WASHINGTON — The White House is missing up to 225 days of e-mail dating back to 2003 and there is little if any likelihood a recovery effort will be completed by the time the Bush administration leaves office, according to an internal White House draft document obtained by The Associated Press.
The nine-page outline of the White House’s e-mail problems invites companies to bid on a project to recover the missing electronic messages.
The work would be carried out through April 19, 2009, according to the Office of Administration request for contractors’ proposals, which was dated June 20.
Last week, the White House declined to comment on the document.
On Wednesday, the White House refused to talk about internal White House contracting procedures but said the information is “outdated and seriously inaccurate.” It would not elaborate. The White House also declined to say whether it has hired a contractor for the work yet.
“With an eye on the clock, the White House continues to drag its feet and do everything possible to postpone public access to the records of this presidency,” said Anne Weismann, chief counsel to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a private watchdog group.
The draft document outlines a process in which private contractors would attempt to retrieve lost e-mail from 35,000 disaster recovery backup tapes dating to October 2003, a period covering such events as growing violence in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the criminal probe into the disclosure that Valerie Plame had worked for the CIA.
Industry experts point out that relying on the backup system to ensure accurate retention, preservation and retrieval of all e-mails is problematic because it does not take into account deleted e-mails.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has said the White House’s failure to properly archive e-mails violated the Presidential Records Act.
