[Sosfbay-discuss] Investigators find secret White House email accounts: 88 senior officials implicated

[JamBoi]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/19/whitehouse_cogr_emails/

Investigators find secret White House email accounts
88 senior officials implicated
By John Oates → 
Published Tuesday 19th June 2007 12:12 GMT

The Committee of Oversight and Government Reform has
released its initial findings after investigating the
use of parallel email accounts by officials in Bush's
White House.

According to the Presidential Records Act, White House
officials are obliged to keep and preserve all
communications which they send on official government
business. But some 88 Bush officials ignored this law.
Instead, they used addresses supplied by the
Republican National Committee (RNC), which raises
funds and promotes the Republican Party.

It also appears that White House Counsel Alberto
Gonzales knew officials were using these accounts for
official communications but did nothing about it.

The committee first learnt of the parallel email
system when investigating which White House officials
had contact with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Karl Rove's PA, Susan Ralston, sent an email to
Abramoff's associate Todd Boulanger, which said: "I
now have an RNC BlackBerry which you can use to email
me at any time. No security issues like my WH email."

In March 2007, the White House said only a handful of
officials had such accounts. That number has now risen
to 88.

Many of these emails have been destroyed. The RNC has
no emails for 51 of the accounts, although it has
saved over 140,000 emails sent or received by Karl
Rove. But there are big gaps - only 130 emails to or
from Rove exist from the first Presidential term - the
first Rove email the RNC preserved dates from November
2003. For many other officials there are no emails
dated before autumn 2006.

In total the RNC has preserved 674,367 emails of which
36 per cent were sent or received from .gov addresses
- suggesting the mails related to government business.

The committee also dismissed the claim that officials
acted out of ignorance. White House Counsel issued
"clear written policies" in February 2001 that White
House staff should only use the official White House
email system for official communications.

Named officials included Andrew Card, former White
House chief of staff, Ken Mehlman, former director of
political affairs, and Scott Jennings, special
assistant to the President.

The White House spokesman yesterday said the accounts
were set up to avoid violations of the Hatch Act -
designed to stop officials using government systems
for party political purposes.

The next step in the investigation is to discover
whether other copies of these missing mails exist. The
committee has written to 25 government agencies to see
if they have copies, and initial responses are
encouraging.

It is also asking the White House for more information
on why these emails were not preserved. And it is
considering taking further action against the
Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign which is refusing to
identify the full list of officials with RNC email
addresses.

The committee said of the campaign's refusal: "This
recalcitrance is an unwarranted obstacle to the
committee's inquiry into potential violations of the
Presidential Records Act."

A great clip of Bush talking about "The Google" and
why he doesn't send or receive emails is available
here.

The report, with names of all 88 officials, is
available as a pdf here. ®

___________________

JamBoi: Jammy, The Sacred Cow Slayer
The Green Parties' #1 Blogger
http://dailyJam.blogspot.com

"To the brave belong all things"
Celt's invading Etrusca reply to nervous Romans around 400BC

"Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)


       
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