WH e-mail in "true emergency conditions"-Magistrate judge orders search of all White House computers

[kpete]

Source: The National Security Archive

White House e-mail in "true emergency conditions"

Magistrate judge orders search of all White House computers, grants plaintiffs' request for inventories and preservation of evidence

For more information contact:
Meredith Fuchs/Tom Blanton - 202/994-7000
Sheila L. Shadmand - 202/879-3939

Posted: January 15, 2009


Washington, D.C., January 15, 2009 - The federal magistrate judge overseeing the White House e-mail litigation today said the issue had reached "true emergency conditions" with only "two business days before the new President takes office" and that "the importance of preserving the e-mails cannot be exaggerated," according to the court's Memorandum Opinion issued this morning along with an Order and posted on the National Security Archive website, www.nsarchive.org.

Magistrate Judge John Facciola formally ordered the White House to search all Executive Office of the President components' workstations and portable media for possibly missing e-mail -- enforcing yesterday's order from U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy -- after government lawyers at a hearing yesterday represented that they would only search those EOP components that create federal agency records and leave out offices that create presidential records.

Today's order also granted plaintiffs' requests that a full inventory of all backup tapes and portable media containing White House e-mail be delivered to the Archivist of the United States and filed with the court, and that the full administrative record and all other evidence related to the White House e-mail be preserved under the custody of the Archivist.

"From the outset, the White House has fought tooth and nail against having to preserve sources of missing e-mail as well as other evidence relating to this case," said Sheila Shadmand of Jones Day, counsel for the Archive. "For the umpteenth time, this Court has commanded that they do so. We expect they will yet again object to the terms of these Orders, when instead they should be busy complying with it. The clock is running out."


Read more: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20090115/index.htm

[meegbear]

1. RAID THE WHITE HOUSE!

If that's what it takes. Hell, even Nixon turned the tapes over, including the "accidentally erased" one.

[DS1]

3. Send in Ronnie Bugspray Johnson!

;)

[meegbear]

4. LOL!

[Skink]

31. Not Bugspray!

No!!

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. "ordered the White House to search all Executive Office of the President "

It sounded great until I read that line.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. If cheney and Rove have not figured out how to destroy the evidence

in 4 years, they are dumber than they have acted all this time.

Jeebus...NOW looking for the "lost" mails is an emergency???????

[chill_wind]

11. You are so right. It is laughable to think

they have not sanitized whatever needed to sanitized within them a long time ago.

Who, for example, can forget the 12 hour heads up Gonzales gave Card/Rove WH when the DOJ decided to open the Plame/Fitzgerald investigation?

And then there were Bush's "missing and incomplete" National Guard records that were allegedly missing for years, and then just magically turned up in some box at the Pentagon... when the RNC needed them the most..

[AwakeAtLast]

14. My thought is that it is probably impossible to eradicate every e-mail

from every workstation without creating an evidence trail. Surely there's a stray laptop somewhere? :shrug:

[Incitatus]

34. It can't be that hard.

They just have to scrub or destroy the hard drives on the computers and servers that held/accessed the emails. The emails they are concerned about would have only been sent to a select number of people. I doubt there will be a lot of physical evidence, but once Bush is out of power there may be people willing to come forward and admit what they know. Of course, there could be actual hard copies of some of these emails.

[Liberty Belle]

42. People they sent them TO might have saved copies, too.

[POR]

63. Yeah but.

That evidence is probably in the hands of some computer expert who is financing his retirement by keeping it out of the hands of any would-be investigats.

I will be proven right if any executive branch technical staff start turning up dead of mysterious overdoses in the next couple of years.

[tclambert]

46. It's tougher to delete e-mails than most people think.

Every computer they ever passed through could have a copy. Deleted copies aren't really deleted off the storage media until the space is written over. Maintenance personnel working on problems may run dumps or traces that essentially copy the data to removable media for analysis.

I'm sure Rove has people who understand how to disappear the computer evidence. Cheney might think it's enough to incinerate his own PC and forget about the server farm and the recipients' computers. "Yes, sir, I deleted all those incriminating e-mails you sent me." But did they remove and incinerate the hard drive and all their back-up copies?

