Today’s hearing before the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform revealed the extraordinary degree to which the White House has ignored, if not outright flouted, its record keeping obligations. Several key points bear emphasis:
- The White House was told when it was planning the change to a new system (Microsoft Exchange) in 2001 that it would need a new electronic record keeping system because the system then in use (ARMS) was tied to Lotus Notes;
- In 2002, when the White House made the change to Microsoft/Exchange, it set up a temporary, stop-gap measure to preserve emails but it was never intended to be (nor is it) a substitute for an electronic record keeping system;
- In October 2005 the White House learned it had a big problem with millions of missing email;
- In 2007 the Archives told the White House the method it was using to store emails was not adequate; and
- To date, as CIO Theresa Payton admitted today, the White House has still not put in place an electronic record keeping system.
Moreover, despite the fact that the White House prepared a detailed analysis in late 2005 of the missing email problem with a plan of recovery, it has now decided to go back to the drawing board -- Theresa Payton announced a three-phase project to re-examine the missing email problem that has no realistic chance of being completed before this president leaves office.
At today’s hearing, two White House officials -- OA’s Director Alan Swendiman and OA’s CIO Theresa Payton – revealed, by their testimony, that the White House has no interest in addressing the record keeping problems that have plagued this administration. Instead it is hoping to run out the clock with its multi-phase diagnostic process, which at best will only confirm what we already know: millions of email are missing and the White House has a grossly inadequate method for preserving the historical records of this presidency, records that belong to the American public.
Rather than coming up with solutions to a clear problem, the White House officials were more interested in impugning the character of a former OA employee who had provided Chairman Waxman’s committee with pages and pages of detailed explanations of what happened and what the White House did or did not do about it.
We expect more from our public officials. Sadly, after today’s hearing we are no closer to finding out when the White House will put in place an electronic record keeping system and when it will restore the missing emails.