When 5 Million E-Mails Went Missing-WH Pointed To Contractor-ONLY PROBLEM-Contractor NEVER EXISTED

[kpete]

Did White House Lie About Solution Provider's Role in Loss of 5 Million E-mails?
By Damon Poeter, CMP Channel
6:27 PM EDT Wed. Oct. 03, 2007

When Congress asked about 5 million executive branch e-mails that went missing, a White House lawyer pointed the finger at an outside IT contractor.

The only problem? No such IT contractor exists, according to sources close to the investigation of a possible violation of the Federal Records and Presidential Records acts.

White House Office of Administration (OA) Deputy General Counsel Keith Roberts told the House Oversight Committee on May 29 that "an unidentified company working for the Information Assurance (IA) Directorate of the Office of the Chief Information Officer was responsible for daily audits of the e-mail system and the e-mail archiving process," according to committee chair Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. That briefing came about after it was confirmed by the White House in April that millions of e-mails had vanished from Executive Office of the President (EOP) archives from 2003-2005.

..........

Contrary to Roberts' statement to the Oversight Committee, several sources, including an IT company currently doing contractual work for the Executive Office of the President, have told ChannelWeb that no outside company had a managed services contract to audit the Executive Office of the President's e-mail archiving system daily during the period when the e-mails went missing.

much more at:
http://crn.com/government/202200837

[annabanana]

1. Hoo Boy!! Is that as outrageous as I think it is?

So the WH destroyed the emails all by themselves.

[TomInTib]

5. Yep. Read on...

from the same article (which is well worth reading, by the way):

""In 2002, they abandoned Lotus Notes, went to Microsoft Outlook, abandoned ARMS, but never put in a new electronic records management system. So I'm told they just dumped e-mail on servers. This meant that anybody with access to the servers could potentially dump data and delete documents," said Weismann.

"Each agency of the EOP's records are commingled. It's all just a dump. How much is missing? I think 5 million is the low end of what's missing."

Interestingly, NARA's total agency IT investments went from $36 million in 2001 to $62 million in 2002, according to the Clinger Cohen Act Report on Federal Information Technology Investments. Drilling deeper, NARA's budget for IT development, enhancement and modernization (DME) shot up from $3 million to $17 million in that year-on-year period. Budget numbers for later years could not be confirmed.

Yet in the year following the near-doubling of its IT budget, NARA suddenly seemed incapable of preventing massive data loss in the form of millions of e-mails."


Oh, they did it, all right.

[Recursion]

7. Christ! I could do better with Postfix...

...and basic POSIX file permissions.

[TheMadMonk]

56. I could do better with a Vic20 and Logo.

[bonito]

2. K&R!

:kick:

[kestrel91316]

3. The alleged WH contractor was probably KKKarl's kid, sitting

in Dad's office after school and on weekends, earning a few extra bucks exercising his index finger.

[tridim]

9. Maybe it was KKKarl's young protégé, AKA Jenna's fiancé. nt

[Liberal In Texas]

4. Verrrrry Interesting.......

K/R

[Double T]

6. And we should expect anything less from these criminals in the WH?

Upon closer examination, I'm certain investigators will find that the "DELETE" button is worn out on ALL the executive branch computers.

[SaveAmerica]

24. Makes the couple of 'W's missing after Clinton left look like kiddie stuff...

[Felinity]

25. Just in case you didn't hear

That was a lie, made up out of whole cloth. Just like troupergate.

[SaveAmerica]

47. I thought the lie was the amount of damages they said the Clinton admin did?

I'm guessing somebody pulled a W or two off of a keyboard and they took that and made the outrageous claim that 100's of thousands of dollars worth of damage had been done to the west wing. That's Rove's MO, take something that's the truth (no matter how small and inconsequential) and expand it to outrage the dimwitted. Anyway, my point is anything that outraged said dimwits about Clinton pales in comparison with what these apes have done.

[babylonsister]

8. Waxman and Leahy need to hear this ASAP! nt

[KoKo]

38. Here's a Timeline from the Article...Note that Waxman a.sked for the name of the IT Co

in August but as of now has not received and answer. :eyes: So, what's Waxman going to do about this, if they now are trying to tell him there wasn't an outside contracter. Is the WH telling the truth or not?

Aug. 2007: Oversight Committee chair Henry Waxman asks White House to name unnamed IT contractor by Sept. 10. As of Oct. 3, committee has not received an answer.

------------------------------------------------------

Timeline of Events in White House E-mail Scandal

1994: Executive Office of the President (EOP) implements Automated Records Management System (ARMS) integration with e-mail clients for secure archiving of White House e-mails. ARMS automatically segregates, categorizes and archives e-mails according to whether they fall under Presidential Records Act or Federal Records Act.

