Posted on 12/15/2009 7:11:15 AM PST by STARWISE
An investigation into e-mails that seemed to have disappeared from the Bush White House has resulted in restoration of 22 million of the missing messages and a deal to uncover what could be millions of other e-mails that allegedly fell through cracks in the archiving system, two nonprofit groups said Monday.
However, an untold number of official e-mails from President George W. Bush's era will probably never be recovered because it would be extremely costly to do so, lawyers involved in lawsuits brought by the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said.
"While we have not gotten every e-mail, some major gaps have been filled," said Meredith Fuchs, an attorney for the National Security Archive.
A settlement the groups reached with President Barack Obama's White House and signed on Monday does not call for the e-mails to be made public immediately. The records from many key White House offices will remain under wraps for at least four more years, while those from some agencies housed within the White House complex can be requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
Asked if the losses of the e-mails were deliberate, neglectful or accidental, Fuchs said, "The Bush Administration had sloppy practices and they had no sense that it mattered….They way they handled it to me suggested they didn’t take their record preservation obligations seriously. To me, the way they dealt with us during the litigation signaled that."
After the groups filed lawsuits over the alleged failures, the Bush Administration used backup tapes to restore emails from 21 days where the number of messages archived through the official mechanism was unusually low. Bush officials also restored 40 other days selected at random. That process resulted, during the Bush era, in the recovery of the 22 million e-mails.
"Documents produced so far show the Bush White House was lying when officials claimed no emails were ever missing. The record now proves incontrovertibly that Bush administration officials deliberately ignored the problem and, in fact, knowingly allowed it to worsen," CREW said in a press release.
Melanie Sloan, CREW’s Executive Director, added: “We may never know exactly what happened to all the missing emails, and which Bush administration officials were involved in the coverup, but we do know the American public never got the full story.”
A White House spokesman under Bush, Scott Stanzel, accused CREW of being on an ideological vendetta against the Bush Administration.
"The liberal group CREW litigates for sport, distorts the facts and has consistently tried to create a spooky conspiracy out of standard information technology issues. Their misleading statements about our work demonstrates their continued anti-Bush agenda, nearly a year after a new President was sworn in," Stanzel said in an e-mail. He did not comment on the Archive, a research organization which specializes in gathering declassified documents.
Under the settlement, the Obama White House has agreed to restore 33 more days from the Bush presidency and to put in place what Obama aides say is a more reliable system for archiving than the "journaling" and "personal storage files" the Bush administration used after a conversion from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook. Fuchs said the total of 94 days of restoration would exhaust about $11 million in federal funds set aside for the recovery project.
"The President is firmly committed to ensuring that the records of this Administration—as well as those of all previous administrations—are properly retained and preserved," Obama White House ethics counsel Norm Eisen said in a blog post Monday. Eisen, who happens to be a co-founder of CREW, also offered praise for the groups who pursued and settled the case.
"We especially want to thank CREW and NSA for their hard work with us in bringing the case to a successful conclusion and in promoting openness in government," he said.
UPDATE: This post was updated to add comment from Stanzel.
Excerpt:
The Soros-funded group CREW has effectively declared war on America’s top federal law enforcement agency. CREW has called on the Justice Department to investigate the FBI.
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Blatant hypocrite = the man who has purposely sealed every record of his and his family's personal past, education and travels and pays millions to lawyers (including our dime for the DOJ lawyers) to keep them that way demands everything from everyone else for political power.
~~Ping!
99.99% wil be like:
What are you doing for lunch?
Good news for Al Qaeda — and its allies.
This is good news!
This means that we can decode trhe 20 mb of Al Gore emails that he finally submitted, but they were “corrupted” and not readable.
Meanwhile...no Bammy BC.
I am really sick of Obama continuation of his Bush bashing while patting himself on the back. Bush did a heck of a lot more than Obama did in heading off the recession. Bush’s TARP was a far better use of money than Obama’s porkulus. It was Bush’s programs that stabalized the banking industry and yet Obama wants to take credit for that. Obama’s programs are just artificially bumping up the GDP and temporarily boosting employment numbers to make them look better, but they are yet to be any real sustainable growth or jobs created. Bush and Bernanke had a heck of a lot more to do with avoiding a crash of the financial system than Obama, and Obama’s efforts at job creation have been extraordinarily inefficient working against business.
Since when is cost an obstacle for this administration?
He has the most corrupt administration and he continues his hatchet job of Bush? I think someone should file the FOI act to see Obama's blackberry. Then we will truly see corruption.
The American people think we should have a war on terror and contrary to the dems boogeyman mentality of Bush we were kept safe. Just because dubya didn't give terrorists rights and play lawyer for the ememy does not make him a bad POTUS.
After reading this it makes me think that Holder and Obama will put Bush/Cheney/CIA on trial in NYCity instead of the terrorists.
Obama is a FAILING unpopular President. Even hard-core liberals and late night talk show hosts are saying ENOUGH with the blame Bush crap.
I suppose Obama's low poll ratings are Bushes fault as Obama said he would grade himself an A if he did not inherit the Bush mess.
Obama has made the worst mess in U.S. history. What an arrogant marxist narcissist he is!!!
| Uh-huh ... Be sure to hold on to ALL of the emails that incriminate the WHOLE lot in DC. Bush has a lot to answer for — even with Conservatives. But with 22 million emails, I'm sure there's plenty of evidence to aid Conservative investigations against the Democrats, once Conservatives take over Congress next year. Play your little games for now, Democrats. But rest assured ... we're coming for YOU corrupt dirtbags after November 2010:
|
Hmmmmmm, they can report on THESE emails yet IGNORE the climate related ones. When is someone, read the GOP, going to shout from the rooftops for all to hear?
Note of course that we never hear of Congress’ emails.
Obama’s blackberry transmissions. Will they be archived?
Politico is also reporting Obama and Biden saying LAST CHANCE for ObamaCare... if it is not done now... no one will do it.. because never before has there been such greatness of a messiah in the WH...the past 7 Presidents have failed what Obama intends to do...
It was so SICKENING I could not even post the article.
The SOB Obama is bragging only HE can pass communism...the irony...
I seriously think Obama and his entire corrupt admin do lines of coke in delusions of grandeur about themSELVES.
I believe these missing GWB emails are supposed to be from 2003-2005. Snoopers will be looking for Valerie Plame, WMD stuff and Halliburton. The WMD stuff will be restricted for national security but if they find anything they will leak it.
What is your guess what they will find? Fannie/Freddie?
They are supposed to go through the national archive process first. They are not supposed to be released until 2014, but I will bet they are leaked.
If they find anything about Karl Rove's mind control machine, it's all over.
In order to free up e-mail publishing capacity, I also insist that the fraudulent, out-of-context, stolen, "Climategate" e-mails be sealed forever, along with BHO, Jr.'s Birth certificate, College, and Passport records.
I know this, Global Warming is Bush's Fault, Polar Bears are dieing all over Louisiana, and your home will be underwater, no matter what it says in those obviously faked, out of context, confidential scientific e-mails from East Anglia, which were stolen by a AGW Denier, and are thus racist and binary gender normative.
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