Comments (86)

Ott wrote on March 28, 2007 10:21 AM:

"Getting a bit lazy" is one of the prime reasons for getting your security clearance yanked in most of the world. "Getting a bit lazy" is also quite often illegal.

Rusty wrote on March 28, 2007 10:22 AM:

Whoops. We got lazy and broke the Presidential Records Act. Darn it. You know how hard it is to always stick to the law and whatnot.

I hope this bit "laziness" will allow the non-partisan investigations access to those servers.

Gilatrout wrote on March 28, 2007 10:22 AM:

Even though the emails didn't go through a WH mail server, I can guarantee they went through a proxy server. The logs on the proxy should have some very interesting information for those interested in what was sent.

It is possible even that these logs might have information that accidentially - on purpose - gets deleted when some RNC intern spills thier coffee on the server.

At the very least the WH proxy will know when something got sent and will identify if any emails are missing when the the records are suboenaed

Supdog wrote on March 28, 2007 10:24 AM:

"We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed. We saw that with the Clintons but I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong."

Right.

JGabriel wrote on March 28, 2007 10:26 AM:

"We just got a bit lazy," said one aide. "We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed. We saw that with the Clintons but I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong."

How could it be wrong? Everyone does it. It's OK if you're a Mainstream Republican (tm).

DiFi Fan wrote on March 28, 2007 10:45 AM:

In other words, we thought the Republican majority was permanent and we would never subjected to oversight authority.

Anonymous wrote on March 28, 2007 10:46 AM:

E-mail Controversy Prompts Many Aides To Stop Usage
March 27, 2007 | 5:18 PM ET | Permanent Link

This comes from Whispers editor Paul Bedard:

The growing controversy over the firing of federal prosecutors and what administration officials knew about it is renewing concerns among Bush aides over the less-than-secret aspect of E-emails. Those concerns were elevated this week when a House chairman asked that all aides retain their E-mails.

But just a week after E-mails in the U.S. attorneys case became a main focus of congressional Democrats probing the firings, several aides said that they stopped using the White House system except for purely professional correspondence.

"We just got a bit lazy," said one aide. "We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed. We saw that with the Clintons but I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong."

But the release of White House emails to the Democrats and the expanded request for more from Rep. Henry Waxman has iced the system. At least two aides said that they have subsequently bought their own private E-mail system through a cellular phone or Blackberry server. When asked how he communicated, one aide pulled out a new personal cellphone and said, "texting."

And this isn't SUBPOENABLE?

BinGA wrote on March 28, 2007 10:49 AM:

Also from USNews article:

"the release of White House emails to the Democrats and the expanded request for more from Rep. Henry Waxman has iced the system. At least two aides said that they have subsequently bought their own private E-mail system through a cellular phone or Blackberry server. When asked how he communicated, one aide pulled out a new personal cellphone and said, "texting.""

I have no idea how to text a message nor do I own a Blackberry. Could someone tell me how White House personnel messaging each other using these methods have any expectation of privacy whatsoever???

Code=wood

Citizen 92 wrote on March 28, 2007 10:52 AM:

It appears as though the operator of GeorgeWBush.com is also a government contractor, operating websites for the House Intelligence Committee as well as Results.gov.

And the operator is a longtime Bush family friend.

If the allegations in this diary are true, there could be a real problem here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/27/182647/444

How trustworthy is the GOP businessman?

(click on the "name" to go directly to the story)

Rusty wrote on March 28, 2007 10:59 AM:

"I have no idea how to text a message nor do I own a Blackberry. Could someone tell me how White House personnel messaging each other using these methods have any expectation of privacy whatsoever???"

Fear not, these messages are held by the phone company on a server too. They are subject to subpeona. The long and short of it folks - if you want no record of the communication, you need to do it in person and with your voice. The mob figured it out a long time ago, the GOP must have misplaced the memo.

What a bunch of crooks.

wagonjak wrote on March 28, 2007 11:01 AM:

Of course they're not using the White House emails anymore...those would be too easy to trace as the law converges on that group of criminals there...

They use emails from the RNC and other outside sources that would be much harder to find...

Oh yeah, and they've devised a whole system of smoke signals that are utterly untraceable!

otob wrote on March 28, 2007 11:01 AM:

Just a quickie about how texting / blackberries work. When you purchase a cellphone, you can send short "text messages" that are equivalent to mini emails. You send them directly to other phones, and people can read and respond just the same as you would with email. This is called "texting."

Blackberries and other similar devices are more powerful than just the cell phone text message. They can (and often do) have full QWERTY keypads, making it easy to type full messages. BB's send emails in the same sense that your computer sends emails - but they do it through their cellular network. These devices can often read files, like word or excel documents. Someone using a blackberry for communications wouldn't use any physical network in the white house - there wouldn't be any wire to plug in. It would use the cellular carriers network.

Hope that helps explain the idea a little more.

skogie wrote on March 28, 2007 11:04 AM:

Rustie's right. They also seem to have forgotten about someone named Mark Foley.

