Comments (48)

Arkansan wrote on April 12, 2007 12:24 PM:

Why don’t they subpoena the RNC and these people?

"Rove 'e-mail scandal' makes April fools of blog readers"

(more)

"Coptix is tangentially associated with the Republican National Committee (RNC) and had become a topic of interest to left-wing blogs even before this prank. Coptix is affiliated with another Chattanooga-based Web company named Smartech, which is employed by the RNC.
Mr. Rove and other White House officials do use outside e-mail accounts, owned by the RNC, which are hosted on Smartech's Web servers. Coptix backs up some of Smartech's information, which is called "backup DNS hosting."

http://washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20070405-114824-8778r

If the WH doesn’t have the email as they claim, I’m sure the honest citizenry elsewhere will do the patriotic thing and provide what they have.

dominiccjr wrote on April 12, 2007 12:32 PM:

Question: What body of enforcement officers does Congress have as a resource? I'm wondering, when something has to physically be done, i.e., officers marching into RNC offices to show warrants/subpoenas for computers, who would it be?

negativequity wrote on April 12, 2007 12:33 PM:

This is absurd. There is a "paper trail" out there to recover these emails. Not everyone is ignorant to how these systems work. Everyone above the municiple level has something to loose if these emails get out, but it's us dear reader who stands to loose everything if this nightmare is not stopped or brought to light. George Orewell wrote in his book 1984 - “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate sublety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.”
- George Orwell, 1984

Wake Up America - We are all being laughed at...

daver9 wrote on April 12, 2007 12:34 PM:

E-mail gate...this is wonderful. for us older boomers, its Oval Office tapes! Stonewalling!
Rosemary reach! 18 1/2 minute gap! To the best of of recollection, I don't recall! Hee Haw! It's 1973 once more and I'm having Watergate flashbacks.

The born agains should have remembered on biblical phrase -- Beware False Proph-fits! They're blind faith in a worldly king is about to be dashed, along with their 401K's and pensions..
Chimpeachment of da bota dem (boy George and Darth Dick) by Labor Day. Pelosi '07!!!

daver9 wrote on April 12, 2007 12:36 PM:

that's "MY" recollection and "ONE" biglical phrase.

Klsydevl wrote on April 12, 2007 12:40 PM:

These deletions should not be a problem for two reasons:
1) Let's start with the DOJ. Let's get all the e-mails they received from the RNC and other web sites. We just need to follow the trail from the receiving end of the e-mails.
2) Call NSA to get these e-mails. They have been touting their capabilities. Let's see how good they really are.

Klsy

bobh wrote on April 12, 2007 12:41 PM:

""They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that!" Leahy shouted from the Senate floor.

"You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers," said Leahy, D-Vt. "Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary.""

Its almost as if Leahy is reading Muckraker,.....heheheheheh. Go Leahy!

robert lewis wrote on April 12, 2007 12:44 PM:

Question: What body of enforcement officers does Congress have as a resource?

It is my understanding that the Sergeants-at-Arms of the two Houses of Congress have the power and authority to arrest and detain persons in contempt of Congress.

I suggest that the Sergeants deputize Dog the Bounty Hunter and some dudes from Blackwater Security and do a house-to-house sweep of Georgetown and McClain, Virginia to round up the contemptuous.

Blake Hegerle wrote on April 12, 2007 12:48 PM:

As for what the congress can do to enforce these and other subpoenas, I believe they have to sue the federal courts to issue a search warrant, at which point it is the responsibility (not the option) of the U.S. Marshals Service to execute said warrant. But I am not a lawyer, so take that with a grain of salt

bobh wrote on April 12, 2007 12:49 PM:

Blackwater is a Republican paramilitary group...big Bushie Loyalists...lets not go there eh?

dominiccjr wrote on April 12, 2007 12:49 PM:

Whatever it takes....

Thanks for the info.

Via wrote on April 12, 2007 12:51 PM:

I agree. Subpoena RNC people!

Power to the Subpoena!!

