White House Says It Routinely Overwrote E-Mail Tapes From 2001 to 2003

Accordingly, she said, "this office has serious reservations about the reliability" of the study. A new study of the matter is underway, Payton said.

Since the controversy arose, the White House has acknowledged that some of its e-mails may be missing but that it is unsure how many because officials are still investigating possible "anomalies" in the records. Payton said in her affidavit that the recycling of backup tapes was "consistent with industry best practices related to tape media management."

Payton, who said she oversees the computer system relied on by 3,000 "users and customers" in the presidential and vice presidential offices, said the backup tape system was created to preserve records in case of a disaster. She did not cite any other federal agencies subject to records preservation requirements that routinely recycle such tapes.

Anne L. Weismann, chief counsel for the ethics group, said the disclosure raises new questions about the Bush administration's management of public records. "They didn't have what any archival person would consider to be an electronic record-keeping system," Weismann said. "These are not the steps of a White House committed to preserving records or meeting its obligations under the law."

Fratto criticized the plaintiffs for making "inflammatory" accusations. He said that "I don't know what the specific reason was" for changing the tape retention routine in October 2003, but he noted "that was around the time of" the Plame investigation, when the White House was told to produce internal e-mails relevant to the probe. He also emphasized that for the period after October 2003, White House "technical people cannot conclude based on that document that any e-mails are missing."

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) told the National Archives in a letter last month that White House officials had told his investigators they found "numerous days with few or no emails for certain White House components" during a 2005 review of White House computer servers.

"More than two years after this problem was first discovered by White House staff," Waxman said, "the White House still has not identified the cause of the problem, determined the volume of emails lost, or developed a plan for restoring those emails that were lost."

In a related controversy, House investigators have determined that hundreds of thousands of e-mails from former presidential adviser Karl Rove and other White House aides are missing because they were sent using external accounts set up by the Republican National Committee.