White House admits it violated law, destroyed emails

Facing a legal deadline, the White House finally, grudgingly, admitted to the federal court that it recycled the backup tapes of White House documents in a way that lost large numbers of documents forever. From the Associated Press via TPM:

The White House has acknowledged recycling its backup computer tapes of e-mail before October 2003, raising the possibility that many electronic messages — including those pertaining to the CIA leak case — have been taped over and are gone forever.

The disclosure came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it has previously refused to provide.

Among the e-mails that could be lost are messages swapped by any White House officials involved in discussions about leaking a CIA officer's identity to reporters. [Snip]

If the e-mails were not saved, the White House might have violated two laws requiring preservation of documents that fall into the categories of federal records or presidential records. [Snip]

"If the backup tapes have been erased or taped over or recycled, it's hard to imagine where we will find copies of many lost e-mails," said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, said in an interview Wednesday.

"It appears that the White House has now destroyed the evidence of its misconduct," said Anne Weismann, the chief counsel for the ethics group.

"The White House declaration raises more questions than it answers, specifically the likelihood that for a very significant period of time — March 2003 to October 2003 — the White House recycled its backup tapes," said Weismann.

"As a result there may be no way to recover the missing e-mails from a period in which the U.S. decided to go to war with Iraq, White House officials leaked the identity of Valerie Plame and the Justice Department started a criminal investigation of the White House," the lawyer said.

The sworn statement by Payton did not say how early in the Bush administration the recycling of backup computer tapes began. The statement does not say why the White House stopped recycling backup tapes in October 2003.

In the period of July until October of 2003, the White House was dealing with the Valerie Plame leak controversy. In July, at least three presidential aides leaked Plame's CIA identity to the news media after her husband suggested the administration had manipulated intelligence in the run-up to the war in Iraq. The Justice Department began investigating the leak in September 2003.

It is hard to conceive that this was just a stupid administrative error. Historians who study the Bush administration will need to be experts in criminal forensics.