Cheney's Subpoenaed E-Mails Missing

Vice President's email lost for key week in CIA leak probe

MSNBC reports:

When Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald wanted to find out what was going on inside Vice President Dick Cheney's office, the prosecutor in the CIA leak probe made a logical move. He dropped a grand jury subpoena on the White House for all the relevant e-mail.

One problem: Even though White House computer technicians hunted high and low, an entire week's worth of e-mail from Cheney's office was missing. The week was Sept. 30, 2003, to Oct. 6, 2003, the opening days of the Justice Department's probe into whether anyone at the White House leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

That episode was part of the picture that unfolded Tuesday on Capitol Hill, where Democrats on a House committee released new information about one of the Bush White House's long-running issues, its problem-plagued e-mail system.

For the first time, a former White House computer technician went public with the details. Steven McDevitt revealed in written statements submitted to Congress how a plan was developed to try to recover the missing e-mail for Fitzgerald.

Ultimately, 250 pages of electronic messages were retrieved from the personal e-mail accounts of officials in Cheney's office, but whether that amounted to all the relevant e-mail is a question that may never be answered.

McDevitt made clear that it was a sensitive issue inside the White House.

"I worked with ... White House Counsel on efforts to provide an explanation to the special prosecutor," McDevitt wrote. "This included providing a briefing to the special prosecutor's staff on this subject."

McDevitt provided no details of the meetings with White House Counsel Harriet Miers and others in the counsel's office in late 2005 and early 2006. The White House refused to comment on those meetings.

White House on defensive

The White House put the best face on a bad hearing Tuesday of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, defending the administration's handling of its electronic messages.

McDevitt said that one estimate from a 2005 analysis was that more than 1,000 days of e-mail were missing from January 2003 to Aug. 10, 2005. McDevitt said "the process by which e-mail was being collected and retained was primitive and the risk that data would be lost was high." The "low end" estimate was about 470 days, he added.

The White House says a substantial amount of what had been believed to be missing e-mail had been located.

"We are very energized about getting to the bottom of this" issue, Theresa Payton, chief information officer at the White House Office of Administration, testified to the committee.

"This is a form of sandbagging," replied Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who pointed out that by the time the White House fixes its e-mail problems, "you'll be out of office."

E-mail shortcomings

McDevitt's statements detailed shortcomings that he said have plagued the White House e-mail system for six years. He said:

* The White House had no complete inventory of e-mail files.
* There was no automatic system to ensure that e-mail was archived and preserved.
* Until mid-2005 the e-mail system had serious security flaws, in which "everyone" on the White House computer network had access to e-mail. McDevitt wrote that the "potential impact" of the security flaw was that there was no way to verify that retained data had not been modified.
* A new e-mail archiving system that would have addressed the problems was "ready to go live" on Aug. 21, 2006.

Payton told Waxman's committee she canceled the new system in late 2006 because it would have required modifications and additional spending. An alternative system is under way, she said.

Payton's predecessor, Carlos Solari, told the House committee that he was puzzled that the new system had been rejected and that he had "absolutely" believed that the system Payton rejected would be implemented.

When President Bush leaves office, presidential records and federal records at the White House will be turned over to the National Archives. Waxman produced a memo pointing to a lack of cooperation between the White House and the Archives.

"We still know virtually nothing about the status of the alleged missing White House e-mails," the Archives' general counsel, Gary Stern, wrote to his boss last September.

Clinton Library A Closed Book

Few of ex-first lady's files released by her husband's archive

The Chicago Tribune reports:



Visitors to the gleaming glass-and-steel William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library can see the former First Lady Hillary Clinton's gold-embroidered 1997 inaugural ball gown and hear Clinton extol his wife's contributions to his administration.

In time, Hillary Clinton "will deserve a lot of the credit" for the comprehensive health coverage that the former president predicts is on the horizon, he gushes in the audio for an exhibit celebrating "The Work of the First Lady."

