Uhuh, right, of course that's it, after all, they had no way of recognizing contemporaneously that such a problem could possibly occur, no indeedy. *heavy sarcasm dripping from each word*

Well shit, that question kind of answers itself, doesn't it?

We need to impound the servers and someone outside the White House needs to try to recover the emails. This is serious bullshit.

> Does the White House seriously think
> we're going to buy this?

It doesn't matter if _we_ buy it, only if the traditional media buys it. So far they have; I believe Time Magazine has made an explicit decision not to cover GonzoGate but the rest of the trads are just not digging in. No digging = no Watergate.

Cranky

No one could have seen this coming....

Of course they think we're going to buy this.

No problem. Congress should insist that a qualified data recovery firm be hired, to recover "accidentally" deleted mail off of their servers.

Well, it worked in the Padilla case. If you can "lose" evidence in the highest profile and most controversial "terrorism" case in the country, why not a few emails?

Oh, and in the meantime, any hard disks in use for mail in the affected period should be taken offline and put under lock and key until the data recovery firm can go at it.

there should be records on other servers, the recipients', for example.

I smell a "Deep Throat II" moment coming...

Do you have any actual evidence that there's malfeasance here, or are you just rumor-mongering?

Hey, if they can't run a war, recover from a hurricane, or remember why they fired 8 US attorneys, what makes you think they can operate a mail server?

They are incompetent, QED.

"""Do you have any actual evidence that there's malfeasance here, or are you just rumor-mongering?"""
That is old fashioned spin and does not work anymore my friend. Rumors? The POTUS is the author of this story. It is the White House that makes this claim. And just for giggles..do you think a WH claim of losing Emails on the up and up?

Al, you drooling fucktard. This entire thread is about how the evidence has been DELETED. Get it?

E mails are not stored on servers unless the users opt to leave them there. I take bets that option was never taken.

"Do you have any actual evidence that there's malfeasance here, or are you just rumor-mongering?" -- Al

It's the Bush Administration, so yeah, pretty much case closed. Even their attempts not to be corrupt ("we used RNC emails to avoid the appearance of impropriety in conducting political activity on government property") are thoroughly corrupt. It's literally metacorruption.

Get the backup tapes, and if need be take the disks themselves in bring in the forensic geeks.

Richard,

If the user does not opt to leave mail on the server, it is deleted after reading, but this does not make the data disappear. Data recovery firms can often recover deleted files; many kiddie porn cases have involved data recovery firms.

fucktard? What the hell is that? No my fucktard expert..this is not about evidence YET! Its just about mail. Until someone can make a credible claim that the mail has 'evidence' it is just mail. If events prove that evidence was in that mail then we fucktards will do what ever it is fucktards do when fucked. Fucktard? is that a Dr. Suess creation?

If the emails are still sitting on the servers waiting to be recovered, then the WH is truly incompetent. My bet is that the data has been thoroughly wiped.

The First Rule of Holes:

When you are in a hole, stop digging.

The Republicans have repeatedly violated the First Rule of Holes, this being the latest example. As an experienced litigator, I can guarantee you that when the e-mails are recovered (and they will be), we will be able to make a persuasive case that some information found therein is the "smoking gun" that demonstrates a Rove-led plot. If the stuff had not been deleted in the first place, it would have been much harder to make the case, even with the same underlying evidence.

Joe Buck...me thinks the GOP / RNC folks know what a digital shredder is. That crap is gone and no one is going to get it...remember the Katy Harris 'formats' in 2000..its gone.

"Does the White House seriously think we're going to buy this?"

No, but I suspect they also don't particularly care. It's just another way of telling Pat Leahy to go fuck himself -- not as direct as Cheney's way, but it does get the message across.

I'm surprised they didn't try to tell us it was all Rose Mary Woods's fault.

Stanzel said some e-mails have been lost because the White House lacked clear policies on complying with Presidential Records Act requirements

Er, yeah. "We 'lost' the emails because we didn't have a policy of obeying the law". That's obviously true: if the emails that were required to be preserved were lost, a policy of obeying the law requiring them to be retained either didn't exist or wasn't implemented. However, that's not a justification...

Do you have any actual evidence that there's malfeasance here

You mean, aside from the White House's admission that it had no policy of obeying the law, resulting in a violation of the law?

Yep, we sure saw this coming. Congress had better get those hard disks under lock and key pronto, before the disks get erased tomorrow morning by some strange electromagnetic phenomenon so that even retrieval experts can't rescue them.

yes, of course we knew this is coming.

How many laws does this administration have to break before they are held accountable?

Worst. Administration. Ever. (this is a recording)

Pricks, the lot of them. I am really looking forward to Hawk, Normy and the rest of the Clowns make any claims to the "party of responsibility and accountability"

They don't give a rats ass about congress, the constitution or this country.

Acting as if the "emails got deleted" line works, what a riot.

Hey, if they're not on the RNC server, they're on someone else's computer somewhere.

And it's a guarantee they're on the NSA server.

"Deleted emails..." No such thing, folks.

What reason would the WH need to out source its e-mails? The obvious thought is to keep the word traffic out of official channels and the scrutiny such channels incur. Perhaps they just wanted to save the taxpayer a few bucks. Better just shut down the Iraq war and give every citizen in the USA a Blackberry...I think we come out on that one.

