from the Bush White House servers. A majority of these documents appear to be copies of documents the Bush White House gave to the House Oversight Committee several years ago.

A significant portion of the documents are emails and spreadsheets prepared by the Office of Administration in 2005 and early 2006 as it discovered the missing emails and analyzed the scope of the problem. As in the last production, virtually all names have been blacked out with no explanations for the redactions. The spreadsheets and other computer listings detail the days and components for which emails are missing and appear to be the output of computer processes used to identify the contents of the PST files in which White House emails were stored.

During this same time frame, the White House was responding to subpoenas for documents related to the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA identity, and the documents include discussions of problems in locating responsive Office of the Vice President (OVP) emails as well as spreadsheets of OVP emails from October 13, 2003, sorted by name, size and number of items.

Significantly, the documents include an analysis dated November 2007 – when CREW’s lawsuit was first filed – of the Office of Administration’s report of its findings. OAP00004640. These documents conclusively demonstrate that at the same time the Bush administration was publicly proclaiming there was no missing email problem, administration officials had in hand an internal analysis detailing just such a problem. More simply, the documents prove the administration lied.

Other documents are related to the Office of Administration’s attempt in 2007-08 to analyze how many and which emails were missing, and to restore a limited number of them from backup tapes. This process is ongoing despite the fact the Obama administration moved to dismiss the lawsuit in January claiming it had done all that is legally required.

In testimony before Congress in February 2008, then Office of Administration Chief Information Officer Theresa Payton suggested emails might not actually have been missing. These documents reveal the White House was well aware of the problem.

Browse these documents in the Related Documents section on the right.

Click here to browse the first batch of documents.