Set The Controls For ‘Shameless’
Did White House Lie About Solution Provider’s Role in Loss of 5 Million E-mails?
By Damon Poeter, CMP ChannelWhen Congress asked about 5 million executive branch e-mails that went missing, a White House lawyer pointed the finger at an outside IT contractor.
The only problem? No such IT contractor exists, according to sources close to the investigation of a possible violation of the Federal Records and Presidential Records acts.
[…]
It’s beginning to seem, even from the trickle of information that leaks past the claims of executive privilege and ‘national security,’ that we’re dealing with a crime here. And not even a clever crime; a brazen, “Haw-haw, suckers, you can’t touch us” one. The kind of crime that Republican ‘plumbers’ can get supremely busted for, if such things can still happen in America, and so on up the line.
Then again, on the ‘plumber’ tip, let no one doubt that a crew of loyal-Bushie IT guys are capable of making quite a mess.
I love this one in the comments:
The article clearly started out with a political slant and, briefly, got involved with technology, then went back to quotes from Waxman and the CIA (which is still staffed by the folks put there by Pres. Clinton).
Of course, there’s no quote there by anyone in the CIA. Paranoia, anyone?
Lies, damned lies, statistics & anything the White House tells you. And can we assume the DHS staffers hired to handle the Open Source Infrastrcture Report were chosen more for their views on abortion than actual ability? Click on it, it’s a pdf, but it seems pointless. A sample section:
October 2, Lansing State Journal – (Michigan) Cell phone tower gets bad reception from some. T-Mobile wants a special land use permit to construct a 125-foot monopole telecommunications tower on the southern edge of Grandhaven Manor, a senior housing complex in Lansing, Michigan. If approved, the tower would enhance cell phone reception and could be used by other wireless companies. Opponents say that the council should adopt a moratorium on telecommunications towers until Lansing has a comprehensive plan on future locations. T-Mobile’s proposal will go to the city council’s Development and Planning Committee, where it could die without two votes. Source: http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071002/NEWS01/710020330/1001/news
How the hell does this affect Homeland Security? And even if it did, what’s the point of a newspaper story reprint w/o any advice/context/something from DHS?
The White House? Not tell the truth??
No!
if the plumbers were tied to republican party tomorrow, instead of in 1972, imagine how differently things would have gone. this website, glennzilla, maybe kos and atrios would be all over it.
shailaigh murray would be explaining on a wapo chat why she didn’t think it mattered, “it’s so boring.” broder would be on his 15th column saying that this will work in the republicans’ favor. hiatt would pen an editorial saying both that the republicans had gone over the line but that the democrats would be wrong to go after them on this “watergate” thing. cnn would be all over it until little jessica fell in a well. shit, we’d move on as soon as the next unbelievably vile and loathsome thing the repubs did came across the wires. after a couple of weeks of bill o lielly yelling at anyone who pointed out that this behavior was criminal and rush limbaugh calling the plumbers “american heroes” (and some obscure asshole from some obscure district creating the “g. gordon liddy appreciation bill”), all of this would blow over and go down the memory hole.
tell them…i blame it on society.
I’m not an “IT guy”, and in fact know nothing of such things. Still, I’m fairly confident that I could do at least as good a job as anyone appointed by this misbegotten, sad carnival of an “administration”.
Wait a second, this is very close to breaking real, actual, um… what’s the word?…
News. This smells of real news. Substance, even.
What has this site been reduced to? Is America so bereft of honest brokers that Sadly,No! must bring potentially real and impactful information to a fact-starved nation?
Sadly Yes? Happily, No? I’m lost and confused.
I’m sorry, Gavin. You’re clearly a threat to national security. You’re going to have to come with us….
mikey
Question: Why would a private company be required to handle government emails? Especially internal ones?
Jesus. I’m not even shocked anymore by anything these fascists do anymore. I’m waiting for the day when they start to order hit jobs on Democrats.
Another commenter, peevish about the political “slant” of the story:
“Ha ha! I just pwned you and gave props to my man Mallard Fillmore! Ungh!”
Question: Why would a private company be required to handle government emails? Especially internal ones?
You gotta be kidding me. The government farms out everything related to IT these days. A certain agency charged with going to other planets on a tiny budget has farmed out it’s I.T. to Lockheed Martin.
Question though. Given that LM is held accountable for backup and recovery of NASA-owned information BY STATUTE…why wasn’t the White House e-mail provider held to those federally mandated minimums?
Someone’s in a lot of trouble here. If those e-mails are well and truly gone, it took intentional and ongoing intervention to make it all go away.
Something smells. Bad.
It’s not so much me wondering “Why does teh Federal governmewnt use contractors for anything?” as “why would such a relatively small, closed off group need contractors?”
I’m running on the assumption that a large number of these are internal emails, ie White House and OEOB. I’m pretty sure that my TI-83 could perform as a fairly reliable e-mail server, so I don’t see any reason why the information couldn’t be hubbed and stored in a Pentium II machine in a closet somewhere on the site.
*shrug*
But yes, actually, seriously, LOSING data is bullshit. It’s about on level of “I was running. In an ally. And then I tripped. And feel on a bottle.” excuse to the ER nurse as to why you need the Budweiser surgically removed from your colon.
Speaking of Bush regime crimes, this looks good. It hasn’t arrived in my part of Canuckistan yet.