You know, this was so obviously going to happen. Why didn't the justice committee do whatever they needed to do (in a legal sense) to get those RNC computers protected as soon as they found out about their use in the USA purge. Lawyers will have to tell me how this could have been done.

whitehouse has rosemary woods moment.

And it's a guarantee they're on the NSA server.

I'll give you that they are probably on a top secret server somewhere, but that ain't getting subpoenaed.

The "Evidential" White House

I wrote before that I had always believed there was some upper limit on weirdness but the current WH is proving me wrong! This is just too funny. Al's comment is actually dead on. You have all the defenders saying (paraphrased) "there is no credible (actual) evidence of wrongdoing(illegal activity, criminal activity, etc.)".

I think you see my point. No one (outside of the WSJ editorial board, I think) is saying that what the DOJ did was good, desirable or ethical, but rather that we don't have the EVIDENCE to prove that it was improper. It's like a kid standing next to an empty cooky jar and wiping the crumbs off his lips while he retorts to his mom, "You don't have any video record of my stealing the cookies, do you?".

And this is the administration that was going bring 'honor and integrity' back to Washington!

James M.

me thinks the GOP / RNC folks know what a digital shredder is.

I would assume that the use of such a digital shredder on White House records would be proof positive of an effort to destroy such records in violation of the law.

I want to see all of the documents related to the decisions to use the non .gov accounts. Someone had to make that decision, and if the documents are destroyed, they can explain it under oath, in a public hearing, to Congress. Don't see how that decision is covered under Executive Priviledge.

POSTSCRIPT: Of course, there are always the RNC servers themselves. They ought to have these emails archived. Right?

Um, I don't know how closely you've been following this, but the RNC has already said their servers routinely delete emails after 30 days. But don't worry! The RNC swears they're making an exception for these emails!

whitehouse has rosemary woods moment.

"""Hey, if they're not on the RNC server, they're on someone else's computer somewhere."""
I doubt it but: you would need at least one of those mails to do a thread chase and my guess is that chase happened a few days ago by the GOP'ers. Those mails have been wiped cleaner than a Princess's ass. Folks - no one believes these assholes anymore except the pathetic 30 percenter's. The mails don't need to happen. Bush has lost his groove and no one..NO ONE is going to believe that this is an honest mistake. Perhaps the unknown character of it will provoke human nature...and folks will just think the worst.
Look what these guys are resorting to... Sit back and get some popcorn. This is better than Kracken.

I thought that it was impossible to truly delete emails. How does that work?

"""I would assume that the use of such a digital shredder on White House records would be proof positive of an effort to destroy such records in violation of the law."""
Nope Nope Nope...these mails were on private servers and their content will remain unknown. No way you can make that allegation unless you have one of those mails.
This is not a clever move by Rove and the bois. Sure they thought it was but they thought the flight suit, the stroll and a host of fake impressions were going to work. They aint got any mojo anymore. Rove actually never had any skill at all. Look at the box he has put Bush and the GOP in. Mails will not be found so American's will just have to imagine their content. I have my ideas..what about you?

They can subpoena the servers themselves, can't they?

Why didn't the justice committee do whatever they needed to do (in a legal sense) to get those RNC computers protected as soon as they found out about their use in the USA purge.

They did.

The problem, however, is that they likely found out far too late. Of course, none of this would have been an issue if the White House wasn't breaking the law to start with.

We would be completely happy to deliver the e-mails in question, except, by a tragic circumstance, they went down the wrong Internet tube and were permanently lost. Please consult our Internet expert, Ted Stevens, for an explanation.

--

The key quote from the story:
"Even though that was changed in 2004, so that the White House staffers with those accounts were excluded from the RNC's automatic deletion policy, some of their e-mails were lost anyway when individual aides deleted their own files, Stanzel said."

So the retention policy was nothing, since anybody could just delete mails anyway.

Might be they are trying to confuse the issue, by referring only to the user visible deletion & purge standards, rather than the internal system policy.

I thought that it was impossible to truly delete emails.

It is difficult to do so in a way that guarantees that they won't be found by dedicated search and forensic analysis, both because actually deleting files is difficult, and because emails tend to travel over many systems, unencrypted, in their lifetime, giving lots of points from which they can be potentially recovered.

But when you want all of a particular person's email from a given server, if they have made a dedicated effort to erase it from the main server it is hosted on, the task of collecting all those emails and examining them is made far more difficult, and the probability of recovering all of them intact is not great, though a dedicated hunt with enough resources will probably find some of them, through some combination of looking elsewhere and forensic examination of the server. At least, that's my understanding.

"""I can guarantee you that when the e-mails are recovered (and they will be),"""
You close to Florida? lets make a bet on that.
If you are an Attorney then you must appreciate what a dependent does with digital evidence that you DON'T KNOW ABOUT. He kills it then tells you what he needs to escape it being seen as something he hid. That means he gets rid of it in a manner that thwarts any forensic method known to retrieve it. If necessary he just sinks the hard drive into that Patomac.
The GOP'ers were in complete control here. They had days to get their stephford IT techs on this and you can bring a boat load of "attorney" stuff into the issue but they body is gone. You are going have to first prove a crime was committed and you aint got jack to do that. Yup it stinks to high hell around here but the shit is gone.

cmdicely,

Your link just takes me back to Kevin's post. I read the BG article and still don't see what I would have liked to have seen, i.e., that the RNC servers were put under subpoena or at least put under protection until the issue could be investigated further. Are we just miscommunicating?

