The big doofus lost more than a year of E-Mails - "Al Gore, fighting to preserve cluelessness". I like it. Has a ring. Look great on my bumper.
June 8, 2000
White House Admits Over One Year of Vice President's
E-Mail Lost Forever
Committee inquiry forces White House to admit that a full year of e-mails from the Office of the Vice President were not saved
Washington D.C., - Chairman Dan Burton (R-IN) today released a written admission by the White House Counsel that all of the e-mails from the Vice President's office from March 1998 through April 1999 were not saved on back-up tapes. Until this recent revelation, the Committee and the several investigative bodies looking into the White House e-mail matter had been led to believe that all Office of the Vice President e-mails had been saved.
"Three weeks ago, the Committee interviewed a witness who told us she had written a memo to the Vice-President, at the Vice President?s request back in April 1999 about the fact that e-mail in his office had not been properly archived," Burton said. "We wrote to the White House Counsel asking why that memo had not been turned over even though the language of our subpoena called for it.
"On Wednesday, we received a reply from the White House telling us that ?[Your letter] has led us to discover that a technical configuration error apparently prevented e-mail on the OVP server from being backed-up from the end of March 1998 through early April 1999.?
"We also learned that the Vice President's staff wanted his records to be managed differently than other records in the White House. The Committee was told that the Vice President himself was warned in April of 1999 about problems with his records management. Apparently, neither the Vice President nor anyone on his staff cared enough to notify the White House Counsel, this Committee, or any of the independent counsels who had outstanding document requests. This is consistent with what was happening in the Office of Administration and the White House Counsel's Office. It is obvious that the White House continues to pursue its strategy of willful ignorance. At every turn they have fought to preserve their cluelessness."
On March 23, 2000, the Committee heard testimony from the Northrop Grumman contractors who discovered the White House E-mail problem. In 1998 these non-partisan, contract employees discovered a computer glitch that failed to preserve hundreds of thousands of e-mails that came into the White House from 1996 through 1998. The e-mails had not been archived as is required by federal law, nor produced to Congress, the Justice Department or any of the several independent counsels - all of whom were investigating allegations of corruption in the executive branch.
Chairman Burton has called for a special counsel to investigate the e-mail matter. To date, the Attorney General has failed to respond to his request.
"This is just the latest outrage in this whole unfortunate matter," Burton said. "First, the White House Counsel certified that we had all documents responsive to our subpoenas. Then the White House led us to believe that all the missing e-mails had been saved on thousands of back-up tapes. Now we learn that not even that is true.
"The White House failure to turn over records about problems in the Vice President?s office is yet another example of the ethical minimalism that governs White House document production."
house.gov |