And maybe there is one conflicted conscience in their cabal who kept off-line back-ups of key documents in a safe somewhere.

Maybe I'm dreaming, but I still hope to see a few juicy e-mails turn up from unlikely places.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

57. and also this--that's more like it!!

I'd rather look for positive outcomes!!

Justice is a pretty damn positive outcome!!

[Tangerine LaBamba]

6. That's more like it!

[ealvarez12]

7. Evidence of Negligence

This litigation must be followed through to the teeth. I look forward to the information that will become public.

Evan
http://www.beyondrace.com

[McCamy Taylor]

8. Send in the Geek Squad!

[pleah]

9. This is great to hear, but isn't it a little late to expect

any evidence to still exist? I wish they would hold someone in contempt for not complying with the orders issued.

[stillcool]

19. It's a lot late..

I'm sure at the White House they're laughing their asses off.

[pleah]

23. I'll bet they are, too.

:(

[JDPriestly]

24. Obstruction of justice? Deliberate destruction of evidence? I don't think the honchos in the Bush

administration want to face those charges.

Of course, these may not be criminally chargeable in a civil case. Can anyone comment on the federal law on that?

[jimshoes]

10. I'd like to think something, or anything will come of this order

other than another episode of bush/cheney thumbing their noses at the American people and the law in general and walking away without so much as a by your leave. I'd like to get my hopes up. Really I would, but in 8 long years these shits never gave a damn about any law they didn't like or inconvenienced them in any way. And with only a few day left until they are safely out of "Dodge", what incentive do they have to comply with this latest order? Maybe if they tell chimpy they are going to suspend or cancel his SS protection until he complies with the law he might be prodded into doing so. Short of something along those lines, I don't see him doing shit as to what he's been ordered to do.

[Broadslidin]

12. Has the "giglin' ghoul" been spotted, scouring from room to room....?

:nuke: :crazy: :nuke:

[yava]

17. any scrubber will do the job

for example, System Mechanics incinatator writes 7 or 10 times over any deleted file.
No way then to read them at all.

[Auggie]

13. Why hurry? There's still TWO WHOLE DAYS LEFT.

Give me a break...






:sarcasm:

[No Elephants]

16. Exactly.

[No Elephants]

15. Maybe this will convince Obama to give up his Blackberry.

[Sanity Claws]

18. Obvious contempt of court

They disobeyed the order of the court to preserve the emails.

[wizstars]

50. Contempt of Court???!!?? OUR Bush??!!??

Contempt of Congress???!!?? OUR Bush??!!??


surely you jest.....

:sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[Stephanie]

20. Geez, remember when they accused Clinton staff of stealing "W" keys?

They said Clintonites stole the W keys off the keyboards (which is really funny if they actually did it, which I doubt) - but these MFs would like to steal the entire sordid history of their abominable tenure in OUR house.

[MADem]

30. One office of smartasses supposedly pried out the W's and taped them to the monitors.

That's hardly stealing, and it's a PRANK, a bit of snarky humor. You want the key, you snap it back on the keyboard.

Will this crew do the same with O's?

That whole pile of lies was designed to get people all outraged and point up the "contrast" between Outgoing Sex In The WH Bill and Incoming Faithful, Serious, Sober, Hardworking George (no vomiting, now, be strong). Remember, GWB actually said he would show up at work in a suit and tie everyday. Of course, he was constantly on vacation, and when he wasn't, he was up at Camp David. He hardly ever had to wear the suit and tie.

That whole transition, with the blind items in the papers, was a "media manipulation" designed to take the attention off the stolen election and put it back where they felt it belonged, on Clinton's "staff" (as opposed to his staff).

[defendandprotect]

36. Of course, the whole thing was lies ... came out later ---

but very effective cause lies got a great deal of attention --

and truth minor atttention --

I'm sure a lot of people still don't know it was all lies ...!!!

[polly7]

21. This is probably a dumb question, but

they had no problem with spying on ordinary Americans, wouldn't their various ISP's and internet servers have copies of every word that was sent from the time they stepped in office?