Forensic computer experts consistently state that, with the right effort, just about anything can be recovered from a hard drive. Even when things cannot be recovered, there are traces, bits, pieces, etc. there that, at a minimum, indicate the previous existence of the items and their characteristics. If this is really true, and it sure appears to be, then the clear cut violation of the Presidential Records Act serves as an unassailable predicate for the seizure of the appropriate computers and hard drives from the Administration. They should be so seized and analyzed; they will either show evidence that confirms the emails and documents in question were there and erased, including WHEN they were erased, or alternatively it will result in a finding that hard drives were replaced with clean ones in an attempt to obstruct justice (and an attendant conspiracy case that would boggle the mind). Substantive criminal evidence results either way, and the public is entitled to the discovery of that evidence. There is no legitimate basis for the Administration to refuse this either; the predicate crime has been directly admitted by them already, and this places the matter beyond executive privilege under Nixon v. US. This is simply not politics anymore, that canard is over; this is criminal behavior that strikes at the heart of our democracy, open and accountable government. The time has come to investigate and prosecute; end of story.

Nope Nope Nope...these mails were on private servers and their content will remain unknown. No way you can make that allegation unless you have one of those mails.

Richard: I think that with one email (such as the ones that turned up at the DOJ document dump), Congress can say: "show us the archives where this record, that you are required to keep by law, exists."

Err. It's on the RNC server. Which was wiped.

"Who made the decision to archive it on the RNC server. Who made the decision to wipe it in violation of the law."

It can get ugly/entertaining pretty quickly. I think the RNC IT guys should avoid small planes.

Hubby just explained 'disk cleaners' to me. The cleaner goes over all info (stored in 0's and 1's) and changes them all to their opposite numbers. After a whole bunch of iterations no one can get to the original. BUT it is clearly evident that a disk has been 'cleaned' so at least the crime, in this case anyway, wouldn't be so easy to explain.

> just about anything can be recovered
> from a hard drive

Please describe your understanding of how a big email system works. Thanks.

Cranky

I came here about an hour ago and searched for "prosec" and "investi" and there was nothng since KD's post, no that there weren't some intimations, until now.

Yes! The RNC computers need to be sealed and there should be a complete investigation of the whole rotten bunch. There needs to be a special investigator leading to prosecution. In a nice way, of course.

I'm going off to e-mail my reps, senators and the judicial oversight committees. You?

"""Richard: I think that with one email (such as the ones that turned up at the DOJ document dump), Congress can say: "show us the archives where this record, that you are required to keep by law, exists.""""
Huh? The RNC is not required to keep E mails 'by law' unless ordered not to destroy. The document dump may well point to mail but that mail is gone and if it was dumped prior to congressional order not to destroy..or after but in a way that spoofs earlier deletion..ITS GONE and no law can be pranced about to deal with it! RNC mail is private..like that mail we don't want the NSA snooping into..PRIVATE MAIL. My man, the gist of this thing is the WH used this mail system in order to avoid the scrutiny it's official channels are subjected to. See a bigger picture here? Why do you think the Judy Miller and the journalists were dragged into role playing positions in the Plame crap? Its the same thing. Journalists are granted certain privileges that Government Officials are not...like being able to hide sources and being largely unavailable to the courts. Thats why Judy and thats why RNC mail servers. Rove just thinks this stuff is cool ( using tools outside of official circles) and being of such a low brow intellect he does not see the possibility of being figured out.

"""Forensic computer experts consistently state that, with the right effort, just about anything can be recovered from a hard drive. Even when things cannot be recovered, there are traces, bits, pieces, etc. there that, at a minimum, indicate the previous existence of the items and their characteristics."""

http://www.top-shareware.net/secure-deletion.html

These work. But so does just cloning the hard drive with mails deleted and dumping the original hard drive into a dumpster.

I'm going off to e-mail my reps, senators and the judicial oversight committees. You?

Already did, and now I'm off to post about it and encourage everyone who stops by to do so too...

For the curious.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_wiping

It will come down to 18 missing E- mails

Please describe your understanding of how a big email system works. Thanks.

It depends on a lot of things -- backup policies, and how full you run your disks. My brother does IT at UFla Med School, said that there was a Novell server that ran its free blocks FIFO, and with sufficient free space, he had online undelete going back about three months (before he even had to consider backups).

I know when we had a drive with some bad blocks, and only did a quick format (i.e., not detecting and avoiding the new bad blocks), we ran for months before we finally got around to using those bad blocks (when we were sad again).

If every last person involved knows what they're doing, then those files are gone, but all it takes is one accidentally preserved backup tape, or one laptop where the deleted bits aren't being wiped, and you've got your evidence. Of course, to be sure of finding it, they'd have to impound all the servers, as well as all the machines that were used to send email to the RNC. Might take a while to scan all those disks, too.

If they just deleted the files, the data should be easy to recover. That is because when you deleat a file, you don't get rid of the data, only the name of the file.