1996-1998: White House IT staffer claims in U.S. District Court affidavits that e-mails coming into one White House server were not archived over a 27-month period.

1997: White House Staff manual establishes policy for staff to only use ARMS-supported e-mail clients (Lotus Notes and Oasis All-In-1) for all official communications.

2002-2003: Executive Office of the President switches from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook e-mail client. ARMS integration with Lotus Notes discontinued, not replaced with similar secure archival system for Microsoft Outlook. Presidential records and federal records no longer segregated and archived in separate storage servers.

March 2003-October 2005: Some 5 million EOP e-mails deleted from servers, representing hundreds of days of missing created or received White House e-mails, according to Office of Administration.

Oct. 2005: In response to government subpoenas, OA discovers missing e-mails, begins investigating how this happened.

Feb. 2006: CIA leak case prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald writes that numerous White House emails from 2003 are missing from White House computer archives.

April 2007: White House Press Secretary Dana Perino "wouldn't rule out" that 5 million e-mails lost in EOP system. Perino later says they "should be" on backup tapes. To date, White House has not shown evidence of the missing e-mails being restored via backup tapes.

May 2007: OA counsel Keith Roberts tells House Oversight Committee an outside IT contractor was responsible for "daily audits" of e-mail archive system.

Aug. 2007: Oversight Committee chair Henry Waxman asks White House to name unnamed IT contractor by Sept. 10. As of Oct. 3, committee has not received an answer.

[L. Coyote]

44. Is the IT contractor a law firm? Does the IT contractor have all the e-mails?

Inside info from Sidley Austin informs of work being carried out to recover e-mails deleted after 30 days.

Bradford Berenson, attorney to Sara Taylor and Kyle Sampson, and former counsel in the White House, is a Sidley Austin partner.

Who is paying for this high-powered representation, and how?

[Frisbee]

59. I truly wish I believed..

..that that would make a difference, but I have finely reached the point where I think these treasonous bastards will get away with anything they do. I am tired of crying wolf, saying this will finally be the one that burns them, only to see everybody's attention shift with the next hot item on the evening news. Sure, I'd still like to see them held accountable for what they have done (war crimes, shitting on the constitution, stealing from the poor and middle class to line their pockets and on and on and on), either in a US or international court, and receive a VERY long sentence for their crimes. Actually, when it comes to the DICK, I'd be happy with 30 days hard labor with the only health care he gets for his ticker is from a free clinic (and a registered Democrat for his doctor). But I have finally accepted that while I will still rant and rave about what they are doing, they will get away with it. The Bush administration may very well be responsible for destroying this country as we knew (and loved) it, and don't even get me started on what they have done on a global scale. But in the end, they will run out the clock, then the politicians will all say it's time to move on and let the healing begin. They will never be held accountable and that just pisses me off.

[Solly Mack]

10. typical

[Jacobin]

11. ruh roh

Those 'outside contractors' come in handy, even when they don't exist!

[Sancho]

12. I hope that CREW is onto this.

I doubt that any committees with do anything - they haven't so far.

[chill_wind]

13. Outside contractors "didn't exist"- or just none they would want uncovered? CHECK THIS:

Anybody else remember this from TPM in 2006?

Cunningham Felon's Intelligence Contracts with the White House Virtually Unprecedented
By Paul Kiel - March 17, 2006, 5:52PM

(see very interesting story intro...)

Our search of the Federal Procurement Data System, going back to the beginning of the Bush administration, returns only one other contractor who got a contract for "Intelligence Services" from the White House.

That one went to Pushkin Operational Consultants, Inc. (POC), a small contractor based in Pembroke Pines, Florida owned by Matthew Pushkin. POC's contract for $247,060 was signed August 13th, 2004 and lasted through May 31st of 2005. The only other indication of the nature of the contract is that POC classifies its industry as "Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services."

Several factors suggest that POC may have been working with MZM on the same project. Wade's contracts with the White House, for instance, worth a total of $254,437, started about the same time as Pushkin's - all in the Summer of '04. And one of Wade's 3 contracts also ended the same day as Pushkin's - May 31st, 2005.

Making their collaboration more likely, POC's business, like MZM's, was information systems. The Federal Procurement Data System shows that POC's other work (3 contracts worth $687,140.13) was for the Federal Technology Service, a government agency that provides IT and telecommunications services to various federal agencies.

(more)

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000125.php

May be connected, may not? Either way, it's a whole slime trail to the WH story of its own, isn't it?

[troubleinwinter]

14. It's complicated to read.

Paricularly for those of us who aren't that tech-y.

Could someone write a clear (non-tech) translation? It would be valuable not only for some of us here, but to send to others.

