via Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post
[.......]
As John D. McKinnon writes in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "The widespread use of private email accounts by some top White House officials is sparking a congressional probe into the practice and whether it violates a post-Nixon law requiring that White House deliberations be documented.
"A top Democratic lawmaker says outside email accounts were used in an attempt to avoid scrutiny; the White House says their purpose was to avoid using government resources for political activities, although they were used to discuss the firing of U.S. attorneys."
Most of the e-mail accounts at issue are on Republican National Committee servers. For instance: "Susan Ralston, until recently presidential adviser Karl Rove's assistant at the White House, appears to have used at least four outside email accounts: a 'gwb' domain account, a 'georgewbush.com' account, and an 'rnchq.org' account -- all run by the RNC -- plus an AOL account.
She once emailed two associates of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, 'I now have an RNC blackberry which you can use to e-mail me at any time. No security issues like my WH email.' . . .
"'At the end of the day, it looks like they were trying to avoid the records act . . . by operating official business off the official systems,' said John Podesta, who worked in the White House for the entire Clinton presidency, including a stint as chief of staff. . . .
"White House officials dispute the criticisms, saying the purpose of the RNC accounts has been to avoid running afoul of another federal law, the Hatch Act. It prohibits many federal officials from engaging in political activity on government time or with government resources."
Will these e-mails ever see the light of day? McKinnon writes: "The White House and RNC said the RNC is preserving the emails generated by White House officials on the RNC's computers, and that they are exempt from the RNC's normal policy of erasing emails after 30 days."
And yet, he notes: "When Congress adopted the Presidential Records Act, it didn't give any agency much authority to police the White House's handling of official records. . . . Congress also has had trouble obtaining many internal records from the political parties in the past."
Here's Bob Franken discussing the story on CNN yesterday: "It's about the Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of all official records of and about the president. . . .
"There are also messages to and from lobbyist Jack Abramoff, now in prison. At one point, according to investigators, after an e-mail was apparently sent by accident to the White House account of an assistant to Karl Rove, Abramoff fired another one saying, 'Damn it, it was not supposed to go in the White House system.' . . .
"Neither administration aides nor Republican Party officials would agree to be interviewed on camera after repeated requests from CNN. But a White House spokesman, Scott Stanzel, in a statement, called the use of different computers to have the separate e-mail account for political activities, 'appropriate, modeled after the historical practice of previous administrations.'"
The refusal of the White House press office to directly address specific questions about these e-mails leaves these issues unresolved:
1) Did the e-mails violate internal White House policy or the Presidential Records Act?
2) Were Rove and the others aware that official business should be conducted on official servers?
3) Were they intentionally trying to keep their e-mails off the official system and therefore permanently out of public view, or was it just a matter of convenience?
4) How does this White House distinguish official business from political business -- if at all?
Some Background
I first wrote about this issue in my March 14 column: "It makes some sense that White House officials might have and use such accounts when they conduct party business, rather than White House business. But the distinction between party and government business seems to have been forgotten here -- which I guess is exactly the point."
I also submitted four questions to the White House press office about the matter. Among them: "Does White House policy allow White House staffers to use non-White House e-mail addresses for official White House business? Does it prohibit it? What is the policy?"
In my March 15 column, I added four more questions suggested by readers. Among them: "Does non-White House e-mail fulfill security requirements for White House communications?" (Despite my repeated attempts since then, there's been no answer to any of the questions.)
I also noted that Steve Bell, the chief of staff to Sen. Pete Domenici, sent an e-mail about the senator's preferred replacement for fired U.S. attorney David Iglesias to three people -- including one "kr@georgewbush.com". Bell wouldn't talk to me about that on the record.
In my March 16 column, I linked to a letter from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asking the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to investigate.
In my March 23 column, I quoted extensively from the mainstream media's first significant stab at the story: a National Journal article by Alexis Simendinger (subscription required).
"White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove may have forfeited potential claims of executive privilege over the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys-- if he communicated about the latter outside the White House e-mail system, using his Republican National Committee e-mail account or RNC equipment," Simendinger wrote.
And, she noted: "According to one former White House official familiar with Rove's work habits, the president's top political adviser does 'about 95 percent' of his e-mailing using his RNC-based account."
In my March 26 column, I linked to the relevant Abramoff e-mails and published excerpts of Simendinger's fruitless attempt to get some answers from spokesman Tony Snow at a March 23 press briefing.
In my March 28 column, I noted an item by Paul Bedard for U.S. News, to the effect that some Bush aides were responding to the news reports by scurrying to put more of their communications (not less) on non-official servers.
I excerpted from spokeswoman Dana Perino's successful ducking of the issue at a March 27 press briefing. And I linked to a letter from CREW pointing out that a Clinton-era White House staff manual explicitly required aides to use White House e-mail accounts for "all official communications."
In my April 5 column, I linked to R. Jeffrey Smith's story in The Washington Post, which reported that "House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) told the Republican National Committee yesterday to turn over copies of any electronic messages from White House officials that relate to the use of federal resources or agencies for partisan Republican purposes." (Here is the Waxman letter.)
And in yesterday's column, I linked to the second significant major-media story on this important issue -- fully four weeks after it first came to light -- this one by Tom Hamburger in the Los Angeles Times describing the genesis of a "back-channel e-mail and paging system, paid for and maintained by the RNC" that is now "creating new embarrassment and legal headaches for the White House, the Republican Party and Rove's once-vaunted White House operation."
Slowly but surely, the storm is gathering.
Attorney Watch
Richard A. Serrano writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, indicating they think there is more to learn about the firings of eight federal prosecutors last year, asked Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales on Monday to turn over additional documents on the terminations and threatened to issue subpoenas if the materials were not forthcoming.
"Specifically, the four senators want the internal rankings that the Justice Department made of all 93 U.S. attorneys over the years, as well as employment charts that Monica M. Goodling, a top aide to Gonzales, provided to Justice officials as they decided which prosecutors to fire."
Adam Cohen writes about executive privilege in a New York Times opinion piece. "[T]he Bush administration is threatening to invoke executive privilege to hobble Congress's investigation into the purge of United States attorneys. President Bush has said that Karl Rove, his closest adviser, and Harriet Miers, his former White House counsel, among others, do not have to comply with Congressional subpoenas because 'the president relies upon his staff to give him candid advice.'"
But, Cohen concludes: "Congress has a right, and an obligation, to examine all of the evidence, which increasingly suggests that the Bush administration fired eight or more federal prosecutors either because they were investigating Republicans, or refusing to bring baseless charges against Democrats. The Supreme Court's ruling in the Watergate tapes case, and other legal and historical precedents, make it clear that executive privilege should not keep Congress from getting the testimony it needs.....
"If Mr. Bush battles Congress in court, he will be fighting not only legal precedents, but the nation's collective memory about the last president to take this stand."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/04/10/BL2007041000832_pf.html