FMArouet wrote on April 12, 2007 12:53 PM:

Arkansan,

The Congressional investigators surely can see the need to secure depositions from the IT professionals responsible for backing up and archiving electronic records at DOJ and the White House, as well as at the private telecoms that have provided servers and storage space for the RNC accounts. Perhaps investigators can even obtain archived material this way.

I think that we need to be a little careful, though, regarding the Coptix and Smartech leads cited in the Washington Times link. They are surely worth looking at, but investigators need to keep in mind Karl Rove's past efforts at misdirection. And the Washington Times is one of Rove's most reliable transmission belts.

In a rapidly surging state of panic, Rove may be trying to divert attention from leads that are much more easy to pursue (like the IT professionals and archived material at DOJ, the White House, and certain telecoms like BlackBerry) and toward entities hosting servers, hard drives, or backup tapes that he has already ordered to be wiped or physically destroyed.

SkippyFlipjack wrote on April 12, 2007 12:54 PM:

The author of that Washington Times article is wrong. "Backup DNS Hosting" has nothing to do with server backups. Backup DNS hosting is just secondary Domain Name System hosting -- so if your primary name server goes down for some reason, people using www.yourdomain.com will still be able to get to your website and send you email. Coptix may indeed do server backups, but this information doesn't tell you that.

united we fall wrote on April 12, 2007 12:54 PM:

"We are controlled by a small group of dominate men. The worst ruled and most completely controlled government in the civilized world. Some of the biggest men in the United States are afraid of something. They know that there is a power, so organized, so subtle, so interlocked, so complete that they had better not speak above their breath, when they speak in condemnation of it." -- Woodrow Wilson

"America can never be destroyed from abroad, It can only be destroyed from within." -- F.D.Roosevelt

"...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in
the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they
more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed
to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others
could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their
minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always
leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire
together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes." - Adolf Hitler quoted in his book MIEN KAMPF

r€nato wrote on April 12, 2007 12:55 PM:

My first thought upon hearing the White House's "The dog ate our emails" story was, they just invited Congress to crawl so far up their ass that they'll know what they had for breakfast two weeks ago. Congress will issue subpoenas and investigate, investigate, investigate until they turn something up regarding those emails.

And who knows what else they will come across while they are investigating?

Bad move, White House... unless exposure of the emails would be even worse than the shitstorm which is just beginning to brew.

r€nato wrote on April 12, 2007 12:57 PM:

It is as if this administration deliberatly set out to re-enact the events of 35 years ago! A failed war, administration lies and cover-ups, "lost" evidence, criminal acts, suppression of dissent... Nixon will just never die, it appears his spirit has returned to this mortal plane and possessed the soul of Karl Rove.

Anonymous wrote on April 12, 2007 12:58 PM:

Question: What body of enforcement officers does Congress have as a resource?

That really is a scarry thought. If the executive branch (nearly all of it) is complicit, and they just simply continue to ignore, who has enforcement powers? Doesn't the U.S. Marshall and FBI report to DOJ? S.S. to Treasury, NSA to Stephen Hadely? So Who does that leave? The capital police force and two old guy congressman?

Am I missing something here?

foggylady wrote on April 12, 2007 12:59 PM:

Sounds like Leahy just declared war, and in nice prose at that.

"the Administration has worn out the benefit of the doubt.
They've undermined whatever credibility they have left"

Ricardo wrote on April 12, 2007 12:59 PM:

With Nixon it was "Follow the money". With Bush it is: "Follow the e-mails . . ." They can run, but they can't hide.

To the barricades!

Mark F. wrote on April 12, 2007 1:02 PM:

Standard forensics techniques can retrieve those "lost" emails no problem. I suspect, considering how much these people seem to know about computers, there are probably a few freeware apps available that can recover them. Unless someone "accidentally" scrubbed the drives, of course.

Ah, springtime! And the sweet smell of scandal and indictments is in the air.

Security code = "screw". As in, I hope Leahy screws these creeps to the wall.

mayan wrote on April 12, 2007 1:26 PM:

over at Kos this is being referred to as DogAte

Sagrilarus wrote on April 12, 2007 1:26 PM:

Fifty says these emails never turn up. These guys knew what they were doing was trouble and if there's even half a brain between them they didn't go through open networks. They've had two months to deep-six any copy in their systems. A good sysop could make this stuff disappear.

