# CREW sues WH for info about FIVE MILLION missing e-mails **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 23, 2007, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288 "2007-05-23T22:40:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/21 "2007-05-24T03:20:43Z")
[QUOTE=Cervaise] So they’re either deeply nefarious or wholly incompetent at administration. [/QUOTE] Can’t they be both? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/22 "2007-05-24T03:28:37Z")
[QUOTE=Cervaise] So they’re either deeply nefarious or wholly incompetent at administration. This is a defense how? [/QUOTE] Do you think the Clinton Administration never lost any e-mails? Or other documents for that matter? Surely the President/administration isn’t personally to be held “incompetent” because of record keeping systems? If so, I’m pretty sure every President/administration we have has had people in charge of records who screw up (and a lot of the people who are actually managing and keeping records aren’t political appointees and thus aren’t part of the “administration”, but just part of the Federal bureaucracy.) I’ll never really understand this desire to insult or deride the current administration for stuff _all_ administrations are guilty of; there’s enough stuff that this administration is **uniquely** guilty of before we start shelling them for record keeping errors (errors that even private companies regularly make–has anyone here ever dealt with the outcome of a record keeping error at their local utility company, credit card company, or et cetera? Happens all the time.) Once **any** organization is large and complex enough, record keeping mess-ups happen. I don’t understand the desire to be vindictive about it. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/23 "2007-05-24T11:27:34Z")
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde] Do you think the Clinton Administration never lost any e-mails? Or other documents for that matter? [/QUOTE] I don’t know. But when I read your cite showing they lost millions of emails relating to major policy failings I’ll be in a better position to judge. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/24 "2007-05-24T11:30:06Z")
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde] If it was some sort of deep, dark, evilll conspiracy I don’t think there’d be anywhere near 5,000,000 emails about it. The White House (West Wing) has hundreds of employees with personal computers, and “the White House” could also include the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (where many members of the President’s staff work because the office has outgrown the West Wing, which was built during the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.) [/QUOTE] Of course you wouldn’t erase just the secret emails, that makes it easier to find. If you’re looking for a dozen missing emails you might find them, but if you’re looking for 5 million how will you ever know when to stop? The miniscule percentage of emails you need hidden are lost in the noise. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/25 "2007-05-24T13:00:39Z")
[QUOTE=Bill Door] Of course you wouldn’t erase just the secret emails, that makes it easier to find. If you’re looking for a dozen missing emails you might find them, but if you’re looking for 5 million how will you ever know when to stop? The miniscule percentage of emails you need hidden are lost in the noise. [/QUOTE] As for the last two years the only defence being offered by the White House and the Kool-aiders is the ‘Breathtakingly incompetent rather than just plain Evil’ defence I guess at some point they’ll admit that when Bush was trying to solve the whole Iraq funding problem and give a helping hand to a Nigerian General with banking problems he accidentally selected all 5,000,000 emails for deletion when going for the Reply button. It could happen to anyone. He’s just a man not a super-being. Maybe next time he’s chatting with God he could ask him to Undelete them? ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/26 "2007-05-24T14:16:50Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] What are they about, I wonder? [/QUOTE] 4 million were titled “Super size ur P1N1$ WOW!!!” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/27 "2007-05-24T20:23:15Z")
[QUOTE=Kevbo] 4 million were titled “Super size ur P1N1$ WOW!!!” [/QUOTE] And the depressing part is that all of those were sent from **inside** the White House. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/28 "2008-01-18T19:53:14Z")
[E-mails? What e-mails? I have no idea what you’re talking about.](http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/01/18/emails/index.html) Unbelievable. ---
**Author:** ![grayhairedmomma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/47e85d/32.png) [@grayhairedmomma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grayhairedmomma)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/29 "2008-01-18T20:13:48Z")
Here’s a link to the [Washington Post](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/17/AR2008011703575.html) article in case anyone can’t get to the [salon.com](http://salon.com) article. > [@](#): > > The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed yesterday by a congressional Democrat. > > The 2005 study – whose credibility the White House attacked this week – identified 473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices, said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.). > > Waxman said he decided to release the summary after White House spokesman Tony Fratto said yesterday that there is “no evidence” that any White House e-mails from those years are missing. Fratto’s assertion “seems to be an unsubstantiated statement that has no relation to the facts they have shared with us,” Waxman said. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/30 "2008-01-18T21:12:45Z")
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde] Only if you view the government as an ongoing criminal organization. [/QUOTE] This administration? Sure. ---