But while tourists wandered through the museum one afternoon last week, awed by the bulletproof presidential limousine and the life-size replica of the Oval Office, the tables in the library's reading room sat empty -- unoccupied by the scholars, journalists and opposition researchers who might be expected to pore over the unique historical record of a White House that featured a leading role for a current presidential front-runner.

For good reason. Almost three years after the library's opening and nearly two years after the administration's archives became subject to federal open-records laws, only a small fraction of the archives has been opened to the public.

Virtually all of the 3 million pages of documents that detail the internal workings of the health-care task force that Hillary Clinton headed remain stored away in boxes, for example.

Although lengthy delays in releasing White House papers are typical, the presidential candidacy of a former first lady presents an unprecedented circumstance. Processing by government archivists is partly responsible for the slow pace. But critics note that Bill Clinton could lift restrictions that keep many controversial records out of the public eye until 2013, and he could speed up release of records by waiving a review by his personal representative.

An inventory displayed on the Clinton library Web site Friday morning showed that 23 requests for records made under the federal Freedom of Information Act have been fulfilled so far. The library had received 397 open-records requests through Sept. 26, according to a court filing in a related lawsuit.

Nearly half of the documents released so far were in response to requests for photos.The only large trove of documents released at the request of an independent researcher were 13,000 pages pertaining to the White House's public and cultural diplomacy initiatives.

Called to task by rival

According to the inventory, the library's only release of materials directly involving Hillary Clinton is a condolence letter she wrote as first lady to Laurance Rockefeller, a wealthy conservationist, on the death of his wife, as well as White House photographs of a trip she made to his ranch in Jackson, Wyo.

So a political couple who battled an independent counsel and congressional investigators find themselves again tussling with political opponents over the release of documents.

This time it is Democratic rival Barack Obama who is challenging Clinton to speed up the flow of records, arguing that someone who has largely pitched her candidacy based on her experiences in the White House owes the public a closer look. Republicans have joined in the criticism.

Documents that might shed light on the first lady's role in scandals such as the White House travel office firings, the fundraising scandals of the 1996 election and pardons received by people who made payments to her brothers Hugh and Tony Rodham remain closed. Attorney Hugh Rodham had been paid to lobby for a pardon, and later returned the money; the Clintons said they were not aware of the payment when the pardon was granted. Tony Rodham was employed as a consultant by a couple who received a pardon, but he has said his work was unrelated to it.

Also closed are papers that might provide insight into roles she apparently played in substantive policy debates such as the Clinton administration's reversal on welfare reform and its early reluctance to intervene in Bosnia and later decision to do so, noted Sally Bedell Smith, author of "For Love of Politics," a portrait of the couple's partnership in the White House.

Historical legacies

Asked about the delays at a recent debate, Clinton first noted that the decision was in the hands of her husband and then promised, "Certainly we'll move as quickly as our circumstances and the processes of the National Archives permits."

In a subsequent interview with CNN, Clinton offered a more calibrated response, in which she asserted -- correctly -- that her husband "has done more than any other president" to open up his archives.

Indeed, every recent former president has struggled to shape his historical legacy, and White House papers typically trickle out slowly after a president leaves office.

"It's not that unusual at all," said presidential historian Robert Dallek, who noted that there are tapes Lyndon Johnson made of Oval Office conversations that have not been released nearly 40 years after his administration ended.

The current Bush administration's policies have made it easier for former presidents to delay disclosure of records. An executive order issued by Bush in November 2001 gives former presidents the power to delay release indefinitely while they review records for potential claims that the records are protected from disclosure. A federal district court struck down parts of the executive order last month, but the administration is considering an appeal.

Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, a private group that promotes disclosure of archival material, said the release of materials from all presidential libraries also has been slowed by "a culture of secrecy" that the Bush administration has encouraged since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and an archival system that is overwhelmed by the explosion in the number of electronic records created in the information age. Archivists must process documents before they are released.

Overall, the wait time for President Clinton's records is not out of line with his recent predecessors. Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the National Archives, said the wait time for FOIA requests for non-classified materials is currently 2 1/2 years for the Reagan library and four years for the George H.W. Bush library.

