Lawmaker Seeks White House Email Report
The Associated Press
Thursday 30 August 2007
Washington - A Democratic House leader asked presidential counsel
Fred Fielding on Thursday to turn over a report first requested three
months ago about the White House's problems with lost e-mail.
In a letter to Fielding, Rep. Henry Waxman set a Sept. 10
deadline for the White House to turn over information about the
missing e-mail, a problem that apparently was discovered by
administration officials in 2005.
The letter from Waxman, D-Calif., revealed new details about the
issue that came from two White House lawyers who briefed Waxman's
staff about problems archiving electronic messages. White House
e-mail problems first came to light during a special prosecutor's
investigation into whether someone on President Bush's staff
illegally leaked a CIA agent's identity and again during
congressional inquiries into the role of presidential aides in
firings of U.S. attorneys.
At a May 29 briefing, Keith Roberts, deputy general counsel for
the White House Office of Administration, said a review apparently
found that on some days a very small number of e-mails were preserved
and that on some days no e-mails were preserved at all, Waxman's
letter stated.
An analysis by the White House Office of the Chief Information
Officer summarizing these findings was presented to the White House
counsel's office, said Waxman's letter, which requested the
information by Sept. 10.
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said Waxman's letter is being
reviewed and that the administration will respond ''expeditiously.''
At the May briefing, the White House staffers also reported that
an unidentified company was responsible for daily audits of the
e-mail system and the e-mail archiving process.
''Mr. Roberts was not able to explain why the daily audits
conducted by this contractor failed to detect the problems in the
archive system when they first began,'' wrote Waxman, chairman of the
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
During the May briefing, Emmet Flood, special counsel to the
president, said he would consider the requests for a copy of the
analysis presented to the White House counsel and for the identity of
the contractor, Waxman's letter added.
The Presidential Records Act requires that White House e-mail be
saved.
A private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in
Washington, is suing the White House Office of Administration seeking
information about the missing e-mails. The Bush administration argued
last week that the suit should be dismissed because Office of
Administration records are not subject to public disclosure under the
Freedom of Information Act. The argument marks a reversal. In the
past decade, the Office of Administration has responded to hundreds
of FOIA requests.
In response to court orders in the case, the White House
disclosed last week that it has located nearly 3,500 pages of
documents about problems with its e-mail system.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/083107J.shtml
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get real. like jesus would ever own a gun or vote republican.
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