Bugboy wrote on March 28, 2007 11:05 AM:

@Rusty

Not even crooks, amatuer crooks at that. It boggles the mind how inept they are.

Imagine if Jebby Boy had gotten in the WH, we'd be all living in thatch huts around castles by now.

They can spend time in Club Fed being "lazy".

heh. code word is public

mroom wrote on March 28, 2007 11:06 AM:

Rusty made a good point. "The long and short of it folks - if you want no record of the communication, you need to do it in person and with your voice. The mob figured it out a long time ago, the GOP must have misplaced the memo."

But apparently they remembered just in time for testimonies from Rove & Miers.

lockean wrote on March 28, 2007 11:08 AM:

Since the emails aren't official WH archival material, can't they simply be erased right now before they're subpoened?

Kate Henry wrote on March 28, 2007 11:08 AM:

Unbelievable...we are hiring public servants (and that is what the people working for Bush are) who feel like they need to hide their correspondence? If they are doing something they think they need to hide, then they are doing something wrong or illegal. It really amazes me that the Republics think that things like this are OK. Anything goes as long as you win the game. What happened to truth and honor?

Greg Roach wrote on March 28, 2007 11:11 AM:

Big. Very very big.

Remember Nixon's secret tapes?

mayan wrote on March 28, 2007 11:12 AM:

Hey...we should just get the back-ups from the NSA. I'm sure KKKarl does it all the time.

Kim McCall wrote on March 28, 2007 11:20 AM:

How come a bunch of people all got "a bit lazy" AT THE SAME TIME?

Three possibilities:
1) Somebody told them to get lazy;
2) They were trying (illegally) to avoid scrutiny;
3) Both of the above.

BinGA wrote on March 28, 2007 11:21 AM:

otob said "It would use the cellular carriers network."

otob: That's my point. Since these people are communicating on public cellular carriers' networks, rather than a secure [or maybe not] closed system like the White House's system, they cannot possibly rationalize any expectation of privacy that I can think of. I guess its sort of, it's, you know, like, private, so if you get one of the text messages by mistake, you shouldn't look, and if you do, you're the one in the wrong. An if they send it to someone by mistake, they shouldn't read it, and if they do they should just, you know, delete it and ignore the fact that you got it.

Every damn one of them should have every level of security clearance they have pulled.

Code=sound

Punchy wrote on March 28, 2007 11:22 AM:

Two comments--
1) If what they're doing is so illegal that they need a private server...well...then they're doing illegal shit, right? What is it about "secret email system" that screams "illegal/coverup"??

2) Can't texts and other wireless communication be swiped out of the air with the proper equipment? How in hell is this considered secure? Can Blackberry encript it better than the gov't systerms? I doubt it.

Rusty wrote on March 28, 2007 11:23 AM:

"Since the emails aren't official WH archival material, can't they simply be erased right now before they're subpoened?"

No. Waxman has sent official letter not to destroy the emails. I don't know the official capacity of such a letter from Congress, but I imagine that it would be very bad for anyone who destroyed such records after getting the letter. Could they have destroyed the material before the letter. Possibly, but there would be a record of that too. You would not believe what can come off an hard drive or server - even if it is initialized or overwritten.

I agree with whoever said these guys were staggeringly inept. I get dizzy thinking how corrupt, evil, and rotten these guys are. However, loyal to the Prez. ain't going to keep everyone out of jail. These power-grubbing self-interested "public" servants will start to see that prospects are better for the crook who made the deal first and sold-out the other crooks. One of these rats is going to jump off the ship sooner rather than later, then we will see some real fireworks.

Leahy is playing his hand well, I only hope that these electronic materials come to light before 2009.

scavok wrote on March 28, 2007 11:23 AM:

That would be the ultimate irony if the illegal NSA wiretapping of everyone provides all of the evidence required to convict this bunch of crooks.

Leahy should start subpoenaing the NSA immediately.

Anonymous wrote on March 28, 2007 11:24 AM:

Maybe the whole purpose of the "secret rooms" acknowledged to be installed at various Verizon and other network central offices around the country was the sweep up the texts and e-mails of the Bush Administration/GOP shadow e-mail and text network?

cynicalgirl wrote on March 28, 2007 11:25 AM:

I guess this throws out the entire notion of "executive privilege". How can it be White House business if it wasn't done via the White House email system?

Jim J wrote on March 28, 2007 11:28 AM:

But, but... David Broder, Brian Williams and Chris Matthews all told me there was no scandal here.

mohio wrote on March 28, 2007 11:28 AM:

Does anyone else think sending emails through the campaign and RNC servers represents "political work" which is supposedly prohibited for federal employees? I was under the impression that strictly political work would have to be done off site, not using federal resources.

IowaGuy wrote on March 28, 2007 11:32 AM:

Does anyone remember the absolute sh*tstorm stirred up by Al Gore's use of the White House phone for political purposes??? My how times have changed.