Records to be withheld

While the Presidential Records Act calls for the release of White House papers five years after a president leaves office, Bill Clinton exercised an option he has under the law to withhold records in broad categories for 12 years -- a restriction every other former president also has placed on his records since Reagan became the first president whose papers were covered by the current law.

Clinton imposed somewhat less far-reaching restrictions on communications from his advisers than did his immediate predecessors. But the restrictions he ordered still effectively wall off most communications regarding the many controversies of his presidency until 2013.

Bill Clinton ordered records withheld if they touch on "a sensitive policy, personal or political matter" or include "advice [on] matters subject to investigation by Congress, the Justice Department or an Independent Counsel." He also ordered withheld "communications directly between the President, and the First Lady, and their families, unless routine in nature."

"When you put all that together, the only things that are not excluded are the most trivial," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor who has criticized both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

The representative Clinton chose to review the papers before their release also has drawn attention from critics: Bruce Lindsey, a famously tight-lipped confidant of the former president who often managed damage control for the White House. Once archivists have processed documents for release, Lindsey has taken an average of an additional 237 days -- about eight months -- to review them, according to a Sept. 26 court filing. Lindsey's spokesman did not return numerous calls seeking comment.

The same court filing provided an estimate for when the archivists at the Clinton library would finish processing the first request for records from Hillary Clinton's office filed by the conservative group Judicial Watch.

Some 10,000 pages of appointment calendars for the first lady should go to Lindsey for his review in January 2008 -- shortly after the Iowa caucuses.

Clinton's First-Lady Records Locked Up

Archivists say the documents at her husband's presidential library won't be released until after the '08 vote.

The LATimes reports:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton cites her experience as a compelling reason voters should make her president, but nearly 2 million pages of documents covering her White House years are locked up in a building here, obscuring a large swath of her record as first lady.

Clinton's calendars, appointment logs and memos are stored at her husband's presidential library, in the custody of federal archivists who do not expect them to be released until after the 2008 presidential election.

A trove of records has been made public detailing the Clinton White House's attempts to remake the nation's healthcare system, following a request from Bill Clinton that those materials be released first. Hillary Clinton led the healthcare effort in 1993 and 1994.

But even in the healthcare documents, at least 1,000 pages involving her work has been censored by archives staff because they include confidential advice and must be kept secret under a federal law called the Presidential Records Act. Political consultants said that if Hillary Clinton's records were made public, rivals would mine them for scraps of information that might rattle her campaign.

"Those files -- that's the mother lode of opposition research," said Ray McNally, a Republican political consultant in Sacramento. "Opposition researchers would be very hungry to see what's there." Robert Shrum, senior political strategist in Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, said: "In 2 million pieces of paper, would opposition researchers hope to find one where she wrote a memo saying, 'I wish I'd never gotten involved in healthcare?' Sure. That's what they'd love to find."

At the Clinton library overlooking the Arkansas River, federal archivists clad in protective smocks are sorting through 80 million pages of records and another 20 million e-mails from a Clinton presidency that ended in January 2001. About 2 million of those pages concern the first lady's office.

A staff of 11 spends most of its time answering some 250 requests for documents submitted under the Freedom of Information Act. Requests are fulfilled largely on a first-come, first-served basis. Because the earliest requests involved other Clinton administration activities, the requests for the now-New York senator's records are further back in line, staff members said.

A list of Freedom of Information Act requests that have been completed by the archives staff includes one for a photo of Bill Clinton jogging with a "Yale Whiffenpoof Club insignia" on his clothing; another for various files on UFOs and flying saucers and one for the full name of the pastry chef who made a birthday cake for Chelsea Clinton.

Before documents are released, archives staff must read them and, by law, must redact material that they determine contains classified information, invades a person's privacy, reveals trade secrets, reveals confidential advice from presidential advisors or raises other concerns specified in the records law.

Asked how long it might be before Hillary Clinton's records are released, the library's chief archivist said it could take years.

"We're processing as fast as we can," Melissa Walker said.