To really erase the data you have to use a program that writes over it a number of times with random data. There is no reason for doing this unless you are trying to hide something.

someone gonna be gettin a medal of freedom

Folks - no one believes these assholes anymore except the pathetic 30 percenter's. The mails don't need to happen. Bush has lost his groove and no one..NO ONE is going to believe that this is an

It's the cult of 'toughness'.

In November of 2000, remember, these were the people who were telling us that the GOP deserved to win because they were prepared to do anything to win.

These are the people who told us that democracy is for pussies.

honest mistake.

The 30-per-centers will point to this not as evidence of a crime, but as further evidence of Junta Boy and his handlers' fitness to govern.

In outrage, I am just wondering if I should be going somewhere else?

GSA? Supreme Court? Who has oversight of the President staying within the law.

Tell me and I will write.

fucktard? What the hell is that? No my fucktard expert..this is not about evidence YET! Its just about mail. Until someone can make a credible claim that the mail has 'evidence' it is just mail. If events prove that evidence was in that mail then we fucktards will do what ever it is fucktards do when fucked. Fucktard? is that a Dr. Suess creation?

Posted by: Richard on April 11, 2007 at 8:45 PM | PERMALINK

Actually, Richie, I was talking to Al. But since you asked, a "fucktard" is what your mother always yells at me. Hmmm. [Deleted]

> If they just deleted the files, the data
> should be easy to recover. That is because
> when you deleat a file, you don't get rid of
> the data, only the name of the file.

You might want to read

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_Area_Network
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undelete

Cranky

Isn't every piece of email in the US now being sucked up into the NSA? Why can't we get it from there? (altho i bet we'll find GOP email wasn't being spied on)

They need to be found in contempt of Congress immediately, and they need to be arrested for destroying evidence.

Tell me and I will write.

Might a suggest a letter to the editor?

Obstruction of justice and willful violation of the Presidential Records Act added to articles of impeachment. Ignorance is no excuse. I believe they coined that phrase. You knew this was coming. And how is it that Rove is not in prison already? He must have a file system like J Edgar Hoover. And of course the Imus lunacy is all the NSN is ranting about.

Impeach.

Err MSM. As if it matters though. SOBs.
Couric caserole.

[Kevin is not the one moderating you. It's really simple - If you don't like it, don't post here.]

Don't worry. There'll be something else to indict, convict, and embalm these traitors with any second now. At the Bush level of absolute corruption, Rove can't fart without the compound breaking of more laws. Not that he gives a shit. He's too arrogant. But the clock is ticking. And everyone within smelling distance is going down. Turdblossom indeed.

LOOK -- over there -- the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby identified!!

Is it censorship if the item had no intellectually redeeming value in the first place? Your complaints, Pat, are trees falling in a forrest that few here hear or care about.

Please describe your understanding of how a big email system works. Thanks.

I would be glad to.

First of all, my downfall in 1994 started because we DID NOT DESTROY the Compaq servers in the server room of the company that I was managing. Number one was for applications, number two was for E-mail and number three was for limited data storage. Had we gotten a tip that the Feds were going to raid our offices and seize that server, along with several hundred boxes of documents, I would never have been a guest of the prison system or a convicted felon. I'm not proud of these things but because I simply don't care what any of you think of me, I will continue.

On the day we were raided, I was roaring drunk by 9 AM, I was making off-hours trades with our market partners in Japan, and I had three major acquisition/liquidation deals pending that would have cleared me a significant amount of income had we been able to bring in all of our low hanging fruit. Some firms are given 24-48 hour notices or tips that the Feds are going to turn them inside out. We received nothing of the sort. The business community let us down. I saw the first phalanx of Federals come through the lobby and I thought, well, they're going to take out the lawyers on the 8th floor who were defending the power company. This was the first time my instincts failed me. I turned over a few bookcases, jammed a desk against a glass door, moved as quickly as I could, to no avail. Despite the fact that I was able to take a fire axe to the server, and get off three or four significant chops at the equipment, a Federal investigator sent the hard drive to some company called "On Track" that restored the drive and was able to produce the files that ultimately incriminated me.

When the investigators go after the White House, I hope they remember that simply causing physical damage to the server is not enough. They need to burn the equipment, pour battery acid on it, and submerge it in a caustic substance. I highly doubt saltwater would do the trick.

This whole thing strikes me as another non-scandal in the making. Until someone can explain how using E-mail is a crime, I refuse to believe this is anything more than a bunch of liberals acting like they found another Fitzmas that never was.

Kevin, could you censor Pat? I want to see him cry.

I think just to be fair the censor should sign their work, e.g.,

Deleted by Tinkerbelle.

bmaz on April 11, 2007 at 9:22 PM

I hope you are right and full speed ahead. Isn't it time for a special prosecutor?

Actually, Richie, I was talking to Al. But since you asked, a "fucktard" is what your mother always yells at me. Hmmm. [Deleted]

If that was what was left, I am terrified of what was actually deleted.

Who let the unhinged liberal have a computer? Are they giving them away free these days? Or did a truck full of them overturn outside of another trailer park?

Thanks. But leave fake-Norman up.