[napoleon_in_rags]

35. Somehow I doubt they're using AOL.

I'm sure their Internet connectivity is provided by a secure government system.

[polly7]

62. No, I never imagined they'd be using AOL.

But they'd have had to have a server that would have a record of every email, no?

[napoleon_in_rags]

66. You'd think, wouldn't ya?

But then that's because you're a normal person. To conservatives, having all correspondences of the president destroyed so the pesky public can never see them makes for really good government. So since they probably controlled their own servers, its pretty unlikely that there will be much email there.

[Cronopio]

22. "For the umpteenth time, this Court has commanded that they do so."

And for the umpteenth time the Court has been served with a lesson: That their position and title mean ***nothing***.

If they aren't ready to send armed personnel to make these people save emails, they are just wasting their time.

[Earth_First]

32. I came to reply exactly that quote and response...

This defiance should be illegal.

Oh wait...

[Tab]

25. Years ago I wrote an article

probably archived here somewhere, which is more than I can say for the White House.

One of the very first things Bush did was replace the National Archivist. The National Archivist is responsible for keeping records. They have a ten-year term, intentionally, to put them out of reach of, well, people like Bush. You are not supposed to replace them arbitrarily, and they are supposed to be academically worthy. He illegally forced the resignation, and then appointed an archivist that was not considered to be academically worthy, nor really approved by congress, which is supposed to be a requirement.

So from the very beginning they laid the stonework for everything to follow, by getting rid of the official record keeper and replacing him with their own. We all know what happened (or maybe we don't know) after that. If you control the record, you control the history. These guys laid this out from the very beginning, and because the subject of the "National Archivist" is "boring" it went under the radar of most people, but the impact was very significant.

[Nevernose]

26. An an imaginary guy named O'Brien once said:

"Who controls the past, controls the future."

[MADem]

27. They need to impound the PERSONAL COMPUTERS of the staff.

Of course, they've probably already wiped those babies clean.

They didn't use the WH computers--they used their own, and YAHOO accounts, to do their nefarious back-n-forthing.

[JerseygirlCT]

29. You're right

There might be some delicious symmetry to this - if the telecoms are forced to divulge all the emails...

[wizstars]

49. So Yahoo should have the records.....

Hmmmmmmm.........

[JerseygirlCT]

28. Most people understand that their work email is in no way private

communcation.

Well, those idiots work for us. We're the boss, and we want to see their email. Now.

[Ken Burch]

33. MORE White House Email troubles?

With our luck, 'Lil Dubbikins sent the bailout money to the Nigerian finance minister.

[orleans]

37. but...those motherfuckers think they are ABOVE the law--hell, they

think they ARE the law.

maybe if someone would start arresting their tired asses we could get some results!

[dickthegrouch]

38. With the right forensic software.....

most of what has been deleted can be recovered.
The trick is to impound the disks from every machine in sight, including the servers and the storage systems.
As many crooks find out delte is nothing of the sort in most operating systems. Delete is defined as hide for a while, especially in any operating system WH staff are capable of using (Windoze).

Here's to the forensic investigators who get to unravel all the wrong doing
:toast:

[elleng]

39. As I've suspected,

they're not gonna give us ANYTHING from WH, DOJ, etc., EVER.

[Politicalboi]

40. Bush/Cheney

Probably water boarded the hard drives so they couldn't leak valuable information to the enemy.

[chill_wind]

41. Rove and Junior are well-seasoned "records" veterens from his Governor days.

They managed to tie up his records for almost 2 years until they got good and done with them first. Remember?

"In December 2000, Governor George W. Bush designated the George Bush Presidential Library as the repository for the records from his tenure as Governor of Texas, under authority of Texas Government Code, Section 441.201. Shortly after he left office, the records were shipped to the Bush Library in College Station, Texas. Texas Attorney General John Cornyn ruled the records are state records subject to the Texas Public Information Act and the management of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission even after transfer to a federal facility (Opinion No. JC-0498, May 3, 2002). In July 2002 the records were transferred from the Bush Library to the Texas State Archives in Austin for preparation for research use. (...) "

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/tslac/40091/tsl-40091.html

They've had lots of anticipation and time to prepare for this deadline.