JEP wrote on March 28, 2007 11:36 AM:

"I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong."

Consider the ambiguity of this statement; does it mean "we had everyone fooled" or "we did not think we were doing something wrong?"

Probably a bit of both, the old crook's lament that you're only guilty if you get caught, mixed with the Republican's ability to justify all thier illegal and immoral acts on ideological grounds.

But both perspectives are skewed, especially to those of us looking in on it from another point of view. Whether we're wingers, centrists or extremists, integrity in "the process" is still something we can recognize, especially when it is absent.

Rusty wrote on March 28, 2007 11:36 AM:

IowaGuy

No doubt. I can't believe this is vitually invisible in the MSM. At the very least the laws regarding serparation of Policial/Public work have been broken with wild abandon.

If anyone didn't read this diary from dailykos yet, I think it is a good read and action alert.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/3/25/12591/9546

Sec. code "shame"

Richard L. Adlof wrote on March 28, 2007 11:39 AM:

We are missing what is important here . . .Conversely, they are admitting to personal usage of tax-payer paid internet access. That's theft!

Agjobs wrote on March 28, 2007 11:40 AM:

"We just got a bit lazy," said one aide. "We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed. We saw that with the Clintons but I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong."
_____________________________________
Let me get this straight. We did not want our emails subpoenaed, so we avoided the offical system on supposedly offical business and we did not think there was anything wrong? How morally bankrupt are these people that they don't see their own corruption. Hell my old grandma use to say simply " don't do anything that you have to lie about and you won't ever have to lie" No excuses. The fact that they even think that statement is some kind of valid excuse shows why they all need to get the hell out of government and let real Americans with real morals run this country. It just Boggles the Mind.

JEP wrote on March 28, 2007 11:41 AM:

Apparently our taxes have paid for a permanent political office in the White House, ever since Rove took up closet residency.

Just wondered what the precedent might be for actually having a political office in the WH, is it a common historic practice?

And if that "political" office is using the WH phone (New Hampshire?) for political purposes, when there are laws on the books against it (they trotted them out when Gore was so ceremoniously accused) isn't that just one more impeachable offense?

ahem wrote on March 28, 2007 11:45 AM:

Waxman needs to address this pretty urgently. I don't trust the White House staff to determine what's 'purely professional' and what's not. Presidential records are US property, and that's that: you work for the preznit, your business is done on the record.

As for the security risks? Dear me.

JEP wrote on March 28, 2007 11:46 AM:

The MSM can be bought and sold to the highest bidders, so we can not expect them to tell us the truth. It is up to each of us to use the tools we have to keep watch over the MSM and our government, they are in cahoots at the lowest(Judy Miller, Vicky Toensing) and highest levels (S.M. Moon and Fred Hiatt.)

JEP wrote on March 28, 2007 11:50 AM:

Waxman needs the power to appoint special prosecutors and empanel grand juries, the scope of these investigations is so broad and so diverse, only a Cheney impeachment could bring them all under one umbrella, and the Dems, while they have made great headway towards unveiling the truth, seem less inclined to push the impeachment envelope.

So the best alternative is to form select committees to concentrate on each issue, with their own individual investigative powers.

In lieu of a Bush or Cheney impeachment, we need a dozen lesser investigations which would, as we all know, lead right back to a much smaller circle of guilty parties.

ahem wrote on March 28, 2007 11:51 AM:

"Since the emails aren't official WH archival material, can't they simply be erased right now before they're subpoened?"

By law, they're US property. Of course, if they're destroyed, there's no direct way to prove that they were presidential records under the law. But there's going to be circumstantial evidence.

The Clinton admin got criticised for tech SNAFUs that messed up official archiving, because contractors mixed up lower and upper-case on the backup scripts. This is a whole different realm: deliberate circumvention of Presidential Records Act requirements.

ding7777 wrote on March 28, 2007 11:51 AM:

IowaGuy - per the whitehouse briefing yesterday, the reason they are using outside servers is that they were being super cautious so they wouldn't violate the Hatch Act

lisainvan wrote on March 28, 2007 11:55 AM:

The curtain is being pulled back revealing the wizard is actually a short pudgy man.
The past six years have been devoted to raising a spectre of an imminent threat to US security, and provoking fear in order to curtail basic civil liberties. And now the WH staff is sending communication is a wholly insecure and interceptable way. The spectre of a threat just vanished into thin air.

I think the debt (my code word) of the past 6 yrs is coming due.

Kim McCall wrote on March 28, 2007 12:02 PM:

ding777 - What does the Hatch Act say about using government-owned computers to access those outside servers? Seems like that would be just as much a violation.

retr2327 wrote on March 28, 2007 12:02 PM:

...just a week after E-mails in the U.S. attorneys case became a main focus of congressional Democrats probing the firings, several aides said that they stopped using the White House system except for purely professional correspondence.
"We just got a bit lazy," said one aide. "We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed. We saw that with the Clintons but I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong."