Somewhere a CD just got dropped into a filing cabinet with it's old friend -- the one that holds the photos of Jack Abramhoff.

Sag.

Kirk Spencer wrote on April 12, 2007 1:33 PM:

The answer to "who will congress send" is the US capitol police force, under the direction of the house and senate sergeants at arms. They have jurisdictional authority to enforce the law in DC. This authority includes the right to enforce subpoenas issued by congress.

Congress has teeth, it's just that they're rarely used.

tektokr wrote on April 12, 2007 1:42 PM:

Having been in IT support for many years, I can attest that we did a daily backup (which was overwritten every 30 days) as well as monthly backups (retained for 1 year) and quarterly backups (retained for 7 years) so I am reasonably certain that there are backup tapes containing all of these communications.

MsInformed wrote on April 12, 2007 1:59 PM:

I vote for "Dogate" scandal. Go Leahy!

Code word "rain"
on them.

wls wrote on April 12, 2007 2:18 PM:

This is no different than Al Gore having to be careful what phone he used when calling campaign contributors looking to raise cash.

You can't use government property for political activities.

Much of the communication between the RNC and the WH staff is going to involve political activity -- scheduling, travel, talking points, etc.

The Clinton WH had staffers that crossed back and forth the same way. What do you think Begala was doing in his WH job as "Counselor to the President"?

Well, his CNN profile describes his job as:

"Serving in the Clinton administration as counselor to the president, he helped define and defend the administration's agenda and served as the principal public spokesman."

If he didn't use a DNC email account when coordinating his actions with the DNC, then he violated the Hatch Act.

31 Tudor wrote on April 12, 2007 2:20 PM:

It seems that the right will protect Rove to the end. Almost like Rove is more important then W. W. will be gone in a year and a half, but Rove will run the RNC untill he is dead.

Patience wrote on April 12, 2007 2:22 PM:

Another voice vote... fascinating. Did Arlen Specter register yet another non-approval approval?

dominiccjr wrote on April 12, 2007 2:29 PM:

"Much of the communication between the RNC and the WH staff is going to involve political activity -- scheduling, travel, talking points, etc." -wls

I believe the more relevant communications will be the ones between the WH and DoJ, where one would not expect "political activity" to be the subject of any emails. Sort of the whole reason this is a s c a n d a l.

dominiccjr wrote on April 12, 2007 2:30 PM:

and a crime.

Austin Cooper wrote on April 12, 2007 2:43 PM:

I'm an IT professional in a large corporate environment; our Enterprise is national. I can't speak to this administration's policies and practice (and both can be quite different) regarding the backup of emails and data.

However, I agree with a number of posters here, and on other sites, that unless someone has physically "wiped" the hard drives on the servers at the RNC used to handle the email accounts in question, it's possible to recover most if not all of that traffic. And wiping a multi-Gigabyte server drive is a deliberate, technical process which (depending upon the amount of data the drive contains) can take several hours.

Even on workstation hard drives, data that was believed 'deleted' can be retrieved. There are professionals at the FBI, CIA, DIA and NSA who can do this. Heck, there are undergraduates in computer science who can do it. If you have the software tools and the training, it can be done.

Here's the point: If the RNC/White House (same thing, really) is serious about complying with a subpoena persuant to a Congressional inquiry, then they'll bring independent experts in and have the data recovered.

If they're not (and we already know they're not), they'll stick to the tissue-thin lies they're already using. Everything will be explained in a manner too technical for most listeners / readers / reporters, or lil' Dana will say that "the Democrats can have their own opinion" about whether the emails could be recovered.

As if the there was no quantifiable truth. Expect more whining and spinning and delays, because *Run Out The Clock* is now the chosen method with this crew. Run it out until the electorate, which this crew hates and fears, gets bored and watches more American Idol.

biff diggerence wrote on April 12, 2007 2:52 PM:

Modified Limited Hangout Redux ?

Haiku Man wrote on April 12, 2007 2:56 PM:

Dog ate his homework
Rove and Bush took Dump on Law
Anyone give a shit?

