Archive sues to recover 5 million missing White House emails

The National Security Archive is suing the White House to obtain and preserve more than 5 million government e-mail messages believed to have been deleted from White House computers between March 2003 and October 2005. Snip from announcement:

The lawsuit filed this morning in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia names as defendants the Executive Office of the President and its components that are subject to the Federal Records Act, including the White House Office of Administration (OA), and the National Archives and Records Administration (which is responsible for long-term preservation of federal and presidential records), under the records laws and the Administrative Procedure Act.

White House officials ranging from spokesperson Dana Perino to counsel Keith Roberts have acknowledged in press and Congressional briefings that e-mail is missing from the White House archive, and that the EOP in 2002 abandoned the electronic records management system put in place by the Clinton White House. Whistleblowers cited in conjunction with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have alleged that more than 5 million e-mail messages are missing from the White House servers.

"The Bush White House broke the law and erased our history by deleting those e-mail messages," said National Security Archive director Tom Blanton. "The period of the missing email starts with the invasion of Iraq and runs through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."

Link.

See also this previous Boing Boing post:
NPR "Xeni Tech" - How Long Should Government E-Mail Linger

• [Stefan Jones]

  I’m I the only one who has this daydream that there’s some uber-anal-retentive IT GOP-HQ guy who is sitting on a complete back-up-copy of the White House mail archives?

  And the second he turns over the tapes Cheney will have to relocate to Dubai?

  Of course, neat shit like that never happens. If it looks like the emails are going to be recovered we’ll have a convenient war with Iran or something.

• [stevew]

  No, you’re not the only one with that dream, and sadly I think that your thought about Iran is coming no matter where Cheney ends up.

• [Anonymous]

  That’s all right. I’m sure the emails will be recovered as soon as the statute of limitations runs out or as soon as everyone who could be held accountable in a court of law is dead. So basically, when I’m 50, boingboing will have a follow-up on this post.

• [Drew from Zhrodague]

  All materials regarding Dick Cheney are classified.

• [leeroyx]

  Beats Nixon’s missing 18 minutes. Hands Down!

• [Anonymous]

  You know, we IT guys get a shit ton of work because of Sarbanes Oxley compliance that the government imposes on us, and there is hell to pay if we don’t do it.

  …And they just get off because someone will toss out executive privilege (just taking a crazy guess on the future)

  :-|

  Ryan