A White House committee says George Bush’s officials
“circumvented” official e-mail systems and as a result created a
hole in official presidential records.
The Oversight
Committee has been investigating whether White House officials
violated the Presidential Records Act by using e-mail accounts
maintained by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Bush
Cheney 2004 campaign for official White House communications.
The Oversight Committee says the number of White House officials
given RNC e-mail accounts is higher than previously disclosed.
In March 2007, White House spokesperson Dana Perino said that
only a “handful of officials” had RNC e-mail accounts. In later
statements, her estimate rose to “50 over the course of the
administration”.
In fact, the Committee has learned from the RNC that at least 88
White House officials had RNC e-mail accounts. The officials with
RNC e-mail accounts included Karl Rove, the president’s senior
advisor; Andrew Card, the former White House chief of staff; and
Ken Mehlman, the former White House director of political affairs,
among others.
White House officials made extensive use of their RNC e-mail
accounts. The RNC has preserved 140,216 e-mails sent or received by
Karl Rove.
Over half of these e-mails (75,374) were sent to or received
from individuals using official “.gov” e-mail accounts.
But there has been “extensive destruction of e-mails of White
House officials by the RNC”, said the Committee.
Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC e-mail
accounts, the RNC has preserved no e-mails for 51 officials.
In addition, there are major gaps in the e-mail records of the
37 White House officials for whom the RNC did preserve e-mails.
The RNC has preserved only 130 e-mails sent to Rove during
president Bush’s first term, and no e-mails sent by Rove prior to
November 2003. For many other White House officials, the RNC has no
e-mails from before the fall of 2006.
The Committee said there is evidence that the Office of White
House Counsel under Alberto Gonzales may have known that White
House officials were using RNC e-mail accounts for official
business but took no action to preserve these presidential
records.
The Presidential Records Act requires the president to “take all
such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities,
deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance
of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial
duties are adequately documented … and maintained as presidential
records.”
To implement this legal requirement, the White House Counsel
issued clear written policies in February 2001 instructing White
House staff to use only the official White House e-mail system for
official communications.
The Committee said that White House officials used their RNC
email accounts “in a manner that circumvented these
requirements”.
The Committee is now considering what further action should be
taken in the affair.
Bloomberg story on RNC e-mails >>
Oversight Committee's report
on RNC e-mail accounts by White House staff >>
Guardian story on RNC e-mails >>