Also published at my new investigative news magazine The Public Record
Earlier this week, the White House disclosed that it could not recover lost e-mails from emergency backup tapes for the period covering the invasion of Iraq and the U.S. failure to find Iraq’s alleged WMD.
This new gap – from March 1, 2003, to May 23, 2003 – also may have wiped out evidence of how George W. Bush and his top aides reacted to the emerging criticism from former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson that the White House had sold the war using false claims about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger in Africa, an investigation by The Public Record http://www.pubrecord.org has found.
“It seems clear now that the e-mail backups are spotty and that there is no guarantee that there are backup tapes for all of [Executive Office of the President] during the period of concern, March 2003-October 2005,” said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel of George Washington University’s National Security Archive, one of two organizations suing the White House in hopes of forcing the administration to preserve its e-mails.
“There are no tapes from earlier than May 23, 2003,” Fuchs added, referring to an apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act. “So, anything deleted from the EOP network prior to May 23, 2003 (particularly between March 2003 and May 23, 2003) is missing from the backup tapes.”
In a federal court filing this week, the White House confirmed the failure to recover lost e-mails from the emergency backup tapes.
White House Chief Information Officer Teresa Payton and press secretary Dana Perino have blamed the loss of the e-mails on the administration’s transition from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook.
Other e-mails are missing from a period of several weeks from late September to early October 2003, another key timeframe when the White House was caught up in a growing scandal over the leaking of Wilson’s wife’s status as a covert CIA officer in reaction to Wilson’s public criticism of the Niger claims.
Senior administration officials disclosed Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to several journalists in early summer 2003, leading to its publication in a July 14, 2003, article by right-wing columnist Robert Novak.
However, it was not until September 2003 that a CIA complaint to the Justice Department sparked a criminal investigation into the identity of the leakers. At first, however, the probe was under the control of Attorney General John Ashcroft and did not appear likely to lead to a major scandal.
The White House responded to press inquiries disingenuously, claiming Bush took the leak very seriously and would punish anyone involved.
“The President has set high standards, the highest of standards, for people in his administration,” press secretary Scott McClellan said on Sept. 29, 2003. “If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.”
Bush personally announced his determination to get to the bottom of the matter.
“If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is,” Bush said on Sept. 30, 2003. “I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true.”
Hiding the White House Role
Yet, even as Bush was professing his curiosity and calling for anyone with information to step forward, he was withholding the fact that he had authorized the declassification of some secrets about the Niger uranium issue and had ordered Vice President Dick Cheney to arrange for those secrets to be given to reporters to undermine Wilson’s criticism.
Jason Leopold is editor of the online investigative news magazine The Public Record, http://www.pubrecord.org, and the author of the National Bestseller, "News Junkie," a memoir. Visit www.newsjunkiebook.com for a preview. He is also a two-time winner of the Project Censored award, most recently, in 2007, for an investigative story related to Halliburton's work in Iran. He was recently named the recipient of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation's Thomas Jefferson Award for a series of stories he wrote that exposed how soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been pressured to accept fundamentalist Christianity.
First, I can't buy this "Lotus" to Outlook conversion. Hellooee, Lotus is a 30yo program that is, for the most part, obsolete. How can the American public buy into that? Unless you pull the motherboard, how can anything EVER be completely deleted? It all goes on your hard drive. I guess a sledge hammer deletes fairly well.
Speaking of a black hole, somehow my OEN isn't getting through the queue to my inbox and twice this week(today, for one), I didn't get it. I know it isn't OEN's fault. It's AOL, the corporate FILTER that "allows" me to have WHAT they want me to read and discards what they don't like me to read. Just like they blocked my Truthout newsletters (and thousands of others on 9/07). Speaking of TO, that comes to me NOW in one of those AOL envelopes and what's up with their newspaper selection? Ash must be getting rightie on us? Maybe just a slow liberal day, eh?
I once got FDA notices straight from FDA. I Signed up when the dog food was coming up poisoned. Then they suddenly stopped, and then months later, started up again, but they came in one of those AOL envelopes. That to me, is repressing. I feel like they are proof reading my material. Hello, Adolph. Hello fascism.
This lost email excuse is hardly better than "the dog ate my homework" excuse. I certainly hope the IT ppl out there aren't buying this. Lotus, the Whitehouse is on Lotus? Unbelievable!! The money we all send to DC and they are still using Lotus? Oh puleaze. Do they have microwaves? Color TV? How about running water? Do they have running water in the Whitehouse?
OMG. I guess that's why I finally stopped watching MSM except Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert. LOL.
by
shirley reese (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 308 comments)
on Friday, May 9, 2008 at 8:19:13 PM
Get another ISP. Check out Olbermann and Abrams sometime. They still must obey their masters when the whip is snapped. But a remarkable amount of good work comes through. And don't forget PBS on Friday evenings. Moyers, NOW and Gwen Ifill continue to keep the journalist faith.
by
Pat Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 82 comments)
on Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 11:03:38 AM
Hey Pat, I can't download another ISP. I'm short on memory. So, until I get a new computer or more memory, I'm stuck for now. I voice in a whine, but I'm patient, it too will pass and I will be changing ISP when the computer is changed. AOL takes a lot of space with their programs and add more all the time. I like the tech support, online chat help. It's the best thing about them. Meanwhile, I put up and I should shut up, but...
I do watch Olbermann sometimes and Abrams(watched him religiously when he was on Court TV back then). However, with all this camp "pain"ing stuff, I just can't stand MSM. I watch Moyers regularly. I'm into CSPAN.
I have several online news sources and I am a peace activist so I get plenty of war news emails.
In regard to this email missing in action crap, we know they are lying, they know they are lying, we know they know that we know they are lying. However, we just sit by and wait for the earth to shake and out comes James Madison and slaps the books at them. LOL! Really, Journalists are coming alive, whistleblowers are meeting together, Attorneys are concentrating pressure on their state Bar Associations, and we, the ppl(some of us) are ready to become the real patriots this country has been starving for.
What's one thing that Bush could do that would simplemindedly wake the sheeple up? (Something that disappoints millions)
I have an idea of what that could be. T'ain't no terrorist attack. Think about it. Almost hate to say it online. I think I will keep it a secret...seems to work for Dick Cheney.
by
shirley reese (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 308 comments)
on Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 8:19:00 PM
3 comments
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