the Untold Story of the Bush WH emails - 22 million "lost" then "found"

the Untold Story of the Bush WH emails - 22 million "lost" then "found"
http://www.citizensforethics.org/pages/untold-story-of-the-bush-white-house-emails

Just how far did the Bush White House go to hide its actions from the American people? A new report released today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), "The Untold Story of the Bush White House Emails," attempts to answer the question by providing a wealth of details regarding the Bush White House's failure to prevent millions of emails from vanishing forever.

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◾ Missing emails included emails from the Office of the Vice President for a critical period in the fall of 2003 that were sought by the Department of Justice as part of its investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity. Files that should have contained these emails also were missing from backup tapes for that period and in its efforts to restore those emails from individual users' mailboxes, the Bush White House excluded the mailbox of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby from those being restored.

◾ Years before its discovery in October 2005 that millions of emails were missing from White House servers, the Bush White House received multiple warnings from multiple sources, including the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), that emails were at risk of destruction.

◾ After spending millions of dollars and years of effort creating an effective electronic record keeping system called the Electronic Communications Records Management System (ECRMS), the Bush White House abandoned ECRMS on the eve of its deployment offering explanations that NARA, among others, did not find reasonable.


"Sadly, the American people will never know the full truth of just what went on inside the Bush White House as decisions affecting all of our lives were made," said Ms. Sloan. "Despite repeated warnings that information was being lost, Bush administration officials repeatedly and willfully turned a blind eye to the problem."


full report

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from the executive summary of full report:

note:
Message Storage Team(MST)
Electronic Communications RecordsManagement System (ECRMS)
National Archives and RecordsAdministration (NARA)


• While the MST was charged with determining the scope of the missing email problem, it was never instructed to investigate why the emails went missing.

• After initially meeting with NARA officials on the design of ECRMS, the BushWhite House ceased all meetings and failed to advise NARA about problems with ECRMS the White House supposedly was encountering or to give NARA advance notice of its decision to abandon ECRMS altogether.

• The Bush White House also rebuffed NARA’s repeated attempts to meet withWhite House officials to prepare for a presidential transition.

• The Bush White House failed to inform NARA about the missing emails or shareinformation with NARA until well after CREW released its report and CREW and the National Security Archive sued both the Executive Office of the President and NARA.
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