Talk:Bush White House email controversy

Proposed merger into Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy

This is an article about a domain name, which really is a minor footnote to the Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy. It's not at all unusual for organizations to have domain names that are used for email only. howcheng {chat} 19:04, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you badly misunderstand what's going on here. See this article: [1] Shii (tock) formerly Ashibaka 03:36, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

No, I get it. The use of an RNC-hosted email server is the significant thing, not the actual domain name of the email server itself. That's why gwb43.com doesn't deserve an article. howcheng {chat} 06:47, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, but it shouldn't be merged into an unrelated controversy. This article applies to Abramoff, too. Shii (tock) formerly Ashibaka 17:10, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it's safe to call this proposed merger dead. -- Yellowdesk 01:37, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Sources for expanding on this article

Perhaps some of the content from these can be incorporated here. -- Yellowdesk 04:33, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

• Stolberg, Sherl Gay Missing E-Mail May Be Related to Prosecutors New York Times' April 13, 2007. Retrieved April 13, 2007.

• Loven, Jennifer (Associated Press) Bush aides' use of GOP e-mail probed The Boston Globe, April 11, 2007. Retrieved April 13, 2007.

• BBS News Karl Rove RNC Emails Missing Prior to 2005 April 12, 2007. Retrieved April 13, 2007.

• Hamburger, Tom Party-issued laptops now a White House headache Los Angeles Times April 9, 2007. Retrieved April 13, 2007. 24.41.39.124 06:10, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

• Glenn Greenwald The Bush administration's terrible luck with finding documents Salon.com April 12, 2007.

Proposed merger of 2007 White House email controversy into Gwb43.com

• Against A more general title would be better, something like: Bush administration email controversy, if it rises to "controversy."
  The domain gwb43 is merely one aspect of this story. Better would be to rename this article, and have a redirect pointing to the renamed version of gwb43.com. -- Yellowdesk 14:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

And I proprose the move/change in name below. -- Yellowdesk 19:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I support the merger after gwb43.com has a better name. -- Yellowdesk 00:42, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

As the nominator of the merge, I agree with this. Quadpus 01:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment the e-mail thingy is not limited to one controversy. We have disappearing e-mails in Abromoff, Plame and now attorneygate. Either somebody is utterly incompetent or it is evidence of something more sinister . Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 15:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

---

• I merged all of the information that was not redundant. Someone can check it over. I'll turn 2007 White House email controversy into a redirect in a week or so, unless someone gets to it sooner. -- Yellowdesk 17:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks good to me Quadpus 18:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, I went ahead and converted it into a redirect. Just in case anyone wants to see the history, here's how to get at the page:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=2007_White_House_email_controversy&redirect=no

-- Yellowdesk 02:01, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed move to "Bush Administration email controversy" or another name.

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Result of the move discussion was move to: Bush White House e-mail controversy -- Yellowdesk 11:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC)}}

Originally proposed new name: Bush administration email controversy.
Revised proposed name Bush White House e-mail controversy
The result would cause gwb43.com to continue to live on, and redirect to the new name.

This method of operations at the White House and Administration seems not yet to be quite a controversy, but I cannot think of a better word.
A proposal for a better name is invited. Meanwhile, I'll start the conversation with this particular new name proposal.
The topic covered with this article is bigger than the domain name, "gwb43.com", since it touches on:

1. several embarassing episodes or controversies,
2. the inability of the Bush administration to provide requested documents and communications in response to Congressional subpeona or request
3. potential violations of the Hatch Act and of the
4. Presidential Records Act as well.

