Reply #153: Mark Silva: White House emails gone missing

[L. Coyote]

White House emails gone missing
Posted by Mark Silva at 10:53 am, updated 3:20 pm CDT
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2007/04/white_house_ema.html

In the congressional investigation of the White House's role in the firing of several federal prosecutors last year, the Justice Department has turned over reams of emails and memos to Congress.

But there may be many more missing emails, it turns out, because many people within the White House have been exchanging emails on a Republican National Committee account using private laptop computers provided by the party for nearly two dozen employees of the president.

The White House maintains that the idea was to keep political business off of government computers. But the record of some public business may have gone missing, the White House acknowledges today. "We screwed up,'' Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino said today, "and we're trying to fix it.''

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, for one, isn't buying it. "That's like saying the dog ate my homework,'' Leahy (D-Vt.) said on the Senate floor today, pledging to subpeona records the White House won't produce. ...........

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Since 2004, he says, the RNC has excluded White House staff from its automatic deletion of emails – which occurs every 30 days. Since 2004, White House staff with party email accounts have been excluded from that. Still, however, email users often delete files "cluttering up'' the inbox, he allows. Until a few weeks ago, they could drag files from their inbox to the deleted items folder, right-click it and clear the folder.

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