Subpoenas vowed over 'lost' e-mails

13 Apr 2007 // WASHINGTON -- The White House said yesterday that it could not find an unknown number of e-mails written by Karl Rove and at least 21 other officials, including some correspondence that has been sought in connection with the firings of eight US attorneys, prompting Democrats to express doubt that the e-mails were accidentally lost.

The White House did not say how many e-mails were lost or whether any pertained to the firings. But an independent group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said yesterday that it had researched the matter and believes that the White House has lost more than 5 million e-mails sent between 2003 and 2005.

"We are trying to understand to the best of our ability the universe of the e-mails that were potentially lost," White House spokes wo man Dana Perino said yesterday. She said the White House would investigate whether the e-mails could be retrieved, adding, "We've changed the [e-mail] policy so that we can make sure that this doesn't happen again."

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a speech on the Senate floor that he doubted the e-mails were lost.

He threatened to subpoena them unless they were turned over voluntarily.

"They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that," Leahy said. "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."

Leahy compared the missing e-mails to the "famous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes. They say they've been erased or misplaced. They're there."

Leahy's panel has been investigating whether the eight US attorneys were fired for political reasons, because they investigated prominent Republicans or did not investigate Democrats.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said unnamed sources told the group the White House had conducted an internal review that estimated that more than 5 millions e-mails may be missing.

Anne Weismann , the chief counsel for the citizens group , said in a telephone interview that many e-mails were lost because the White House did not put in place a system for archiving them after it dropped one that had been used by the Clinton administration.

"They didn't keep a backup," Weismann said. "There was no way to ensure they were not modified or deleted in some way."

White House officials said at briefings yesterday that an undetermined number of e-mails were lost because they were sent by White House officials using nongovernment accounts, such as one run by the Republican National Committee.

Perino has said a "handful" of White House officials had used nongovernment e-mail accounts. In recent days, she modified her statement to say that 22 current officials, including Rove, had sometimes used the nongovernment accounts and that 50 officials may have used them altogether, counting people no longer serving in the Executive Branch.

Asked about her varying responses, Perino said yesterday that "when I said a 'handful' I was asked based on something that I didn't know."

Perino said the problem occurred because White House officials were trying to follow rules separating government and political activities.

"There [is] White House official business and there's political business [and you have] to make sure that you don't cross that line," Perino said. "People, either out of an abundance of caution or because of convenience . . . sometimes erred too much on the side of caution, and we have recognized that error."

In preparation for hearings next week, Democrats have asked for thousands of pages of documents from the White House regarding the firings of US attorneys.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales is slated to testify Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Leahy said the e-mails were declared missing only after his committee pressed for more information about the firings.

"Now, when they suddenly are facing meaningful oversight, they say they can't produce the information," Leahy said. "They have the information. They have to bring it out and show it to the American people. The administration has worn out the benefit of the doubt."

Representative Henry A. Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, yesterday sent a letter to Gonzales asking that all nongovernment e-mails sent by White House officials be preserved.

Waxman cited media reports alleging that Rove has sent 95 percent of his e-mails via a nongovernment account, and expressed concern that many of those e-mails apparently were not preserved.

Waxman said his committee would examine whether e-mails were deleted in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

The fact that e-mails are missing was noted -- but not widely and publicly noticed -- in the perjury trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

In January 2006, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald sent a letter to Libby's lawyer that noted that "we have learned that not all of the e-mail of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process of the White House computer system."