Ok, as a systems admin, I know I keep good backups. I bet the admins who run the RNC mail servers are a bunch of anal retentive bastards (like all sysadmin), and could very easily be THE WHISTLEBLOWER THIS COUNTRY NEEDS TO IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT. Please, please, I beg you, on behalf of humanity, come forward. Save the world from this guy.

The House and Senate should subpoena the head of the NSA and tell him to bring with him ALL the emails from the GOP sites that they undoubtedly have recorded. No will not be an answer or budgets will get axed for NSA.

The Congress cannot tolerate this 'we lost it, I can't recall it, I have no conscious memory of ever having a memory of that' response from BushCo. Those who answer less than adequately should be impeached by the Congress (impeachment works for any officer of the US).

Apollo 13 - I think it just might be.
Norman Rogers - Without commenting on how deep or big the crime turns out to be in the end, the admission by the Administration today of the "gone" data is open and shut violation of the Presidential Records Act. You can quibble about how big a crime it is, but it is pretty clearly a crime.

Man--I love the fake Norman. That was compelling Enron Freaking Kafka stuff.

I think we are at about the Inkitatus moment for Caligula W. Bush, aren't we? This whole disaster is getting a bit out of hand.

They emails had to disappear.
There really was no other option.

Otherwise the Bush crime family's naked hostility to democracy and democrats would have been utterly exposed.

Too bad.
It'd would have made great reading.

In fact, it would have made Nixon's paranoia seem benign.

Huh? The RNC is not required to keep E mails 'by law' unless ordered not to destroy.

Mar. 26, 2007, ThinkProgress:

Today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) issued letters to the Republican National Committee and the Bush-Cheney ‘04 Campaign directing them to preserve all emails by and for White House officials, and to meet with the committee about the legal issues involved in conducting official government business using partisan email accounts.. From Waxman’s letter:

The e-mails of White House officials maintained on RNC e-mail accounts may be relevant to multiple congressional investigations. For this reason, the Committee directs you to preserve all e-mails sent or received by White House officials using e-mail accounts under your control.

In addition, the Committee requests that you or your designee meet with Committee staff during the week of April 2,2007, to discuss the following five matters:

– Who has access to the e-mail accounts maintained by the RNC; […]

– What steps have been taken to preserve the e-mail accounts maintained by the RNC that have been used by White House officials;

– What assurance can the RNC provide the Committee that no e-mails involving official White House business have been destroyed or altered.

"On the day we were raided, I was roaring drunk by 9 AM, I was making off-hours trades with our market partners in Japan, and I had three major acquisition/liquidation deals pending that would have cleared me a significant amount of..."

Would somebody please cut Ward 9's internet connection?

Sheesh.

All the geeky speculation is interesting, but I think it's beside the point.

-- Who would be doing the impounding and the forensics? Might it be, say, Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department?

-- How long would it take to actually impound all the equipment? How many subpoenas served? How many claims of privilege litigated?

-- And then what? What if a vaguely incriminating email is recovered? What then? Demands that Karl Rove resign? Claims of "politicization"?

-- Presuming something is discovered, how long would it take to organize an investigation, find targets, indict them, and prosecute and convict them?

The only practical route here is to make the COVER-UP a POLITICAL crime. Forget the evidence, forget the emails, forget the Hatch Act or the Presidential Records Act or any other Act. The cost is too high, and the benefit is too distant.

COVER-UP! COVER-UP! COVER-UP!

The other day I suddenly realized who Norman actually is.

Won't say who. Just putting it out there.

Ah, Kevin.

e-mail is still a relatively new technology. Is unlikely that the law has completely caught up to it, so we can assume there's still some gray area there.

My cousins a Novel Networker. He says instances like this come up all the time at his company. People delete emails all the time. Theres a gray area.

Richard wrote: "Until someone can make a credible claim that the mail has 'evidence' it is just mail."

There is evidence that mail that went through the RNC servers was, in fact, pertinent to the investigation of the fired attorneys, since one of the document dumps from the Justice Department contained such mail.

"What reason would the WH need to out source its e-mails?"

There actually is a valid reason -- so that private and campaign mails go through private servers rather than government servers. That they set this up is not at all unusual. That they appear to have transacted so much government business through this system is.

"Huh? The RNC is not required to keep E mails 'by law' unless ordered not to destroy."

They are, in fact, required by law to keep official government e-mail intact.

Without commenting on how deep or big the crime turns out to be in the end, the admission by the Administration today of the "gone" data is open and shut violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Hounding good people out of public service is a crime as well. Wonder when we'll start prosecuting it.

The other day I suddenly realized who Norman actually is.

I'm a good Republican and a member of several service organizations. I am a citizen and a patriot and an agent for truth. When you figure out who you are, throw it out there but don't share it.

Dear little egbert, as predictable as ever, writes: "e-mail is still a relatively new technology."

No, dear, it isn't. It's been around for decades. You really should try to keep up.

"Is unlikely that the law has completely caught up to it, so we can assume there's still some gray area there."

Alas, dear heart, you are, as usual, completely wrong. The law has, in fact, "caught up to it" and there is no gray area.

"My cousins a Novel Networker. He says instances like this come up all the time at his company. People delete emails all the time. Theres a gray area."

No, dear, there's not, but it's not too surprising that you're desperate to push this angle. Better luck next time.

