# CREW sues WH for info about FIVE MILLION missing e-mails

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288>\
**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:** 4\
**Page:** 3

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**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, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/41 "2008-01-19T06:57:49Z")

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[White House missing CIA, Iraq e-mails](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080119/ap_on_go_pr_wh/white_house_e_mail_34)

> [@](#):
>
> Among the times for which e-mail may not have been archived from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office are four days in early October 2003, just as a federal probe was beginning into the leak of Valerie Plame’s CIA identity, an inquiry that eventually ensnared Cheney’s chief of staff.  
> …  
> Among the periods of time for which the chart indicates e-mail is missing is a five-day span starting on Jan. 29, 2004, when the White House was dealing with the possibility of an election-year probe by Congress into Iraq intelligence failures.

Software doesn’t know which emails should be deleted, only people do.

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**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, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/42 "2008-01-19T07:06:43Z")

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So, the e-mails are missing during times when the WH was enmeshed in a nasty scandal? Whenever was it _not_ enmeshed in a nasty scandal?

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**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, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/43 "2008-01-19T13:11:12Z")

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[QUOTE=Czarcasm]  
Considering what the White House’s ultimate goal is, it might just be absolute competence.  
[/QUOTE]

Ahem. By the reasonable standard of a professional IT person, this is beyond any possible measure of simple incompetence. This could only have occurred with direction.

That’s what I’m saying.

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**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crew-sues-wh-for-info-about-five-million-missing-e-mails/405288/44 "2008-01-19T14:12:36Z")

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I’m not so sure that there’s anything really valuable in the missing emails. In interviews Bush has stated that he doesn’t like using email (and _not_ because he doesn’t know how to use it). In an interview with a NASA scientist about being ordered to obscure certain “inconvenient” facts, he stated that they never gave out such orders via email or had any documentation of this request. It was just the scientist and the Administration wonk alone in the wonk’s office when the orders were handed out. (Me, I’d be wearing a wire after the first meeting so that when I had my next one, there _would_ be a record of what was said.)

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