The private organization is, of course, CREW.  We made significant progress in our lawsuit against the White House Office of Administration yesterday -- quite significant:

A federal judge has agreed to let a private group delve into the operations of an office at the White House as part of a controversy over whether large amounts of e-mail have disappeared.

Permitting any private organization to inquire into White House functions is an unusual step. And U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (KO-lar KO-tell-ee) made that point clear in her six-page order Monday.

Major development today in CREW's lawsuit against the White House Office of Administration in our case over the missing White House e-mails.

Today, Federal District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued an order allowing CREW)to conduct limited discovery in the case of CREW v. Office of Administration (OA). The court order can be found here.

For all the non-lawyer types, in short, discovery is a key part of the pre-trial process where the parties provide relevant information (including documents) to each other. Because the Office of Administration claims to be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) -- despite responding to FOIA requests in the past -- CREW argued that discovery was necessary to determine whether the Office of Administration is indeed an agency as defined by federal law. Today, the court agreed with us. This ruling means that within the next 10 days, CREW and the White House will have to develop a "Joint Discovery Plan."

In our lawsuit, CREW is seeking documents that the Office of Administration prepared assessing the scope of the missing White House email problem and its proposed recovery plan.

Just because Bush signed the new FOIA law doesn't mean it will be enforced.  From the  authorative FOIA Blog:

Austin American Statesman reminds us that whie most Americans were celebrating New Years Eve, President Bush took the time to sign into law the Freedom of Information Act reforms.  That legislation was supported by CREW and a broad coalition of other organizations across the political spectrum:

In a surprising move, President Bush signed the open government act of 2007, which amends the aging Freedom of Information Act of 1966. It was a much-needed step toward public disclosure that should force government agencies to respond to records requests in a timely manner.

The bill was sponsored by Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn and Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, and both fought hard for it. It wasn’t assured that Bush would sign it into law, but he did Dec. 31.

Federal agencies routinely ignore requests for information from the public. Some requests have languished in bureaucratic limbo for more than two years. Such delays are unacceptable in a democracy, and the bill Bush signed is designed to improve the situation.

Among other things, the new law gives federal agencies 20 days to respond to requests - or pay for the search and copy costs. Agencies that worry about their budgets should be quick to respond to public requests for documents rather than eat the costs. The bill also creates a tracking system so requesters can know where their queries are in the system.

In another important change, the bill requires agencies to create a response time report, so everyone can know how long a request has gone unanswered. And it creates an independent ombudsman’s office to review performances and mediate disputes.

Legislation to reform the Freedom of Information Act has finally passed both Houses of Congress.  CREW is a strong supporter of these much needed reforms.  Today's Washington Post has the details:

The bill would encourage faster compliance with FOIA requests. By law, agencies must respond within 20 days, but in practice the process can take months or years. Delays lengthened in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as agencies began to favor nondisclosure in the name of national security.

Under the measure, requests would be assigned public tracking numbers. Agencies that exceed the 20-day deadline for responses would be denied the right to charge requesters for research or copying costs.

The bill would strengthen the ability of people who sue over their FOIA requests to collect attorneys' fees and would establish an office at the National Archives to accept citizen complaints about unfulfilled FOIA requests, issue opinions and foster best practices.

"In an era of increased government secrecy, we cannot postpone reforming the very act that keeps our government open to the people whose government this is," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). "FOIA helps make government accountable and responsive to the people."

Earlier this year, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discussed technology and e-mails with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo. Rice indicated that the State Department has changed its policy regarding e-mail and blackberrys:

QUESTION: So do you not take your blackberry when you go to China?

SECRETARY RICE: The truth of the matter is I don't have one. But I used to, but I don't now.

QUESTION: Is that because of security reasons?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, they don't let me play with almost anything technological now, Maria. Funny, but it seems they all want to do it for me. And it's too bad because, you know, I love the internet, I love e-mail and --

Who are "they"? What is the policy? And, why and when did the policy change? Given the major scandals surrounding the Bush administration involving e-mails, CREW wants to know. Last week, CREW filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request "seeking documents stating the Department of State’s policies governing the Secretary of State’s methods of communicating via e-mail with audiences both internal and external to the U.S. government."

One of the myriad Bush administration's e-mail controversies was exposed by CREW in our report, WITHOUT A TRACE: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act. That report details the legal issues behind the story of the White House e-mail scandal. Earlier this month, in a lawsuit brought by CREW, a U.S. Federal District Court Judge issued the first-ever Temporary Restraining Order against the Bush administration. The order prevents the Bush White House from destroying back-up copies of millions of deleted emails while the lawsuit is pending.

Melanie Sloan appeared on Hardball last night to talk about the contradictions between what the Bush administration said in court documents about FOIA requests -- and what the White House website said. Hardball managed to find someone to try to defend the Bush administration's contradictions. But, as Melanie notes, the law is the law and even the Bush administration is supposed to follow the law:

Chris Joyner, who writes about First Amendment issues at the Clarion-Ledger, asks who has "the easiest job in the world?"   He also has an answer: 

Apparently, it's FOIA officer Carol Ehrlich in the White House's Office of Administration.

The Justice Department is claiming the office, which handles (surprise) administrative functions for the White House, is not covered by FOIA, despite the fact that it has a FOIA officer and has responded to FOIA requests in the past. In fact, an executive order has the office was under a FOIA improvement plan. No matter, Justice said. 

Noting that CREW's Melanie Sloan was "not impressed with Justice's claim,"  Mr. Joyner also has a suggestion for anyone who know Ms. Ehrlich:

Anyway, if you went to school with Carol and are looking to catch up, now is a good time to call. Turns out, her workload just got a lot lighter.

This week, the White House has been making the argument that somehow the Office of Administration is no longer subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). CREW has just learned from a source that the White House has begun peeling off all of the Office of Administration FOIA-related content.

Stay tuned...

Today's Washington Post confirms what CREW reported yesterday. The Bush administration's claim that the Office of Administration is not subject to FOIA requests is, in fact, contradicted by the Bush administration's own White House website. Like our blog post, the Washington Post includes a screen capture of the website :

The Bush administration argued in court papers this week that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act as part of its effort to fend off a civil lawsuit seeking the release of internal documents about a large number of e-mails missing from White House servers.

The claim, made in a motion filed Tuesday by the Justice Department, is at odds with a depiction of the office on the White House's own Web site. As of yesterday, the site listed the Office of Administration as one of six presidential entities subject to the open-records law, which is commonly known by its abbreviation, FOIA.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit group, filed a lawsuit in May seeking Office of Administration records about the missing e-mails, including when they were deleted from government computer files. CREW said it understood that internal White House documents had estimated at least 5 million e-mails were missing from March 2003 to October 2005.

The Bush administration has not provided a number publicly. Some of the records may have been subject to a document preservation law administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. Congress has sought access to them as part of its probe into the administration's firing of nine U.S. federal prosecutors in 2006.

Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said that "one has to wonder if this is an effort by the White House to keep secret the details of how millions of White House e-mail suddenly went missing. The OA's disingenuous claim that it is not subject to the FOIA is contradicted by its own actions and statements."

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel declined to comment yesterday.

Here's our screen capture: