White House Deleted Five Million Emails

In a story that is currently just on the blogosphere and not in mainstream press, it appears there are reports that over a two year period, more then five million White House emails have been deleted, counter to a policy to maintain that information via the Presidential Records Act.

The policy to delete emails apparently came from Karl Rove who used his Republican National Committe blackberry and e-mail accounts to conduct White House business. The RNC usually only kept email for 30 days, fairly standard for most businesses. Considering at the time Karl Rove worked for the White House though, therefore the American public, those emails where not his to delete. It could be argued he was doing RNC business, since thats what the White House is all about. America is secondary to that, but still White House business should have been retained.

According to the Washington Post, "In an afternoon conference call with reporters, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel spread the blame all around. "White House policy did not give clear enough guidance," he said. "The oversight of that wasn't aggressive enough." And individual White House staffers "did not do a good enough job of following existing preservation policy -- or seeking guidance."

Karl Rove wasn't aware? Please. The man knew it and circumvented the policy intentionally and it sounds like he encourages his White House co-workers to follow the same policy. The supposed confusion policy is ""Federal law requires the preservation of electronic communications sent or received by White House staff". Seems pretty cut and dry to me. An additional aspect of the policy ""commercial or free e-mail sites and chat rooms are blocked from the EOP network to help staff members ensure compliance and to prevent the circumvention of the records management requirements." This would be why Rove performed his correspondence on the blackberry. He was clearly and intenitionally violating the Records Act.

While I doubt nothing will come of this, its further proof of the King Bush White House and the belief that they are above the law.

Full details are here.