Leopold: Investigators Eye Broader White House Email Trail

In a story first reported by Truthout last year, in a federal court document filed in January 2006 in US District Court in Washington, DC, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed that his investigative team "learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system." That document was filed during the discovery phase of the perjury and obstruction of justice trial against former vice presidential staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Less than two weeks after Fitzgerald revealed that emails from the White House were missing, 250 pages of emails from President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's office were turned over to investigators working for the special prosecutor - more than two years after the investigation began.

The White House offered no official explanation concerning the circumstances regarding the sudden reappearance of the emails it turned over to Fitzgerald on February 6, 2006 or if there was any truth to Fitzgerald's allegations that the emails were not automatically archived. At the time, a White House spokeswoman would only say that staffers "discovered" the batch of documents during a search.

A number of theories emerged at the time in an attempt to explain why the emails were not preserved. Media reports settled on the idea that White House computers simply broke down and failed to archive the emails.
However, Steve Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' government secrecy project, said in an interview with the Associated Press last year that the reason the White House offered to explain how the emails went missing "invites suspicion."

"Bottom line: Accidents happen and there could be a benign explanation, but this is highly irregular and invites suspicion," Aftergood said. "A particular subset of records sought in a controversial prosecution have gone missing. I think what is needed is for the national archivist to ascertain what went wrong and how to ensure it won't happen again."

A spokesperson for the National Archives did not return calls for comment.
Fitzgerald's office would not comment on specific evidence in the case. A spokeswoman for Libby's defense attorney, Theodore Wells, said Wells would not address whether the emails he received during discovery contained RNC email addresses because Wells is preparing to file an appeal on behalf of his client. In February, a jury found Libby guilty of obstruction of justice and perjury.

However, the revelation that administration officials used their RNC email accounts to keep tabs on the US attorney purge raises questions about whether emails in the Plame leak investigation were truly lost due to a computer failure or if they were actually sent by White House officials through the RNC servers. More on the story.

This is what Jason and I discussed over lunch two weeks ago about the missing 250 emails in the CIA Leak case. Jason is on to something. Why would those 250 emails al of the sudden reappear on February 6, 2006? I will add this. I do believe that the White House usage of the RNC email server to conduct official business stems back in The President's first term. The only question is can Waxman get those emails that stem back from Bush's first term. And since the White House used the RNC email server and Gmail from Google, what other servers and email address did the White House used illegally to conduct official business? Lastly, regarding Fitzgerald's CIA Leak investigation and case, we can now see clearly that no only Scooter Libby obstructed the leak case so did the White House. I hope that Waxman can comb over those found 250 emails to see if those emails were though the RNC server.I look for a Special Counsel in the near future into this investigation.