According to a new report issued by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a liberal watchdog group, it is alleged, in possible violation of the federal Presidential Records Act, official White House email traffic for hundreds of days has vanished, over a two year period. As per White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, it cannot be ruled out that there were a potential ’5 million emails’ lost. She stressed although there was no indication of a deliberate attempt at losing emails, she was alert not to dispute the outside group’s allegations. She continued that nothing is being concluded at this point in time and the matter is being looked into. There are 1,700 people in the Executive Office of the President. Perino told reporters that the e-mails from those accounts should have been saved, but said policy has not kept pace with technology. She said computer experts were trying to retrieve any records that have been deleted. The administration was already facing sharp questions about whether top presidential advisers including Karl Rove improperly used Republican National Committee e-mail that the White House said later disappeared. Rove has always understood from very early on in the Bush administration that RNC and campaign e-mail were being archived Congressional investigators have questioned whether White House aides used e-mail accounts from the Republican Party and President Bush’s re-election campaign for official government business to avoid scrutiny of those dealings. The biggest problem here is really that here is a White House that is deliberately violating an existing statute that requires them to preserve all records
May
15
