Most systems allow users to delete their own emails. It's unlikely that there are backups.

And backup 'tapes', Kevin? Those are notoriously unreliable. It's something of a miracle that the RNC has recovered 99% or so of the emails.

Nancy Pelosi, et al, should lead by example and disclose all of their emails, personal and business, because that's what they're asking of the white house. I doubt they can, and I'm sure they won't.

If the 2006 mid-terms were Political Christmas, this scandal is shaping up to be quite the (seasonaly appropriate) Political Easter. I wonder what the RNC-Bunny will leave in my basket?

Yes, they have the tapes. They're over in Rose Marie Woods' office.

Al,

If Speaker Pelosi is under investigation for obstruction of justice or as part of a corruption scandal, she would be expected to open up such correspondence provided a legitimate reason is offered. Were there an indication that she was using DNC e-mail accounts for official House business, in direct violation of the law (assuming the Speaker's office is under the same records obligations as the White House), I wouldn't hesitate in calling for her submission to the investigation - and I don't think anyone can argue against that in good faith.

It's not about tapes, Kevin. It's backup software.
Of course, they've got it...but even if they don't, there are many other ways of retrieving the emails.

This "oh, all the emails have been deleted!" is the biggest bamboozlement of them all.

Al:

Deleting e-mails on the client side has nothing to do with whether back-ups of those e-mails are available on the server side. Any good corporate IT shop backs up their mail servers nightly to tape, with a designated rotation and retention schedule to an off-site storage location. Retrieving Karl Rove's e-mails should be childs play, particularly in a post-Sarbanes-Oxley world. Of course, we can't always assume that our leaders play by the same rules as we do, can we???

TCD

===Nancy Pelosi, et al, should lead by example and disclose all of their emails, personal and business, because that's what they're asking of the white house. I doubt they can, and I'm sure they won't.

No, they are asking for all e-mails related to the US Attorney's office--you know, correspondence that by the law was supposed to be done in White House e-mail accounts. It's not the Democrats fault that the White House broke the law and carried on government business on private e-mail accounts.

The scary part is Als dismissal and the jackaloptic attack on Pelosi works. Hannity will do it too. Its amazing that there are people who are waiting for that to come along so they can continue to see nothing here, which is what they want.

The backup tapes were checked out by a guy smoking "Morley."

Everyone keeps backup tapes, don't they?

Not if you bite off the head of little animals for a living...

This is going to be good, real good.Karl walked the line one too many times.The RNC wasn't going to be tossed under the bus.Karl's days should be numbered.

Chuckle Chuckle -- Al thinks hitting the Delete key actually deletes an email. Bwa Ha ha ha.

Unless Rove was taking all the storage tapes home every night, some backup will turn up.

Karl Rove's missing e-mails remind me of those critical time and attendance sheets that disappeared from George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard files about the time that Karen Hughes was assigned to review them, before Dubya ran for president. These strange coincidences...

I don't think Rove's missing emails should be described as "peculiar," perhaps a more accurate description would be "prima facie evidence of criminal acts."

While I'm more than willing to believe the worst about these people, things like this happen legitimately all the time. (Think about the Hillary Clinton billing records showing up in a file where they should not have been, and no sane person would have looked.) Electronic discovery is a nightmare for lawyers, and it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Wouldn't it be great if the FBI found that the RNC e-mail retention policy was not compliant with the Patriot Act? The loyal bushies would be hoisted by their own petards!

More about Karl & his email

"...Mr. Kelner's briefing raised particular concems about Karl Rove, who according to press reports used his RNC accountfor 95%o of his communications. According to Mr. Kelner, although the hold started in August 2004, the RNC does not have any e-mails prior to 2005 for Mr. Rove. Mr. Kelner did not give any explanation for the e-mails missing from Mr. Rove's account, but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.

Mr. Kelner also explained that starting in 2005, the RNC began to treat Mr. Rove's emails in a special fashion. At some point in 2005, the RNC commenced an automatic archive policy for Mr. Rove, but not for any other White House officials. According to Mr. Kelner, this archive policy removed Mr. Rove's ability to personally delete his e-mails from the RNC server. Mr. Kelner did not provide many details about why this special policy was adopted for Mr. Rove. But he did indicate that one factor was the presence of investigative or discovery requests or other legal concerns..." from TPM Muck division

This is getting to be more & more fun all the time.

"As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities." - Voltaire

I'm sure we can ask the Chinese or the Russian's for copies since they probably can easily hack Karl's Blackberry signals.

It's quite a revelation that even the RNC doesn't trust Rove. Looks like they just might be preparing to jettison him.

Something seriously sounds wrong here. There's not a business in the world I'm aware of that allows people to permanently delete their emails. For various auditing and legal reasons, every single email ever sent is usually retained for a signifigant length of time, usually archived somehow if disk space is a premium, except for mass mailing and marketing appeals and the like, which may be routinely purged from the "Sent" archives.

I'm not an email administrator, but I work in information technology and have some familiarity with this. I've never worked for any company that would not be able to pull up one of my prior emails (received or sent) if they really needed it, whether or not I deleted it from my client "view", at least for a good several years back.

I suppose a smaller business might do that, or an incompetently run larger business, but an organization like the RNC should have no financial deprivation that would cause them to cut corners, and every legal reason to protect themselves if dealing with official communications from White House staff.

