HOW TO LOSE 22 MILLION EMAILS

THE THRILLING STORY OF THE MISSING

WHITE HOUSE EMAILS AND GWB43.COM

FROM THE TOP

• The USA Patriot Improvement and Reorganization Act is signed into law in March of 2006, and includes a provision that interim attorneys have no maximum term limit (it was 120 days) if a President does not find a replacement U.S. Attorney to appoint in the wake of a resignation

(Taylor 2007).

• After the passage of that provision in 2006, eight U.S. attorneys were forced into resigning, especially in December of 2006, where seven attorneys were informed of their effective

terminations (Hartley 2007).

• Because of the convenient timing of that provision to apply to the recent terminations as well as the unprecedented action of terminating multiple attorneys during mid-term appointments, the

Senate Judiciary Committee began an investigation into whether the terminations were politically motivated in January of 2007 (Eggen 2007).

WAS THERE UNINTENTIONAL DELETION?

There had been problems for years with email retention in the BushAdministration, largely due to the replacement of the Automated

Records Management System with the Electronic CommunicationsRecords Management System. Even with backups, the White Housecould have lost at least five million emails from wrongly categorizedautomated deletion (Fuchs 2008). There is no proof of the deletion

problem occurring beyond the 2003-2005 time period.

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN VIOLATED?

• The Hatch Act of 1939 states that the executive branch of the United States cannot engage in partisan political activities with the use of

government resources, which includes White House emails (Office of General Counsel 2013).

• The Presidential Records Act of 1978 made all Presidential records public and imposed standards on all future Presidential administrations on how they are supposed to manage their records (Legal Information Institute

2013).

VIOLATION OF THE HATCH ACT?

• To avoid violation of the Hatch Act, an email domain called gwb43.com was created by the RNC solely for discussing partisan political actions. This server was not intended to be affiliated with

the government in any way.

• Because the domain contained official information created by White House staff and it contained information relevant to a congressional hearing, the records were considered to be under the jurisdiction of

the White House and thus subject to investigation (Smith 2007).

VIOLATION OF THE PRA?

• ‘“The e-mails of White House officials maintained on RNC e-mail accounts may be relevant to multiple congressional investigations,” [Rep. Henry A.] Waxman [D-Calif.] wrote to the group's chairman,

Mike Duncan, adding that as “governmental records” they are subject to preservation requirements and “eventual public

disclosure”’ (Smith 2007).

• Because it was a third-party domain, the user could delete records, which could indicate a staffer having access to record destruction in

the wake of a scandal such as this one (Froomkin 2007).

WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES?

• The U.S. attorneys whose positions were terminated can never get a complete, accurate answer as to why they lost their jobs, even if it was

for legitimate reasons.

• The National Archives and Records Administration cannot keep the lost information for future usage by U.S. citizens.

• While criminal charges were never filed, the missing emails led to Karl Rove’s resignation within the Administration, which lead to a disruption

in operationsand caused even more distrust in the government (Emanuel 2007).

HOPE

• In late 2009, it was announced that 22 million emails to and from White House staff were deleted during the Bush Administration, which is millions more than was first claimed. Most of them had

been recovered and turned over to the National Archives, who will process them according to presidential records protocol (Yost

2009).

• President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13489 on his first day in office, reaffirming the power of the AOTUS in setting

standards for presidential recordkeeping (Obama 2009).

REFERENCE LIST

Eggen, D., Kane, P. (2007 March 24). Gonzales: 'Mistakes Were Made': But Attorney General defends firings of eight U.S. Attorneys. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/03/13/AR2007031300776.html

Emanuel, M. (2007 August 13). Bush Adviser Karl Rove to resign at end of month. Fox News. Retrieved from http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/08/13/bush-adviser-karl-rove-to-resign-at-end-month/

Froomkin, D. (2007 March 15). A culture of deniability. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/03/15/BL2007031501053.html

Fuchs, M. (2008). White House email chronology. George Washington University. Retrieved from http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20080417/chron.htm

Hartley, A. (2007 March 21). Timeline: How the U.S. Attorneys were fired. U.S. News and World Report. Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070321/21attorneys-timeline.htm

Legal Information Institute. (2013). Management and custody of Presidential records. Cornell University. Retrieved from http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/44/2203

Obama, B. (2009 January 21). Executive Order 13489. The White House. Retrieved from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13489

Office of General Counsel. (2013). Hatch Act and political activities. National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved from http://www.archives.gov/legal/ethics/hatch-act.html

REFERENCE LIST (CONTINUED)

Smith, R.J. (2007 March 27). GOP Groups told to keep Bush officials' e-mails. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601979.html

Taylor, M., Gordon, G. (2007 January 26). Gonzales appoints political loyalists into vacant U.S. attorneys slots. McClatchy Newspapers. Retrieved from http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/16555903.htm