Most of your commenters seem to read this as suggesting that using non-White House e-mails systems was being "a bit lazy." That's not how I read it. To me, the speaker is stating that the failure to use non-White House e-mail systems for everything except "purely professional" correspondence was being "a bit lazy," because it resulted in e-mails that could, and would, be subpoenad and found. They weren't scrupulous about covering their tracks because they didn't see that they were "doing anything wrong." Once the US Attorney replacements became a scandal, they realized they had to stop using White House e-mail systems for such non-"purely professional" (i.e., at the very least politically partisan, and maybe potentially criminal) activities.

Why is that not the more natural reading?

PTF wrote on March 28, 2007 12:03 PM:

CREW is out with ANOTHER ONE on e-mail.

Apparently the Clinton Administration explicitly prohibited use of outside e-mail at the White House:

http://www.citizensforethics.org/files/032807WHOALetterExhibits.pdf

Stormwatcher wrote on March 28, 2007 12:07 PM:

Blackberry site says communication is secure ( encryption )?? Anyway site link is here:

http://www.blackberry.com/products/enterprisesolution/security/data.shtml

noshrub wrote on March 28, 2007 12:10 PM:

Lazy? I don't think it's laziness that got them using these email addresses. These guys are anything but lazy. I think this is one of the biggest stories in this whole thing. It's a deliberate, not lazy, sidestep of the Presidential Records Act. It's what prevented discovery of emails on the Plame matter...this is deep. Fucking real deep.

Uncle $cam wrote on March 28, 2007 12:16 PM:

This is not the first White house e-mail scandal, nor the first Bush e-mail scandal..

I ran across and bought most provocative book this week entitled:White House E-Mail at the National Security Archives:

President Reagan tried to shred them electronically...

President Bush tried to take them to Texas...

President Clinton tried to put them beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act...

White House e-mail survived, thanks to a six-year lawsuit brought by the National Security Archive and allied historians, librarians, and public interest lawyers.

The most revealing of the e-mail released to date appears in this book and disk set, edited and richly annotated by the Archive's director.

Here are the highest-level White House communications on the most secret national security affairs of the United States during the 1980s--shockingly candid electronic exchanges you were never meant to see, virtually none of which has ever before been available to the American public.

CHRONOLOGY
1982
- The National Security Council (NSC) staff at the White House acquires a prototype electronic mail system, from IBM, called the Professional Office System (PROFs).

April 1985
- The PROFs e-mail system becomes fully operational within the NSC, including not only the full staff, but also home terminals for the National Security Adviser, Robert "Bud" McFarlane, and his deputy, Admiral John M. Poindexter.

November 1986
- The remainder of the White House comes on line with electronic mail, at first with the PROFs system, and later (by the end of the 1980s) through a variety of systems including VAX A-1 ("All in One"), and ccmail.

November 22-25, 1986
- John Poindexter and Oliver North electronically shred more than 5000 e-mail notes in the memory banks of their computer systems, as the Iran-contra scandal breaks.

November 28, 1986
- Career staff at the White House Communications Agency order the November backup tapes of the e-mail system to be saved instead of recycled as usual. Subsequently, investigators from the FBI and the Tower Commission use the backup takes to reconstruct the Iran-contra scandal.

February 26, 1987
- The Tower Commission issues its report on Iran-contra, reprinting hundreds of PROFs notes exchanged by McFarlane, Poindexter and North.

January 19, 1989
- On the last day of the Reagan presidency, the National Security Archive files a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests together with a lawsuit against President Ronald Reagan, to prevent the imminent erasure of the White House electronic mail backup tapes. At 6:10 pm, on the eve of George Bush's inauguration, U.S. District Judge Barrington D. Parker issues a Temporary Restraining Order, prohibiting the destruction of the backup tapes to the PROFs system.

September 15, 1989
- U.S. District Judge Charles B. Richey rules that the National Security Archive and its co-plaintiffs, including the American Historical Association (AHA) and the American Library Association (ALA), have standing to sue President Bush, in order to force him to comply with the retention requirements of various records acts which potentially cover the White House e-mail.

January 25, 1991
- After a year-and-a-half of legal procedural wrangling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholds Judge Richey's ruling on standing, denying the Bush administration's attempts to have the case dismissed.

November 20, 1992
- On request from the plaintiffs, Judge Richey adds the White House e-mail from the lame-duck Bush administration to the case, issuing a restraining order preventing the Bush White House from destroying its own backup computer records.

January 6, 1993
- Judge Richey rules that computer tapes containing copies of e-mail messages by Reagan and Bush White House staff must be preserved like other government records, because the electronic versions are not simply duplicates of paper printouts, but contain additional information beyond the paper copies.

January 11 and 14, 1993
- Judge Richey issues specific court orders requiring that the Bush White House preserve its computer records. In press interviews, Judge Richey says that despite his orders, he believes that the Bush administration is planning to destroy its e-mail files.

