Administration Plays Hide and Seek With Missing E-Mails
In an apparent effort to keep the estimated 5 million missing White House e-mails missing, the Justice Department is claiming that the White House Office of Administration, which handles IT support for the executive branch, is not covered by freedom-of-information law. Press-freedom advocate Lucy Dalglish notices a trend: "When they don't want to comply with the law, they just shamelessly argue they are not subject to the law."In an apparent effort to keep the estimated 5 million missing White House e-mails missing, the Justice Department is claiming that the White House Office of Administration, which handles IT support for the executive branch, is not covered by freedom-of-information law. Press-freedom advocate Lucy Dalglish notices a trend: “When they don’t want to comply with the law, they just shamelessly argue they are not subject to the law.”
WAIT BEFORE YOU GO...AP:
In its filing in U.S. District Court, the Justice Department acknowledged that the White House office “currently has regulations implementing” the Freedom of Information Act and has not previously taken the position that it is exempt from the disclosure requirements.
The department cited a court ruling in the 1990s that the National Security Council was not subject to the disclosure law.
According to the suit, the Office of Administration has prepared estimates saying at least 5 million e-mails from March 2003 to October 2005 are missing from the White House.
This year, the ground feels uncertain — facts are buried and those in power are working to keep them hidden. Now more than ever, independent journalism must go beneath the surface.
At Truthdig, we don’t just report what's happening — we investigate how and why. We follow the threads others leave behind and uncover the forces shaping our future.
Your tax-deductible donation fuels journalism that asks harder questions and digs where others won’t.
Don’t settle for surface-level coverage.
Unearth what matters. Help dig deeper.
Donate now.
Forget WikiLeaks, speeches to Goldman Sachs and the behind-the-scenes machinations of John Podesta. The FBI director’s letter to Congress was the ultimate October surprise.
After mischaracterizing a law governing medical marijuana distribution, the president who refused to prosecute those who led the U.S. into an indefinite war on terror told a Rolling Stone interviewer last month that he couldn't ask the Justice Department to "turn the other way" when it comes to potential violations of medical marijuana use.
How exactly does an administration lose millions of e-mails? However it happened, 22 million Bush-era White House e-mails have been recovered, and more may be found. The content, however, probably won't be made public for years.
Seems like even those Bushies who didn't manage to make it to the end of the W. age with their political reputations intact are popping up with brand new jobs; take, for example, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who's slated to teach a political science course at Texas Tech University this fall.
The Bush administration may have exited the proverbial building, but that isn't stopping certain House Democrats, such as House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, from taking Bush sidekick Karl Rove to task for his potential role in the Justice Department's pink-slipping of several U.S. attorneys in 2006.
Read the devastating bipartisan report from the Senate Armed Services Committee that indicts high-level Bush administration officials -- including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- as bearing major responsibility for the torture at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo, and other detention facilities.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.