About Those Missing Five Million E-mails....

Let's just face it. Drama is part of the current Administration. First, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has to deal with his own lawyer resigning. And now, there is another story growing legs in the press. It has to do with the violation of the federal Presidential Records Act of 1978:

Specifically, the Presidential Records Act:

* Defines and states public ownership of the records.

* Places the responsibility for the custody and management of incumbent Presidential records with the President.

* Allows the incumbent President to dispose of records that no longer have administrative, historical, informational, or evidentiary value, once he has obtained the views of the Archivist of the United States on the proposed disposal.

* Requires that the President and his staff take all practical steps to file personal records separately from Presidential records.

* Establishes a process for restriction and public access to these records. Specifically, the PRA allows for public access to Presidential records through the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) beginning five years after the end of the Administration, but allows the President to invoke as many as six specific restrictions to public access for up to twelve years. The PRA also establishes procedures for Congress, courts, and subsequent Administrations to obtain special access to records that remain closed to the public, following a thirty-day notice period to the former and current Presidents.

* Requires that Vice-Presidential records are to be treated in the same way as Presidential records.

But wait. There was an Executive Order signed by President of the United States George Bush as an "amendment" to the act. You know he had to do something about this one way or another. Let's just get to the juiciest part, shall we:

(d) Concurrent with or after the former President's review of the records, the incumbent President or his designee may also review the records in question, or may utilize whatever other procedures the incumbent President deems appropriate to decide whether to concur in the former President's decision to request withholding of or authorize access to the records.

(1)When the former President has requested withholding of the records: (i) If under the standard set forth in section 4 below, the incumbent President concurs in the former President's decision to request withholding of records as privileged, the incumbent President shall so inform the former President and the Archivist. The Archivist shall not permit access to those records by a requester unless and until the incumbent President advises the Archivist that the former President and the incumbent President agree to authorize access to the records or until so ordered by a final and nonappealable court order. [[Page 56027]] (ii) If under the standard set forth in section 4 below, the incumbent President does not concur in the former President's decision to request withholding of the records as privileged, the incumbent President shall so inform the former President and the Archivist. Because the former President independently retains the right to assert constitutionally based privileges, the Archivist shall not permit access to the records by a requester unless and until the incumbent President advises the Archivist that the former President and the incumbent President agree to authorize access to the records or until so ordered by a final and nonappealable court order.

(2) When the former President has authorized access to the records: (i) If under the standard set forth in section 4 below, the incumbent President concurs in the former President's decision to authorize access to the records, the Archivist shall permit access to the records by the requester. (ii) If under the standard set forth in section 4 below, the incumbent President does not concur in the former President's decision to authorize access to the records, the incumbent President may independently order the Archivist to withhold privileged records. In that instance, the Archivist shall not permit access to the records by a requester unless and until the incumbent President advises the Archivist that the former President and the incumbent President agree to authorize access to the records or until so ordered by a final and nonappealable court order.

Before we get to the main point, it seems from the look of things that another executive privilege has been asserted: that instead of making all records of the President and Vice-President public, the choice is being reverted back to the former and incumbent leader of America to withhold certain papers unless there is a court decision that overturns the request.

With that being said, this further points to the current Presidency being more secretive than any other in history. Think about it. The entire Bush Administration has been built around secrecy. The past leaders of the United States had increasingly been generous to the public's right to know since the years of Watergate. This was in conjunction with the Freedom of Information Act. However, some of those same governmental papers are being reverted back to classified status. And with this latest story, this aspect becomes even more murkier when it has been found that Mr. Rove allegedly has been found involved in destroying e-mails between the years of 2003 and 2005.

I know some might ask what's the big problem with this. After all, people destroy their e-mails on a daily basis. The punchline is that with the Presidential Records Act, those e-mails fall under the jurisdiction of public records--especially if they have to do with alleged "official business" It probably wouldn't have been discovered unless the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington didn't make this public with their report about the disappearing electronic notes over a given period.

After some hemming and hawing, the White House Spokeswoman Dana Perino cut to the chase. Read the lowdown on CNN's site. But for the purposes here, there is a key excerpt of the story:

Millions of White House e-mails may be missing, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino acknowledged Friday.

"I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential 5 million e-mails lost," Perino told reporters.

[...]

Perino's disclosure about the White House e-mail comes a day after she admitted that the White House "screwed up" by not requiring e-mails from Republican Party and campaign accounts to be saved and was also trying to recover those e-mails.

Perino said 22 aides in the political arm of the president's office use party or campaign e-mail accounts, which were issued to separate official business from political work. Some of those accounts were used to discuss the December firings of eight federal prosecutors, a shake-up that has triggered a spreading controversy on Capitol Hill.

Congressional investigators have questioned whether White House aides used e-mail accounts from the Republican Party and President Bush's re-election campaign for official government business to avoid scrutiny of those dealings.

It gets even uglier. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy connected this finding with the canning of the eight U.S. District Attorneys. He even went as far as to connect the missing computer missives to what happened during the Nixon era.

What it comes down to is the fact that we need either an Independent or Congressional oversight committee to find out whether this has been the case. And since Ms. Perino hinted at it by allegedly saying that the White House "screwed up", well then it is time to get the ball rolling.

I don't know about you. But, I wonder how much more of this the American public has to take before they demand accountability from the White House. After six years of stories relating to the public's right to know verses the secrecy of the Administration, something has to give. During the Nixon years, there was an essential mistrust of the government due to Watergate.

Currently, the die-hard supporters of the Presidency still remain. Suffice it to say, their ranks are thinning out by the day. And knowing that impropriety after impropriety continues to happen, when will the straw break the camel's back here? What will it take before the public--in righteous indignation--finally call for our Congress to do something about this. At first, explaining away things might have worked in light of 9/11. But, now, when there is more and more trickling out about the Administration, there has to be questions asked and investigated.

With this news, one cannot go blindly into the night and believe that all is well. We must make sure that our leaders receive letters and e-mail to make them care about finding this out. If not, it will be the same old business as usual--especially in light of executive privilege and the slow eradication of citizens' rights in supposedly "The Free World".

One must question whether we are truly living in the "land of the free" when we find out that our government has not been entirely honest with us--especially when to hide facts that could shed light on important matters.