[NYTr] Fed Judge Orders White House to Preserve All e-Mails

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by MichaelP - activ-l


AP via The Guardian - Nov 12, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-7071623,00.html


Fed Judge to White House: Preserve Your e-Mails

WASHINGTON  (AP)  -  A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to 
preserve  copies  of  all its e-mails, a move that Bush administration 
lawyers had argued strongly against.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy directed the Executive Office of the 
President  to  safeguard the material in response to two lawsuits that 
seek  to  determine  whether  the White House has destroyed e-mails in 
violation of federal law.

The  White  House  is seeking dismissal of the lawsuits brought by two 
private  groups - Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government
and the National Security Archive.

The  organizations  allege  the disappearance of 5 million White House 
e-mails.  The court order issued by Kennedy, an appointee of President 
Clinton,  is directed at maintaining backup tapes which contain copies
of White House e-mails.

The  Federal  Records  Act  details  strict  standards prohibiting the 
destruction  of  government  documents  including electronic messages, 
unless first approved by the archivist of the United States.

Justice  Department  lawyers had urged the courts to accept a proposed 
White House declaration promising to preserve all backup tapes.

``The  judge  decided  that  wasn't  enough,''  said Anne Weismann, an 
attorney  for  CREW,  which  has  gone  to  court  over secrecy issues 
involving  the  Bush  administration  and  has  pursued ethical issues 
involving Republicans on Capitol Hill.

The judge's order ``should stop any future destruction of e-mails, but
the White House stopped archiving its e-mail in 2003 and we don't know
if some backup tapes for those e-mails were already taped over before
we went to court. It's a mystery,'' said Meredith Fuchs, a lawyer for
the National Security Archive.

CREW  and the National Security Archive are seeking to force the White 
House  to immediately explain in court what happened to its e-mail, an 
issue  that  first  surfaced nearly two years ago in the leak probe of 
administration officials who disclosed Valerie Plame's CIA identity to 
reporters.

Special  counsel  Patrick  Fitzgerald  revealed  early  in  2006  that 
relevant  e-mails  could be missing because of an archiving problem at
the White House.

The  White  House  has  provided  little  public information about the 
matter,  saying  that  some  e-mails  may  not have been automatically 
archived  on  a  computer  server  for  the  Executive  Office  of the 
President  and  that  the  e-mails  may  have been preserved on backup 
tapes.

The  White House has said that its Office of Administration is looking 
into  whether  there  are e-mails that were not automatically archived
and that  if there is a problem, the necessary steps will be taken to
address it.