ABC’s Brian Ross is reporting that the White House is refusing to name the company it farmed out its email management to. You know, the one whose fault it supposedly is that we can’t read Karl Rove’s email.
The White House will not identify a private company which appears to be involved in the disappearance of millions of White House e-mails.
The company was responsible for reviewing and archiving White House e-mails, a White House official told congressional staff in May, according to a letter yesterday from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Congressional investigators asked then for the name of the company and “have repeatedly requested” the information since then, according to Waxman.
Resistance is futile, thanks to Richard Nixon.
According to the White House, at least five million e-mails were not properly archived and may be lost forever, in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act. The post-Watergate law states that communications relating to official activity in the offices of the president and vice president are owned by the American public and cannot be destroyed.
Waxman’s new deadline to stop the stonewalling is Sept. 10.
In addition to requesting the firm’s name, Waxman’s staff has also asked to see a White House report which detailed the days on which few or no e-mails were archived; the White House has been similarly unresponsive to that request, Waxman charged, and asked it provide the document by Sept. 10 as well.
Maybe the White House strategy is to stonewall it until Jan. 20, 2009 and then put Bush on one of those secret flights to Eastern Europe and send Cheney to the bunker.