I read several years ago in one of the Texas dailies online that for as close as Bush and Turdblossom operated together during his governor and campaign years, there's not a single paper or piece or correspendance, however innocuous, even, in his governor archives anywhere bearing Rove's signature on it. That's real fore-thought.

[Hekate]

43. You know, I am starting to believe that it is all starting to unravel. Popcorn?

:popcorn:

Hekate

[SpiralHawk]

44. "Stop your anti-American darkside occultism." = Judge to Republicon Homelanders

"Try to act like Americans, for once." = Judge to Republicon Homelanders

[Enthusiast]

45. This is a joke.

This is a joke like every other piece of lip service directed at the Bush Administration. You watched the simian on TV last night. Will The Obama Justice Department prosecute that?

[mwb970]

47. Send in a SWAT team.

Hustle bush and cheney to the Turkish prison where they belong. And let's see those e-mails!

[liberal N proud]

48. And what will be left?

Will the bu$h regime have already deleted and reformatted all machines so as to destroy all evidence?

[Wapsie B]

61. We'll be lucky if they haven't put in empty hard drives on all computers.

Plus I'm sure there'll be enough confetti left behind to give a hundred ticker-tape parades. Confetti from destroyed documents and memos that is.

[Soylent Brice]

51. when they stumble onto the right info

there will be no choice but to impeach, try, and imprison these fuckers.

K&R

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

52. Nancy is right, impeachment is off the table.

Pick another form of jurisprudence.

[chill_wind]

53. Well..as a last resort, they could always have themselves another little fire

like the earlier one in Snarl's broom closet, or the nastier one at Ft Meade.

Memory lane...


http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2007/12/19/152145/71

[neohippie]

54. what about the RNC email accounts?

Whatever happened to the story about many whitehouse staff members using RNC email accounts so that they could conduct business outside the normal channels which were supposed to be archived...

How can this mis-administration get away with so much, and the media seems to just look the other way or let the stories fade away, and the Clinton's couldn't get a free pass on anything?

the myth of the liberal media continues

[theEmpireNeverEnded]

58. gwb43

The White House set up a parallel email system to avoid public disclosure. It was run by Republican IT guru Mike Connell through a company called SmarTech. Connell was also involved in the Ohio 2004 shenanigans.

"...researchers found that the gwb43 domain used by members of the White House staff to evade freedom of information laws by sending emails outside of official White House channels was hosted on those same SmarTech servers."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Karl_Roves_IT_guru_Mike_Connell_1220.html

Karl Rove had him whacked a couple weeks ago...

[paparush]

55. Initiate Emergency Lockdown Protocol Zula Tango Delta.

[Imagevision]

56. Cheney wanted a seperate pardon from Bush 10 days ago, the story then faded...

[chill_wind]

59. edited- to move post

[chill_wind]

60. So..who were the $10 mil IT contracters brought in this time?

Has it been disclosed?

In the old days, a handy outfit like MZM could have fit the bill...

memory lane...

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_first_contract

"..But it wasn't until 2002 that MZM would get its first federal government contract: a peculiar one-month, $140,000 contract from the White House, later revealed to be for providing computers, office furniture, and specialized computer programming services to the Office of the Vice President

Wade's company would later get three more contracts from the White House and tens of millions of dollars in contracts from the Defense Department and other federal agencies, many of them for classified intelligence work

(....)"

Missing White House E-Mails Traced, Justice Aide Says

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 15, 2009; A09

A Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge yesterday that the Bush administration will meet its legal requirement to transfer e-mails to the National Archives after spending more than $10 million to locate 14 million e-mails reported missing four years ago from White House computer files.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3691186

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/14/AR2009011401957_pf.html

[Hekate]

64. Didn't I read years ago that a bunch of WH hard drives were physically destroyed for "security" ?

I think that actually happened during the last attempt to get at the emails. Well, I hope for the best anyway.

Hekate

[Pryderi]

65. Email? What Email? We Don't Have No Steenkeeng Email!