Federal Judge Blasts Bush for Lost Emails

A federal judge said the Bush Administration has failed to adequately safeguard electronic messages that should be a part of the public record, according to a ruling out today. 

First Amendment advocates have long had frustration over the Bush Administration's apparent willingness to withhold internal communications and documents from the National Archives claiming executive privilege and privacy rights. 

As First Amendment Fan has documented in the past, Vice President Dick Cheney said in a court filing that his official White House records are private and he alone will determine what records will be given to the National Archive and which will not.

Unfortunately for First Amendment advocates and journalists alike, many of the "lost" emails and other electronic documents hidden away in unknown White House file cabinets will probably never been made available to the public. 

An excerpt from the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON — A federal court tore into the Bush White House today over the issue of millions of apparently missing e-mails, saying the administration had failed in its obligation to safeguard all electronic messages.

In a four-page opinion, U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola said the White House was ignoring court instructions to search a full range of locations for all electronic messages that may be missing.

The Executive Office of the President, Facciola said, was limiting its search to offices subject to the requirements of the Federal Records Act, while sidestepping offices subject to the preservation requirements of the Presidential Records Act.

There is a profound societal interest as well as a legal obligation to preserve all records and "the importance of preserving the e-mails cannot be exaggerated," Facciola wrote.

The Bush White House has represented to the court that no records created in an office covered by the Presidential Records Act are transmitted to offices covered by the Federal Records Act. But there is no factual record on which to base that conclusion, said Facciola.

He ordered the EOP to conduct a search of all offices regardless of which law covers a White House office, saying the issues in the case must be dealt with in "true emergency conditions" because there are just two business days remaining before the Bush administration ends.

"The records at issue are not paper records that can be stored, but electronically stored information that can be deleted with a keystroke," Facciola wrote. "Additionally, I have no way of knowing what happens to computers and to hard drives in them when one administration replaces another."

Facciola's opinion raises questions about the completeness of the Bush administration e-mail search. The Justice Department says the government has finished a search that entailed spending more than $10 million to locate 14 million e-mails.