-- Yellowdesk 18:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Discussion:

1. E-mail should be hyphenated in this request, to correspond with the title of the e-mail article. Dekimasuよ! 12:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

This can be handled with a redirect. I have not typed "E" "DASH" "MAIL" in years, and there are a lot of others that don't either. That article redirects from "email" as well. -- Yellowdesk 16:47, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

1. I thought the controversy only had to do with people working at the White House, not for the rest of the Cabinet. If that's the case, then it should be "Bush White House" and not "Bush Administration". Joeldl 07:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Good Point. -- Yellowdesk 17:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• I have taken the two above suggestions and incorporated them into a revised name: Bush White House e-mail controversy
  

Support

1. Support as the proposer, for the reasons stated above. -- Yellowdesk 18:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
2. Support it would seem the Bush administration has had trouble finding e-mails in several incidents.[2] A more detailed discussion is warranted and that should be in an anrticle with a relevant name. Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 19:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
3. Support. As I said above, the domain name in and of itself is unimportant. howcheng {chat} 20:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
4. Sure Shii (tock) formerly Ashibaka

Oppose

Neutral

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Redirects:

Also created redirects from: Bush White House email controversy,
George W. Bush White House e-mail controversy
George W. Bush White House email controversy

Yellowdesk 12:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

References improvement requests

• A real citation to source this statement is needed. A link to the domain is "original research." Is there a published source that acknowledges this?
  -- Yellowdesk 19:38, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

  Communications by federal employees were also found on georgewbush.com and rnchq.org, but unlike these two servers, gwb43.com has no Web server connected to it—it is used only for e-mail.

• reference 19 is a dead link 69.234.30.25 11:10, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Missing e-mails and stuff

Trying to collect sources for the different controversies.[3][4] Please add any you find. Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 11:23, 24 April 2007 (UTC) I am adding some links that do not qualify as WP:RS yet they are a good read. Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 12:29, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

• Presidential Records Act

The Presidential Records Act requires presidents to preserve all records that relate to the "activities, deliberations, decisions and policies that reflect the performance of [the president's] constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties...."[5]

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released a report [April 12, 2007], WITHOUT A TRACE: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act, detailing the legal issues behind the story of the White House e-mail scandal.[6][7][8]

Critics say the White House has violated the Presidential Records Act, a 1978 law that requires each administration to maintain an adequate record of its deliberations.[9]

Iglesias said that on April 3, he filed a Hatch Act complaint with the OSC, charging that Karl Rove and others may have violated the law by firing him over his failure to initiate partisan-motivated prosecutions. Iglesias said he subsequently spoke with OSC chief Scott Bloch, who made clear that he was planning to launch an investigation.[10]

• Dismissals

Political advisers to President Bush may have improperly used their Republican National Committee e-mail accounts to conduct official government business, and some communications that are required to be preserved under federal law may be lost as a result, White House officials said Wednesday. . .[11]

The White House said Wednesday that it may have lost what could amount to thousands of messages sent through a private e-mail system used by political guru Karl Rove and at least 50 other top officials, an admission that stirred anger and dismay among congressional investigators.[12]

• Plame affair

Media largely ignored Fitzgerald revelation that White House may have destroyed emails[13]

More than two dozen emails sent to various senior Bush administration officials between May 2003 and early July 2003 related to covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, are missing, and the special prosecutor investigating the case suspects that the communications may have been destroyed, according to high level sources close to the two-year old probe.[14]

..not all e-mail of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system, ...[15]

The defense was told that the White House had recently located and turned over about 250 pages of e-mails from the vice president's office. Fitzgerald, in a letter last month to the defense, had cautioned Libby's lawyers that some e-mails might be missing because the White House's archiving system had failed.[16]

During a wide-ranging interview with Truthout on Monday, Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and CREW's Chief Counsel Anne Weismann said they believe Miers did not fully inform Fitzgerald about the millions of emails the White House lost between 2003 and 2005. As a result, the CREW attorneys said it's likely that Fitzgerald did not obtain all of the evidence related to the leak investigation - particularly emails sent during that time period by Karl Rove that may further implicate the White House political adviser in the Plame Wilson leak.[17]

