Press Briefing by Dana Perino = 1:41 P.M. EDT
White House Conference Center Briefing Room
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/04/20070413-6.htmlPlay Video Video (Windows)
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MS. PERINO: Good afternoon. Happy Friday. Okay, I don't have anything to announce. I'll just go to questions.
Q Have you been able to determine why Karl Rove's ability to delete emails was --
MS. PERINO: No, not between the gaggle and now, I haven't.
Q Okay. How about the list of the 22 officials; are you ready to release that?
MS. PERINO: No, but we've taken it under consideration. No, I don't have that ready yet, but we are consulting -- obviously, we're in communication with the committee, meaning the House Judiciary Committee, as well as the RNC general counsel. And so a lot of these things are being discussed at that level. And so in between 10 a.m. and now I wasn't able to get a conclusion.
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Q Dana, if I could follow. We have mentioned before the group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. They issued this report, and they are saying their analysis shows that between March 2003-October 2005, there were hundreds of days in which emails were missing -- this being in the White House system, not the RNC -- and that this equated -- it was estimated that roughly over 5 million email messages were missing.
MS. PERINO: I don't know if that group actually has -- I don't know how they do an analysis on an internal White House system. But I did check it out, and we are in communication with the Office of Administration to see if there are days or partial days when there were emails that would have gone missing. And in terms of -- "missing" is a word that -- maybe misplaced, or not necessarily lost forever. I think there are backup tapes, there are different ways in order to go back and find emails.
And in talking with them and with the Counsel's Office, there is no indication that anyone who is working on a server or in terms of technical capability that would be able to look at a server, clean up a server, or, in terms of when we converted from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook if there would have been any potential loss there, that there was any intentional loss of any document. I think that those folks take those jobs very seriously and endeavor to make sure that all of the records are preserved for the Presidential Records Act, as well as the Federal Records Act.
Q So, just to be clear, are you taking issue with their conclusions, or are you just saying --
MS. PERINO: I'm not taking issue with their conclusions at this point. We're checking into them. And, again, there's 1,700 people in the Executive Office of the President. I don't know how -- we'll try to find out how many emails a day are sent with that many people. I can assure you it's a high number. But I also will tell you that the technical folks that we've spoken to in the preliminary discussions was that if there had been an inadvertent human error or a technical problem where there were days where emails might have been misplaced, that either, one -- well, one, it wouldn't have been intentional; and, two, there are ways that we can try to gather those if need be.
Think about it. I mean, there are sometimes -- and I don't have a list of the days with me -- but if it was a Saturday or a Sunday, oftentimes because we have such a large organization that works 24/7, but mostly Monday through Friday, if they do any maintenance on our servers, just like in your organizations, they often do it on times when it's slow -- slow periods. And so if they are looking at those days -- we just need to do a little bit more work before I can answer definitively.
Q So, to your knowledge, there's no problem within the White House email system, in terms of messages or emails that have been deleted? Or at this point, you just don't know?
MS. PERINO: No, what I'm saying is that -- the way that the system is set up, and the way to comply with the Presidential Records Act is that any email that goes to or from a White House account, an EOP account that you all email us on, those are automatically preserved. Their question was specific not to GWB emails but to White House account emails, and their question is -- the allegations that there could be days, whole days missing.
And what I'm saying is, we're looking into that. But I would caution people from making any broad conclusions about that, for the reasons I've stated -- which is, there's no indication that that would have been intentional, and there are ways that you can find missing emails. And that's one of the ways that they do that. I'm not a technical expert, but they have the expertise on that.
Q Just a quick follow here. They alleged that White House Counsel Harriet Miers was informed of this problem at the time, these missing emails, and that they -- that she didn't do anything about it or the White House didn't do anything about it. Are you aware of that, or --
MS. PERINO: I haven't spoken to Harriet. Obviously, she's no longer working here. But we are -- Scott Stanzel and I are working to find as much information as possible, and we're talking to the Office of Administration. Remember, sometimes -- we don't have the same personnel, necessarily, that we had three or four years ago. So we're working to get the answers for you.
Q Dana, can we go back broadly for just one moment?
MS. PERINO: Okay.
Q You've had a change of policy here. Why?
MS. PERINO: Well, as I said, this -- now stepping back away from that particular problem on EOP emails and talking about, specifically about GWB RNC-hosted accounts, out of an abundance of caution at the beginning of the administration, there were two basic notices, in terms of policy, on this issue. One was, official White House business should be done on official White House accounts.
The second one was -- and it was much more extensive -- how an individual who has responsibilities in both the political and the official worlds would avoid violating the Hatch Act. And that was very explicit, and the Hatch Act says you cannot use a government-issued computer or any sort of government-issued equipment, which is paid for by taxpayer dollars, to do any sort of political business. And so out of an abundance of caution, and because people were concerned about violating the Hatch Act, and because of convenience, in terms of managing multiple devices, as the BlackBerrys became more ubiquitous, the policy wasn't always followed correctly.
And so we decided that the best thing to do was to let you know that, and to, secondly, have a new policy, one that makes it much more clear and gives the employee much more clear guidance. There was a failing both on not having a clear guidance, not having good management or overseeing of the issue, and then individuals not following through on the guidance.
