At Your Fingertips: Any E-mail, Sent to Anyone, Anywhere at Anytime
News Item
White House Deleted E-Mails between 2001-2003
White House e-mail from the first three years of the Bush administration doesn’t exist because it was routinely recorded on tapes that were later “recycled,” the White House’s chief information officer said in a court filing. During the period, the Bush presidency faced some of its biggest controversies, including the Iraq war, the leak of former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson’s name and the CIA’s destruction of interrogation videotapes.
Dosen’t exist! Are you kidding? Time for a Men in Black, government secrecy reality check.
Go the White House motor pool, sign out one of those big, black Chevy Suburbans, put on your dark glasses, and head east out of the District and into the wild suburbs of Maryland, to one of those places with the word “fort” as part of its name. Fort Meade! Yeah, that’s it.
Flash your super-duper government secrets security clearance badge at the front gate, give the secret hand signal and pull into the VIP parking area in front of the National Security Agency admin building.
Flash your badge again, nod politely to the guards at the front door and head on up to Director Keith Alexander’s office (Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander, United States Army).
“Hey, Keith,” you say, flashing the badge, yet again. “I know you guys keep copies of all e-mails that are sent by anyone to anyone else anywhere, so could you run off a tape of all the White House e-mails between between January 20, 2001 and, oh, let’s say, February 1, 2004?”
General Alexander will smile his trademark kindly smile and say, “Sure thing, if that’s what the President wants.” He’ll pick up the phone, bark an order or two and in a couple of weeks a big 18-wheeler will back up to the White House loading dock and disgorge crate after crate of computer tapes that contain all the lost White Houe e-mails.
Yes, fellow citizens, it’s that easy to find out what Karl Rove said to Scooter Libby via e-mail back in those halcyon early years of the Bush 43 reign.
Administrative Hint: To save storage space at the White House, ask Gen. Alexander if they could just dump the tapes to DVDs.