Dear little Normy, just as big a troll as ever, writes: "Hounding good people out of public service is a crime as well."

Dear heart, people who break the law and then break the law again in an attempt to hide the fact that they broke the law are, de facto, not "good people" who are performing good public service. As such, the sooner they are "hounded from public service," the better.

Dear heart, people who break the law and then break the law again in an attempt to hide the fact that they broke the law are, de facto, not "good people" who are performing good public service. As such, the sooner they are "hounded from public service," the better.

Wait, love--weren't liberals crying in their drink over the "politics of personal destruction?" One man's "lawbreaker" is another man's President Clinton.

cld, I have been trying to figure it out myself. email me your guess?

cld, I have been trying to figure it out myself. email me your guess?

My guess is that the person doing Norman is Colonel Mustard in the Library with a candlestick...

Back in 2002, when Hans Blix, Mohamed El Baradei, IAEA, UNMOVIC & teams of UN weapons inspectors were unable to find ANY evidence of the Iraqi WMD stockpiles which the Bush Administration declared unequivocally were there, Donald Rumsfield famously pronounced:

"An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

This always seemed to me as elegant a piece of sophistry as Rumsfield's more famous "known-unknowns" haiku, if an utterly specious rationale for war. Nonetheless, given the suspiciously evident absence of documents re: USAs, it'd be poetic justice to repeat Rumsfield's dictum fairly often, to his cronies, about now. It'd be particuarly apt when noting each evidentiary absence: every missing e-mail, every deletion, each data shredding & all hard drive replacements.

Tellingly in this instance, the systematic absence of evidence provides damning evidence of conspiracy & obstruction.

wow. that's the best Norman ever. Are you sure it's fake? will Real Norman emerge to duel fake Norman? Was Real Norman ever real? tune into this thread later to find out! and in the meantime, don't forget to email your congressional representatives about the current administrations deplorable attempts to subvert law and order in the pursuit of raw political power at any cost! Secrest out!

Ah, egbert - I see that you have gone beyond naming the voices in your head, and have started ascribing them spots on the family tree, and you are giving them little jobs, I see. That's nice.

Norman Rogers >"...weren't liberals crying in their drink over the "politics of personal destruction?"..."

All 3200+ American military deaths are part of said "politics of personal destruction" and, yes a**wipe, that IS going to be part of the settling up of accounts. You have NO clue as to what is coming down.

It is fairly certain that NSA has copies and I would bet that there are several "backups" stored away for "insurance" if you will.

You think the folks that "play" at that level behave in an amateur fashion ?

BWAAHA HAHAAHAAAAA

"...you cannot save your face and your ass at the same time..." - vachon@shadrach.net

Norm, whatever you do with that candlestick in the privacy of your own library is none of my concern...

After URK's post at 11:21, I have the theme song to Soap running through my head.

daCascadian - But these people do have their heads in their asses....

Norm, whatever you do with that candlestick in the privacy of your own library is none of my concern...

How do you unhinged liberals always manage to turn innocuous comments into filth and degradation? Wait--I've got the answer. It has to be the Hormones.

Watching you moonbats celebrate a conviction for a crime that never was is hilarious. Fitzmas, Fitzmas, Fitzmas.

dC - I said much the same thing on another topic earlier tonight in a post on my site.

There is a reckoning on its way was how I put it.

egbert: "My cousins a Novel Networker. He says instances like this come up all the time at his company. People delete emails all the time. Theres a gray area."

Ah, egbert, you cheap and slutty Republican troll -- the only "gray area" is between your pointy ears.

If there's an excuse to be offered by this ongoing bait-and-switch RICO violation known as the Bush White House -- no matter how implausible, and no matter how unreliable -- you're right there with your mouth agape to swallow it, just like the proverbial sloppy-drunk sorority girl at a "Freshman Rush Weekend" on Fraternity Row.

Your dubious talent for excusing the egregious and ignoring the obvious might account for your breed's current popularity amongst your fellow sorry-assed wingers in D.C., but also renders you nothing more than one pathetic excuse for an American.

Norman, I'm not insulted when you call me Hormonal. That, at least, has the advantage of being true...

Norm, it's the destruction of the personnel I have such a big god-damned problem with.

There's been a good deal of speculation that a competent IT professional could have got enough of these emails sufficiently wiped that it would be difficult to reconstruct some/most of them, which may be true. The assumption here is that Rove and those closest to him would have access to personnel not only possessing that level of expertise, but also willing to throw in with a very serious conspiracy to obstruct justice, knowing all the legal jeopardy that comes with it. Remember also that if the data really is wiped, it'll be extremely obvious that an affirmative effort was made to do so, and any IT people with the capacity to wipe it will be in front of some major investigations.

The bottom line is I'm dubious that this same bunch of clowns that gave us an unbroken string of policy disasters over the past six years are suddenly going to become skilled forensic data disposal experts. They're not that smart, and even if they were they wouldn't have the expertise available among people willing to be part of the conspiracy.

I think they're claiming the emails are lost as a delaying tactic, knowing eventually all this shit is going to come out, but hoping to run out the clock so they can be as close as possible to the end of the administration before it does. In any case, given the likely amount of outright criminality that the full emails will show, there's no way they're going to easily give up the data. Whether there's any hope of winning or not, they're stave off defeat as long as they can.