Not fast enough, in the view of some who have been waiting. A conservative watchdog group called Judicial Watch filed suit against the National Archives last month, demanding the release of Hillary Clinton's diaries, telephone logs, daily planners and schedules. In the 1990s, the group filed suits against the Clinton administration that led to revelations about fundraising practices, including Democratic campaign donors being tapped for official trade missions. In the most recent suit, Judicial Watch said it had submitted its request more than a year ago and had received nothing, save for confirmation that the library possessed "a substantial volume" of such papers.

Staffing pressures have prevented the National Archives from keeping up with an expanding workload. In 2002, the agency employed 334 archivists. This year, the number is down to 301. That 10% drop came during a period when the National Archives assumed jurisdiction over two more presidential libraries: those of Clinton and Richard Nixon.

"If we have fewer trained personnel, we are unable to do as many preservation projects as we might like, and we're less able to serve the public in ways we would like to," said Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the National Archives.

But advocates for open records said that had it made savvier use of technology, the Clinton library could be moving more quickly. Computers can sort through e-mail to flag classified documents, as distinguished from material that can be speedily released, said Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a research institute at George Washington University.

"There's no reason why a load of a few hundred FOIA requests should absorb 11 full-time people perpetually," Blanton said, referring to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act.

What records that have been made public offer tantalizing details about Hillary Clinton's White House years. One memo reveals details about the "war room" for the healthcare plan. Aides wrote of the need for secrecy, but also presented Hillary Clinton with arguments she could make that the process of drawing up a healthcare plan was "the most open in the history of the federal government."

A 1993 memo discussed a plan to create reports on members of Congress, tracking their positions on healthcare. The files would log when members met with Hillary Clinton, how they voted on key bills, and -- under a category called "influence" -- whom they consulted for advice. One 1994 memo offers a historical curiosity: It draws Clinton's attention to a rising Republican politician, Mitt Romney, who is now a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination.

In the memo, Clinton's aides discussed a trip to Boston, where the then-first lady was to appear at a fundraising event for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass). Kennedy was then running for reelection against Romney.

"Romney, a millionaire business consultant with no political experience, is a Mormon," the memo reads. "His religion is a delicate issue, which Kennedy himself has not raised but other Democrats have."

At other presidential libraries -- which in some cases have had decades to process the material -- some first lady records are now open to the public.

About 75,000 pages of Rosalynn Carter's records are publicly available, including scheduling and social office files. Both the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush libraries also said that some records covering former first ladies Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush were open.

The healthcare papers that have been released contain gaps when it comes to the part played by Hillary Clinton. A number of records involving her have been kept secret because they include confidential advice between presidential aides. Among the withheld documents are memos about meetings between Hillary Clinton and Democratic Sens. Christopher J. Dodd and Joseph R. Biden Jr. -- now her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Other records kept from public view include a 1993 memo to the first lady entitled "positioning ourselves on healthcare," and another from that year called "public portrayal of the Medicare program."

UPDATE On The Use of RNC E-Mail Accounts by White House Officials

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reports:

The Oversight Committee has been investigating whether White House officials violated the Presidential Records Act by using e-mail accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee and the Bush Cheney ‘04 campaign for official White House communications. This interim staff report provides a summary of the evidence the Committee has received to date, along with recommendations for next steps in the investigation.

The information the Committee has received in the investigation reveals:

The number of White House officials given RNC e-mail accounts is higher than previously disclosed. In March 2007, White House spokesperson Dana Perino said that only a “handful of officials” had RNC e-mail accounts. In later statements, her estimate rose to “50 over the course of the administration.” In fact, the Committee has learned from the RNC that at least 88 White House officials had RNC e-mail accounts. The officials with RNC e-mail accounts include Karl Rove, the President’s senior advisor; Andrew Card, the former White House Chief of Staff; Ken Mehlman, the former White House Director of Political Affairs; and many other officials in the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Communications, and the Office of the Vice President.

