The Liberty Papers

The Washington Post reports today that countless numbers of electronic mail messages to and from White House staff members were deleted, apparently at the direction of Karl Rove:

Countless e-mails to and from many key White House staffers have been deleted — lost to history and placed out of reach of congressional subpoenas — due to a brazen violation of internal White House policy that was allowed to continue for more than six years, the White House acknowledged yesterday.

The leading culprit appears to be President Bush’s enormously influential political adviser Karl Rove, who reportedly used his Republican National Committee-provided Blackberry and e-mail accounts for most of his electronic communication.

Until 2004, all e-mail on RNC accounts was routinely deleted after 30 days. Since 2004, White House staffers using those accounts have been able to save their e-mail indefinitely — but have also been able to delete whatever they felt like deleting. By comparison, the White House e-mail system preserves absolutely everything forever, in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.

The White House yesterday said it has no idea how many e-mails have been lost.

In it’s defense the White House is blaming the mass deletion on lack of a clear policy on email retention and not being agressive enough in promulgating that policy clearly. The only problem with this defense is that the policy seems to be crystal clear:

“Federal law requires the preservation of electronic communications sent or received by White House staff,” says the handbook that all staffers are given and expected to read and comply with.

“As a result, personnel working on behalf of the EOP [Executive Office of the President] are expected to only use government-provided e-mail services for all official communication.”

The handbook further explains: “The official EOP e-mail system is designed to automatically comply with records management requirements.”

And herein lies the problem, and what could be an indication of a willful effort to evade the Presidential Records Act. As noted above, Karl Rove used his RNC e-mail account for virtually all his electronic communication, including official White House business, and it would appear that other White House staffers were following this practice.

The question that comes to mind is why would they do this ?

Here’s one theory. The White House email system is designed to automatically archive every email sent and received from the system in order to ensure compliance with Federal Law. The RNC system apparently does not have this feature, thus making it easier to delete correspondence that you don’t want to see the light of day. By using the RNC system, White House staffers could, theoretically communicate securely without having to worry about their correspondence being preserved and subject to subpoena.

It’s too early to tell if there was something nefarious going on here, but it certainly does look suspicious and it is yet another example of how the Bush Administration has considered itself above the law.