IRS Wanted Lois Lerner Emails To Disappear

Investor's Business Daily ^ | June 24, 2014 | IBD EDITORIALS

[raptor22]

Scandal: The IRS canceled a contract with an email storage contractor weeks after Lois Lerner reported lost personal files and before other IRS officials had their hard drives crash as Tea Party-targeting investigations began.

Timing is everything, the saying goes, and sometimes the timing of events is also very curious, as in the case of the lost emails of Lerner and at least six other officials at the very same time the IRS canceled its contract to back up and preserve those emails as required by federal law.

Lerner's computer supposedly crashed in June 2011, an alleged event the IRS concealed from the American public and congressional investigators for two years.

This event, which cannot be verified because her hard drive has since been destroyed and recycled, occurred just 10 days after House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Dave Camp first wrote a letter asking if the IRS was engaging in targeting of nonprofit groups.

[EVO X]

And realistically, they cannot plead poverty!

That is what they are doing after a little sun light made it into their operations room..

[Milton Miteybad]

Bo ate them.

Then Bo took a dump on the floor.

Then Bo ate what was on the floor.

Then Obama cooked Bo and ate him.

[don-o]

Why were the missing emails only an issue for just six key people? There is something nefarious going on, far more sinister than just a matter of limitations of “bare bones” systems. The timing is also highly suspect.

I believe we know that at least six persons of interest besides Lerner had email lost because of hard drive crashes. I have seen no names or dates related to those six. All these demand the same scrutiny - work tickets and a reason no why no attempt was made to restore the lost data from the tape backup.

[EVO X]

But again, hasn't produced evidence yet that his characterization is correct. Didn't he specifically answer that he hasn't provided a copy of the contract to Congress yet?

By all accounts the Sonasoft contact is a dead end. It might help find any emails sent to that dept.

[Hoffer Rand]

That may be true for the worker bees but this is generally not the case for higher ups. They are usually allowed expanded storage that greatly exceeds the standard limits imposed on everyone else. Managers are simply not going to spend time during their day to maintain their inboxes. They consider their time and their communications too important to be constrained. There are also auto-archiving add-ons that off-load old emails automatically. You can easily retrieve old emails by using the enterprise vault app. Not sure if IRS was using that type of archiving or not but its worth investigating.

Not only what you mention, but you have the ability to specify where the email auto-archive is stored. Local computers aren't backed up. Networks are, as part of good IT protocol. Any IT pro worth their weight would have made sure the bigwigs' auto-archives were being saved to a location on the network, where they could be part of the regular network back up routine. They do this for just such contingencies as HD crashes. Sorry, IRS, those emails are out there. Not buying the cover story in any form.

[Toespi]

I am sure the missing e-mails had provocative substance. But does anyone really believe that the WH and Lerner incriminated themselves with substantial evidence in readily available communication documents? Not for one minute is this possible, I am more inclined to believe the e-mails in question would tell who, when and where she was meeting with and her WH contacts.

[Rock N Jones]

It ain’t worth two cents.

[gr8eman]

All they’d have to do is forward the emails to Issa, Gowdy, etc. from a library computer.

[Pajamajan]

Bookmark

[P-Marlowe]

Usually when there is a hard drive crash there would be a work order for the IT department to run a check on the computer. Then there would be a log of what the IT worker did and if there was actually a crash there would be a requisition order for a new hard drive and a work order for replacement. If there is important information on the drive it would be sent to a data recovery shop where they would make an attempt to recover the data.

There would be a paper trail.

I’m sure the paper trail has been shredded.

[P-Marlowe]

The thing that should scare you the most is that these idiots have access to all your personal and financial records and it is stored on these disappearing hard drives.

How are we to know whether there aren’t moles in the IRS who are selling all our personal information to the Chinese or the Russian mob?

If what they say about “lost” hard drives is true, then the implications are at least as bad as if they are lying through their teeth.

[Cubs Fan]

Charge them all with obstruction of justice (for starters)

[353FMG]

>The complete loss of confidence in our government.<

.
You think government cares about our confidence?

[EVO X]

Usually when there is a hard drive crash there would be a work order for the IT department to run a check on the computer.

The have been reports that a ticket was created and the drive found its way to the drive recovery people at IRS. The reports I've seen, don't say what was actually done to the drive..

[FreedomPoster]

Thanks, and ping to Laz; we were discussing this earlier.

[Starboard]

work tickets and a reason no why no attempt was made to restore the lost data from the tape backup

*************
BINGO!!! Every Help Desk keeps logs on trouble calls. Start there, if the logs haven’t been “lost” too.

[Starboard]

You’re absolutely right. The server drives are a contingency against loss of the hard drives. Also, there should be Help Desk logs that captured the nature of the disk failures and there should have been procedures for recovery of such data outlined in a Disaster Recovery Plan.

This story needs to be methodically investigated from the bottom up (i.e., bring in the IT people and their contractors and ask them what happened). Don’t get confused by the smoke screen being put up by corrupt managers.

[wbill]

Well, then, there's the smoking gun. There's a policy, and it wasn't followed.

Next question is "Who said 'Don't follow the policy.'"? That'll be harder to find, as I'm certain that there's no paper trail.

And if there was, it would lead to some low-level technical wonk (I've been one) who was "A Rogue", or somesuch. We'll never find out what happened, unless the RINOs in the house have enough spine to scare someone into spilling the beans. Or they find someone stupid enough to spill 'em, or someone with an axe to grind.

[offduty]

If Dave Camp sent a letter to the IRS stating that all emails should be preserved and if Lerner’s hard drive crashed, at the very least, the original hard drive should have been preserved as evidence. Somewhere, someone made the determination that the hard drive could be destroyed. So start with the IT department and find out who authorized the destruction of Lerner’s hard drive.

In addition, why would this hard drive end up in the CI Division’s forensic lab for examination and restoration? It is highly unusual for this to happen, unless someone wanted to make sure the hard drive was destroyed beyond recovery.

[miserare]

Wouldn’t it be easier just to make Lois Lerner disappear?