White House officials made extensive use of their RNC e-mail accounts. The RNC has preserved 140,216 e-mails sent or received by Karl Rove. Over half of these e-mails (75,374) were sent to or received from individuals using official “.gov” e-mail accounts. Other heavy users of RNC e-mail accounts include former White House Director of Political Affairs Sara Taylor (66,018 e-mails) and Deputy Director of Political Affairs Scott Jennings (35,198 e-mails). These e-mail accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies.

There has been extensive destruction of the e-mails of White House officials by the RNC. Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC e-mail accounts, the RNC has preserved no e-mails for 51 officials. In a deposition, Susan Ralston, Mr. Rove’s former executive assistant, testified that many of the White House officials for whom the RNC has no e-mail records were regular users of their RNC e-mail accounts. Although the RNC has preserved no e-mail records for Ken Mehlman, the former Director of Political Affairs, Ms. Ralston testified that Mr. Mehlman used his account “frequently, daily.” In addition, there are major gaps in the e-mail records of the 37 White House officials for whom the RNC did preserve e-mails. The RNC has preserved only 130 e-mails sent to Mr. Rove during President Bush’s first term and no e-mails sent by Mr. Rove prior to November 2003. For many other White House officials, the RNC has no e-mails from before the fall of 2006.

There is evidence that the Office of White House Counsel under Alberto Gonzales 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. In her deposition, Ms. Ralston testified that she searched Mr. Rove’s RNC e-mail account in response to an Enron-related investigation in 2001 and the investigation of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald later in the Administration. According to Ms. Ralston, the White House Counsel’s office knew about these e-mails because “all of the documents we collected were then turned over to the White House Counsel’s office.” There is no evidence, however, that White House Counsel Gonzales initiated any action to ensure the preservation of the e-mail records that were destroyed by the RNC.

The Presidential Records Act requires the President to “take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented … and maintained as Presidential records.” To implement this legal requirement, the White House Counsel issued clear written policies in February 2001 instructing White House staff 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.

The evidence obtained by the Committee indicates that White House officials used their RNC e-mail accounts in a manner that circumvented these requirements. At this point in the investigation, it is not possible to determine precisely how many presidential records may have been destroyed by the RNC. 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 potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive.

There are several next steps that should be pursued in the investigation into the use of RNC e-mail accounts by White House officials. First, the records of federal agencies should be examined to assess whether they may contain some of the White House e-mails that have been destroyed by the RNC. The Committee has already written to 25 federal agencies to inquire about the e-mail records they may have retained from White House officials who used RNC and Bush Cheney ’04 e-mail accounts. Preliminary responses from the agencies indicate that they may have preserved official communications that were destroyed by the RNC.

Second, the Committee should investigate what former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales knew about the use of political e-mail accounts by White House officials. If Susan Ralston’s testimony to the Committee is accurate, there is evidence that Mr. Gonzales or counsels working in his office knew in 2001 that Karl Rove was using his RNC e-mail account to communicate about official business, but took no action to preserve Mr. Rove’s official communications.

Third, the Committee may need to issue compulsory process to obtain the cooperation of the Bush Cheney ’04 campaign. The campaign has informed the Committee that it provided 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.


Documents and Links
• Investigation of Possible Violations of the Presidential Records Act [.pdf]
• Deposition of Susan Ralston [.pdf]
• Errata Sheet for Deposition of Susan Ralston [.pdf]

White House Follows New Path To Secrecy

The AP reports:
In the past year, lawyers for President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney directed the Secret Service to maintain the confidentiality of visitor logs, declaring them to be presidential records.

The drive to keep secret the lists of visitors to the White House complex and Cheney's home, the administration says, is essential to ensuring the president and vice president receive candid advice to carry out their duties. The decision made the logs exempt from a law requiring their disclosure to whoever asks to see them.

The latest part of the strategy emerged this week when the government disclosed a letter from Cheney's counsel placing visitor logs for his personal residence on the Naval Observatory grounds in the category of presidential records.

Lawsuits are bringing to light new details about the White House push to make sure the public doesn't learn who has been meeting with top Bush administration officials.
Cheney's counsel wrote the Secret Service last September, instructing the agency not to preserve copies of visitor data for the vice president's personal residence. The Secret Service has been giving the originals to the vice president's office since the start of the Bush administration.

