NEW INFO IN CREW LAWSUIT REVEALS 89.4% OF BUSH-ERA EMAILS WERE NEVER ARCHIVED

89.4% of emails restored from backup tapes for the 21 selected days were completely missing...

14 Jun 2010 // Washington, D.C. – Last Friday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive (the Archive) sent another follow-up letter to Archivist David S. Ferriero with the final results of a comparison the White House conducted between archived emails of the Bush administration for 21 non-consecutive days and the emails restored from backup tapes for those same days. An earlier comparison, which was jettisoned after the White House revealed it was conducted using a completely flawed methodology, had shown an 83% discrepancy, suggesting 83% of the emails for those 21 days would have been lost to history but for the restoration process CREW and the Archive demanded of the White House in settlement of their lawsuit, CREW, et al. v. Executive Office of the President, et al. The latest comparison revealed an even greater problem with the Bush White House’s process for archiving its emails – 89.4% of emails restored from backup tapes for the 21 selected days were completely missing from the Bush archived email records for those same days. Further, 3.9% of emails in the archived records for those days were not found on backup tapes, indicating yet more problems with the system the Bush White House used for archiving its electronic records. Based on these very disturbing results and the many flaws in the methodology used by the Executive Office of the President, CREW and the Archive reiterated to the Archivist their request that all of the missing Bush-era emails be restored.

Click here to read CREW and the Archive’s letter.