I could see them mass purging the bulk emailings and marketing appeals, but only incompetence would include all emails in this purge, including individual personnel emails, who may accidentally delete something they really need and not notice for awhile. Also, again, normally when you delete an email from your email client there is no association with the actual email on the server being deleted.

Again, I'm not an expert on this, but those are my impressions from being in the larger field for over a decade now.

The "Rose Mary Woods Defense" ain't gonna cut it as John Nichols writes at The Nation. He quotes Leahy from the Senate floor today:

They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that! You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers. Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary.... E-mails don't get lost. These are just e-mails they don't want to bring forward.

A long, hot summer to come. Heh.

I'm really having a great time with these Democratic investigations of the WH. I especially love the silly little futile tricks the Republicans play -- it makes it feel like a fair sport!

Really, it's cat and mouse. We're the cats, they're the mice.

Oh, we'll get around to eating them, but first a little chase! It's fun to hear them squeak when we bat them around!

Deleting e-mails on the client side has nothing to do with whether back-ups of those e-mails are available on the server side. Any good corporate IT shop backs up their mail servers nightly to tape, with a designated rotation and retention schedule to an off-site storage location. Retrieving Karl Rove's e-mails should be childs play, particularly in a post-Sarbanes-Oxley world. Of course, we can't always assume that our leaders play by the same rules as we do, can we???

TCD concisely and articulately gets at a good portion of what I was trying to say.

I would add that people often accidentally delete emails, sometimes not noticing for some time, and also sometimes suddenly "need" emails they deleted off their client so as to recall a correspondence history with a particular associate, client, agency, etc.

Any decent email administrator knows this will occur, and has established the means to recover old emails for this very purpose, in addition to all the other reasons - legal and otherwise - that these would be kept long-term.

The only reasonable explanation, at first glance, for allowing this lax system to be in place, and for losing these emails, is to conceal them, to intentionally have them be unavailable - i.e. to protect a criminal enterprise.

...but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server

I have never heard of such a thing. Why would a non-technical employee or client be given server access rights to delete his emails?

Where oh where is the reincarnation of Deepthroat spelled in proper Elite speak to get those emails when we need him...

I have never heard of such a thing. Why would a non-technical employee or client be given server access rights to delete his emails?

Since they used a third party for hosting it would not necessarily be uncommon for specific users to be granted admin access in order to do something like this, however that just adds more evidence to the chain as far as emails being deleted because only X number of people would have that kind of access. If Rove's name is on that list it would not look good for him.

Ooooh, another post on the email aspect of the US Attorney scandal! Does this mean Nathan -- who's as much of a failure at concealing his pro-Bush derangement as he is a lwayer -- is going to amuse us with more "expert" legal opinion?

Bonus points, of course, if he disparages the legal acumen of Stefan and cmdicely, both of whom kick his ass regularly in these forums.

Let me get this straight, the Bush administration can read our emails without a warrant, but we can't read theirs even with one? Especially when they were compelled by law to retain archives in the first place?

If impeachment and prosecutions do not follow, the Democratic party needs to be dissolved. Thus far the Democrats have proven themselves to be the spineless, worthless Stockholm Syndrome enablers in our nation's history.

When you consider the tremendously large number of major scandals from this administration that have gone without serious opposition, yet alone investigation or prosecution, you have to wonder if the Democrats are a legitimate opposition party or just willingly playing the Colmes to the GOP's Hannity.

What is so worrisome is that increasingly there appears to be little if any effective difference between a corrupt dictatorship that investigates itself merely as a public relations pressure valve release and our government.

If the Democrats don't achieve real results in the form of impeachment and prosecution, there's a very real danger that these crimes not only will go unpunished but become established as a new, lower floor for corruption and lawlessness by our elected leaders. In fact, impeachment and prosecutions alone may not even be enough to undo the damage that has already been done to our constitutional form of government.

You're right, Jimm. That's just crazy that Karl would be able to delete e-mail from the server, unless he were, uh, helped (allowed) to do so by someone at RNC.

With intemperate imbeciles like Leahy lurching around with authority to subpoena, I don’t mind that much of such a loss to history! Marble-mouth will froth on for a while and lawyers will do what lawyers do [the word is cognate with liar]

I think Dick Cheney summed him up well, though Cheney himself is no prize. Takes one to know one!

I have never heard of such a thing. Why would a non-technical employee or client be given server access rights to delete his emails?

Gosh, that certainly boggles the mind, doesn't it? No one could have anticipated that an exception would have been made for Karl Rove....

Really, folks. This is getting ridiculous. Most folks here seem to be arguing that it is impossible to not be able to retrieve Rove's email, or at the very least that non-retrieval indicates gross incompetence on the part of the WH/RNC.

As I said before in another thread, if Rove's email can be retrieved, *that* would indicate gross incompetence by the WH/RNC. We're not dealing with a legit corporation that wishes to maintain documentation of its actions; we are dealing with a criminal enterprise that wishes to hide it actions.

Since they used a third party for hosting it would not necessarily be uncommon for specific users to be granted admin access in order to do something like this

Just saying that this almost never be a non-technical person. You don't want people who don't know what they're doing mucking around your servers with admin rights. They could end deleting all kinds of stuff by accident or corrupt the system even worse. Few administrators are willing to take those risks.

I know some bosses demand and get server access, but they're not actually supposed to use it and a good administrator would be well aware of everything they did on the server, and probably still have them in some kind of sandbox they're not aware of.