The animal is trapped and cornered. It's baring its teeth and making as much scary noise as it can, but everybody knows the end is not far off.

As an intern here at Washington Monthly I can tell you the Norman issue has been a vexing one for us. At first we put up with his boasting and bragging and unseemly revelations about his personal affairs in the name of free speech. But after a while it got bothersome and distracted from productive discussion so we banned him from the threads, which many people remember.

But then after a time he returned and started posting again, just as bold as ever, and our further attempts to ban him failed. No matter how many times we banned him he'd return with the same IP address and continue chattering away about the depth of his portfolio or his Latin pool boy.

This was perplexing, and the Washington Monthly IT staff had no explanation. How could this individual be defeating our filters? Finally out of desperation we began coordinating with various service providers to determine how and where the posts were coming from not only to stop Norman but plug this security leak and to prevent potential abuse by other posters.

We finally traced the origin of the IP address with the help of Verizon, who provided us with the address. So one rainy evening just as dusk was settling in we set off in the gloom with our umbrellas down Wall Street in New York City, until we came to the corner of Broadway. The Verizon techs told us that corner was where the signal was originating from. We headed toward historic Trinity Church, favorite haunt of privateers from Captain Kidd to Gordon Gecko, a place where those who'd devoted their lives to the getting of wealth could go to salve their conscience and portray themselves as respectable members of society. We walked around the church until one of us noticed a cable box on the side of a building with something hanging from it. As we got closer we noticed it was a fiber optic strand, and it was not only hanging but appeared to go directly into the ground.

We looked around and suddenly realized with a shock where we were...for we were in the cemetary of Trinity Church, final resting place to pirates and tycoons and captains of industry, and the loose fiber optic cable that is the origin of the Norman posts went directly into the ground between the grave markers....

bmaz >"...But these people do have their heads in their asses...."

Self evident that they ARE amateurs.

I was thinking of the folks at the NSA and related organizations; few, if any, amateurs in those ranks.

HE HE HE HE HE

ROFLMAO

BGRS(aka G.C.) >"...it's the destruction of the personnel..."

Indeed it is, all those faithful trusting souls

“Once you start a project, amazing people start to join” - Major Nate Allen

i've been saying this for days now on comment threads:

they're conducting business from blackberries. this means that it traveled over the cellular network. law enforcement is routinely able to get old sms and location data from cell phone providers. check with them.

Moderator 37,

What?

Did you copy that straight off the dustjacket of the film "National Treasure?"

And, please. The loonies Charles Peters is paying to work in downtown DC are usually face down in a pool of their own crusted vomit at this hour, shades of having the beer bong explode during those parties at college where everyone ended up with peanuts stuck to their flesh when they woke up on the linoleum.

...Theres(sic) a gray area.

Posted by: egbert on April 11, 2007 at 10:57 PM | PERMALINK

Donald's wrong, of course. If there was a gray area between your ears you wouldn't write the dross you do. And you never fail to write doo.

jimBOB >"...The animal is trapped and cornered. It's baring its teeth and making as much scary noise as it can, but everybody knows the end is not far off."

So true.

Now the job is to close the circle ever so slowly, taking all the time necessary to do the correct things so the complete mess is cleaned up with no loose ends. Patience is the key.

"The first lesson of democracy is not to hold the public in contempt." - Ronnie Earle

Norman...was that where you were working after your experience with the 1961 Yale women's basketball team? The one that didn't exist back then?

Oh, and Kurt Vonnegut has died.

I'll leave you moonbats with that somber thought.

Sunnuvabitch.

"The bottom line is I'm dubious that this same bunch of clowns that gave us an unbroken string of policy disasters over the past six years are suddenly going to become skilled forensic data disposal experts. They're not that smart, and even if they were they wouldn't have the expertise available among people willing to be part of the conspiracy." - JimBOB

I'm sure they can hire the expertise from whatever dark alley they choose. Let's hope their disk cleaning has been as sloppy and as obvious an inside job as their Niger forgery was.

BG/RS-now I have that theme in my head too.

And
Vonnegut passed and i have to hear it from Norman? Ahh...I'm too sad to even Smartass about that.

"“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”

From God Bless You Mr. Rosewater.

We could do worse than to follow this advice...

Someone should call Steve Ellis at +1.202-863-8670 or his sysadmin at -8651 to ask:

   	Domain Name: GWB43.COM
   	Registrant: 
   	Republican National Committee 
   	310 First Street SE
   	Washington, DC 20003
   	Administrative Contact, Technical Contact :
   	Republican National Committee 
   	dns@RNCHQ.ORG
   	310 First Street SE
   	Washington, DC 20003
   	US
   	Phone: 202-863-8500
   	Fax: 202-863-8851

 	Domain Name:RNCHQ.ORG

 	Created On:02-Jul-1996 04:00:00 UTC

 	Registrant Name:Republican National Committee

 	Registrant Street1:310 First Street SE

 	Registrant Email:dns@rnchq.org

 	Admin ID:6248954-NSI

 	Admin Name:Steve Ellis

 	Admin Phone:+1.202-863-8670

 	Tech Phone:+1.202-863-8651

 	Name Server:NS1.CHA.SMARTECHCORP.NET

 	Name Server:A.NS.TRESPASSERS-W.NET

Damn. Vonnegut dead and Cheney lives.