Sojourner wrote on April 12, 2007 3:09 PM:

If there was a need to investigate something else (like a staffer selling information), you can bet that every email that staffer ever sent out would be available!

These are people with security clearances, who discuss secret matters every day. If secret communications are going over the RNC system, that, to me, says there is a MAJOR security breach and it is time to call in the FBI to start the investigation.

This is no longer about Republicans or Democrats... It is about AMERICAN issues! Anyone who has an ounce of integrity in the White House needs to come forward and tell what they know...

Whistler wrote on April 12, 2007 4:20 PM:

Who says the Dems haven't had this stuff for ages ... and just pretended they didn't?

Read "The Ultra Secret" -- British code breakers in World War II knew all sorts of stuff, as it was happening. They just couldn't admit it, or let anyone suspect it ... or codes and procedures would change. That 1970's (I think?) book changed a lot of history; Generals thought to be brilliant turned out to just be well-informed. And some of those turned out to be no good at hiding the fact that they knew things they should not have known: Patton, for instance, fell into that boat. Montgomery was thought to be a wimp, by the code breakers: even with all the inside dirt on where things were and how strong, etc., he apparently needed heavy pushing, to deal with the problems he was allegedly in charge of. Not so, with the Dems of today. Smart sons of guns!

I'm betting the Dems learned well from the 18 minute tape gap (Watergate) and firing up the shredders (Iran-Contra) ... and got the info FIRST; and THEN pretended to ask to see it all.

I've heard that while it's not necessarily legal to tape conversations without someone's knowledge that you're doing so, and then use that in court as evidence, up front; that it's perfectly legal to tape things; keep it to yourself; and produce a transcript of what was actually said AFTER the persons involved have perjured themselves.

I can't wait to see and hear all the denials, under oath, that such-and-such does not still exist (or never did exist); only to have Dems read it all back to them, word for word.

Besides: who set the rules here, about privacy?

Foo wrote on April 12, 2007 4:31 PM:

Speaking as a Vermonter, Leahy makes me stand up and cheer. I hope so much that he and the committee are creeping up on getting jurisdiction to subpoena the servers. Just think -- would we be having to consider subpoenaing the entire servers if the geniuses hadn't deleted everything?? No! They are idiots! I'm pretty sure that Leahy's staff is indeed checking the Muckraker. Oh those servers...

Sharon A wrote on April 12, 2007 4:37 PM:

Think of the Bush Cabal as a plant putting down roots in the ground of government infrastructure and political processes. Now think about those roots having the power to paralyze and poison as they reach into this ground.

I predicted in 2001 to anyone who would listen that the longer this nation tolerated this cabal, the weaker political and civil infrastructures would become. These are the critical agencies required now to address the administration's excesses and perhaps criminal behaviors.

Back then I was called a lunatic and conspiracy theorist.

Fortunately, we still have the blueprints to reconstruct anything that was compromised or destroyed.

Would it be asking to too much or hoping too much for justice? Americans are punished quickly for the most trivial of mistakes: overdrawing one's checking account, forgetting to register the vehicle or inspect it.... errors that are most often than not caused by exhaustion from working too many hours to afford the bills. Miss one payment on anything, and you are punished swiftly with extravagant fees. Then these fees are cast back INTO the balance and begin accruing interest, more punishment.

So the time clock for punishing our tiny mistakes is marked in seconds while the time clock for punishing the people at the top is years. Ken Lay actually expired waiting for his sentencing.

I bet I'm not the only one who wonders why the wheels of justice mow us little people down while exempting people like Bush and Cheney and their crony pals.

Kimberly wrote on April 12, 2007 4:38 PM:

On an earlier thread about Gonzales and the DOJ attorney firings, there was a link to a story about a fire in the DOJ IT department where their servers are stored.

I guess you wouldn't be able to recover emails from a toasted drive

Randy wrote on April 12, 2007 4:39 PM:

For Senator Leahy it's time to get tough and show some savy. Yellng into a camera is not enough. It's time to use the Hi-tech resources that our government has available. He needs to say that if you can't find them then we will. He needs the whole country saying, "go get them Pat". Good start but now it's time to use all the power.

Security Code is memory And nothing remembers better than a computer.

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