January 15, 1993
- In an expedited emergency ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholds and modifies the rulings by Judge Richey, holding that government officials could erase White House and NSC computer files, as long as they preserved, on backup tapes, identical copies of what was being erased.

January 19, 1993
- President Bush signs a secret agreement with Don Wilson, head of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), purporting to grant Bush exclusive legal control over the e-mail tapes of his administration. Working through the night, a staff team from NARA takes custody of thousands of tapes and disk drives, hurriedly removing them from White House offices to prevent incoming Clinton appointees from gaining access to them.

February 16, 1993
- NARA career staff who managed the transfer describe in an internal memo how the so- called "midnight ride" had violated NARA's own rules for records transfers and how several sets of tapes ordered preserved by Judge Richey had been lost, erased or damaged.

May 22, 1993
- Judge Richey cites the Clinton White House and the acting Archivist of the United States for contempt of court for failing to carry out his order to issue new and appropriate guidelines for the preservation of the computer records of the Reagan, Bush and Clinton White House staff.

August 13, 1993
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacates Judge Richey's contempt orders but upholds his overall decision that the Federal Records Act (FRA) requires that complete electronic copies of e-mail messages be preserved by the White House, and by extension, government agencies in general. The appeals court remands the case to Judge Richey to decide the issue of the dividing line between "agency" records covered by the FRA and presidential records covered by the Presidential Records Act.

March 25, 1994
- In a brief filed in federal court, the Clinton administration declares that the National Security Council is not an agency, and should be accorded the protection from public scrutiny given to the President's personal advisers. This argument attempts to remove the Clinton administration's White House e- mail from the reach of FOIA requests and the FRA, arguing that all its documents are subject only to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and therefore not to court oversight.

December 13, 1994
- The e-mail plaintiffs file suit against the Acting Archivist of the United States to void the Bush-Wilson agreement, in American Historical Association et. al. v. Peterson.

February 15, 1995
- Judge Richey rejects the Clinton administration's arguments about the NSC's status as "arbitrary and capricious... contrary to history, past practice and the law," and declares that the National Security Council is an agency. The government subsequently appeals the decision, and the plaintiffs cross- appeal against a portion of Richey's ruling that opens a loophole for senior NSC staff giving advice to the President.

February 27, 1995
- In a separate opinion in the lawsuit over the Bush-Wilson agreement, Judge Richey declares the agreement "null and void," writing that "No one, not even a President, is above the law." The New York Times subsequently editorializes, under the headline "A Special Place in History for Mr. Bush," that "No President has the right to corner official records in an effort to control his place in history." (March 1, 1995, page A18)

September 8, 1995
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit hears oral arguments in the case on the issue of Judge Richey's decision and the agency versus Presidential status of the NSC.

mbbsdphil wrote on March 28, 2007 12:17 PM:

I love it! The "come clean" approach. J. Edgar admitting he kept a few "personal files" among his dresses and high heels. Al Capone admitting he might have mistakenly underpaid his taxes.

"Officer, I'm so sorry. I didn't know I wasn't supposed to drive ninety through a school zone. Would you be ever so kind and give me just an itsy, bitsy warning? Oh, thank you, Officer Lieberman. I knew you'd give me another chance. Here, would you like, brrpp, a swig? "

Peter Principle wrote on March 28, 2007 12:17 PM:

"Just wondered what the precedent might be for actually having a political office in the WH, is it a common historic practice?"

Various administrations have had an Office of Political Affairs and/or an Office of Public liason as far back as when I first came to Washington in the early '80s, and I think earlier than that. These offices are filled with people with jobs that are essentially all about electoral politics. It seems to be a long-standing, generally accepted exception to the Hatch Act.

Most presidents I know of have also had a Karl Rove type on the White House payroll to be the senior political fixer -- Carter had Hamilton Jordan, Reagan had Ed Rollins (and others), Clinton had Harold Ickes and Paul Begala, etc. Bush Sr. was a bit unusual in that he made his personal hatchet man, Lee Atwater, RNC chairman.

So if Rove and company were using the RNC and/or private servers to transmit political communications from their White House offices, that wouldn't seem to be unkosher -- in fact it might even be MORE kosher than what previous administrations have done.

The scandal is that they appear to have been conducting official government business through political back channels -- in effect, turning the White House itself into a branch office of the RNC.

If you think this is fun, imagine what prosecutors in a future Democratic administration are going to find when THEY start looking under all these rocks.

Even now, I'm not sure the Rovians understand how much they bet on their permanent Republican majority theory. More than they could afford to lose, it looks like.

Legalize wrote on March 28, 2007 12:18 PM:

By definition, there evaporates the executive privilege argument. Whoops.

code: nail.

p.s. Awesome

B wrote on March 28, 2007 12:18 PM:

That would be the ultimate irony if the illegal NSA wiretapping of everyone provides all of the evidence required to convict this bunch of crooks.

Leahy should start subpoenaing the NSA immediately.
Posted by: scavok

When it comes to emails emanating out of the White House computers, the NSA doesn't need to break the law to keep them.
You're talking about national security.

