Greenwald provides a list of "missing" document cases.

Glenn Greenwald has a really interesting article today in Salon. He goes back and reviews a number of cases in which somehow the Bush administration has "lost" documents that law and the courts required them to turn over.

Go sit through the (short) Salon Day Pass and read the article. Then go back and review:

• More on the RNC non-government email system
  (April 12, 2007) posted today.

If you miss the reference, then go back even further to my earlier post:

• Surprise. The emails sent through the RNC have 'accidentally' been lost.
  April 11, 2007

More on the RNC non-government email system

It is clear that the email system provided to 22 current top White House aides was intended to provide a method of doing political work that the Hatch Act states cannot be done on government equipment. But it is also a lot more. It has primarily been an email system designed to be used that was not open to audit or subpoena in lawsuits. Here is what Paul Kiel wrote at TPM Muckraker today on the subject:

it's apparent from emails that the White House avoided the governmental email system because it was vulnerable to investigators. The Hatch Act just provided a good excuse. In 2003, for instance, a lobbyist for Jack Abramoff Kevin Ring wrote him that emails about Abramoff's clients shouldn't be sent to White House addresses because "it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc." That warning, Ring told The Washington Post, came from Jennifer Farley, a deputy in the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Susan Ralston, Rove's personal aide, used RNC provided email accounts when corresponding with Abramoff, her old boss.

And remember that Karl Rove reportedly uses his RNC-provided account for approximately 95% of his communication.

In other words, it was an open secret at the White House that the parallel system was to be used for everything you didn't want coming out later -- an understanding that was most likely never made explicit, but a situation that was carefully preserved by not providing apparently any parameters for what sort of communication should be done via the White House system.

The apparent loss of a large number of emails was not an accident. It was the reason the system was used as extensively as it was, especially by Karl Rove, and the reason why clear guidance on how to use the system properly was never made explicit.

This was political. In spite of all the incompetence the Bush administration has displayed in other arenas of government, the one thing they do well is political activities and planning. The lack of clear guidance for using the RNC email system was not accidental. The misuse of the system was not accidental. And most especially, the reported loss of many emails has not been accidental.

This was political, planned and conducted by highly experienced political operators with specific political goals in mind. Anything they tell us to the contrary should be assumed to be a lie - a lie that was planned from the beginning as a cover for the system itself.

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Addendum 10:52 AM CDT
Atrios says it so much better than I do.

Voter Suppression

It's probably a hopeless task, but perhaps someone other than dirty fucking hippie bloggers can understand that Karl Rove's efforts to use the tools of the state to suppress the votes of poor and minority voters is, you know, profoundly wrong in a way which makes him a extremely bad man.

New Spy Chief wants expanded surveillance laws

National Intelligence Director [NID] Mike McConnell and already he knows that the spy agencies don't have enough power to properly eavesdrop on suspected spies and terrorists. From the Washington Post [via MSNBC]:

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has circulated a draft bill that would expand the government’s powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA], liberalizing how that law can be used.

Known as “FISA,” the 1978 law was passed to allow surveillance in espionage and other foreign intelligence investigations, but still allow federal judges on a secretive panel to ensure protections for U.S. citizens — at home or abroad — and other permanent U.S. residents.

The changes McConnell is seeking mostly affect a cloak-and-dagger category of warrants used to investigate suspected spies, terrorists and other national security threats. The court-approved surveillance could include planting listening devices and hidden cameras, searching luggage and breaking into homes to make copies of computer hard drives. [Snip]

According to officials familiar with the draft changes to FISA, McConnell wants to:

* Give the NSA the power to monitor foreigners without seeking FISA court approval, even if the surveillance is conducted by tapping phones and e-mail accounts in the United States. “Determinations about whether a court order is required should be based on considerations about the target of the surveillance, rather than the particular means of communication or the location from which the surveillance is being conducted,” NSA Director Keith Alexander told the Senate last year.
* Clarify the standards the FBI and NSA must use to get court orders for basic information about calls and e-mails — such as the number dialed, e-mail address, or time and date of the communications. Civil liberties advocates contend the change will make it too easy for the government to access this information.
* Triple the life span of a FISA warrant for a non-U.S. citizen from 120 days to one year, allowing the government to monitor much longer without checking back in with a judge.
* Give telecommunications companies immunity from civil liability for their cooperation with Bush’s terrorist surveillance program. Pending lawsuits against companies including Verizon and AT&T allege they violated privacy laws by giving phone records to the NSA for the program.
* Extend from 72 hours to one week the amount of time the government can conduct surveillance without a court order in emergencies.

McConnell, Alexander and a senior Justice Department official will appear at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on April 17 to discuss whether to amend the FISA law.

Since this is the same day Abu Gonzales is scheduled to testify to the Senate in an effort to keep his job, I hope this testimony isn't squeezed out of the news.

On a purely theoretical issue of organizational control, if you have well-trained people you trust doing a job that changes quickly you can sometimes exchange immediate approvals for action and replace most of the approvals with strong and independent reporting of actions after they are taken.

I'm not sure that I have the required trust of this administration generally, but if any of these proposals are approved, they should certainly be accompanied by a strong reporting scheme and followup audits by independent agencies at more frequent intervals than present. Then the Congress should schedule Hearings at the end of one year, two years and three years of operation regardless of what the followup reports and audits suggest, and perhaps more frequently if problems are demonstrated.

Bushies use RNC email accounts for official business

One of the more recent revelations from the House oversight hearings has been that a lot of top administration officials have been given access to Republican National Committee email accounts and use them rather than use the official government email accounts which are subject to archival rules.

...several White House aides “said that they stopped using the White House system except for purely professional correspondence. … ‘We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed.' said one aide.

The Think Progress article provides some examples of administration staffers using the RNC email system to avoid the possibility that Congress would subpoena the emails.

A strong indicator that decisions to use this non-government email system was mostly based on a combination of fear of the emails being subpoenaed and on pure laziness by rushed individuals is that apparently there was no consideration given to the fact that (as Kevin Drum has pointed out) this may eliminate the possibility of using the legal doctrine of Executive Privilege to keep the information in those RNC emails from being given to the Congressional oversight committees. If this were White House policy, then whoever established the policy would have had to pass it by the White House Counsel who would have considered such potential downsides.

Oh, wait. This is not a White House or an administration that "does policy," is it?