Congress to Bush: You've Lost Mail

"Alan Swendiman, director of the White House Office of Administration, 'can't control what individuals do on their own' regarding e-mail, he told the committee. The White House counsel's office 'has taken steps' and letters have gone out to former White House staffers regarding their e- mail accounts, Swendiman said. Swendiman was unable to be specific about the contents of the letters, he said. . . .

"'If the e-mails are truly missing, it's the White House's responsibility to restore them,' [Weinstein] said. The Presidential Records Act is 'incredibly important' and those e-mails and other records 'belong to the American people,' he said.

"But no one is helping the Archivist collect e-mails from RNC accounts, Weinstein said."

Anne Broache writes for CNET News: "Republican Ranking Member Tom Davis (R-Va.) said the White House has said it has since reduced the number of days' worth of missing e-mails from 473 to 202 after discovering that those messages had been filed 'in the wrong digital drawer' as part of a switch from the Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange e-mail system in 2002."

FISA Watch

Eric Lichtblau writes in the New York Times: "All last week, intelligence officials fielded calls from nervous lawyers for the country's phone companies. With a wiretapping law allowed to lapse in Congress, they were no longer certain what they were supposed to do when the government came to them with a wiretapping order, administration officials said.

"'They're raising questions, and they're saying, "Look, we've got an expired piece of legislation," ' recounted a senior administration official who was involved in the conversations. 'It's not crystal clear.'

"President Bush and his senior aides have been warning for the last 10 days that the country was left more vulnerable by the expiration of the surveillance law on Feb. 16, and said last week that the government had already lost valuable counterterrorism intelligence because of Congressional inaction.

"But as a practical matter, the issue is less about harm that has actually been done than about the prospect that such harm will be done because of uncertainty in the government and the telecommunications industry over what is now allowed, officials involved in the discussions say.

"Even with the law lapsed, intelligence officials continue to be able to put wiretaps on terrorism and espionage suspects under directives that were approved before the expiration of the six-month law, the Protect America Act, which gave the government a freer hand in deciding whom to wiretap without court approval.

"Theoretically, intelligence officials would have to revert to older -- and, they say, more cumbersome -- legal standards if they were now to stumble onto a new terrorist group that was not covered by a previous wiretapping order. But that has not happened since the surveillance law expired, administration officials said. . . .

"Democrats have been arguing for days that the administration has exaggerated the actual national security harm.

"A group of former intelligence officials chimed in Tuesday in a letter to Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence. The administration's recent comments about wiretapping tools 'have distorted rather than enhanced' the debate over the law, said the letter, signed by Rand Beers, Richard A. Clarke, Lt. Gen. Donald L. Kerrick, retired, and Suzanne E. Spaulding, all of whom have served in senior intelligence capacities in recent years."