The Bush Administration deliberately got rid of automatic email archiving because they didn't want any nosy investigators snooping into the executive branch's business. They could then blame "human error" for any missing email messages when it was anything but.

Admittedly these folks are incompetent across the board; it's unsurprising that they would have a complete lack of knowledge of basic IT procedures.

Except they're also the people who were using RNC email accounts to avoid anyone reading their email. Somehow I'm thinking incompetence wasn't the only reason this happened.

Isn't it sad how the utter stupidity of the Bush Administration is now so unsurprising that it has passed painful, right on into cringingly funny?

So you're saying they applied the same careful planning and thought that they applied to Iraq?

Recall that this White House includes loyalists from the Reagan Administration, whose crimes were revealed when e-mail archived revealed they were lying to Congress about selling weapons to Axis-of-Evil Iran.

Does anyone, other than our lap dog media reporters, actually believe that this change was for any reason other than to enable the Bush Team to edit and remove from archiving incriminating e-mails?

tehy prolly uesd teh wrez versin of teh Outlok.

bye

Chisel and granite, charcoal and bark, iron gall ink and parchment to Outlook is not an upgrade.

because they wanted to. It's pretty much that simple. When White House employees are told to use RNC email accounts to avoid public scrutiny, it's pretty clear what's going on. Do we really have to report the official explanation as if it is credible?

This is par for the course, folks - welcome to what you voted for.

And shame on the Congress for ignoring this and every other thumbing of the WH's nose at the law. Get Pelosi out of there and put someone in who has the stones to go after the Bush-ites.

Does not use email at all, zero, never.

I don't normal attribute something to maliciousness if incompetence can explain it (and this administration has both in spades), but to “lose” 5 million emails? Blatant blatant deception- basically them giving the finger to anyone investigating. And… seriously disrespecting anyone’s intelligence if they expect anyone to buy this. But then again, this administration in spades…

I've never figured out why "mail" is plural but "e-mail" is treated as singular.

I don't go to my "mails box" to see what kind of "mails" the "mails man" brought today, so why are we concerned about lost "e-mails"?

Shouldn't we be concerned about lost e-mail messages instead?

. . .and I'll probably say it again, numerous times, before January 2009:

Hasn't this administration done anything that's good and honorable? ANYTHING? Throw me a crumb.

During Iran Contra, that when you 'delete' a message from the White House Office Vision mail system, it doesn't delete it. It marks it for deletion. This is why Reagan &co got caught. They 'deleted' their emails which were easily retrieved. This was actually changed after the fact, but

I believe there was a court case that determined that the executive branch couldn't do perform hard delete DoD compliant scrubs on the fly except under extraordinary circumstances.

Email?

No?

Well, how about the contracts and the contacts and lost lives and defense gift bags, subcontractors, diversion, torture, spying, lying, suppression, intimidations, cash drops, abuse, cheating, firing, tyranny, usurpation, pardons, negligence and criminal conspiracy?

Maybe there remain some hints of clues and leads of paths to evidence and proof to make a bunch of cases on those bases.

Can't do everything in cyberia.

DOJ, DOJ.

How many times did you look the other way today?

CONGRESS, CONGRESS.

Help us now.

How much contempt will the law allow?

SENATE, SENATE.

2 by 2.

You know what's wrong. Don't you and you?

NETWORK NEWSWORKS.

Lost your voice?

When ya gonna make the truth a choice?

Automatic backups fail with annoying regularity for many reasons. Since they are automatic nobody ever checks them to be sure they are working properly.

I support quite a few networks and one of my first tasks at a new client is to determine who will be responsible for the backups. It tends to be the accountant type person who has the most work to loose in case of system failure.

By making a PERSON responsible I have never had a case of a unusable disk or tape that has been in the machine for 2 years causing a problem with data recovery.

It all has to do with setting up a system that works. Time and again BushCo deliberately set up systems that don't work to facilitate their lying, cheating and looting of our government.

Those who vote for criminals have no right to be surprised when they get criminal behavior.

For 20 years I have been hearing the republicans saying that the government should be run like a business. So the American people voted for a bunch of MBAs thinking we would get IBM when in fact what we got was Enron. The last 8 years have been one white collar crime after another. Does anyone remember Neil Bush and the Silverado Savings & Loan ? This is SOP from the bushies.

The republicans have been engaging in criminal behavior for the last 8 years and by not doing anything about it the democrats have been accessories to these crimes. Come November __ALL__ incumbents should be voted out of office.

wires is correct that automated backups are prone to failure, and systems work best with a person verifying the completion of backups. The problem appears in this case that the backup process was started manually, rather than automatically. Processes that are started automatically are much more likely to kick off than manual ones, especially if the person responsible doesn't have a vested interest in the process.

The difference here is that these are not backups, but archives. There are several software packages readily available that can provide this service, either for MS Exchange, Lotus, or other e-mail servers. The fact that this functionality was lost on a technology transition means there was some major incompetency going on in the White House IT department. If I, currently the only IT person at a DC professional services company, ignored or neglected to implement such a vital function as required by law, I would be thrown out on my rear, and justifiably so. Well, unless I was directed to do otherwise by superiors and could prove that. In that case, I would be making sure those emails got archived.