| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"PagCal" |
| Date: |
09 Apr 2007 04:44:54 AM |
| Object: |
GOP-issued laptops now a White House headache |
GOP-issued laptops now a White House headache
Democrats say a private e-mail system was used in violation of federal
rules.
By Tom Hamburger, Times Staff Writer
April 9, 2007
WASHINGTON — When Karl Rove and his top deputies arrived at the White
House in 2001, the Republican National Committee provided them with
laptop computers and other communication devices to be used alongside
their government-issued equipment.
The back-channel e-mail and paging system, paid for and maintained by
the RNC, was designed to avoid charges that had vexed the Clinton White
House — that federal resources were being used inappropriately for
political campaign purposes.
Now, that dual computer system is creating new embarrassment and legal
headaches for the White House, the Republican Party and Rove's
once-vaunted White House operation.
Democrats say evidence suggests the RNC e-mail system was used for
political and government policy matters in violation of federal record
preservation and disclosure rules.
In addition, Democrats point to a handful of e-mails obtained through
ongoing inquiries suggesting the system may have been used to conceal
such activities as contacts with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was
convicted on bribery charges and is now in prison for fraud.
Democratic congressional investigators are beginning to demand access to
this RNC-White House communications system, which was used not only by
Rove's office but by several top officials elsewhere in the White House.
The prospect that such communication might become public has further
jangled the nerves of an already rattled Bush White House.
Some Republicans believe that the huge number of e-mails — many written
hastily, with no thought that they might become public — may contain
more detailed and unguarded inside information about the
administration's far-flung political activities than has previously been
available.
"There is concern about what may be in these e-mails," said one GOP
activist who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of
the subject.
"The system was created with the best intentions," said former Assistant
White House Press Secretary Adam Levine, who was assigned an RNC laptop
and BlackBerry when he worked at the White House in 2002. But, he added,
"the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Oversight
and Government Reform Committee, last week formally requested access to
broad categories of RNC-White House e-mails.
Waxman told the Los Angeles Times in a statement that a separate "e-mail
system for high-ranking White House officials would raise serious
questions about violations of the Presidential Records Act," which
requires the preservation and ultimate disclosure of e-mails about
official government business.
Waxman's initial request to the RNC seeks e-mails relating to the
presentation of campaign polling and strategy information to Cabinet
agency appointees. He is also expected to ask for e-mails relating to
Abramoff's activities, which Waxman is also investigating.
The Senate and House Judiciary Committees are also expected to formally
request e-mail records from the RNC that relate to last year's firing of
eight U.S. attorneys.
The private e-mail system came to light in the U.S. attorney controversy
because one of Rove's deputies used an RNC-maintained e-mail domain —
gwb43.com — to communicate with the Justice Department about replacing
one of those prosecutors.
White House officials said the system had been used appropriately and
was modeled after one used by the Clinton White House political office
in the late 1990s.
"The regular staffers who interface with political organizations have a
separate e-mail account, and that's entirely appropriate," said White
House spokesman Scott M. Stanzel. "The practice is followed to avoid
inadvertent violations of the law."
Stanzel said he did not know how many officials used the separate
system. Another White House official called it "a handful."
Some Republican activists say the e-mail request will not create great
difficulty for the White House because nothing nefarious happened and
because the RNC automatically purges some e-mails after 30 days.
RNC officials are expected to meet with House Government Reform and
Judiciary Committee lawyers as early as this week to discuss the first
document request.
"We'd like to cooperate to whatever level is appropriate," Republican
Party spokeswoman Lisa Camooso Miller said Friday.
Waxman focused on the e-mails after a hearing last month examining a
presentation of campaign forecasts and polling data made by a Rove
deputy to top appointed officials of the Government Services
Administration, some of whom believed they were being instructed to help
GOP candidates.
White House staff arranging for the GSA briefing by a Rove deputy, Scott
Jennings, used the gwb43.com e-mail domain name. That caught the
attention of Waxman's investigators, who had previously examined e-mails
from Abramoff to Rove's executive assistant, Susan B. Ralston, to object
to an impending Interior Department decision. The decision, he wrote,
was "anathema to all our supporters it's important if possible to get
some quiet message from the WH [White House] that this is absurd."
Ralston used outside accounts — including at rnchq.org — to communicate
with Abramoff and his partners. One e-mail from an Abramoff associate
said that White House personnel had warned "it is better to not put this
stuff in writing in [the White House] … e-mail system because it might
actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could
be lawsuits, etc."
Abramoff's response, according to a copy of his e-mail released by
Waxman's committee, was: "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her rnc pager
and was not supposed to go into the WH system." Ralston later resigned
in connection with the lobbying scandal.
Waxman told RNC Chairman Mike Duncan in a letter that such exchanges
"indicated that in some instances White House officials were using
nongovernment accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of
communications" that could be reviewed by congressional committees or
released under the Presidential Records Act.
Lawyers for the committees say that use of campaign-connected e-mail
addresses may make it easier to gather information because it would be
harder for the White House to make a broad claim of executive privilege.
Lawyers for congressional Democrats have anticipated that the White
House will invoke executive privilege in an effort to block requests for
information about its role in the firing of U.S. attorneys, Abramoff and
other matters.
In the U.S. attorney case, Rove deputy Jennings used the RNC e-mail
system to write to D. Kyle Sampson, then Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales'
chief of staff, in August 2006 about replacing Arkansas U.S. Atty. H.E.
"Bud" Cummins III with former Rove protege Tim Griffin.
"We're a go for the U.S. atty plan. WH leg, political and communications
have signed off and acknowledged that we have to be committed to
following through once the pressure comes," Jennings wrote in an e-mail
from the gwb43.com domain name. Sampson noted in a related e-mail that
"getting him appointed was important to" Rove, then-White House Counsel
Harriet E. Miers and other officials.
The gwb43.com account, and others like it, have been traced to the
Republican National Committee computer servers, Waxman's staff said.
Doug Sosnik, White House political director under Clinton, says that his
office had a small number of separate computers and cellphones for
campaign-related matters but that the scope of the political operation
was smaller than that in the Bush White House.
For both administrations, the separate system was an acknowledgment that
certain White House jobs necessarily mixed policy and politics. Though
campaign-related activity is prohibited for federal workers on the job,
White House appointees typically work extraordinarily long hours and are
required to be available around the clock.
Sosnik said only a handful of people used the political computers in the
Clinton White House, which were purchased with campaign funds. However,
he said, the political messaging from the Bush team appears to have been
broader than that of Clinton's. He could recall no instance, for
example, in which campaign computers or cellphones were used to
communicate with the Justice Department.
Levine, the former Bush press aide, said he saw senior White House
colleagues, including Rove and his top staff, moving fluidly between the
two computer systems, which often sat on officials' desks along with
their government computers.
But Levine said he found the two computers with their separate purposes
and log-in procedures confusing and inefficient. So he quietly slid his
RNC laptop into a desk drawer, deciding to use the telephone rather than
e-mail to communicate anything that was not considered official
government business.
"In retrospect," he said last week, "I was lucky."
*
tom.hamburger@latimes.com
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