FWIW, as an IT guy, I can say that “her hard drive crashed” is meant to mean “her computer is unavailable”, and therefore “will be without email” means she only gets her emails through her own PC (though we now know this is false, since she had a Blackberry), and wouldn’t be able to read or respond to emails until her PC is back up.
Many of the executives I supported cared *only* about access to their email. Without it, many would at least claim they couldn’t work at all. Since Lerner was the head of the agency, she’s not likely to have much to do other than communicating with other management within the agency, and so access to her email is the only real issue with her PC crash.
From what I’ve come to understand, the IRS used Microsoft Exchange for their email system, and had just about the worst, least-useful data policy out there. Even senior executives like Lerner were only allocated 150MB for their mailbox, with no archive. Backups of the system were only kept 6 months, and then the tapes were overwritten. There was a policy in place that required all “relevant” emails to be printed off and preserved as hard copies, but “relevant” probably had a very plastic definition within the IRS, and it’s all too easy to “forget” to print off incriminating email that would look bad during a later investigation.
The whole thing stinks, and the IRS deserves to be hung out to dry. No ordinary member of the public facing IRS audit could ever get away with the kind of record-keeping the IRS feels is acceptable for its own operations.
“Without it, many would at least claim they couldn’t work at all.”
Lawyers are like that too.
One thing about Exchange is attachments are kept separate from the emails. So if you send 20 copies of an email with an attachment to 20 different people, only one copy is kept in the Exchange data store, and not in the Exchange mailbox itself. Incoming is the same.
Therefore, while measly, 150 MB can hold a lot more emails than people might realize. We’re only talking about text - which doesn’t take up hardly any storage space at all.
So it’s definitely worth the effort to try and recover that data from the hard drive or tapes if they can find them. I don’t know about tapes, but it’s amazing what can be recovered from even a ‘wiped’ hard drive.
I have e-mails dating back years.
I’m not a knowledgeable computer person, and I only researched hardware because I wanted to upgrade the guts of my friend’s 4-5 year old low-end gaming PC. But even I know the idea of “losing e-mail to a hard drive crash” is preposterous.
Lerner wasn’t the head of the agency, just of this particular ‘criminal enterprise’.
If there was a Blackberry involved then the is another set of servers involved that also contain the emails. The entire thing is BS. the actual IT people involved need to be questioned by someone other than those in the IRS. I don't know but maybe someone interested in the facts.