...but getting the NSA to acknowledge that they have them is a whole 'nuther ball game...but guess who controls the NSA's purse strings now?

Uncle $cam wrote on March 28, 2007 12:19 PM:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/white_house_email/index.html

mbbsdphil wrote on March 28, 2007 12:26 PM:

That's so like Little Karl. Use all the other children's toys instead of the ones his parents gave him, and then brake them before it's time to give them back. How would we ever find all the pieces to put them back together again? I guess we'll have to ask Mr. Special Prosecutor to help us out.

jdw wrote on March 28, 2007 12:44 PM:

As others have pointed out, there is wonderful double irony of switching over to non-WH e-mail to avoid having to produce subpoenaed WH e-mail.

One irony is that it doesn't seem to fit the talking point that WH e-mail is covered by Executive Priv - at least some of these staffers thought it would be subject to subpoena.

The other irony is that is smells of obstruction of justice.

Not to mention the Presidential Records Act that people mention.

As people keep saying - the USAG story is just the tip of the iceberg of this stuff in the Admin.

John

Anonymous wrote on March 28, 2007 12:45 PM:

"I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong" sounds almost as stupid as "no one anticipated a breach of the levees".

These folks are breaking the law as soon as they start using "unofficial" email addresses to hide their actions. And the NSA "illegal" eavesdropping program is catching every single word because they are using public systems that are being piped through "secret" rooms.

Incompetence and arrogance are a truly dangerous combination. Nixon found that out the hard way too.

Security code: (Ma) Bell

ScottW wrote on March 28, 2007 12:46 PM:

The Clinton's used the RNC's email, WOW.

Not to bust anyone's bubble, but in '92 email was in it's infancy and I highly doubt any the DNC had their own website, much less an email server and domain.

Is this what we are going to hear for two years, ya we did it, but so did Clinton ?

BinGA wrote on March 28, 2007 12:47 PM:

If you really want the creepy feeling crawling up your neck to get worse, go read this post at dkos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/27/182647/444

It's what epluribusmedia has found about the servers getting goevernment contracts to get behind the congressional firewall.

"Following these threads, ePluribus Media researchers have pieced together information that suggests that the influence Mr. Connell has had in his role as the technical guru of everything Republican led to the eventual winning of government contracts by another company he has close ties to-- GovTech Solutions -- placing it and its servers behind the Congressional firewall.
"

Who is Mr. Connell? "Mike Connell's association with the Bush family began as far back as 1988 with George H.W. Bush and continues through to the present day. Throughout their association, Bush family has had a close relationship with several of Connell's business interests. As Mr. Connell's businesses grew, they expanded to encompass much of the Republican Party, from the RNC to the Republican Governors Association and onward to more."

So the question is if the private servers are behind the firewall, what happens when a new administration/congress comes in? Do those servers still have access? And who has access to those servers?

code=scale

Ron Byers wrote on March 28, 2007 1:04 PM:

Since the emails aren't official WH archival material, can't they simply be erased right now before they're subpoened?

Try erasing something that has gone out over the internet. It isn't that easy.

Posted by: lockean
Date: March 28, 2007

Dan S wrote on March 28, 2007 1:32 PM:

If the email user is technically savvy, there may not be any record of the email on the user's PC or on any White House proxy server. Example: the user may have used a web mail application such as Yahoo mail or Gmail. If the user logged into those services via an encrypted (https) link, then the White House proxy server would hae a record of the connection to the Yahoo mail server, but it would not have a plain text log of the email message.

With any luck, the WH emailers were not technically savvy, and all the emails are sitting on a WH server somewhere waiting to be read.

Phoenix Woman wrote on March 28, 2007 1:36 PM:

95% of their e-mails were done on RNC servers.

That's NOT "getting a bit lazy".

That's a deliberate attempt to avoid oversight.

Oh, and by the way: The RNC server e-mails are NOT covered under any definition of "executive privilege" that exists or could possibly be dreamed up. So they're screwed.

hubbabubba wrote on March 28, 2007 1:46 PM:

It seems to me some enterprising FBI agent with all those magical Homeland Security evidence gathering powers including electronic record mining could have a chat those blame internets and get all the data you please.

They are so good at what they aren't supposed to do. Then, they could get a pat from Waxman for doing something useful for a change!

David Brooks wrote on March 28, 2007 1:55 PM:

I read the "getting a bit lazy" comment even more benignly. It seems to be saying that they were using their WH email for swapping jokes, arranging illicit affairs, threatening their brothers-in-law, pleading with their bookies. Been there, done that (except for the last three) because the system running on the corporate server is right in front of me. But now these people wonder if their personal life is going to end up on the public record. Teehee.

Michael Stevens wrote on March 28, 2007 2:00 PM:

Congress should *immediately* demand the White House back up all logs from internal proxy servers, and continually back up those servers. As Gilatrout points out above, anyone who has accessed an outside e-mail account using the White House's internet connection will have left a footprint in the proxy server logs.

