Saturday, September 01, 2007

 

White House Secret of the Day

The White House will not identify a private company which appears to be involved in the disappearance of millions of White House e-mails. —Justin Rood writing in ABC's The Blotter

And he continues—

The company was responsible for reviewing and archiving White House e-mails, a White House official told congressional staff in May, according to a letter yesterday from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Congressional investigators asked then for the name of the company and "have repeatedly requested" the information since the, according to Waxman.

They are still waiting for an answer, the chairman wrote to White House counsel Fred Fielding. Waxman asked the White House to come up with the company's name by Sept. 10.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel declined to tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com the company's name or explain why the White House would not provide it to Congress.
....

In addition to requesting the firm's name, Waxman's staff has also asked to see a White House report which detailed the days on which few or no e-mails were archived; the White House has been similarly unresponsive to that request ... and asked it [to] provide the document by Sept. 10 as well.

Is the White House about to claim that private contractors with which it deals are shielded by "executive privilege"? If so, it's going to be a wee bit difficult for the White House to make this overstretch. The effort to come up with a rationale should be causing the Office of White House Counsel to lose some sleep.

Some 5 million emails "missing" and the White House won't name the company responsible? The company worked for that section of the White House bureaucracy ironically named the "Information Assurance Directorate." By federal law all White House emails must be retained.

This looks to me like a very big fish that's beginning to smell. Even the mainstream media may catch a whiff.

Related post
Some DoJ attorneys go where the crime is (5/14/07)

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