Really, it's cat and mouse. We're the cats, they're the mice.

And this is why I think the irrefutable -- except for the dead-ender, True Believer Bush Cultists, of course -- revelations of the Bush Administration's mendacity, incompetence and corruption spells a long, long time in the wilderness for the GOP, through 2008 and beyond. (The Democratic Party could certainly overreach, but they'd have to work hard to surpass the GOP in terms of malfeasance, incompetence and corruption.)

Oh, and Rove? Having one's "permanent Republican majority" shredded by failing to keep Congress in GOP hands for eight years running, not to mention ruining the GOP's decades-long branding effort as "strong on defense" by sheer incompetence, hardly burnishes one's credentials as a political genius -- just another dirty-playing huckster.

In other words, a typical Republican politician.

'Gosh, that certainly boggles the mind, doesn't it?'

You mean 'bottles' right? :)

You're right, Jimm. That's just crazy that Karl would be able to delete e-mail from the server, unless he were, uh, helped (allowed) to do so by someone at RNC.

Of course, in this particular case, I don't find it crazy. :) It makes perfect sense...concealing a criminal enterprise.

'(The Democratic Party could certainly overreach, but they'd have to work hard to surpass the GOP in terms of malfeasance, incompetence and corruption.)
'

Not really. They could stand perfectly still and yet still become more corrupt than any political party ever as long as FOX is still on the air and reaching ditto heads.

I love today's selection of troll'doeuvres.

My compliments to the Chef!

Apollo: A long, hot summer to come. Heh.

Just exactly the phrase I used about this topic earlier today. Ain't it grand?

Wait, wait, I feel the presence of my (admittedly dullwitted, thick-tongued and bedheaded) muse!

Tap delete button
All gone! Smooth sailing ahead!
Not quite, M.C. Rove

Disputo, I was speaking generally with my "surprise" in order to make the more specific point that this is obviously veering far from normal practice and that the best explanation is intentional concealment of a criminal enterprise.

I did actually say that in the first or second post.

If KK Karl's emails are gone, I smell obstruction of justice for whoever deleted them (canary singing), plus it's apropos to Fitz's investigation, which is not officially closed.

If you follow the links, you find this passage:

Mr. Kelner also explained that starting in 2005, the RNC began to treat Mr. Rove's emails in a special fashion. At some point in 2005, the RNC commenced an automatic archive policy for Mr. Rove, but not for any other White House officials. According to Mr. Kelner, this archive policy removed Mr. Rove's ability to personally delete his e-mails from the RNC server. Mr. Kelner did not provide many details about why this special policy was adopted for Mr. Rove. But he did indicate that one factor was the presence of investigative or discovery requests or other legal concerns. It was unclear from Mr. Kelner's briefing whether the special archiving policy for Mr. Rove was consistently in effect after 2005.

Aren't the emails of interest with regard to the Attorney Purge in 2005 and 2006 in any case? So isn't Rove in deep shit even if he deleted emails before that point?

the Democratic Party needs to be dissolved

Be careful, you may be attacked mercilessly for that apostasy, but I agree.

Um, third post, my bad.

Since they used a third party for hosting it would not necessarily be uncommon for specific users to be granted admin access in order to do something like this

This, I think, is the only hope we have of seeing the emails. If, eg, they are using an Exchange server hosted on a third party machine, then presumably the third party has daily backups going back some period of time. However, if the third party is ideologically aligned with the RNC (as seems probable -- when the GWB43.com scandal first broke, I did a search of all the other domains that resolved to the same IP addy, and many of them were wingnut type domains), then who knows what kind of deal they have worked out regarding data retention....

I would think the emails would have been hosted on one of the more enterprise mail servers, and I don't think we would be talking about some small-time web hosting arrangement where you are very careful about your disk space to keep costs down (other than routinely purging mass emails).

I did actually say that in the first or second post.

Fair enuff.

Didn't Nathan just accuse me of having BDS in another thread for asserting that Karl Rove's emails were missing?

I await my apology.

As I said before in another thread, if Rove's email can be retrieved, *that* would indicate gross incompetence by the WH/RNC. We're not dealing with a legit corporation that wishes to maintain documentation of its actions; we are dealing with a criminal enterprise that wishes to hide it actions.

Likely the essence of it, unless there was real "incompetence", as you mention.

Still, I would hazard to guess that some tapes are hidden somewhere, just waiting to be "discovered" after being "misorganized", if the shit really hits the fan over these missing emails, and the fall out over them being missing starts to loom as heavier than the actual content in them.

Didn't Nathan just accuse me of having BDS in another thread for asserting that Karl Rove's emails were missing?

I may have overstated your BDS...not that such an overstatement is illegal, mind you...but you have to concede that I was correct in stating that it is currently 43 and cloudy in Manhattan.

Somehow this reminded me -- I recently saw a rerun of an early episode of the original mid-1960s Star Trek TV series (with Shatner and Nimoy), and there was a line in which one character referred to data in the 23rd century starship Enterprise computer system being stored on "tapes". The future sure ain't what it used to be.

Didn't Nathan just accuse me of having BDS in another thread for asserting that Karl Rove's emails were missing?

I await my apology.

Don't hold your breath -- Nathan never apologized, so far as I'm aware, for lying about the opinions that I, cmdicely and someone else -- I'm sorry for forgetting -- held regarding the Valerie Plame matter. This despite utterly failing to provide, you know, examples of us expressing the opinions he claimed.