Robert Green above nails it. The slow downward spiral from where we were at in ’72 has picked up considerable steam over the last 7 years & we’re pretty much in a free-fall now. The Republicans and this admin have committed so many crimes, at both the national & international level, and absolutely no one is doing anything about it. There’s barely a peep in the “real world” (though just about everybody is pretty fed up with Bush — finally) about any of this stuff. The mainstream news from which most people get their news (& to which they barely spare a passing glance at) has become a propaganda arm for the Republican party.
Sorry to go off-topic here, but:
1. Manny.
2. Joba’s achilles heel? Small winged invertebrates.
Okay, sorry for that. About those emails: wasn’t Duke Cunningham’s pal Mitchell Wade involved in providing porktastic IT services to Cheney’s office? Wade-provided storage services for the Pentagon also proved susceptible to sudden “losses” of data. Wouldn’t surprise me if Wade’s shop provided expert advice on how to make White House data disappear.
1. Hafner
2. Teh bugs
Okay, so they DIDN’T lose the e-mails. They’re still there, and the White House is flat-out lying that they’re not.
“There will be no charges – but we politely ask that one of you give up some of your dessert pudding.”
– Democratic Congress
From an interview with Bush:
October 23, 2006, 6:44 pm
Googler-in-Chief
but when the emails ah don’t write get written ah make sure they’re not stored, if you get my meanin’…hehehe
Question though. Given that LM is held accountable for backup and recovery of NASA-owned information BY STATUTE…why wasn’t the White House e-mail provider held to those federally mandated minimums?
Answer: Not absolutely sure about the White House, but I know that Congress exempts itself from some laws & regulations that otherwise apply to virtually all other gov’t. departments & agencies, as well as private sector entities. Wouldn’t be surprising if some sort of “executive privilege” is applied to the White House.
M. Bouffant gesprek:
“How the hell does this affect Homeland Security? And even if it did, what’s the point of a newspaper story reprint w/o any advice/context/something from DHS?”
Presumably they are surveying the open source infrastructure to find out where it is and who controls it. I can think of any number of ways that information might prove useful – in a suddenly announced ‘national emergency’ perhaps?
We’re still lacking an actual casus belli for Iran…
To control something you must know where it is. At the very least this report tells DHS operatives what addresses to send the National Security letters.and Presidential Orders to.
As for the specific info re the local vote being posted: it may be well be advantageous for the government for the tower to be approved:- for all we know, T-mobile may be one of the companies cooperating in the Great Warrantless Wiretap. What better way ffor local DHS to know who to put presssure on except by sharing this kind of seemingly innocuous info?
From the article we now know that Jim Davis, student services director for the Lansing School District, Councilman Bill Matt and resident Ann Kostin-McGill are opposed. a quick google tells me the opposing attorney also does a lot of litigation for big telecoms corps like Nextel and who have rolled over for government spying. Do your own math.
And after all, all DHS did was put a link in. It’s up to the individual how they use that info. They were just reporting.
They may be incompetent weasels, but never misunderestimate their essential weasality.
Let me guess….
There are exactly 18½ minutes of missing emails?
Who’s their IP?
Vandelay Industries?
Dana Perino fumbles the statue of liberty play (again) and no one says anything.
9-18- we’re going to get back to you on the getting back to you-ing
There’s a good chance that those emails are still around. You subpoena the IT people who actually managed those systems and they’re going to tell you that server backups were made and archived on a regular basis. That’s a key part of their jobs. So for emails to “disappear”, they’ve got to disappear not just off one server but also off a whole set of backup media.
The messages are out there.
Frankly, I don’t get it. Why would any sane person possibly believe ANYTHING this White House says whatsoever. Of course the White house lied, who could possibly expect anything other than that. I mean, like, come’on…
The President says he doesn’t use email because email leaves a document-able paper trail.
And nobody thinks this is unusual? Mr. Bush, if you are innocent, why do you worry about evidence?
Okay, okay, okay. This is one of those questions where we know the answer after the first four words, right? Oy. I just don’t understand why they went to all that trouble. For all the actual accountability they’ve been held to over the past six years, they really should have just gone with the old stock favorite and told Congress that Barney ate them. Just chewed the dickens out of them, I tell ya. We can go through the garbage for you, but you don’t really want slobber all over your hands, now do ya?
Some Guy;
IIRC, that was 1968. ’63 if you want to go there, but every time I try, people start commenting upon my headgear. Is it wrong to be at the height of metallic fashion?
M. Bouffant;
Actually, the Presidential Records Act is pretty specific about what gets kept and how, which, of course, is why this is a big deal in the first place. Dear Leader, however, really doesn’t like record keeping. Witness the first thing he did when he planted his ass in the Oval Office, re-classified all his daddy’s documents that were slated to be made public, circumventing the law. Only last week have the courts finally decided that this ain’t kosher. Maybe they’ll do something about those emails ’round about 2013 or so.
Jillian;
No, that’s the U.S. Attorney scandal emails, which have an 18 day gap. History, as Mr. Twain said, does not repeat itself. It rhymes.
Hey, the author even provides his own “shorter” (in response to the wingnut objections about ‘political bias’ in the comment thread):
Nice.
zhak, Robert Green almost nails it. He left out the part where the Democrats stamp their little feet in impotent rage and Arlen Specter threatens an investigation before the Dems just suddenly give up. Even in the majority the Democrats are fucking useless.
Ooh, crimes! Ooh, violations! Ooh, somebody’s in trouble now!
Right. And Harriet Meiers is gonna be in Playboy. Yawn.