[chill_wind]

16. "Unspecified intelligence services"- cites by The Federal Procurement Data System"

per TPM and also WAPO.


(...)
Now, during 2004, the Federal Procurement Data System lists 444 procurement contracts for the Executive Office of the President (that's the official name for what we colloquially refer to as 'the White House'). Most of those contracts are what you'd expect for a large office complex -- computer services, shipping, office supplies, etc

But three stand out: three contracts, for a total of $254,437, for unspecified "intelligence services."


(snip)

Government procurement records show that MZM, which Wade started in 1993, did not report any revenue from prime contract awards until 2003. Most of its revenue has come from the agreement the Pentagon just cut off. But over the past three years it was also awarded several contracts, worth more than $600,000, by the Executive Office of the President. They include a $140,000 deal for office furniture in 2002 and several for unspecified "intelligence services." (italics added)

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000045.php

(March 2006)

TPM speculated connections to Wade Iran Group, but they also explain (see upthread) that one of MZM's numerous enterprises was in the IT business.

[paparush]

41. Super Simple Version

Email to/from the office of the President and VP belong to We The People.

The offices are supposed to save permanent copies of all emails.

They didn't.

When some 5M email records turned up missing, the WH pointed the finger at Company X. "We hired Company X to make sure all of these emails get saved. Company X must have messed up...Its all company X's fault"

There was no Company X. No such contract existed. Emails gone. Records gone. Evidence gone.


>>>>>>> >>>>>>>


Depending on how the email accounts are set up:
The can delete their copy.
The can delete their copy.
A copy should remain on the

The copies on the should still be there, or at least have been saved and stored for later retrieval. They were not.

[PinkyisBlue]

15. When Clinton was President, the same thing and worse happened.

Millions of e-mails went missing (we never knew if they were purposely deleted, and they violated a legal statute requiring all White House communications to be saved).

A covert CIA agent was outed under the direction of the Vice-President, and then the VP and others lied about it to a Grand Jury. Ultimately, after years of interrogation, the VP's Chief of Staff was found guilty of lying to a Grand Jury.

A major war was initiated under false pretenses by the administration, followed by a long, tedious, bloody occupation of an innocent country. During the war and occupation, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were murdered or injured and tens of thousands of US soldiers were killed or maimed. The reasons for the war were financial control of the country's oil reserves and plain old war profiteering.

The administration had its own political litmus test for the hiring and firing of important positions, such as state Attorney Generals, Director of FEMA, etc. A person's educational background and work experience were not important; a person's loyalty to the political party and to the administration were of utmost importance. A person was seen as a team player if he/she was to bring up charges, even false ones, against a candidate of the other party shortly before an election.
One could rise quickly in the administration if he/she actively campaigned for candidates of their party, especially if it was on government time using government resources (which is illegal).

The voting rights of millions of US citizens were nullified, either by disallowing, not counting, or altering their votes.

Torture of detainees was okay, as long as it wasn't publicized.

The children in poor and middle class families didn't need health insurance because they had access to emergency rooms in hospitals.

Free speech occurred only in "Free Speech Zones", located where the protesters couldn't be seen or heard by others. If they came out of the zone, they could and would be arrested. They would also be placed on "No Fly Lists" for the purpose of detainment and harrassment at airports.

Things were so much worse under Clinton. Didn't he also have a sexual affair, for which they tried to impeach him? Good thing we have a media that is looking out for us and reporting important information.

:sarcasm:

[caligirl]

17. the 18 minute gap of the Nixon WH all over again folks. Huge violations.

[chill_wind]

19. The "Mary Rose Stretch.".. saved for all posterity.

I didn't know she came from a Dem family.

(another pic of The Stretch)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30678-2005Jan23.html

[FogerRox]

20. Wasnt that to lift the phone, while hitting a pedal to start the tape recorder..... IIRC....

[chill_wind]

23. Yes- her famed, claimed "demo of how she erased the tape".

I have trouble picturing chunky little Karl, for one, twisting himself in such un-ergonomic ways. :-)

Nay.... the mystery lies elsewhere. Karl has never been dumb enough to leave such kinds of fingerprints. I read in one of the big-time Texas papers online some years ago that in all the years that he served in then-Governor Bush's inner circle, not one single scrap of paper that went into archives of Bush's admin bore his signature on it anywhere.

[defendandprotect]

18. I'd say they think their backs are against the wall . . . . but, the way things go . . ..

somehow they are never held accountable -- !!!!

[Amonester]

22. and never will be - eom

[Trillo]

21. Aren't the laws trite?

"Laws are for little people", or some such semantic permutation, words spoken by some rich idiot who was caught breaking the law, was it Leona Helmsley?

