Historical context: Missing Government Emails — stupidity or criminal behavior?

As many editorials are published about Hillary Clinton getting away with high crimes and misdemeanors, it is important to give some historical context. The information below is from many different sites, all of which are cited in or at the end of the article. This is not to defend Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server, but to show that the understanding of the use of email by some elected and appointed officials — probably throughout the government- has ranged from ignorant and lax to very possibly criminal, and much was not secure. It screams for more transparency about this issue and an increase in IT education at all levels of government.

Many don’t remember, back in 2005, when there was an inquiry into possible illegal firing of Federal Attorneys that the Bush White House reported it had lost emails from White house servers from Janary 2003 to July 2005.

In 2009 after the Bush presidency, IT people recovered some, but not all, of the 22 million “lost” White House emails. Here is the National Security Archive for the timeline for the White House email issue: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/20080417/chron.htm

It later became clear that the investigation of other potential criminal offenses would require this email documentation. The organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), filed several Fredom of Information requests for emails related to the outing of CIA operative, Valerie Plame, during the build up to the Iraq war.

After years of litigation to obtain the emails, CREW evaluated 21 days of the “lost” data, but files given to them were incomplete and emails marked “sensitive” were not released. Emails to and from Scooter Libby, who was found guilty of 4 felony counts in the outing of Valerie Plame and pardoned soon after his conviction by George W Bush, were never released. Ultimately, CREW concluded that a significant number of emails were not restored and may be lost forever. http://www.citizensforethics.org/pages/untold-story-of-the-bush-white-house-emails

At least 4 years of potentially critical emails from high-level Bush administrators were also lost from another private server at the Republican National Committee (RNC). A House committee eventually found that 88 top Bush administrators used this server and records from 51 were not recovered, including those of 19 administrators who used the RNC server heavily, like Karl Rove (kr@georgewbush.com), who used this server for approximately 95% of his correspondence. These emails were highly likely to have contained information relevant to the build up of the Iraq war and to governmental activities of people like Jack Abramoff, a person who, in 2006, was sentenced to six years in federal prison for mail fraud, conspiracy to bribe public officials, and tax evasion.

The NY Times editorial in 2007, included: “Last week, the Republican National Committee threw up another roadblock, claiming it had lost four years’ worth of e-mail messages by Karl Rove that were sent on a Republican Party account. Those messages, officials admitted, could include some about the United States attorneys. It is virtually impossible to erase e-mail messages fully, and the claims that they are gone are not credible.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/opinion/15sun1.html?_r=0

So, in historical context, the use of private servers and the sequestering or loss of email is not new. The practice, hopefully, is better now, but standard operating procedures do not seem to be in practice government wide. Because of this, I would suggest that second guessing the FBI, when the same level of attention has not been spent to figure out what Condeleza Rice and Colin Powell had on their private email accounts and with years of Bush era emails still not public, is pointless. Clearly, we should also do our best not let our thinking about issues be guided by individuals who clearly have partisan agendas.

However, the bottom line has to be that this never, ever happen again, whatever the party that is in power. It is time that the elected, appointed, and staff in government be at least as informed about modern IT technolgy and other developments as our US companies are. Email can be a new thing for some baby boomers, it should not be a surprise to our governemnt.

Here are recent follow ups and background information:

https://www.wired.com/2009/12/22-million-emails-found/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/18/AR2007061800809.html