Oops, We Totally Broke The Law
THURSDAY MAY 8 2008 6:00 AM
Submitted by FearTheReaper. Edited By erin_broadley.
TAGS: Bush White House, Missing email, CREW, NSA, Iraq War
The White House admitted in a court of law this week that it blatantly broke the law and... nobody gives a shit. Late on Sunday night, the criminals known as the Bush Administration acknowledged in a court filing that they don’t have backup tapes of emails between March 1 and May 22, 2003. Nothing much happened during that time, except the build up to the Iraq War. As a matter of fact, May 22nd just happens to be the day the UN gave formal approval to the US occupation of Iraq. How unlucky is that? And, it turns out we have something called the Presidential Records Act, which is a law that requires the president to save all his records. Thank God nobody gives a shit about our president breaking the law.
The archive was told it could not receive emails relating to Iraq, despite a 30-year-old law requiring the preservation of presidential records, because a system upgrade had deleted up to 5m emails.
"What is most shocking is that if anyone at the White House was deleting their emails during the invasion of Iraq, those e-mails are not on any backup tapes," Tom Blanton, director of the archive, said.
Yeah, that's a bummer Tommy. Did you see the Laker game?
Two non-profit organizations are suing the White House to recover any missing emails and to create a more effective email archiving system. (That basically means, don’t throw your hard drives in the shitter.) Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) and the National Security Archive (NSA) are the two groups on this mission of failure.
Up until Sunday, there were quite a few contradictory reports coming from the administration. They said they had them, then they didn’t have them, then they did, then they recycled the back up tapes, then they were lost in a boat accident, then they were killed in Russia and finally, the court was told the emails got drunk and took off in a Jeep. None of those statements turned out to be true. The court asked the White House to clear up the confusion and state exactly which backup tapes it did and did not have from March 2003 to October 2005. Finally, late Sunday night, the White House came clean and said they had totally blown it. I believe they used the legal term, “My bad” and the US media responded with the journalistic expression, “No worries.”
In October 2003, the White House stopped their “policy” of recycling backup tapes. All tapes after that date have been preserved. Up until that point, it’s a bit spotty. In 2003, no tapes exist for March thru May and for the months May thru September the number of existing tapes is extremely low.
It seems clear now that the e-mail backups are spotty and that there is no guarantee that there are backup tapes for all of EOP during the period of concern, March 2003-October 2005. There are no tapes from earlier than May 23, 2003. So, anything deleted from the EOP network prior to May 23, 2003 (particularly between March 2003 and may 23, 2003) is missing from the back-up tapes.
It’s been 2 ˝ years since the White House “realized” there was a problem with the archiving system – and they are still trying to say they don’t know whether many emails are missing or not. The White House is clearly trying to run out the clock, knowing nothing will be done to punish them once they are gone. After Bush leaves the White House, the Republican media machine will go bat shit crazy if anyone investigates their obvious criminal activity and the Democrats will cower in a corner and shake. But, hey, the worst thing they did was commit an act of treason, so no big.
At this point, CREW and NSA want the judge to issue a ruling that forces the White House to copy email archive files from all electronic sources. It may actually happen now that the Administration has admitted that they “can’t find” a couple months worth of emails.
Go America!

















PAGE:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4
FearTheReaper
NEWSWIRE
I'm lost
MAY 09, 2008 10:17 AM
scylis
Seattle, WA
November 2004
MAY 09, 2008 10:23 AM
scylis
Seattle, WA
November 2004
MAY 09, 2008 10:25 AM
hk85
Guerneville, CA
October 2007
MAY 09, 2008 11:27 AM
SockPuppet
I'm lost
July 2006
MAY 09, 2008 05:02 PM
SockPuppet
I'm lost
July 2006
MAY 09, 2008 05:05 PM
LSlice
Montclair, NJ
December 2007
MAY 09, 2008 11:00 PM
LSlice
Montclair, NJ
December 2007
MAY 09, 2008 11:00 PM
OhSoOrdinary
New York, NY
July 2006
MAY 10, 2008 02:22 AM
willam9
Philadelphia, PA
January 2008
MAY 10, 2008 03:39 PM
RudieCantFail
Intercourse, PA
January 2006
MAY 10, 2008 03:50 PM
willam9
Philadelphia, PA
January 2008
MAY 10, 2008 03:53 PM
RudieCantFail
Intercourse, PA
January 2006
MAY 10, 2008 04:07 PM
willam9
Philadelphia, PA
January 2008
MAY 10, 2008 04:43 PM
PAGE:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4