Now we get to find out. Do laws equally apply to all of us?

So far, it isn't looking good for us 'little ones'.

[HereSince1628]

34. Quaint anachronisms of V- time,

Scholars will divide American History into pre-W, to be designated V-time; W for W's reign of social destructin; and X-time--everything that comes after W.

[ck4829]

26. K&R

[Vinca]

27. Another day, another lie. Ho hum. nt

[Whoa_Nelly]

28. "...high crimes and misdemeanors"

Impeach Already!

[Dr.Phool]

29. Impeach?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[trusty elf]

49. Not for that, but what about this?

Fowlatio!

[Jackpine Radical]

30. So what?

You think somebody's gonna do something about this? Outrageous as it is, it's among the least of the offenses committed by these people. Think of WMD, Plame, election theft...aw, make up your own list. Then get back to me on why I should allow this information to pump any adrenaline into my system.

It's not just outrage fatigue that's getting to us. It's gthe learned helplessness. The people we elected to clean house make a big flurry of dust and activity, and in the end nothing changes.

[L. Coyote]

37. All that follows STEALING FLORICA 2000 is an offense to democracy. Were YOU Purged?

Democracy was purged with the voter rolls in Florida in 2000.

The course of American history was altered by a few crooked men and a crooked woman.

[Jackpine Radical]

45. ...in league with a whole bunch of other people

whom we were counting on to do better for us.

The war rages on with no end in sight.

New revelations come to light every day (today it's secret approval of torture)and get no press coverage, in no small part because the Democrats aren't screaming about them.

The White House continues their high crimes & misdemeanors.

Impeachment is off the table.

If we were expecting a Dem majority to be our comic-book heroes and come to the nation's rescue, all I can say is Superman has George Bush's snot all over his cape.

[SpiralHawk]

31. republitons HATE America and lie, lie, lie to the American people

Why are republicons so Anti-American? Why are they so anti-truth and honesty?

[lonestarnot]

32. Barney was managing them.

[f the letter]

33. Wow.

Will this make the news? Nah, that'd just be playing politics. Right?


right?

[ThomWV]

35. Repeat after me: P-E-R-J-U-R-Y

[mod mom]

36. What we need is charges with action taken. the whole cabal is nothing but lying

scoundrels, yest so few have faced jail time.

[L. Coyote]

40. Remember, the Criminals are the Police and Justice both! An indelicate predicament!

[lovuian]

58. P-E=R=J=U=R=Y

:toast:

[cascadiance]

39. Is Keith any relation to SCOTUS chief justice John Roberts?...

Then perhaps we'd have some ammunition to perhaps force some recusals if a case on this got appealed to SCOTUS!

[redqueen]

42. Lie lie lie lie lie lie lie...

that's all they ever do.

Shame that 'liberal media' lets them get away with it all the damn time, huh?

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

43. So, they committed yet another crime of perjury and contempt. What else is new?

:shrug: Nothing will be done about it. What else is new? x(

[progressoid]

46. Bush administration: Lie. Rinse. Repeat.

[npincus]

48. "Impeachment is off the table"

Put it f*cking back.

[dkofos]

50. And nothing will be done again!!

[RoccoR5955]

51. It doesn't matter WHO didn't archive the e-mails....

The EXECUTIVE BRANCH is STILL responsible for their data. They have no IT staff? BS! Who tells chimpy to click on a message to read it? Or is Chimpy's computer really an Etch-A-Sketch?

They are responsible for keeping backups of what they do, just as they are responsible for paper documents. No excuse, no way.

[L. Coyote]

53. Yes, someone is acountable, someone behind the stonewall.

Problem is, everyone behind the stonewall is part of the Culture of Corruption. They are the ones not caught yet.

They can stall and stall, but that will not change the facts. Someone is accountable.

[FiveGoodMen]

52. My imaginary dog ate my homework

[gasperc]

54. ooops, they lied about a lie

I guess I'll have to compartamentalize that one under
'oh fuck, what a shock, give me yet another fucking break'

[Gonnuts]

55. Redundancy

Anyone that has had anything to do with the government knows this, EVERYTHING it keep, duplicated, triplicated and quad-triplicated. To say that these emails were simply "lost" is an insult to whatever little intelligence the American people have.

[rhett o rick]

57. Wasn't this being investigated? What has happened to all the investigations?

Have any actions been taken other than the Libby sentence and pardon. Dems were so anxious to investigate. How's that workin for ya??

[alfredo]

60. Nothing out of their mouths approaches the truth.

[L. Coyote]

61. Email-Gate FACTS: Felons, georgewbush.com, gwb43.com , et. al.

About 240 posts compilation thread from Mar-28-07
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x523978