Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and co-founder of The Panda's Thumb. He has written for such publications as The Bard, Skeptic and Reports of the National Center for Science Education, spoken in front of many organizations and conferences, and appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows and on C-SPAN. Ed is also a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media.(static)
Ed Brayton also blogs at Positive Liberty and The Panda's Thumb
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Posted on: March 25, 2008 9:16 AM, by Ed Brayton
Stop me if you've heard this one before. The White House says they destroyed the hard drives that contained the millions of missing emails that might implicate administration officials in wrongdoing. And they erased the backup tapes too. And they lost the DVDs of those interrogations. And, uh, then the dog ate them. Honest injun.
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Comments
Is this really surprising?
At the least, can we not get someone put in jail over the destruction of government documents or somesuch?
Posted by: Umlud | March 25, 2008 9:48 AM
Is anyone in (what used to be) the free world surprised? What the Bush (Mis)Administration should do is reinstall Windows Me on each of their computers; that way, the data will be totally irretrievable to begin with, thus saving the hassle of removing it later.
Posted by: ebina2 | March 25, 2008 9:54 AM
Presumably destruction of those hard drives is a criminal offence under Presidential Records Act. They don't even have the excuse that the emails were on RNC servers this time.
You've got to love this argument:
Oh no! It would be costly and time consuming to investigate a massive violation of the law! We'd better ignore it then. While we're at it, let's shut down the war on drugs too, then.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | March 25, 2008 10:05 AM
Somehow nobody noticed that Rose Mary Woods was Director of the White House IT Department.
Posted by: kehrsam | March 25, 2008 10:15 AM
> Oh no! It would be costly and time consuming to investigate
> a massive violation of the law!
More or less costly than attempting to prosecute someone for having consensual sex? (Hint - $7M).
Most two-term presidents would be concerned at this point about their place in history (something the certainly was an obsession for Tony Blair before he left power). President Bush just doesn't appear to care that history is likely to view him as the worst president of all time...
Posted by: David Durant | March 25, 2008 10:36 AM
What's really pathetic is how little text the Post devoted to a posible Federal felony committed by the President and his subordinates. This is the paper that broke the Watergate story?
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 25, 2008 10:44 AM
That's true, Raging Bee... But so little journalistic energy has been used on any of the scandalous things by this administration.
Posted by: Paul | March 25, 2008 11:09 AM
"...retrieval program that entails pulling data off each individual workstation..."
Bollocks. The copies can be made at the mail server. No need to go to the workstations.
Posted by: Lassi Hippeläinen | March 25, 2008 11:22 AM
Posted by: James Hanley | March 25, 2008 11:41 AM
Posted by: JDP | March 25, 2008 12:12 PM
The general consensus among historians is that Bush does care about his legacy, and that his only chance of saving it is to make something out of the Iraq war. That's why he absolutely will not withdraw troops, as sick as that sounds. Nobody seems to care about scandals after the fact. A good portion of our favorite presidents were actually douchebags. For example, does anybody still care that Thomas Jefferson raped and impregnated his slaves? If Bush were to win the Iraq War and actually establish a democracy in Iraq, that will be remembered long after the scandals are forgotten.
Posted by: Brandon | March 25, 2008 12:13 PM
It's cold outside, so I hope Barbara remembered to give George mittens with a thread of yarn connecting each of them, so they don't fall off and get lost and his little fingers don't freeze.
Posted by: crf | March 25, 2008 1:17 PM
"Bollocks. The copies can be made at the mail server. No need to go to the workstations"
They could, if they hadn't written over the data at the mail server. Also in violation of the PRA.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | March 25, 2008 1:58 PM
My father was an audio technician in the White House during Nixon. He used to make jokes about the missing 18 minutes. I wonder if some IT admin's kids will be hearing similar jokes about the missing 18 terabytes one day.
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 25, 2008 4:43 PM
What else could we expect from a president who so freely picks and chooses which laws he wants to follow, and which he'd prefer to ignore?
Bush and his cronies have make a vulgar joke of the rule of law.
Posted by: CHV | March 25, 2008 7:19 PM
Let me guess, the back-ups are on display in a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disued lavatory with a sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard".
Posted by: James K | March 26, 2008 1:48 AM