**Author:** ![NurseCarmen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/31 "2008-01-18T21:29:24Z")
What blows me away is that I am in IT. And backing up a mail server is probably just about one of _the_ most important things about my job. If that sucker crashes and burns, suddenly everybody is without their email, and a mob is outside my office with pitchforks and torches. I have automated emails that tell me if the backup worked. I have automated emails that tell me if the backup failed. I follow simple, step by step, industry wide practices to assure that I never lose any data, not just on my email server, but ALL of my servers. I have more than once had to recover emails from years ago (Once I had to rebuild a Novell Groupwise server JUST to pull one accounts’ emails, weeeee). And the funny thing is, in the world of IT, I can readily admit that I’m a completely average geek. In the world of IT, nobody would look at my skill set and be that impressed. And I _know_ that there are a hell of a lot of geeks out there that would happily take a job at the White House just to say to all the other geeks “Yep, I run the servers at the White House”. Ya see, between you and me, every IT person secretly wants to brag about the shit they run. You got a Terabyte? Heh, well I’ve got two. You still run WINDOWS? etc., etc. So I’m not buying it that some IT guy screwed the pooch and lost all that data (Even if they did overwrite the tapes, a lot of it can still be recovered at any number of data recovery shops). I just don’t buy it. It’s just such a basic part of IT. But if I was of loose morals and was _asked_ to make a year’s worth of data disappear, I could do it. But it would take a while. I’d have to delete a lot of local profiles on laptops and call in all of my off-site backup tapes from the vendor. But I could do it. And I think that is what happened here. I just can’t see some clueless yahoo running things at the friggen Whitehouse. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/32 "2008-01-18T21:31:15Z")
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde] Do you think the Clinton Administration never lost any e-mails? Or other documents for that matter? [/QUOTE] Wow, Zero to “But Clinton” in 21 posts. You’re getting slow. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/33 "2008-01-18T21:31:50Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] I know. It astounds me that even the WH can **generate** that many in a day. But then, it’s a big country and a big government. [/QUOTE] I’d bet they’re counting one email per person on a cc list. In that way, 5 million is nothing. This all goes to show what happens when you hire IT guys on the basis of their service to the Party and their views on abortion. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/34 "2008-01-18T23:20:39Z")
[QUOTE=NurseCarmen] And the funny thing is, in the world of IT, I can readily admit that I’m a completely average geek. In the world of IT, nobody would look at my skill set and be that impressed. [/QUOTE] As **Voyager** said, when this administration won’t even schedule an interview with you unless the first line of your resume says, “I promise my body and soul to the service of The Leader, even unto prison or death, not to mention a little genital tonguewashing if asked,” one’s actual real-world qualifications tend to get somewhat glossed over. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/35 "2008-01-18T23:38:21Z")
[QUOTE=NurseCarmen] I just can’t see some clueless yahoo running things at the friggen Whitehouse. [/QUOTE] Ummm… ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/36 "2008-01-19T01:23:07Z")
Its probably a software issue. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/37 "2008-01-19T01:59:07Z")
In this case, wetware. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/38 "2008-01-19T02:20:12Z")
Today, I restored an e-mail from eight years ago that never actually hit the person’s e-mail in box, at work. It was from two different e-mail systems ago. I was not working at the job when it came in, nor were any of my available co-workers… the two who were, were at home on vacation. This is beyond incompetence. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/39 "2008-01-19T02:48:42Z")
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde] Do you think the Clinton Administration never lost any e-mails? Or other documents for that matter? Surely the President/administration isn’t personally to be held “incompetent” because of record keeping systems? If so, I’m pretty sure every President/administration we have has had people in charge of records who screw up (and a lot of the people who are actually managing and keeping records aren’t political appointees and thus aren’t part of the “administration”, but just part of the Federal bureaucracy.) I’ll never really understand this desire to insult or deride the current administration for stuff _all_ administrations are guilty of; there’s enough stuff that this administration is **uniquely** guilty of before we start shelling them for record keeping errors (errors that even private companies regularly make–has anyone here ever dealt with the outcome of a record keeping error at their local utility company, credit card company, or et cetera? Happens all the time.) Once **any** organization is large and complex enough, record keeping mess-ups happen. I don’t understand the desire to be vindictive about it. [/QUOTE] The story says Podesta ,Clintons assistant who ran the staff ,sent messages notifying the staff that all email was going to be saved. Not the same as Bush .sorry bad try. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/40 "2008-01-19T03:12:57Z")
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath] Today, I restored an e-mail from eight years ago that never actually hit the person’s e-mail in box, at work. It was from two different e-mail systems ago. I was not working at the job when it came in, nor were any of my available co-workers… the two who were, were at home on vacation. This is beyond incompetence. [/QUOTE] Considering what the White House’s ultimate goal is, it might just be absolute competence. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288.md?page=3)