Furor Over Lost E-mails Grows

13 Apr 2007 // WASHINGTON - The White House's admission that it may have lost e-mails possibly linked to the controversial firing of eight U.S. attorneys sparked skepticism and outrage Thursday on Capitol Hill.

``They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that!'' bellowed Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., on the Senate floor.

The e-mails were sent by White House employees on accounts tied to the Republican National Committee. Democrats contend that the outside e-mail accounts may have been used to hide collusion between the White House and the Justice Department over the firing of the U.S. attorneys.

Leahy said it would be impossible for e-mails to completely disappear without a trace.

``Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them,'' said Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary panel, which is leading the inquiry in that chamber. ``We'll subpoena them if necessary.''

Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, ordered all federal agencies Thursday to preserve ``any e-mail communications in the possession or control of your agency that were received from or sent to White House officials using RNC or other nongovernmental e-mail accounts.''

And House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., sent a letter to the RNC demanding all e-mails stored on the political party's server that are related to the firings.

The White House contends there is no effort to conceal the e-mails. The White House counsel's office is searching for them and consulting with forensic experts to find them, White House spokesman Dana Perino said.

``I will admit it. We screwed up and we're trying to fix it,'' said Perino of the potentially lost e-mails.

Asked if there is any concern that laws might have been broken, Perino said, ``I've not heard any indication of that.''

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 forbids destroying presidential documents. White House officials could not say whether the missing e-mails could be recovered.

And that frustrated Leahy. ``I've got a teenage kid in my neighborhood that can go get 'em for them,'' he told reporters.

Leahy is off-base with his allegation that e-mails intentionally were deleted, Perino said.

''I don't know how you could possibly say that when what we have done is endeavor to be very forthcoming and honest in talking about a policy that we've had,`` Perino said. ''I don't know if Senator Leahy is also an IT expert, but I can assure you that we are working very hard to make sure that we find the e-mails that were potentially lost.``

Twenty-two administration employees now have Republican National Committee e-mail accounts, Perino said. Over the course of the administration, there have been 50.

''We are trying to understand, to the best of our ability, the universe of e-mails that were potentially lost,`` Perino said. ''And we are taking steps to make sure that we use the forensics that are available to retrieve any of those that are lost. And we've changed the policy so that we can make sure that this doesn't happen again.``

She said the internal review includes whether White House staffers possibly deleted messages from their RNC e-mail accounts, something they could do until several weeks ago.

E-mails sent on White House addresses are logged and preserved. But until 2004, RNC e-mails automatically were deleted after 30 days.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said he could not rule out that some of the missing e-mails involved the attorney firings.

The Judiciary panel also approved new subpoenas Thursday that would require the administration to turn over hundreds of new documents and force Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General William Moschella and Scott Jennings, a senior White House political aide, to testify about the firings.

For now, Leahy is holding back on actually issuing the subpoenas, hoping that negotiations will yield the witnesses without force.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the ranking member, said he would support issuing subpoenas if the documents are not turned over.

''I think we would be well-advised to see if we can get the documents, and see if we get it on a voluntary basis, to avoid compulsory process if possible,`` Specter said. ''If it is not possible, then we are going to assert the oversight rights of the committee.``

Meanwhile, a report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found that the executive office of the president has lost more than 5 million e-mails generated between March 2003 and October 2005.

The report asserts that using political accounts for official business is illegal.

''It's clear that the White House has been willfully violating the law, the only question now is to what extent?`` said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the nonpartisan ethics watchdog group.

The Bush administration has said that officials used private e-mail accounts tied to the Republican National Party to avoid violating the Hatch Act, a federal law that forbids government employees from using federal resources for political purposes.

''The ever changing excuses offered by the administration - that they didn't want to violate the Hatch Act, that staff wasn't clear on the law - are patently ridiculous,`` Sloan said. ''Very convenient that embarrassing - and potentially incriminating - e-mails have gone missing. It's the Nixon White House all over again.``

The White House counsel's office was advised of these problems in 2005 and CREW has been told that the White House was given a plan of action to recover these e-mails, but that has not happened, Sloan said.

Perino said the White House was transitioning from one e-mail system to another at the time and that officials are going to look into whether there was ''anything lost.``

The escalating tensions between Congress and the White House come at a bad time for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the central figure of the inquiry.

Gonzales is expected to face sharp questioning next Tuesday when he goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Gonzales' chief aide recently testified that the attorney general was fully informed about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year, contradicting the attorney general's previous statements.

Seven of the U.S. attorneys were fired on Dec. 7, and another was fired earlier last year. Democratic lawmakers assert that the prosecutors were improperly fired because most of them were conducting political corruption investigations and all of them had positive reviews.