Again, I think it was more -- I don't think it was intentional, and there's no indication that there was anything improper or improper use of these RNC emails. But it is better now to have a clearer policy in which people know exactly where the lines are, and if they have questions about whether they fall in the gray area and where the line is, the Counsel's Office has let them know that their door is open and that they're happy to help them make those judgments.
Q Could you enunciate what that policy is and when it went into effect?
MS. PERINO: It was recently, only in the last couple weeks or so, I think.
Q And what is that policy?
MS. PERINO: I think it's what I've just described to you, which is that you still need -- that White House business still needs to be done on White House official accounts; political -- I see your point -- political affairs business needs to be done on your RNC account. We want to make sure that people aren't using government-sponsored -- or government-paid-for equipment to do political business, but that, out of an abundance of wanting to make sure we're complying with the Presidential Records Act, that you should figure out a way to preserve those documents, so either by printing them out or saving them in some way on your computer or CC-ing yourself so that if, in the future, at any time the Counsel's Office needs to review those documents, they are available.
Q Dana, I'm unclear on -- you said the policy wasn't always followed before. But then is there an indication of wrongdoing there, and violation of the Hatch Act?
MS. PERINO: I think the way to describe it would be that there's no indication that anyone was intentionally not following the policy. I think that the policy wasn't very clear, and that people needed a clearer policy. And especially because technology changed pretty rapidly. I think people at the White House -- and I don't know about you all -- but we didn't have access to BlackBerrys until well after -- right around after September 11th. And then at that point, it was only a very few people. And now it's much more widespread.
Q Are you certain there was no violation of the Hatch Act? I mean, you just said the policy wasn't always followed. So what does that mean, exactly?
MS. PERINO: I don't know of anybody that violated the Hatch Act.
Q Whether it was intentional or not --
MS. PERINO: I don't know of anyone that violated the Hatch Act or would have intentionally violated the Hatch Act.
Q Dana, just following up on that, two questions. First, at the outset of the administration you had this policy. Were there ethics trainings? Was it just a written policy that was distributed? How was the policy communicated to your staff?
MS. PERINO: I've worked here a long time; I can't remember. I do know that we get a written policy. I do know that -- and there is ethics training for everyone. I can't remember specifically how this was described in that ethics training.
Q And then you said -- actually, three questions. You said there wasn't enough oversight of the policy. Whose job is it to oversee that people were adhering to this policy? Who fell down on the job?
MS. PERINO: That's a good question. I don't specifically know. I think it was more a definition of senior staff, senior management.
Q And then with respect to Karl, Henry Waxman, after his meeting with the RNC, or his aide's meeting with the RNC lawyer yesterday, wrote a letter stating that the committee had, in 2005, adopted a policy specifically aimed at Karl Rove, that precluded him from manually deleting his emails from the RNC server. Why did the RNC need a special policy for Karl Rove?
MS. PERINO: As I said this morning, there are ongoing discussions between our Counsel's Office and the RNC general counsel, and it's just not something I'm able to answer right now. I understand that you want the answer, I just don't have it for you.
Go ahead, Holly.
Q When you talk about this guidance at the beginning of the administration, our understanding is that Gonzales, when he was in the White House Counsel's Office, he issued some guidance on this. Is that true, and can you release that guidance?
MS. PERINO: Can I look into it?
Q Yes.
MS. PERINO: It would follow that as Counsel to the President and in charge of the ethics counsel -- that's not illogical, but I need to check.
Q Can that be released, so we could actually see what was --
MS. PERINO: We typically have not released internal White House documents, but I'll take a look.
Q The thing is, since you're saying it was unclear, it was confusing, that way we could see for ourselves, and judge it.
MS. PERINO: Yes. Go ahead, John.
Q Have you read or been briefed on the letter from Waxman to Gonzales?
MS. PERINO: I have read the letter.
Q Okay, because at the end it seems to indicate that Rove's email capabilities were changed -- I'm sorry, I don't have the specific language in front of me -- but it seems to indicate that his email capabilities were changed because of an investigation. There's some mention of an investigation.
MS. PERINO: This follows within what Sheryl was asking about, and it's just not something I can answer right now.
Q Do you think that the increased focus on Karl Rove's
email and possibly his emails being missing might give more ammunition to Democrats who want to see him brought up to testify?
MS. PERINO: My experience has been that any time Karl Rove's name is mentioned, it adds to the ammunition, regardless of merit.
Q Do you think it has merit?
MS. PERINO: No comment. Go ahead, Peter.
Q Following up on a question from yesterday, were you able to determine who determined that the emails were missing and how this was determined?
MS. PERINO: Broadly but not specifically, in terms of the Counsel's Office review. I think that's when they realized that that -- remember, the Justice Department has been working to be responsive to the Congress, providing the documents that they ask for. And in one of those documents it showed that a White House employee had sent an email to the Justice Department, and it was from a GWB account. And that's what raised a question about it. There was nothing improper about using that account, but that's where it initiated. And so I think that from there, that's where they started looking into it more.
Q So someone went back and looked into that and found that it and others were missing, is that what you're saying?
MS. PERINO: Well, I'm not saying that anyone said that they were missing. The question is, is there a potential that some could have been lost. And, yes, there is a potential that some could have been lost, but we don't have a definition in terms of that universe or an answer specifically on that, until we are able to talk more about the forensics.
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