Bring On The Screeching Harpies
by digby
These missing Cheney e-mails are very intriguing. This is particularly so because we went though a similar event during the Clinton administration and the Republicans went completely apeshit over it. In 2000, it was revealed (through the machinations of Judicial Watch) that some emails had not been properly archived and it was suspected that some of Monica Lewinsky's had not been turned over as a result. Dan Burton held hearings and the Independent Counsel, Robert Ray, was assigned to look into it.
Judicial Watch ended up filing an ethics complaint against Ray for declining to follow it up but it was clear from the get that it was another bogus witch hunt, as all the Clinton scandals were. But in the course of it we all found out what kind of an archiving system the White House has for maintaining emails:
... whenever a White House staffer clicks "send," a message reminds them that a copy of their missive is being sent to records management.
When it comes to saving e-mails, the White House is held to a higher standard than the private sector, and even Congress.
Companies that have a policy of saving e-mails usually do so only for three to six months, according to records-management consultants. Many companies consider them the same as phone calls, and don't archive them unless they are equal in weight to a written communication.
But the White House is different. It saves its records for posterity. After President Clinton vacates his office next January, at least 30 million stored e-mails will be deposited with the National Archives, an unfathomable mountain of data ranging from "how about lunch?" to speech drafts, to perhaps more juicy communications.
Now Fitzgerald says:
We have learned that not all email of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.
And here I thought the grown-ups from the private sector with their fancy pants ways were going to fix all those technical problems.
Whatever the case, there is ample precedent for a full-on congressional hissy fit and a thorough special counsel investigation. The Republicans held fiery hearings on this matter just months before Clinton left office, so great was the urgency, and there was absolutely no evidence that any emails of the president were involved. But because there might have been an email from Monica to the president that said "I wuv you" that hadn't turned up yet, they grilled the entire White House counsel's office for days.
There can be no complaints from the Republicans about Fitzgerald investigating this. None. The precedent was set just five and half years ago --- by them.
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