Watchdog groups press Obama DOJ on Bush e-mails
Open-government advocates have hailed many of the new Obama administration's efforts to increase transparency at federal agencies. But the National Security Archive and the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington were disappointed when, just a day after the inauguration, the government moved for dismissal of long-running litigation over millions of lost Bush-era e-mails.
In a response brief filed Friday, the Archive blasted White House claims that recovery was under control as based on "untested scraps of evidence," and urged a federal court to compel archivists to request the intervention of the Attorney General under the Federal Records Act.
The watchdog groups filed suit under the FRA after learning that problems with the White House e-mail journaling system had led to the loss of some 5 million messages between 2003 and 2005. The law makes the preservation of all such official communications mandatory. In January, the government argued that suit had been rendered moot thanks to the preservation of backup tapes that will permit the eventual restoration of almost all the lost data.
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