Press

PRESS

March 16, 2010

CREW Wins American Library Association’s James Madison Award for Work in Missing White House Emails

Lawsuits, The White House, Transparency, Press Releases

Washington, D.C. - Yesterday, in a ceremony in the Knight Conference Center at the Newseum, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s (CREW) Chief Counsel Anne Weismann accepted the American Library Association’s (ALA) James Madison Award for CREW’s work in the missing White House emails case The ALA bestowed the award jointly to CREW and Meredith Fuchs, General Counsel for the National Security Archive (NSA). The James Madison Award is given annually to those who have made a great impact in government transparency and promoted open access to information.

On December 14, 2009, after years of litigation, CREW, the NSA and the White House announced a settlement in the long running lawsuit challenging the failure of the Bush White House and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to recover and properly archive millions of emails that had gone missing from White House servers over a two and a half year period. The settlement stipulates the Executive Office of the President will restore a total of 94 days of missing emails, which will then be sent to NARA for preservation and, eventually, public access.

The award ceremony took place during The National Freedom of Information Day Conference, an event cosponsored by the ALA and the First Amendment Center.

CREW is immensely proud of the tireless work put in by Ms. Weismann and the entire CREW legal team in fighting to make sure these critical records of our nation’s history are saved.

Click here to read Anne Weismann’s acceptance speech below.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a non-profit legal watchdog group dedicated to holding public officials accountable for their actions. For more information, please visit www.citizensforethics.org or contact Garrett Russo at 202.408.5565 or grusso@citizensforethics.org