The Dog Ate My Homework Administration

Accountability sucks, doesn't it?


No, I don't eat emails. Your socks are a different matter.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) lets them have it:

For years preceding this new Congress, accountability has been lacking in this Administration. Loyalty to the President has been rewarded over all else. That lack of accountability, and lack of the checks and balances that fostered it, must end and, I hope, has ended.

We do not need another commendation for the “heckuva job” done by those who have failed in their essential duties to the American people. True accountability means being forthcoming, and it means there are consequences for improper actions.

The White House continues to stand by the firings of the U.S. attorneys and despite assurances by the President that we would receive cooperation, documents and access to witnesses, the White House has yet to produce a single document or make any witnesses available.

Now we are learning that the “off book” communications they were having about these actions, by using Republican political email addresses, have not been preserved. Like the famous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes, it appears likely that key documentation has been erased or misplaced. This sounds like the Administration’s version of the dog ate my homework. I am deeply disturbed that just when this Administration is finally subjected to meaningful oversight, it cannot produce the necessary information. This Administration has worn out the benefit of the doubt and undermined whatever credibility it had left. The American people are right that they are entitled to full and honest public testimony of the White House staff responsible for this debacle.

Further comments:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's aides are lying about White House e-mails sent on a Republican account that might have been lost, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy suggested Thursday, vowing to subpoena those documents if the administration fails to cough them up.

"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."

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said there is no effort to purposely keep the e-mails under wraps, and that the counsel's office is doing everything it can to recover any that were lost.

"The purpose of our review is to make every reasonable effort to recover potentially lost e-mails, and that is why we've been in contact with forensic experts," he said.

Leahy scoffed.

"I've got a teenage kid in my neighborhood that can go get 'em for them," he told reporters later.

Exactly. jpadgett at DKos assures us this is true:

So, the White House is asserting they "lost" some email, huh? You've got to be kidding me. Is this a joke?

As an IT guy, I know all too well that most emails are nearly impossible to "lose," especially if one really wants to find them. In fact, if the emails in question really are gone for good it probably means that there was a tremendously expensive, concerted effort to destroy them (and, if so, it should be very easy to prove that they were intentionally destroyed).

Even so, I find it very difficult to believe that copies of these little devils aren't lurking on various electronic devices hither and thither throughout the country (if not the world). Unless a Department of Defense grade hard drive wipe was initiated on every single workstation or device that came in contact with the emails in question, they can be found. And that's not even mentioning the multiple email archives and backup files that doubtless exist.