A week ago, the government filed court papers stating that the Secret Service is retaining copies of the visitor logs because of pending lawsuits, and that Cheney's office agrees with the decision.

A private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, has filed two lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act seeking Secret Service visitor logs. But the FOIA does not apply to presidential records.

The Bush administration has exploited that different treatment of records between the two laws, which prompted the fight in federal court. The administration is seeking dismissal of the lawsuits.

In trying to get the cases thrown out, the Justice Department has filed documents in court outlining a behind-the-scenes debate over whether Secret Service records are subject to public disclosure. The discussions date back at least to the administration of President Bush's father and involve the Justice Department and the National Archives as well as the White House and Secret Service.

The government's court filings show that the Bush White House focused on the issue in the months before Election Day 2004.

Discussions moved into high gear when the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal prompted news organizations and private groups to demand that the administration release Secret Service records of visitors to the White House complex and the vice president's residence.

There was precedent for the demands.

During the Clinton administration, Republican-controlled congressional committees obtained Secret Service visitor logs while conducting investigations of the president and first lady.

Christopher Lehane, a former special assistant counsel to President Clinton and press secretary to then-Vice President Al Gore, points out the political implications of the Bush administration campaign to close off access to the records.

``The question it raises is 'What are these guys hiding?''' said Lehane, now a Democratic consultant. ``They can live with it because they've only got a year or so left, but it doesn't do a lot for public confidence in open government.''

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Thursday, ``I can't comment on a case in litigation, and I can't speak to the decisions made by other administrations.''

The Bush administration says it is standing on principle.

``It is important that the president be able to receive candid advice from his staff and other members of the administration,'' Fratto said. ``To ensure that he receives candid advice, it is essential as a general matter that the advice remains confidential.''

In a declaration filed in court a week ago, Cheney's deputy chief of staff, Claire O'Donnell, said that ``systematic public release of the information regarding when and with whom the vice president and vice presidential personnel conduct meetings would impinge on the ability of the OVP (office of the vice president) to gather information in confidence and perform its essential functions, including assisting the vice president in his critical roles of advising and assisting the president.''

In May 2006, the Secret Service and the White House signed a memorandum of understanding designating visitor records as presidential.

They are ``not the records of an 'agency' subject to the Freedom of Information Act,'' says the agreement that was not disclosed until months later, in late 2006. The records are ``at all times under the exclusive legal custody and control of the White House.''

Four months after the memorandum of agreement, Cheney's counsel wrote to the Secret Service, stating that visitor records for the vice president's personal residence ``are and shall remain subject to the exclusive ownership, custody and control of OVP.''

The Sept. 13, 2006, date on the Cheney letter coincides with requests by The Washington Post seeking records on the vice president's visitors under the Freedom of Information Act.

The law enforcement agency ``shall not retain any copy of these documents and information upon return to OVP,'' said the letter to the Secret Service's chief counsel.

``If any documents remain in your possession, please return them to OVP as soon as possible,'' the letter added.

The Justice Department filed the Cheney letter last Friday in one of the lawsuits brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is invoking the FOIA law in seeking the identities of conservative religious leaders who visited the White House complex and the vice president's residence.

The group, which represents Valerie Plame and her husband in their lawsuit against Cheney and other key administration figures in the leak of Plame's CIA identity, also is seeking White House visitor logs in the Abramoff scandal.

According to government documents, the Secret Service routinely destroyed five of eight categories of information relating to visitors to Cheney's residence. Of the records it retained, the Secret Service regularly turned over handwritten visitor logs to Cheney's office.

The Secret Service stopped the destruction in June 2006 because of lawsuits by various groups, according to the court papers. The law enforcement agency also is retaining copies of the material, contrary to the directive in the September 2006 letter from Cheney's counsel.

The court filings by the government show that:

-On three occasions late in the administration of the first President Bush and during the first term of President Clinton, the Secret Service proposed treating copies of White House visitor documents as non-presidential records. In its court filings, the current Bush administration opposes releasing details of the Secret Service proposals, saying this ``poses a substantial risk of creating public confusion'' because the proposals were never adopted.

