The Bush administration is fighting CREW's effort to release information about missing e-mails. In April of 2007, we filed a FOIA request with the White House Office of Administration to find out about the missing five million e-mails after receiving information about this startling development from a confidential source. CREW also released a report, Without A Trace, documenting how the Bush administration lost over five million e-mails. Now, the Bush lawyers are trying to expand executive privilege even further:

The Justice Department said Tuesday that records about missing White House e-mails are not subject to public disclosure, the latest effort by the Bush administration to expand the boundaries of government secrecy.

Administration lawyers detailed the legal position in a lawsuit trying to force the White House Office of Administration to reveal what it knows about the disappearance of White House e-mails.

The Office of Administration provides administrative services, including information technology support, to the Executive Office of the President.

The office has prepared estimates that there are at least 5 million missing White House e-mails from March 2003 to October 2005, according to the lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a private advocacy group.

In court papers seeking to end the case, the Justice Department said the White House Office of Administration has no substantial authority independent of President Bush and therefore is not subject to the disclosure requirements of the Freedom of Information Act.

Most of the White House is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, but certain components within it handle FOIA requests, including the Office of Administration, which issues annual reports on the number of FOIA requests it processes each year.

The 2006 annual report says the Office of Administration processed 65 FOIA requests.