ViceZilla’s Views

I’m beginning to wonder why some people and corporations that commit white collar crimes waste their energy and time going to great lengths to cover their misdeeds, when all they have to do is take a page out of the Bush Administration’s excuse handbook. Case in point: The Missing E-mail Saga.

A critical period of time in Bush’s tenure as President has been conveniently erased from history. I say conveniently because it shouldn’t be this easy to cover up a crime. But when you are the President of the United States, and work above the law, its as simple as throwing something in the trash, or at least saying you threw it in the trash, then expect everybody to take your word for it, and forget that the crime happened in the first place.

Three years of White House E-mail communications have simply disappeared, almost as if the Administration is in denial that they ever existed. Three years of communications that happened around the same time as the Iraq invasion, and the despicable outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, not to mention the prelude to the dismissals of seven U.S Attorneys, have all very easily and conveniently disappeared. Despite challenges by lawmakers and open-government groups in congressional hearings and in court, the White House remains defiant about its guilt to safeguard the communications produced or received by the President, his staff, or units or individuals in the Executive Office of the President, which according to law, belong to The United States as an historical record.

The excuses provided by the White House are reminiscent of the school child trying to explain to the teacher why his homework assignment wasn’t completed. The excuses offered by the White House so far have included an “outdated archival system,” the “backup tapes were recycled,” and now “the hard drives have been destroyed.” What, no little green men in flying saucers hacking into the White House systems and translating the files into their native language, making them unreadable by humans?

In a sworn declaration filed Friday with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola, the White House contends “when workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired … the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction. Some, but not necessarily all, of the data on old hard drives is moved to new computer hard drives.” This again is in direct violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

The court papers filed on Friday also state “It would be costly and time-consuming for the White House to institute an e-mail retrieval program that entails pulling data off each individual workstation.” Ummmm, no it wouldn’t! Costs has never been a priority for the Bush Administration, and with 303 days left in his Presidency, there should be plenty of time to resurrect the data? Maybe the crack Telcos that illegally spied on Americans can lend some of their technical expertise?

Technorati Tags: Missing White House Emails, Bush Administration, Email Retention, Hard Drives, Refresh Program

Tags: Bush Administration //