E-Mail for 51 White House Officials Missing, Panel Says

WASHINGTON (June 19) - E-mail records are missing for 51 of the 88
White House officials who had electronic message accounts with the Republican National Committee, the House Oversight Committee said Monday.
The Bush administration may have committed "extensive" violations of a
law requiring that certain records be preserved, said the committee's
Democratic chairman, adding that the panel will deepen its probe into
the use of political e-mail accounts.

The committee's interim report said the number of White House officials who had RNC e-mail accounts, and the number of messages they sent and received, were more extensive than previously realized.


The administration has said that about 50 White House officials had RNC
e-mail accounts during Bush's presidency. But the House committee found
at least 88.

The RNC has preserved e-mails from some of the
heaviest users, including 140,216 messages sent or received by Bush's
top political adviser in the White House, Karl Rove .
However, "the RNC has preserved no e-mails for 51 officials," said the
interim report, issued by committee chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.


The 51 include Ken Mehlman, a former White House political director who
reportedly used his RNC account frequently, the report said.


"Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC e-mail
accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the
large quantity of missing e-mails," the report said, "the potential
violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive."
Republicans said there is no evidence that the law was violated or that
the missing e-mails were of a government rather than political nature.


The records act requires presidents to assure that "the activities,
deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance" of
their duties are "adequately documented ... and maintained," the report
said.

White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters
he would not "respond specifically" to the committee's findings but
said the RNC e-mail accounts "were designed precisely to avoid Hatch
Act violations that prohibit the use of government assets for certain
political activities." He added, "the RNC has had an e-mail
preservation policy for White House staffers."


Congressional Democrats are investigating whether White House officials
used RNC e-mail accounts to conduct overtly political, and perhaps
improper, activities such as planning which U.S. prosecutors to fire
and preparing partisan briefings for employees in federal agencies.


Waxman's committee is contacting numerous federal agencies to determine
whether their records "contain some of the White House e-mails that
have been destroyed by the RNC," the report said.

In a
statement, Waxman said the panel's findings "should be a matter of
grave concern for anyone who values open government." He said the
committee will investigate "who knew about the violations of the
Presidential Records Act, why they did not act earlier, and what
e-mails can be salvaged from RNC, White House, and agency computer
systems."

The committee's top Republican, Tom Davis of
Virginia, criticized the report, saying the panel should obtain more
conclusive evidence before accusing the RNC and White House of
wrongdoing. The evidence thus far, he said, "simply does not support
the report's breathless conclusions."

Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the RNC, said the report appears to present Democrats' partisan spin as fact.


"Not only have we been clear that we are continuing our efforts to
search for e-mails, but there is no basis for an assumption that any
e-mail not already found would be of an official nature," she said.


The report especially criticized Alberto Gonzales, now the attorney
general, for actions when he headed the White House Counsel's office.
There is evidence that under Gonzales the office "may have known that
White House officials were using RNC e-mail accounts for official
business, but took no action to preserve these presidential records,"
the report said.

Snow said of the claim: "That's an allegation. We'll respond to it in due course."


The report said the House committee may need to issue subpoenas "to
obtain the cooperation of the Bush Cheney '04 campaign." It said the
campaign acknowledges providing e-mail accounts "to 11 White House
officials, but the campaign has unjustifiably refused to provide the
committee with basic information about these accounts, such as the
identity of the White House officials and the number of e-mails that
have been preserved.

Eric Kuwana, the Bush-Cheney
campaign's counsel, said the requested documents "have no articulated
connection" to the panel's investigation "and very well may be the type
and nature of political documents that are specifically exempt from the
Presidential Records Act."

The House committee report said
Rove's RNC e-mail account carried 75,374 messages to or from people
with government, or .gov, accounts. It said the RNC has preserved
66,018 e-mails sent to or from former White House political affairs
director Sara Taylor, and 35,198 sent to or from deputy director Scott
Jennings.

"These e-mail accounts were used by White House
officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal
agencies about federal appointments and policies," the report said.


It said the White House counsel in early 2001 "issued clear written
policies" instructing staffers "to use only the official White House
e-mail system for official communications and to retain any official
e-mails they received on a nongovernmental account." Recent evidence
"indicates that White House officials used their RNC e-mail accounts in
a manner that circumvented these requirements," the report said.

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