Nathan's a liar and victim of true Bush Derangement Syndrome (the deranged notion that the Bush Administration is not spectacularly, disgustingly dishonest, incompetent and corrupt.

Funny how those two qualities go together, hm?

Somehow this reminded me -- I recently saw a rerun of an early episode of the original mid-1960s Star Trek TV series (with Shatner and Nimoy),

Just as I predicted would happen, SA mischaracterized ST-TOS as having first aired in the mid-1960s, when in fact it aired in the *late* 1960s.

shortstop on April 12, 2007 at 6:58 PM

Yow!

Missing WMDs?
Now missing emails!? Good grief.
Can we lose Bush next?

Maybe the RNC decided that they didn't want to end up on the "Gee, we found these emails on [political operatives x, y, & z's laptops] and we're wondering why you don't have the original..." chain-gang.

Or, it could have been someone at RNC trying to keep a sword hanging over Karl's head, just in case that became necessary to save the Constitution, etc.

No one anticipated that the Democrats were determined to investigate the White House.

Missing WMDs?
Now missing emails!? Good grief.

Did anyone look under aWol's desk?

Really, it's cat and mouse. We're the cats, they're the mice. Posted by: frankly0 on April 12, 2007 at 6:35 PM

Sure it is amusing until ya realize that what the cats are playing with are mice in the last stage of rabies.

guess who was the reporter who broke the story on the missing emails a year ago? Jason Leopold.

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/57/17972

Guess who was the reporter that revisited this issue last week?

Jason Leopold

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040507J.shtml

BGRS(aka G.C.) >"Did anyone look under aWol's desk?"

In the pretzel bowl

"...playin with matches in a pool of gasoline..." - Swamp Mama Johnson

Nathan is always correct wrote: "Just as I predicted would happen, SA mischaracterized ST-TOS as having first aired in the mid-1960s, when in fact it aired in the *late* 1960s."

I assume this is a joke, but for the record the first episode of the original Star Trek series ("The Man Trap") was broadcast on September 8, 1966. That's the "mid-1960s".

Wow--this is starting to stink like four day old fish.
Rove et al. might just have spastic colons by now. This really has a feel of the 18 minute gap... dishonest, fraudulent, illusionary. A legacy of unethical behavior that will forever define this presidency.
ALL emails are recoverable.

"Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law breaker, it breeds contempt for the law."
From former US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

GW Bush: " One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end." 1/8/03

I assume this is a joke, but for the record the first episode of the original Star Trek series ("The Man Trap") was broadcast on September 8, 1966. That's the "mid-1960s".

Ah, I predicted that this would be your response.

If you divide the 10 years of the 60s into thirds, an "early", a "middle", and a "late", with each third consisting of 3 years and 4 months, the late 60s begins on Sept 1, 1966.

> There's not a business in the world I'm aware
> of that allows people to permanently delete their
> emails. For various auditing and legal reasons,
> every single email ever sent is usually retained
> for a signifigant length of time,

Where do people come up with things like this? I thought we were reality-based? Some financial institutions, particuarly those regulated by the SEC, and certain public corporations have such a requirement. That is problem 10% or less of the e-mail systems in the US alone. For everyone else, when you hit Delete it is gone. Now, there may be backups, but those may or may not allow you to get the deleted message back depending on dozens of factors.

Cranky

CW always: Rove et al. might just have spastic colons by now.

That made me chuckle!

BGRS: Did anyone look under aWol's desk?

Now that you mention aWol, see No. 6 below.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon documented what's gone missing (besides decency and integrity) at the Bush Administration:

1) The current missing WH emails
2) The gap mid-November to early December in the DOJ doc dump
3) A video of Jose Padilla's interrogation in a military brig that mysteriously disappeared from the Pentagon
4) Missing memos about torture and interrogation to and from the FBI and CIA and any documents dated after April 2003
5) 2,000 pages missing from a congressional copy of a classified report detailing the alleged acts of abuse by soldiers against Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib
6) Gaps in aWol's TANG service, the missing docs that explain his absences plus his missed annual medical exam in 1972
7) The alleged non-existent transcript of Aug. 29, 2005, videoconference call produced by Bush administration officials about Katrina that Congress had requested... which magically appeared via Newsweek.

Of course, there are the obvious missing things about Bush-Cheney: Saddam's WMDs and links to AQ, any sort of post-invasion plan for Iraq, $12 billion of Iraq funds, etc. ...And honesty, good governance, fiscal responsibility, competence, national security credibility, you know, the characteristics the Repubs like to tout about themselves.

But partisan corruption, incompetence, lying, and plain ol' skullduggery, there's a-plenty.

I feel a need to post this:
"Media largely ignored Fitzgerald revelation that White House may have destroyed emails
Summary: Few major news outlets have covered the fact -- first reported by the New York Daily News -- that in a letter to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's defense attorneys, special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald said that numerous emails from 2003 are missing from the White House computer archives.
A February 1 New York Daily News article by staff writer James Gordon Meek reported that in a recent letter to defense attorneys for former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the lead prosecutor in the CIA leak case, wrote that numerous White House emails from 2003 are missing from White House computer archives. A Media Matters for America survey of coverage following the publication of Meek's article found that major news outlets have -- with only a few exceptions -- ignored this story.