The White House may even (probably) have other layers of security servers that log this sort of data. Congress should demand that logs from any and all internet proxy and/or security systems within the White House be retained. Due to encryption, these logs may not contain unencrypted e-mails, but the logs should certainly identify each time an internal staffer accessed outside e-mail, identify the staffer, and give the external email account log-in.

Next, congress should request the appropriate national security agency perform a (quick) emergency security audit of all outside electronic communication methods used by White House staffers with security clearances. This should identify all the private cellular accounts and e-mail systems being used by White House staffers. Some staffers may "forget" about certain e-mail accounts or private cellular devices, but those can be found as well.

Years ago, a friend told me that the secret service monitored electronic communications near the White House. While I can guarantee the Secret Service would be loathe to give this information to Congress, I have a suspicion that the SS may require every White House staffer to register their personal cellular devices with them if they plan to use them within the White House. If the registering of devices isn't a requirement, then the SS still will still have a log of every device used within the White House. This would be done so the SS could tell friendly devices from unfriendly ones.

Congress has already sent do not destroy letters to each of the e-mail hosts revealed in the DOJ document dumps. (GWB43.com and the like). But with each staffer seemingly forging their own method of electronic communication, there are likely to be as yet unknown private e-mail servers and privately owned communication devices being used to transmit White House business.

When the security audit has determined which e-mail and cellular e-mail accounts are being used by staffers, those e-mail hosts and cellular providers should also be sent do not destroy letters. This will all need to be done rather quickly, most proxy server logs are automatically over-written in short order, and cellular companies only hold e-mail for limited periods of time.

donviti wrote on March 28, 2007 2:33 PM:

"We just got a bit lazy,"

uh-huh, one morning you woke up and presto, you got lazy. Isn't this code for, "we got complacent and never thought that the democrats would get in office and persue or political theatre."

Sagrilarus wrote on March 28, 2007 2:58 PM:

I read "lazy" to mean they didn't spend the time to get onto non-traceable communications.

In my opinion he meant that they got lazy and used the official WH email because they didn't think the contents of the communications were illegal or unethical ("I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong."), therefore they could be part of the public record.

There's plenty of ways to communicate without a traceable record, and had the Exec Branch stuck to them none of this would be an issue. They did indeed get lazy -- they didn't whisper when they started doing the dirty work. Were it not for Marshall this issue likely would have just passed into history.

Am I the only one reading it this way?

llywrch wrote on March 28, 2007 3:30 PM:

I am not a lawyer, but there is an intreguing problem here that
it appears almost no one has mentioned. (Legalize touches upon
one corner of this above.)

If these staffers are discussing policy off the WH servers, does this mean that they no longer benefit from the corporate shield against individual responsibility?

What I am trying to say is this. In a corporation (or a government agency), individuals have a certain amount of immunity from legal responsibility as long as it can be shown that they were acting as employees. Using the corporate mail servers to discuss possible actions would be a convincing argument that, indeed, they were acting within their assigned roles as employees. However, if two or more individuals are discussing possible actions outside of the corportate space, then how can they argue that they were engaged in discussions either at the direction or with the consent of their employers?

If I am onto something here, then a large number of loyal partisan staffers have just made themselves vulnerable to all sorts of charges for crimes (with possible jail time) that they might have avoided had they continued to use the WH mail servers.

Geoff

kevin wrote on March 28, 2007 3:47 PM:

And let's not forget that it's the ever-popular Patriot act that requires ISPs to maintain copies of email correspondence that runs across their servers and makes that information subject to subpoena.

Hoist on their own petard, aren't they?

Pity.....

bushyinsanity wrote on March 28, 2007 3:53 PM:

What percentage of information sent by aides over the RNC email was classified? Any classified info sent over RNC email should immediately result in that individual's security clearance being revoked.

Anonymous wrote on March 28, 2007 3:58 PM:

A security audit is probably the only way it could be determined if classified information was sent over unsecured networks.

Congress should demand an immediate, independently monitored security audit of the White House.

Brad wrote on March 28, 2007 4:43 PM:

What may be the great thing is peoples' tendency to include the original message in their reply.

That way, even if a staffer has their own, outside account that flies under the radar, someone else may have included their message in one sent from the servers we know about.

Richard L. Adlof wrote on March 28, 2007 5:15 PM:

I wrote a week ago the Congress should have had the White House drives pulled and request that the FBI yank the RNC servers. Too bad we got the Chairmans sending stern letters sent instead.

Realist wrote on March 28, 2007 5:24 PM:

if you want no record of the communication, you need to do it in person and with your voice

Don't forget the Cone of Silence.

Heh - code word is "crime" - how appropriate.

PO wrote on March 28, 2007 5:50 PM:

This, to me, is "classic Rove." Remove the trail of evidence by one step (private emails and text messages, instead of the White House system) and pick a law that the general public's never heard of (the Presidential Records Act in this case), bend/break that law, deny having done so and claim it was a "mistake" ("a bit lazy..."), and in combination with all the other scandals it becomes a very hazy blip on the public's moral radar. By the time anyone notices or thinks to say anything, you've already gotten away with whatever you wanted to get away with, and been able to destroy the secondary evidence.