As the White House comes under increasing scrutiny, the picture just keeps getting bleaker. We learned yesterday, for instance, that until August 2004 the RNC had a policy of deleting emails on its servers that were more than 30 days old. After "legal inquires," presumably those of CIA leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, the committee began saving the correspondence of White House officials. So, since Karl Rove is said to use his RNC address 95 percent of the time, and is a well known email fanatic, the RNC should have quite a hefty record of his communications, right? Strangely, the RNC doesn't have records of a single Rove email until 2005, which, as the committee's counsel Rob Kelner told members of Henry Waxman's Government Reform Committee, may have been because Rove was deleting them himself. This, it seems, is what led the RNC to remove Rove's ability to delete his messages and place an automatic archiving function solely on his account.[18]

Mr. Kelner also explained that starting in 2005, the RNC began to treat Mr. Rove's emails in a special fashion. At some point in 2005, the RNC commenced an automatic archive policy for Mr. Rove, but not for any other White House officials. According to Mr. Kelner, this archive policy removed Mr. Rove's ability to personally delete his e-mails from the RNC server. Mr. Kelner did not provide many details about why this special policy was adopted for Mr. Rove. But he did indicate that one factor was the presence of investigative or discovery requests or other legal concerns.[19]

Going on weeks now, I've been inundated with questions about whether Fitzgerald knew about the GWB43.com server. If so, what can he teach Waxman, Conyers, and Leahy about its use? If not, does that mean Fitzgerald has received enough new information that the CIA Leak case will re-enter an active phase?[20][21]

Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to reopen his investigation of Karl Rove's role in disclosing Valerie Plame Wilson's status as a covert CIA operative in light of recent revelations about missing White House emails.[22]

• Abramoff

Disclosures last week that large numbers of Mr. Rove's White House email messages and those of other White House officials were erased and possibly permanently lost raised concern on Capitol Hill about possible destruction of evidence relevant to the Abramoff-White House inquiry.[23][24]

First, let me expand on why I think it was the Abramoff scandal that first focused attention onto the RNC servers. As I said, the timeline makes sense: the Wapo first starting reporting this story heavily in February 2004. The FBI started investigating in March 2004.[25]

But the revelation in Waxman's letter that Abramoff communicated with Susan Ralston - Rove's former assistant - via an RNC email account suggests that the DOJ inspector general may not have obtained email correspondence between Abramoff and the White House because RNC emails can be destroyed, whereas emails sent using a White House account are automatically archived, in conjunction with the Presidential Records Act.[26]

• General Services Administration

The e-mails are also sought in a congressional investigation of the alleged politicization of the General Services Administration.[27]

• Hurricane Katrina

[Federal Emergency Management Agency Michael] Brown's comments about the president surfaced in a transcript of an Aug. 29, 2005, videoconference call produced by Bush administration officials today after they initially told Congress that no such document existed. . . .[28]

• Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force

The missing e-mails are reminiscent of the White House's resistance to releasing information about its domestic spying program and Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, Dodd said.[29]

• Election

There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website – which gave the world the presidential election results – was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s firing of eight federal prosecutors.[30]

• Detainee abuse

The Pentagon sought Sunday to explain why some 2,000 pages were missing from a congressional copy of a classified report detailing the alleged acts of abuse by soldiers against Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison. . . . .[31]

Key documents are missing from the batch of newly declassified documents the White House released this week on its policies on torture and the treatment of prisoners, critics say. Absent are any memos to and from the FBI and CIA and any documents dated after April 2003. No documents address the State Department's concern over the Bush administration's interpretation of the Geneva Conventions.[32]

• Jose Padilla

The disclosure that the Pentagon had lost a potentially important piece of evidence in one of the U.S. government's highest-profile terrorism cases was met with claims of incredulity by some defense lawyers and human-rights groups monitoring the case.[33]

• Bush's Texas Air National Guard service

Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts.[34]

• Miscelaneous

But a civil lawsuit, filed by the protesters, recently unearthed D.C. police logs that confirm the FBI's role in the incident.[35]

Hundreds of videotapes that federal prison officials had claimed were destroyed show that foreign nationals held at a New York detention facility after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were victims of physical and verbal abuse by guards, the Justice Department's inspector general said yesterday. . .[36]