On October 28, 2005, a grand jury indicted Libby on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to the FBI. Made public as part of a recent court filing, Fitzgerald's letter was sent in response to requests by Libby's legal team that the prosecutor turn over a large number of documents pertaining to the defendant. At the end of the letter, in which Fitzgerald refused the request, he wrote:

We are aware of no evidence pertinent to the charges against defendant Libby which has been destroyed. In an abundance of caution, we advise you that we have learned that not all e-mail of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system..."

If you divide the 10 years of the 60s into thirds, an "early", a "middle", and a "late", with each third consisting of 3 years and 4 months, the late 60s begins on Sept 1, 1966.

Wow, that means we are already into the "late 00's." I feel old.

You're not old until your kids start getting gray hair.

Apollo, at the risk of appearing an unrepentant blogwhore...I ripped on aWol from my hubbies perspective today.

at the risk of appearing an unrepentant blogwhore

Just so long as your hair isn't nappy....

;)

Well, it isn't too humid today...

Neocon-led government sucks.

Seemingly it is a largely imaginary idea that emails are lost.
This assuredly is a purposeful email blunder that will leave the GOP in crisis, coupled with their willful self delusion about the recovery of email.
Strategically beneficial??
How about total lawlessness!!
This administration is genuinely devoted to its anti-democratic behaviors.

Is not the White House--through Attorney Gonzales-- responsible for ensuring mandatory compliance with applicable laws>>including the Presidential Records Act>> which appear to have been violated by their wierd, self-serving system?

The really pertinent question, the one no one has yet asked...How can they frame Inman for this???

Just a quicky.

You had a post about Lee Iaccoca who asked about outrage.

I've never understood why there isn't any outrage in the US when rights are abused. But there isn't.

None here, and, particularly, none here from the right of the line. Just guess it's all OK. It's all OK.

We've even been here before, but it's all OK.

Man! We are close to the edge.

I kept backups for 5 years. Just to CYA if nothing else.

I kept backups for 5 years. Just to CYA if nothing else.

Globe,
Read your post. Major Tom sure knows how to call 'em. And I'd chip in on some beer for Larry Johnson. Have you read LJ's latest post about the possibility of Fitzgerald not knowing about the use of RNC email accounts in the WH? Interesting repercussions, I'd say.

CW always,

You may also find this curious with regard to the Libby case. RawStory first broke the story and then The Washington Note confirmed it. Via Shakespeare's Sister, Mar. 28, 2006:

According to several Pentagon sources close to Rove and others familiar with the inquiry, Bush's senior adviser tipped off Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to information that led to the recent "discovery" of 250 pages of missing email from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney…

Rove is providing information on deleted emails, erased hard drives and other types of obstruction by staff and other officials in the Vice President's office. Pentagon sources close to Rove confirmed this account.

None would name the staffers and/or officials whom Rove is providing information about. They did, however, explain that the White House computer system has "real time backup" servers and that while emails were deleted from computers, they were still retrievable from the backup system. By providing the dates and recipient information of the deleted emails, sources say, Rove was able to chart a path for Fitzgerald directly into the office of the Vice President.

Keep in mind, fellow citizen journalists, this is an ever narrowing crisis.
You get the impression of ridiculously clueless 'Mayberry Machiavellis'... Mayberry RFD.
Every information technology specialist worth his or her mustard says emails are retrievable through the hard drive. However, we will likely watch their bullshit machine going into overdrive.

Even the conservatives at the national review weigh in as follows:

"We need not need more evidence, however, to reach a conclusion about the suitability of Alberto Gonzales for the leadership of the Department of Justice. While we defended him from some of the outlandish charges made during his confirmation hearings, we have never seen evidence that he has a fine legal mind, good judgment, or managerial ability. Nor has his conduct at any stage of this controversy gained our confidence.

His claim not to have been involved in the firings suggests that he was either deceptive or inexcusably detached from the operations of his own department..."

I love you, Apollo 13. You are truly an investigative reporter.

Apollo, if I win the bet, I like my locally brewed Boulevard Pale Ale.

He is far better connected than I am, so he is probably right. My assertion that it's a lower-level officer or a civilian is pure hunch.

With a dash of life experience and just enough undergrad psychology to make me dangerous.

ps - I read every word LJ writes.

BGRS(akaGC): The really pertinent question, the one no one has yet asked...How can they frame Inman for this???

Please say more.

That's an inside-the-community joke.

Inman is happily ensconced in academia. He is miles away from all this, and not missing it at all, I'm sure.

Senator Leahy did not sound like he would be bullied or out-foxed by the irresponsible stewards of the white house email.

"It is not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." --Albert Einstein

"If you don't know what your government is doing, you don't live in a democracy." --Jane Anne Morris

Globe,

I actually referring to your hubby's call about Gates getting "caught with his pants down" over extensions. And with regard to chipping in for beer for Larry, I wouldn't bet against your hunch... but I would gladly buy a round of pints for Larry and you. No betting necessary. Simple gratitude.

RE: Things that have gone missing...

You forgot to mention something that really pisses me off.