Damn.

BGRS AKA GC,

Sorry, but I had barely recovered from having sprained a nerve while taking a really huge dump in the pool to see if I couldn't get the boy to finger the innocent I knew he wanted to accuse when some representatives of the Fox network showed up and demanded access to my personal discretion.

I, of course, was coy. After all these years TV holds no fear nor temptation for me.

Their concern, I soon saw, was legitimate, and had the ring of cash; it seems one of their barrel-balled operatives had come loose from the pier and was threatening to bring himself to the attention of their insurance company.

That is, he was burning down the intertubes. Even more alarmingly, he had given up drink --cold sober. With a computer.

After many years in the executive wash room I couldn't help but be moved by the natural gravity of these people and their situation, and reminded also of the many times when I, too, could have used a friendly hand in those cold grey cubicles.

So, we'll see how well the charge card works for a few months, then, perhaps, revisit the question.

(But I do hear he's been buying up hurricane ravaged vacation land.)

IMO the whole scheme was designed not to archive anything, this may be the only fact discovered at the RNC by Congressional investigators.

My cousins a Novel Networker.

Is that anything like a book club?

Time to send in the FBI forensic data team.

Sending e-mails to your various representatives is a fine idea, but also send one to the top.

The address is:

RICO
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC

As little Shrub told his school 'marm, "Laura said to tell you that Barney has a v-o-r-a-c-i-o-u-s appetite - Geez, glad she wrote that down for me" - "Maybe, Harriet will tell me what it means"

> The assumption here is that Rove and those
> closest to him would have access to personnel
> not only possessing that level of expertise,
> but also willing to throw in with a very serious
> conspiracy to obstruct justice, knowing all the
> legal jeopardy that comes with it.

First of all, you can hire very knowledgable and experienced people to do just about anything somewhere in the world. I am sure Blackwater has top-level data people who could do this, and there are many to be found in Russia, Bulgaria, etc.

Second, these people don't think they are doing anything illegal. They think they are on a crusade (carefully chosen word) to readjust and rebalance government in the face of a liberal onslaught. Their good and righteous deeds will be undone if the evil (literally) liberals discover them too soon, so they are just taking the precautions that any Roman Christian would have taken.

Finally, e-mail administrators usually do not have access to their clients' mailboxes. If the RNC has a stated data retention policy that says e-mail is purged in 30 days (as many organizations do), and their clients have stated that they do not send e-mail subject to the Executive Records Act from their accounts, the e-mail administrators can just say "_I_ followed the law".

Cranky

It was just in article on company email policies by Mathew Ingram in the Toronto Globe and Mail this morning that Bush has sent exactly 0 emails since 2001. Only other guy who did the same was Bernie Ebbers. Didn't work for him either.

0 emails! Not even, "Hi, Mom". The guy is corr-upt.

Cranky,

We couldn't have said it any better

First of all, you can hire very knowledgable and experienced people to do just about anything somewhere in the world.

If you know where to find them. We're talking Regent University graduates and such running all this. Also, it's not just a matter of wiping the data - you have to cover up the fact that you wiped the data, which is even harder.

Second, these people don't think they are doing anything illegal.

I think the whole reason they are trying to conceal their emails is because they know what they are doing stinks to high heaven, and that if it comes out they could go to jail. They may think they have some fundy-based moral justification, but they know that legally they're on real thin ice.

As to the final point, as many have noted above, a simple purge policy wouldn't be sufficient to wipe all the data. You'd need to actively wipe both data and metadata in multiple locations if you want to hide from a forensic investigation.

> If you know where to find them. We're
> talking Regent University graduates
> and such running all this.

I doubt that very much. Rove, his staff, and his entourage may be evil but they are not stupid, and I would be willing to bet they get the right tools for the right job. Goodling may have been the right tool for Dept of Justice personnel vetting, but behind the scenes I think they have a very sophisticated operation staffed by very smart and experienced people. Evil, but smart.

Cranky

Stanzel said some e-mails have been lost because the White House lacked clear policies on complying with Presidential Records Act requirements

Late to the game here, but isn't the Presidential Records Act in itself the clear policy?

they'll recover everything from the RNC servers folks.

cmdicely once would have given a good analysis on this...in the days before he went off the deep end.

as someone who has dealt extensively with document discovery, I can tell you that although every large organization or business (like the WH) has a document retention policy...none of them are perfect. the obvious surmise here is that the document retention policy was promulgated in one office (by relatively low-level legal people) which would have been almost certainly unaware of the use of RNC servers by high-level aides.

so far, what we've seen is pretty much analogous to every large scale electronic discovery that I've ever been involved in. you go to the client and say "here are the doc requests, here's what we've agreed to give them"....then you put together a filter list of key words and e-mail accounts and pull those files. you also try and pull the individual hard drives of the key individuals.
then you have a bunch of low-level attorneys review the stuff...most of which will turn out to be non-responsive. then you produce it.

then the other side comes back and asserts that you're hiding stuff...cause so and so also used hotmail and so and so used to use a differ