Contempt for the Law

It seems unconscionable that the tapes were not preserved. But the underlying failure -- the apparently complete disregard for the law -- is considerably more serious than that.

It took a federal court order for the White House to tell us even as much as it did on Tuesday. But the new filing raises many more questions than answers.

Hopefully, reporters and congressional investigators will be asking those questions with renewed ferocity in the days to come.

For background, see my April 12 column, Countless White House E-Mails Deleted, my June 19 column, Casual Lawbreaking at the White House, and my Nov. 13 column, Where Are the E-mails?

The Coverage

Elizabeth Williamson and Dan Eggen write in The Washington Post: "E-mail messages sent and received by White House personnel during the first three years of the Bush administration were routinely recorded on tapes that were 'recycled,' the White House's chief information officer said in a court filing this week.

"During the period in question, the Bush presidency faced some of its biggest controversies, including the Iraq war, the leak of former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson's name and the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes.

"White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed.

"From 2001 to October 2003, the White House's practice was to use the same backup tape each day to copy new as well as old e-mails, he said, making it possible that some of those e-mails could still be recovered even from a tape that was repeatedly overwritten. 'We are continuing to analyze our systems,' Fratto said last night. . . .

"Two federal statutes require presidential communications, including e-mails involving senior White House aides, to be preserved for the nation's historical record, and some historians responded to the court disclosure yesterday by urging that the White House's actions be thoroughly probed.

"'There certainly could have been hugely important materials there . . . and of course they're not owned by President Bush or anybody in the administration, they're owned by the public,' said presidential historian and author Robert Dallek. 'Given how secretive this administration has been, it of course fans the flames and suspicions about what has been destroyed here. I hope we'll get an investigation.'"

Pete Yost writes for the Associated Press: "The White House started preserving backup tapes in October 2003, which would have been shortly after the start of the probe into who outed CIA operative Valerie Plame in July of that year.

"The backup tapes, which also contain electronic documents in addition to e-mail, are the last line of defense for saving electronic records. . . .