See #8:

1) The current missing WH emails
2) The gap mid-November to early December in the DOJ doc dump
3) A video of Jose Padilla's interrogation in a military brig that mysteriously disappeared from the Pentagon
4) Missing memos about torture and interrogation to and from the FBI and CIA and any documents dated after April 2003
5) 2,000 pages missing from a congressional copy of a classified report detailing the alleged acts of abuse by soldiers against Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib
6) Gaps in aWol's TANG service, the missing docs that explain his absences plus his missed annual medical exam in 1972
7) The alleged non-existent transcript of Aug. 29, 2005, videoconference call produced by Bush administration officials about Katrina that Congress had requested... which magically appeared via Newsweek.

8) Pat Tillman's journal:

"He started keeping a journal at 16 and continued the practice on the battlefield, writing in it regularly. (His journal was lost immediately after his death.)"

It wasn't lost.
Journals don't get lost...
True writers, like Pat, keep them close to their chest. BET ON IT.

Here's the quote that will prove that to you:

"Interviews also show a side of Pat Tillman not widely known — a fiercely independent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in service to his country yet was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty. He was an avid reader whose interests ranged from history books on World War II and Winston Churchill to works of leftist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author."

They stole it.
Probably burned it.
This perhaps is their greatest sin of all...

Another new low. It is like the jet stream of April is following the fortunes of the administration. Unbelievably corrupt.
What is more sickening, their intransigent refusal to leave Iraq is now to solely placate Big Oil--they fear a regional meltdown. Everyone with a clue would have left years ago. So obvious is it that oil is calling the shots for the war, I think it is fair to call this administration "The Oil Regency" for the purposes of history. It is clear that everything that has been plotted, stolen or exploded was done at the behest of a too rosy oil profit assessment. I expect we will find that Exxon-Mobile-BP-Texaco-Shell was behind Bush's original stolen election, the complicity of the MSM, and the quagmire of Iraq. Rove was free--those types tend to have already sold their soul repeatedly in the subprime marketplace.

Those e-mails would tell us a lot, but the gullible public will be assailed with non-stop media stories about how there really was a way a huge electro magnet ruined everything innocently in parts of the server. Perino is already preparing this part of the script. It is more clear with each passing day. "It is strange, and we really can't explain it. We are sorry. Here is an expert on magnets from Exxon to explain the weird coincidental placement of the illuminated magnetic globe and its quirky effects on Rove's server."

One more thing to add before I retire for the night:

White House Criminal Conspiracy

*Blushing Here* Thanks Apollo. :)

Cheers!

Globe: read your blogging and agree fully with Apollo.
Put up a fund cite and many of us would gladly kick in for a beer for you and LJ irrespective of degree of certainty. You have done spectacular service for your country. Make it a microbrew, that Kansas City Busch beer is a wee bit too close to tainted by its name alone!

BGRS(akaGC):Inman is happily ensconced in academia.

We talkin' Bobby Ray? If so, last I heard of him (long ago) was he delivered a rant about why he wouldn't do CIA, something involving LaRouche. The CSPAN (re?)broadcast of said rant was cancelled. Lost track after that. I'd love to catch up (and I'd love to hear the rant.)

Please, fill me in.

If Bush & Co. were a publicly-traded company, the revelations of their deception, duplicity, and sad attempts at cover-up would have brought the value of their stock down to about $0.16 - and they would have been de-listed from the Exchange over a month ago.

But instead our sleepy nation and press puts up with this buffoonery; we care less about our government than stockholders care about their company.

Sad.

notthere: "I've never understood why there isn't any outrage in the US when rights are abused. But there isn't. None here, and, particularly, none here from the right of the line."

Yours is not to reason nor understand why. You need to support our troops by going shopping, just like President Bush told you. After all, the adults are now in char--(POP!!)

You know, it's really uncomfortable, bending over and trying to climb head-first inside my own ass! I don't know how Al and egbert can perform that feat so effortlessly, and seemingly at will. Maybe if I did more right-wing political yoga ...

" Mr. Kelner did not provide many details about why this special policy was adopted for Mr. Rove. But he did indicate that one factor was the presence of investigative or discovery requests or other legal concerns."

The Valerie Plame investigation?

…the late 60s begins on Sept 1, 1966. Nathan is always correct at 8:06 PM

I thought it was remembered from the millennium celebration, there was no year 0. Therefore, the first year was 1, decades begin at x1, centuries at xx1, and millennia at xxx1.
Technically, the Sixties begin in 1961 since 1960 was the last year of the Fifties.
Dividing a decade into thirds of 3.334 year each, the early 60's ran to 1964.3; the mid 60's to 1967.6, and the late 60's to the end of 1970.
September 8, 1966? Mid 60's. Point to SecularAnimist.

ROTFLMLiberalAO Probably burned it.

The investigation revealed that soldiers burned Tillman's uniform and body armor. So burning his journals isn't far-fetched.

CW always,
Thanks, with warm regards in return. Amazing what one can find with tenacity and having enough patience to dig around pages of Google queries.

consider wisely >includes "If you don't know what your government is doing, you don't live in a democracy." --Jane Anne Morris"

Thanks. That`s a keeper.

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime." - Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.

Mr. G - After a Republican witchhunt after Clinton nominated him for DoD, he withdrew his nomination and is at the LBJ school in Austin.

There for a while in the eighties every damned nefarious thing that happened they tried to blame him for - from Iran-Contra to Pollard's treason.

He remains to this day the only person ever to have the stones to deal harshly with Israel, when he cut the Mossad out of the intel loop.

I think he's a mensch, and I hope he is happy in his retirement from public service.

BGRS (aka G.C.) >"...he cut the Mossad out of the intel loop..."