-In January 2001, as Clinton prepared to leave office, White House lawyers proposed the transfer of visitor records from the Secret Service to the White House. The proposal was entitled ``Disposition of certain presidential records created by the USSS,'' or the Secret Service. The records are now at the Clinton library in Little Rock, Ark., the National Archives confirmed Thursday.

-In September 2004, a lawyer for the Bush White House and a special assistant to the director of the Secret Service proposed ``informal views on one way to address the disposition'' of visitor records, according to court documents. The unnamed associate White House counsel and the Secret Service assistant jointly authored a July 29, 2004, document bearing the same title as the Clinton administration document from 3 years earlier.

-In July 2005, the Secret Service gave a presentation on the issue to the White House counsel's office, the Justice Department and the National Archives.

-On May 11, 2006, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel provided a legal opinion on the issue, which is among the many documents the government is refusing to disclose. Six days later, the White House and the Secret Service signed the agreement designating the records as presidential.

Presidential records are released starting five years after a president leaves office. Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, nonclassified material is disclosed first, with classified documents and advice to the president released later after review by federal agencies, the White House and the former president.

Under an executive order President Bush signed in 2001, the archivist of the United States cannot unilaterally release the records without the permission of the current president, former presidents and their representatives.

``The scary thing about this move by the vice president's office is the power grab part of it,'' said Tom Blanton, head of the National Security Archive, a private group that uses the FOIA law to pierce government secrecy.

``We're looking at a huge problem if the White House can reach into any agency and say certain records have something to do with the White House and they are presidential from now on,'' Blanton said. ``This White House has been infinitely creative in finding new ways and new forms of government secrecy.''

White House E-Mail Administrator Says He Never Told Clinton About Missing Messages

CNN reports:

The Clinton administration official who oversees the troubled White House e-mail system testified Wednesday he never told President Clinton about the computer problem that prevented thousands of White House e-mails from being properly stored and archived.

Mark Lindsay, the assistant to the president for Management and Administration, also told a court he did not threaten White House workers with jail if they went public with the problem that arose at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Lindsay's comments came in testimony before U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who is holding hearings into allegations of obstruction of justice by White House officials concerning the computer problem and the delayed reconstruction of the missing e-mails.

The e-mails, many of which were captured on back-up tapes, might be covered by subpoenas issued by the Office of the Independent Counsel, congressional committees and Judge Lamberth. Thousands of other messages, including those from the office of Vice President Al Gore, were not captured on tape and are irretrievable.

Lamberth is hearing a case brought by the conservative legal group Judicial Watch. The group is suing the White House in a related matter concerning a batch of errant FBI files found inside the Clinton White House.

Lindsay -- who invoked executive privilege Tuesday when asked if he discussed the problem with President Clinton -- said Wednesday he had discussed the problem as high as then-Deputy Chief of Staff John Podesta and White House Counsel Charles Ruff, but never brought it directly to the attention of the president.

Lindsay also said he did not tell Hillary Rodham Clinton about the computer failure.

Lindsay described the White House computer system as "antiquated" and "unstable." He said his job required him to lurch from one computer crisis to the next while using the time in between to beg for more money from Congress to upgrade the system.

Lindsay said he did not understand the magnitude of the e-mail problem when he first learned of it, and his mischaracterization of the problem may have led others to inaccurately portray the situation to investigators.

But, as he did when he testified before Congress earlier this summer, Lindsay maintained that he had "absolutely not" threatened contracted White House computer technician Betty Lambuth when the problem surfaced in June 1998. He said he only spoke to Lambuth for a few seconds and never told her to keep the issue to herself.

Lambuth testified before Congress earlier this year that she and other Northrop Grumman technicians feared for their jobs because of the problem and held secret meetings in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House to discuss their situation.

Lindsay did testify that he wanted the extent of the problem limited to those working to fix it but he said that group could have included "5, 50, or 5,000" people so long as the problem was fixed.