WASHINGTON — The White House has acknowledged in a new court filing that it routinely recycled computer backup tapes containing its e-mail records until October 2003, a practice that could mean that many electronic messages from the first two years of the Bush administration are lost forever.
The disclosure raises the possibility that the White House effectively erased e-mail related to some of the biggest controversies of the Bush administration, including the leak of a CIA officer’s name, the start of the Iraq war and the CIA’s destruction of interrogation videotapes.
The administration previously has acknowledged problems with its archiving systems but had not disclosed its practice of overwriting backup tapes. The backups are meant to preserve records in case of a disaster. They also serve a role in ensuring that federal record-keeping laws are met. Two separate statutes require the White House to preserve federal or presidential records.
The prospects for recovering data that has been overwritten is uncertain, especially if the tapes were rerecorded numerous times, technology experts say.
Theresa Payton, chief information officer in the Office of Administration, also said that the White House stopped the practice in October 2003 and that backups made since then have been preserved. She did not explain in her sworn statement why the White House stopped recycling its backup tapes.
Destruction of interrogation videotapes
Meanwhile Wednesday, the top Republican House Intelligence Committee member said the CIA official who gave the command to destroy interrogation videotapes apparently acted against the direction of his superiors.
“It appears he hadn’t gotten authority from anyone,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., speaking to reporters after the first day of closed testimony in the committee’s investigation. “It appears he got direction to make sure the tapes were not destroyed.”
Hoekstra said that raises the troubling prospect that there’s a thread of unaccountability in the spy culture.
Hoekstra spoke after John Rizzo, the CIA’s acting general counsel, testified behind closed doors for nearly four hours as the first witness in what committee officials have said will be a long investigation.
“I told the truth,” Rizzo said in a brief appearance before reporters.
The man at the center of the controversy, Jose Rodriguez, had been scheduled to appear Wednesday, but his attorney’s demand for immunity delayed his testimony. Rodriguez was the head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, the CIA branch that oversees spying operations and interrogations. He gave the order to destroy the tapes in November 2005.
The tapes, made in 2002, showed the harsh interrogation by CIA officers of two alleged al-Qaeda terrorists.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