Didn`t know, thanks for the insight.

Maybe he suffered some "blowback" over that.

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw

Thanks, Sparko. I appreciate that. If you are really moved to contribute something because I am blogging, make a donation to the Air Force Aid Society or the Kansas City Public Library.

Or the ACLU, of course.:)

'I've never understood why there isn't any outrage in the US when rights are abused. But there isn't.'

People would have to know their rights are being abused and there are barriers getting this info to them when the info reflects badly on the letter R.

[Posting deleted.]

lampwick: "But instead our sleepy nation and press puts up with this buffoonery ..."

You want real buffoonery? Watch a replay of tonight's Paula Zahn Now! on CNN, in which right-wing Dennis Prager expresses his outrage at Don Imus' "nappy-headed ho" remark, while Paula turns the whole episode into an indictment of rap music.

To take Paula's blonde-impaired argument to its logicial conclusion, we only have to paraphrase Armstrong "For Sale - Cheap" Williams on MSNBC's Scarborough Country yesterday, and say that it's black people's own damn fault that white people feel compelled to label them in such deroguatory fashion.

Why, black people just need to stop being a convenient target for white people's wrath -- it's really as simple as that.

(Sigh!) And I wonder why I often find wanting to just get stoned, after hearing such mindless punditry ...

C.E. is a modern invention that coincides (coincidentaly) with A.D. My guess would be that Jesus was born at 0 A.D., not 1 A.D. as this would make Jesus 1 year old the moment he was born. I think this is asking too much even of virgin birth.

Just to keep the math straight (not by Mike's math) 1/3 = .33333', 2/3 = .66666', 1/3 of 10 years = 10/3 = 3.33333', 2/3 of 10 years - 6.66666'.

365 days per year, 366 leap year: 366/3 = 122 days.

So, counting from 1st Jan 60 would be: 1960 + 1961 + 1962 + 1/3year.

So 1/3 = 1963 + 122 days = 1st May, 1963.

So 2/3 = 5.1.63 + 1964 + 1965 + (5.1.1966 + 122) days = 31st August 1966.

I'll give you a day either side.

Apollo 13:

The investigation revealed that soldiers burned Tillman's uniform and body armor. So burning his journals isn't far-fetched.

Can't agree with that.

It presupposes that those examining his things for burning assumed the family had no right or interest in his most private thoughts. Even if these fellow soldiers hated him (doubtful) I suspect they would still preserve the journals for his family.

I suspect that the journals got sent up the stairs to superiors who didn't like what they read...

Why it pisses me off to no end:
You do not destroy a person's final thoughts.
To do so is a sin beyond belief.

Sorry to throw a pedantic monkey wrench into the glorious works y'all are furiously sweating over - but there is the little matter of the missing days when Pope Gregory rejiggered the calendar...

Deleting emails doesn't eliminate them, as any moderately computer savvy person knows. They are fully recoverable by software available online, some free, or via data recovery service. The only way this is not the case is a data wipe. To do a true data wipe, the RNC would have to be complicit in the criminal act of aiding Rove in violating the legally binding hold on deletions.

A mere email user can "delete" emails just fine, but what they cannot normally do is wipe them (delete the data and then overwrite the drive sectors that hold the data, hundreds of times, with nonsense data. THAT is something that Rove, as a mere user, could NOT do.

So, either the emails are fully recoverable or the RNC is guilty of conspiring with Rove to violate the law. That and the fact that Rove didn't receive and send emails only to himself. EVERYONE who received emails from Rove or sent emails to Rove would also have to take part in the data elimination. That would be a conspiracy.

Rove, by himself, cannot eliminate his emails and be free and clear.

Just winding you up.

I don't suppose there was a year 0. They probably counted year 1 from the time he was supposedly born, completing at years end.

I'll take 1st May, '64, and 31st August '67.

Something seriously sounds wrong here. There's not a business in the world I'm aware of that allows people to permanently delete their emails.

I can tell you of one that I am personally aware of: hushmail. Hushmail servers allow you to PERMANENTLY delete emails...or at least that is an option you get when you delete email messages. They are one of those email providers that specialize in encrypted/private email and privacy protection. Now, whether or not the option to permanently delete emails means that the email data is wiped (deleted and overwritten hundreds of times with other data) is another question.

Globe: you are a treasure already--guess I'll keep giving to the aforementioned charities and drink your beer in absentia--kind of like Rove's emails!

Let's get some justice going on the Oil Regency.

I'll give you an "Amen!" and I'll bear witness.

Thanks for the kind words.

Als' humor factor keeps me coming back. Hilaryarious!

The latest incarnation of the Beltway Madam dropped a name in court today - now mind you, she still maintains she wasn't selling sex - but she dropped the name of Harlan Ullman...the guy who dreamed up the notion of *Shock and Awe.* He of course denied it...As every high-powered man since the dawn of journalism has denied he was boinking hookers. (Most always, he is lying.) He has a good lawyer, though. He is represented by Bracewell & Guiliani.

Nobody else is asking about the security clearances these mendacious fuck-ups enjoy...So I will. What about these guys security clearances? Hmmm? Are they at least being reviewed???

More here

ROTFLMLiberalAO: It presupposes that those examining his things for burning... Even if these fellow soldiers hated him (doubtful) I suspect they would still preserve the journals for his family.

