Top aides to President George W. Bush seemed unconcerned amid multiple warnings as early as 2002 that the White House risked losing millions of e-mails that federal law required them to preserve, according to an extensive report obtained by The Federal Eye and set for release on Monday.
The report, by the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, follows a settlement reached last December between the Obama administration, CREW and the National Security Archive, a George Washington University research institute. The groups sued the Bush White House in 2007 alleging it violated federal law by not preserving millions of e-mails sent between 2003 and 2005.
The settlement resulted in the restoration of 94 days worth of e-mail and the release of documents detailing when the Bush White House learned of the missing e-mails and how it responded. The restored e-mails are part of the National Archives and Records Administration's historic record of the Bush administration, but presidential historians and others seeking information in the coming decades about the major decisions of Bush's presidency likely will be starved of key details, including messages sent between White House officials and drafts of final policy decisions, CREW said in its report (see it below).
"The net effect of this is we've probably lost some truly valuable records that would have provided insight," into the administration's decisionmaking process on several policy issues, said CREW Chief Counsel Anne L. Weismann, who led the review.
Problems first arose when an e-mail recordkeeping system established during Bill Clinton's presidency failed to archive messages sent by the Bush White House as it started converting e-mail accounts from Lotus Notes to the Microsoft Exchange Program, the report said.
The White House Office of Administration and National Archives warned top Bush officials about the glitch and potential loss of e-mails, but were ordered to continue with the conversion, the report said.
"It wasn't like it was a one-time event and they went out and fixed it," said CREW senior counsel Adam Rappaport.
The Office of Administration later proposed a plan to fully restore the missing e-mails in 2005, but White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers rejected the plan, according to the report. Miers did not return requests for comment.
In the end, the Bush White House spent at least $10 million to develop new electronic records management systems that restored just 48 days worth of e-mail, the report said.
Missing e-mails included messages sent by the office of Vice President http://www.washingtonpost.com/cheney">Dick Cheney that were later sought by the Justice Department as part of its investigation into the disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA spy and messages from the months preceding the start of the Iraq war.
Scott Stanzel, a former Bush spokesman, called CREW a liberal group that "likes to sue for sport and for years has tried to create a spooky conspiracy out of standard IT issues."
"Nearly two years after President Bush left office, their interest in launching partisan attacks through misleading press releases has not waned," Stanzel said. "The Bush Administration has complied with the Presidential Record Act requirements and this matter is closed, yet CREW's tiresome effort to score political points continues."
Though the Bush administration has been a frequent target of CREW's efforts, it was also critical of several government-funded projects constructed in the district of former Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), has called for the resignation of embattled Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), and has accused South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Alvin M. Greene of violating election
laws.
The Justice Department declined to comment on CREW's report or the December settlement. The settlement led the Obama administration to establish an automated e-mail recordskeeping system that automatically captures and preserves all e-mails
sent from computers and mobile BlackBerry devices, controls against the unauthorized deletion of e-mails, and automatically generates audits of ongoing archival activities. CREW and the National Security Archive approve of the plan.
Federal law and Obama White House policy prohibits administration officials from using personal e-mail accounts to conduct official business. But earlier this year it sanctioned White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin for using his personal e-mail address to discuss policy issues with colleagues at his former employer, Google. The White House has rebuffed requests from Congressional Republicans to speak with McLaughlin and other officials about the matter.
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