A breakthrough on ‘lost’ emails? Sort of

April 14, 2007

The good news is, an outside expert, who works for neither Congress nor the White House, will try to recover some of the Bush gang’s missing emails. The Senate Judiciary Committee requested the independent consultant and today the White House agreed. Of course, there’s a small catch.

On Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and the committee’s top Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, wrote White House counsel Fred Fielding to request that “we jointly agree on a fair and objective process for investigating this matter, including the use of a mutually trusted computer forensic expert.”

“Such a process would help to restore the public’s confidence in the White House’s desire to comply with the Presidential Records Act,” the senators said.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Saturday that Fielding called Leahy and Specter to say that allowing the committee input into picking an independent consultant is a good idea.

So, what’s the catch? David Kurtz notes that the Senate “gets to help pick who will find the emails but the White House still hasn’t agreed to let the Senate see the emails once they are found.” That ought to make things interesting.

Here’s a crazy thought: isn’t likely that the White House agreed to the independent consultant because the Bush gang feels secure that possibly incriminating evidence has already been thoroughly disposed of?

isn’t likely that the White House agreed to the independent consultant because the Bush gang feels secure that possibly incriminating evidence has already been thoroughly disposed of?

50% chance of this.

50% chance of ‘Don’t just stand there, do something!’ reaction faced with Watergate 2.0 bearing down on them with blinding speed.

In other words — coin-toss odds on the survival of the Republic.

  • How could you possibly be so cynical as to suggest that the pure-as-the-driven Bush Crime Family — the gang that gave you two stolen national elections and bilked the treasury of trillions for a war they repeatedly lied us into– can’t be trusted on this?

  • Being a computer idiot, wouldn’t the forensic guy know if the board was wiped clean and when? I mean, this kind of forensic stuff is very thorough, isn’t it. They may not be able to retrieve everything, but they’ll also know when things were wiped clean, right?

  • the Bush gang feels secure that possibly incriminating evidence has already been thoroughly disposed of?

    If they do feel secure, they are idiots, unless they’ve let the NSA have the computers for a VERY thorough cleaning. I suspect it is a delaying tactic to avoid being asked to turn the computers over directly. They also get to preview what incriminating evidence is uncovered, rather than having it sprung on them by Democrats.

  • How did you get from:

    White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Saturday […]
    […] that allowing the committee input into picking an independent consultant is a good idea.

    to:
    the White House agreed to the independent consultant

    To me it sounds like WH’s SOP; allow input, then ignore it and stall for all you’re worth. 18months from now they’ll still be haggling about which consultant is sufficiently independent to be acceptable.

    And, anyway, what’s this “allow”? Do they have any say/option about that if Leahy holds firm (I don’t put much faith in the Spectral justice)

  • Those hard drives are likely in a bazillion little pieces on the bottom of Chesapeake Bay by now. We are talking about crimes run by Watergate and Iran-Contra veterans. We can say what we want about them for the next 21 months, but in the absence of proof, they stay there and continue the conspiracy.

    Would that it were otherwise.

  • Aren’t most of these neo-con’s convicted but pardoned felons? And in reading recently about a pardon for Libby…the pardon meant they are forgiven…not that they are innocent! Why are they still in government? Ted Cleaver and some of the other comments are right…the evidence will disappear.

  • The only way the emails would be permanently lost is if the Bush crew has physically compromised the hard drives where the email is stored, as Tom Cleaver is suggesting. To permanently delete information from a hard drive using software only is something only the major spook organizations in this country can do. Consumer-level software isn’t sophisticated enough to frustrate an IT forensic expert. If those emails are on a server somewhere beyond the physical reach of the Bush cabal, a well-known White House reprobate is about to become, wait for it,

    MC Turdblossom

    or how about

    2PHAT2LIVE

  • What a truly dire statement on American Democracy. Our Constitution is under assault and the Democrats are not shouting from the highest mountains that this usurpation of Congress’ Constitutional authority is morally and legally treasonable.

    The headlines coming out of Washington, D.C. for the remainder of this criminal conspiracy called The Cheney administration ought to be dominated by articles of impeachment and removal from office of the Bush Crime family and the Cheney imperial corporatist 9/11 hijackers of democracy.

    Now let me tell you what I really think …

  • How about simply detroying the hard drives and replacing them? The Bush neocons certainly had enough time. Where is the outrage? It is all going into the internet! Posting outrage on the net doesn’t replace daily support of our Democratic majority in Congress.

  • One thing I don’t get is that destroying the emails only makes sense if you can destroy them on both the sender and receiver side. Who was Rove emailing? Preumably it wasn’t ONLY people with GOP email accounts. Can Leahy subpoena Yahoo and Hotmail?

    BTW, does anybody know if any blogger in particular has become a repository of info for this scandal? I’m thinking of making some charts and a timeline, but I don’t want to recreate the wheel here.

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