The only way to hold them accountable is to nail them to the wall on absolutely everything, and prosecute to the limits of the law. No mercy.

Kimberly wrote on March 28, 2007 6:22 PM:

ePlurius Media article noted above can be found here:

http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2007/3/26/22612/9031

The article is interesting as it shows how a favored republican owned company loyal to GWB placed political websites behind the congressional firewall.

However, if you scroll down about 2/3 of the page, (to the post just under the "Domain Tools" graphic) there are two quote blocks about the georgewbush.com domain sharing an IP address with focushumanitarian.org, which is owned by Aga Kahn Development. (Aga Kahn became Iman of the Shia Imami Ismaili muslims in 1957.)

Just below that, there is another quote block that states, "The State of Ohio's real-time, streaming election results are first diverted through Chattanooga, TN, to a GOP-only web firm and the servers currently hosting georgewbush.com as well as other key republican web sites.

I'm not sure, but does this mean that these other two domains are behind the congressional firewall too? Are taxpayers paying for any of this?

Kimberly wrote on March 28, 2007 6:22 PM:

ePlurius Media article noted above can be found here:

http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2007/3/26/22612/9031

The article is interesting as it shows how a favored republican owned company loyal to GWB placed political websites behind the congressional firewall.

However, if you scroll down about 2/3 of the page, (to the post just under the "Domain Tools" graphic) there are two quote blocks about the georgewbush.com domain sharing an IP address with focushumanitarian.org, which is owned by Aga Kahn Development. (Aga Kahn became Iman of the Shia Imami Ismaili muslims in 1957.)

Just below that, there is another quote block that states, "The State of Ohio's real-time, streaming election results are first diverted through Chattanooga, TN, to a GOP-only web firm and the servers currently hosting georgewbush.com as well as other key republican web sites.

I'm not sure, but does this mean that these other two domains are behind the congressional firewall too? Are taxpayers paying for any of this? Is this what Karl Rove meant when he said that he is entitled to THE math?

BinGA wrote on March 28, 2007 6:31 PM:

"In my opinion he meant that they got lazy and used the official WH email because they didn't think the contents of the communications were illegal or unethical ("I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong."), therefore they could be part of the public record.
[snip]
"Am I the only one reading it this way?"

Posted by: Sagrilarus

Sagrilarus:

I think you're right - that is a pretty accurate assessment. But I would add that these people have been living in a fantasy world, and they didn't think the real world would, or could intrude. It simply didn't occur to them to hide what they were doing. In their inexperience, they thought they were untouchable, because in their limited government experience sheilded by a Republican Congress that engaged in no oversight, they had been untouchable.

code=fear

Kimberly wrote on March 28, 2007 6:35 PM:

Sorry 'bout the double post!

Jack wrote on March 28, 2007 8:15 PM:

Congress can subpoena e-mails from any ISP if they want. There are few limits on their power to subpoena evidence. They could send the Sergeant At Arms to get it. They're usually retired federal agents.

The Skeptical Cynic wrote on March 28, 2007 9:43 PM:

Using e-mails that could be subpoenaed was caused by serious attacks of "dumbass" engendered by their uber-arrogance of power. The most systemically corrupt administration in the history of this nation planted it, fertilized it with its special brand of manure. If you'll forgive the mixed metaphor, it has spread like metastasizing cancer. There is not branch of government to which it has not spread; every executive department or agency; the Supreme Court and federal district courts; the supremes and those judges in federal district courts into which the cancerous appointees have been embedded have made decisions which smell like last week's "catch of the day". And the ilk of Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell,Trent Lott, and Bush's "boy toy" McCain . . . need more be said?

El Borba wrote on March 29, 2007 1:01 AM:

Adding to the David Brooks post (March 28, 2007 01:55 PM), more information on the gwb43.com domain name and past usage of that server can be found here:

El Borba wrote on March 29, 2007 1:04 AM:

Sorry for the missing URL.

El Borba wrote on March 29, 2007 1:06 AM:

One more try.
http://www.trustme.com/story.php?title=secret-White-House-comunication-system

Wretched Refuse wrote on March 29, 2007 1:17 PM:

Lets get real here.
Even if someone "deletes" it from their account. the Server had it, it was backed up from the previous multi-times a day corporate server that they sent it on. To think that the end user of a BB has the sole ability to just "poof" delete an email and it is gone, is not only ludicrious, but so totally innane that it is laughable.

code = snake

artur@gmail.com wrote on April 30, 2007 10:16 PM:

hello

tom@gmail.com wrote on May 1, 2007 10:35 AM:

hello

tom@gmail.com wrote on May 1, 2007 10:36 AM:

hello

jennifire@gmail.com wrote on May 6, 2007 9:46 AM:

hello