Didn't intend to imply that the same soldiers involved in burning Tillman's uniform and body armor also burned his journals... but I can see how my comment could be misconstrued. My bad. I was simply agreeing with your statement that "burning" Pat's journals isn't a far-fetched notion.

Who burned or disappeared Tillman's journals? I would agree with you that probably "the journals got sent up the stairs to superiors who didn't like what they read." BGRS has been tracking the story about the investigation into Tillman's death that now involves "nine officers, including up to four generals." Regardless, Pat's death was a tragedy. The exploitation of his death, the lies and deception are despicable. The loss of Tillman's journals, especially for his family's sake, makes it even more terrible.

BGRS(akaGS): Your response above, regarding Inman, led me to the following from Libertarian Murray Rothbard:

This incident must be understood against its structural background: the CIA had long consisted of two clashing factions: the hard-line hawks, fanatical Cold Warriors, pro-Zionists and close to Israel's spy agency Mossad; and the moderates, close to the Establishment and the Rockefeller World Empire. The hard-liners and Mossadniks were big in the operations department, and included Ops chief James Jesus Angleton, and Bill Buckley's CIA mentor and buddy E. Howard Hunt; they were headed by William J. Casey. The moderates were strong in the Intelligence department, and included William Colby and Admiral Inman.

Carl Olglesby referred to the larger embodiments of these factions as "Cowboys" and "Yankees".

In the same vein, Carroll Quigley spoke of the struggle between industrial and financial capital, and placed it in a truly sobering context: the survival of Western Civilization.

Samuel Huntington gave a hat tip to Quigley, and proceeded to ignore his central point. Instead, he proposed a "clash of civilizations" based on something more durable than political ideology: religious belief. This, of course, presupposed the demise of financial capital, but that wasn't an issue for Huntington.

The current plan (near as I can tell) is for Industrial (now Christian) capital to form an alliance with Islam against whatever Huntington is currently calling the Yellow Peril (was "Confucianism", later on "Sinic Civilization"). We just have to get rid of those Shiites, who are sitting on the oil.

Surely we can do better. Google, Apple, and, yes, even Microsoft give me hope.

As Bertrand Russell said: In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms, one of the few unifying forces is scientific truthfulness...

Very well done, Grasshopper!

One thing not to be lost in all of this is that they had to know just how lame this explanation would be not only to politico types but damn near everyone these days and yet they chose to go this route anyway. Why? Whatever it is it in those e-mails must be so dangerous to them that this kind of clear credibility shredding/destroying (and it is not like they have much left to start with and even they must recognize that these days) exercise is preferable which given just how much worse this is making an already incompetent looking Administration look is saying something. What are they so afraid of? That is what we cannot allow ourselves to forget while we are down in the weeds of the details of the matter IMHO.

So 2/3 = 5.1.63 + 1964 + 1965 + (5.1.1966 + 122) days = 31st August 1966.

Have you considered using the harmonic mean of these dates instead, or possibly the median? I believe 31 would be an outlier because it only happens in a few months, as would September cause it uniquely starts with S.

Then again, it mostly depends on how close to the speed of light you are traveling.

Bom - Bom - Bom -
Another one bites the dust!
And another one! And another one!
Another one bites the dust!.

OooooOooOoOoo OooOoOoo OooOoOoo

Another one bites the dust!

Mr.G --

"As Bertrand Russell said: In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms, one of the few unifying forces is scientific truthfulness..."

I think what Russell was referring to was the similar Karl Popper "Logic of Scientific Discovery" type philosophy, not the rather speculative if not necesserily inaccurate but totally unscientific analysis you write of.

In short, don't comfort yourself with a misapplied aphorism.

notthere:

In what way was what I wrote "analysis" let alone "not necessarily inaccurate but totally unscientific analysis"?

In short, what's your beef?

Where do deleted comment posts go?

I know there have been many times I have not posted what I have written. Where do those comments go?

If I backspace and wipe out whole paragraphs, where do the words go?

I have written long posts and then hit the link to call up comments, losing the file that was my post. Where did it go? One time I lost a comment twice this way. I must have been unconsciously censoring myself. (Making very many people happy.)

Text in html, or whatever this is called, is a little bit different than ink on paper, which goes in the trash, crumpled, if it is rejected.

'I think what Russell was referring to was the similar Karl Popper "Logic of Scientific Discovery" type philosophy, not the rather speculative if not necesserily inaccurate but totally unscientific analysis you write of.'

Dude, you totally ended your sentence with a prepostion.

I am of the opinion that Bertrand Russell should be quoted at every conceivable opportunity. In fact, I think I will quote him right now:

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.

Josh Marshall is reporting that there will be another huge WH document dump tonight.

I am of the opinion that Bertrand Russell should be quoted at every conceivable opportunity.

Taking this as an opportunity:

"It is traditional to regard opinion as due to mental causes, but this is only true of the immediate causes: in the background, there is usually force in the service of some creed."

"Broadly speaking, all the elements in Marx's philosophy which are derived from Hegel are unscientific, in the sense that there is no reason whatever to suppose them true."

"The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm."

"I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race."

"The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other."

From TPM. WH claims executive privilege over RNC e-mails.

From the Times ...

The clash also seemed to push the White House and Democrats closer to a serious confrontation over executive privilege, with the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, asserting that the administration has control over countless other e-mail messages that the Republican National Committee has archived. Democrats are insisting that they are entitled to get the e-mail messages directly from the national committee.